En español: http://www.indymedia.org/or/2009/04/923348.shtml
The Demarest Factor: The Ethics of U.S. Department
of Defense Funding for Academic Research in Mexico
Simón Sedillo 16 Apr 2009 04:08 GMT
On October 23, 2006 the Lawrence Journal World or LJ World published
an article which silently uncovered a funding scandal within Kansas
University, in Lawrence, Kansas. In 2005, the university’s department of
geography received at least $500,000 in Department of Defense funds to
map communally held indigenous land in the states of San Luis Potosi,
and in Oaxaca, Mexico.
As a result of this original story, on November 26th, of 2007
elenemigocomun.net published a feature follow up story on the funding
scandal titled “The Road
to Hell”, which elaborates on the the potential dangers of this type
of militarily funded mapping project. Since the publication of this 2007
article, myself and a growing number of community members and students
from both sides of the U.S. Mexico border, have engaged in several
extensive investigations into the details of this particular research
project. Our growing concern has revolved around, academic ethics
violations due to improper transparency with communities about the
research funding, and serious U.S. Army violations of Mexican
sovereignty, and of indigenous autonomy. Our collective research over
the last year has resulted in several key pieces of irrefutable
evidence, demonstrating both academic ethics violations, and serious
violations of Mexican sovereignty and indigenous
autonomy.
The Scandal:
Kansas University Geography professors, Peter Herlihy and Jerome Dobson
received the funding for their mapping project, named the Bowman
Expeditions, from the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) located at
the Fort Leavenworth U.S. Army base in Leavenworth, Kansas. The Mexican
incarnation of the project is named “Mexico Indigena” and began mapping in
2005 in an indigenous region known as “La Husteca”, which is partially
located in the state of San Luis Potosi, and then moved their operation to
the state of Oaxaca amidst the statewide popular uprising of the APPO -
Oaxacan Peoples’ Popular Assembly, in 2006.
On the 14th of January, 2009, UNOSJO, the Union of Organizations of the
Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, released a communique in which the
organization expresses concerns of BioPiracy in the Mexico Indigena
mapping project, and claims that communities were deceived, having no idea
that a primary funder of the project was the FMSO. UNOSJO cites a clear
lack of transparency and additional suspicions of implications related to
the US Army’s controversial Human Terrain Mapping System. Indeed there is
very compelling evidence that the FMSO is engaging in what they themselves
define as “Civil Information Management in Support of Counterinsurgency
Operations.”
The Official Responses:
After the initial elenemigocomun.net article was published, the Mexico
Indigena team released an official response to concerns raised by the
military funding. Since then the scandal has ballooned, and several
Oaxacan indigenous communities and organizers are demanding answers. Why
were they not told about the military funding? What will the maps be used
for by the military?
And is any of this ethical at all?
In the face of these very serious international concerns, The Mexico
Indigena Team, KU Geography professor Jerome Dobson, and the American
Geographical Society (AGS), of which Dobson is the president, have all
three released separate statements about the situation. All the statements
claim transparency, ethical standards, and the best of intentions for the
indigenous populations being mapped. The AGS takes it a step further and
denies any involvement in the US Army’s Human Terrain Mapping System.
The Contradictions:
First off, the Bowman Expeditions are aptly named after the father of
American imperial geographic exploration and imposition, Isaiah Bowman. A
new biography about Bowman by Neil Smith, “American Empire: Roosevelt’s
Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization”, provides us with a closer
look at a very racist, and arrogant academic who used his science and the
academy to advance imperial political and economic impositions around the
world. Smith cites that Bowman captured several indigenous Quechua, and
used them as pack animals during his explorations in Peru, which lead to
the “discovery” of Machu Pichu. This is just one example of many in
Smith’s book about Bowman, which illusrate the geographer’s arrogant
nature.
UNOSJO cites that neither they, nor the communities they represent,
were ever made aware of FMSO funding behind the Mexico Indigena mapping
project. At a second UNOSJO press conference on February 19th, 2009, Aldo
Gonzalez added that originally several Oaxacan communities had denied the
Mexico Indigena mapping project in their territory because someone noticed
a FMSO logo on some of the sample maps that were displayed to promote the
project to communities. Aldo goes on to show that in UNOSJO communities,
the maps that were shown to promote the project no longer had the FMSO
logo, and at no point was this funding source ever mentioned to them.
On The Mexico Indigena project summary reports published in 2008,
project coordinators clearly express time and time again, “We (the Mexico
Indigena Team) continue to explore how best to display the complex
geospatial data needed for understanding the “cultural landscape” or
“human terrain” in a web-accessible, easy–to-use format.” Also on KU
geography professor Peter Herlihy’s web page, it clearly states, “Our
multi-scale GIS database aims at crafting the digital cultural landscape
(so-called “human terrain”) of indigenous Mexico.”
Mexico Indigena team members have traveled to Colombia with FMSO
agents. In Colombia, the counter insurgency and strategic military uses of
this type of mapping project can not be disguised as altruistic, or
otherwise intended. No one can possibly imagine happy little mapping in
Colombia by the hands of the US Army. Either the Mexico Indigena team is
lying or they are playing dumb, but the implications and intentions of the
mapping project could not be any more self evident.
The Demarest Factor:
The Bowman Expeditions received their grant from the FMSO at Fort
Leavenworth. The official assigned to the Bowman expeditions is Lieutenant
Colonel Geoffrey B. Demarest. Demarest is the IberoAmerica researcher at
the FMSO. During a 23-year military career, Dr. Demarest served in
multiple assignments in Latin America and is also a graduate of the U.S.
Army School of the Americas, the Defense Attaché Course, Foreign Area
Officer’s Course, Defense Strategy Course, Defense Language Institute, and
others. He has written numerous articles dealing with internal conflict
including “The Overlap of Military and Police Responsibilities in Latin
America.” Dr. Demarest’s first book, Geoproperty, considers property
ownership as an issue of national security and strategy. His areas of
academic interest include emerging threats and responses, new strategic
alignments, military history, and international law. Dr. Demarest holds a
Ph.D. in International Studies from the Denver University Graduate School
of International Studies, a J.D., has practiced as a civil attorney and
lectures on the legality of espionage.
The Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO), is a research and
analysis center under the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command,
Deputy Chief of Staff G-2 (Intelligence). FMSO manages and operates the
Ft. Leavenworth Joint Reserve Intelligence Center (JRIC) and conducts
analytical programs focused on emerging and asymmetric threats, regional
military and security developments, and other issues that define evolving
operational environments around the world. Asymmetric threats are defined
as terrorist organizations and guerrilla insurgent army’s, while emerging
threats are being defined as social phenomenon and in particular, social
movements.
Six declassified essays published by Lieutenant Colonel Demarest of the
FMSO are the best evidence of sinister intentions for the Bowman
Expeditions. Demarest’s essays, “Expeditionary Police Sevice” [1],
“Tactical Intelligence and Low Intensity Conflict” [2], “The Strategic
Implications of International Law” [3], “Mapping Colombia: The Correlation
Between Land Data and Strategy” [4], “Geopolitics and Urban Armed Conflict
in Latin America” [5] and “The Overlap of Military and Police in Latin
America” [6] directly contradict any of the primary intentions made
public, or ever expressed by the Mexico Indigena team, the Bowman
Expeditions, or the American Geographical Society. Demarest also published
an entire text book titled: “Geoproperty: Foreign Affairs, National
Security and Property Rights”, which is available for anyone to purchase
for around $150. It is this text that thoroughly expresses Demarest’s
attitude toward the military uses of the Bowman Expedition’s Mexico
Indigena project. A seventh essay by the FMSO’s Major José M. Madera,
United States Army Reserve titled “Civil Information Management in Support
of Counterinsurgency Operations: A Case for the Use of Geospatial
Information Systems in Colombia” describes with utmost specificity, the
counterinsurgency and intelligence uses of open source GIS information,
land data, for what the FMSO calls “Civil Information Management.” It is
important to note that the bulk of the information provided by these
texts, is in reference to the use of geographic data for ongoing US
Military operations in Colombia. This military operation is financed by
U.S. taxpayers through a funding packet known as Plan Colombia. Recently
the U.S. government has voted to fund a similar operation in Mexico, known
as the Merida Initiative. Communities and organizers in Mexico have dubbed
the Merida Initiative, “Plan Mexico.” Both of these funding packets use
the excuse of narco-terrorism, to further militarize communities. Plan
Colombia has shown little to no results in the last ten years.
These FMSO essays, and Demarest’s text book on the matter, expose a
very particular and sinister military ethic, attitude and strategy with
regards to the control of large populations of poor people, indigenous
people, and the disenfranchised in general. These specific attitudes
include the systematic devaluation of any forms of indigenous self
governance and self determination. Cultural identity as a whole is
regarded as an impediment to prosperity. In particular, traditional forms
of communal land usage and rights, or in Demarest’s words “informal land
use”, is specifically cited as the primary impediment to progress, and
security. In particular, the Demarest essays cite that informal property
ownership in either rural or urban settings is the breeding ground for
criminal or insurrectionary activity.
The solutions provided by Demarest to the security dilemma of “Informal
Land Use” and poverty in urban or rural settings, is the systematic
devaluation, segregation, and criminalization of these communities. Such
communities include everything from “shanty towns” on the edges of an
urban metropolis, to communally held indigenous farmland, or even urban
ghettos with rows of rental property. In this worldview of the
dispossessed, Demarest assesses poor communities as deserving of a
systematic segregation because of their propensity towards criminal
activity and self organizing. He specifically cites concerns about the
criminality of large areas of the dispossessed, as they become separately
governed autonomous zones. Demarest even admits that though this
perception, attitude or strategy may not be as openly acceptable any
longer in the US, it makes absolute sense to employ it heavily upon the
people of Latin America. However, it is painfully obvious that the
attitudes and strategies expressed by Demarest relate directly to systems
of urban displacement, or gentrification, within the United States as
well.
Demarest asserts that the privatization of property is the key to
stability, prosperity, progress, and security in Latin America, and that
formal land titling leads to effective government control of the land and
its inhabitants. In Demarest’s approach to property and security, existing
private property of real value, must be made secure from nearby and
potentially unsettled poor communities, through a phenomenon he describes
as the “architecture of control.” He concludes that unregulated and
informally used land must be privatized, and titled for security and
prosperity to take place. Through Demarest’s strategic analysis of private
property, the communally held lands of indigenous farmworkers in Oaxaca,
Mexico, and the rented property of the working poor in Los Angeles are
impediments to progress, development, and security. Demarest cites the
1992 LA riots, as a success story of “the architecture of control”,
wherein the financial district was effectively able to seal itself off
from the rioting masses, and suffer minimal high value property
damage.
From the protection of existing valuable real estate to the systematic
displacement of poor communities in order to gain formal ownership and
titling of their “informally” owned territory, Demarest places the Bowman
Expeditions, the Mexico Indigena Project, the KU Geography professors, and
the American Geographical Society in a very uncomfortable ethical pickle.
Furthermore, Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey B. Demarest, and the FMSO, put
the entirety of U.S. Academia in an ethical quagmire requiring immediate
resolution.
A question about ethics for everyone, not just soldiers and
academics:
Today, under a new and historical presidential era, US citizens are in
a very unique position to reflect upon the immediate past and identify a
series of great American mistakes. However easy it may be to point at the
arrogance and volatility of the Bush administration, it is always
challenging to ascertain the culpability of average everyday citizens,
ranging from apathy, to arrogance, and everything in between. Some
Americans protested lightly, and symbolically resisted the global
atrocities and national defamation caused by the Bush presidency. Many
more US Citizens hid behind the embarrassment of a federal government
willing to engage in clearly unethical and unintelligent political,
economic, and military strategies that have ultimately proven to be
absolute failures for the American people. These failures have
disproportionately affected the poor, while profiting and benefiting
tycoons and their corrupt institutions. The entire world, with varying
levels of access to education and information, recognizes that it is not
OK to disregard national sovereignty, it is not OK to impose a single
worldview or political economy, it is not OK to engage in preemptive
military activity, and it is not OK to gather intelligence in violation of
basic human and community rights. No matter how glaring George Bush’s
excesses and crimes may be, the American people, more so than just their
new president, still hold a serious responsibility to themselves and the
world to be accountable for what has happened, for what is to happen next,
and for how they are never going to allow these things to happen again.
Americans owe it to themselves to save their own face.
The ethics of military funding for academic research may seem blatantly
obvious to anyone with any sense of territory, sovereignty, autonomy,
communality or self determination. Unfortunately after generations of
constant war and fear mongering, it is clear that it has become more
difficult for the American people to grasp this simple contradiction. No
matter where one may lean on the subject, this particular case is a clear
violation of some very basic ethical research standards for any
educational institution. US Citizens, and academics in particular, should
be very alarmed at the perception this incident, and incidents like it,
will give the world about American researchers, and citizens in general.
Can the American people afford any more global disdain for their
country?
I normally would not be inclined to discuss or debate the ethics of any
sort of military activity in which the United States of America is engaged
in. My particular concern is the way in which, this fighting force has
become less defensive and increasingly preemptive and offensive. For me
personally this is a source of great national embarrassment. But for
arguments sake, and just for a hypothetical moment, allow me to defend a
nation’s right to defend itself. Shouldn’t the right of all nations, and
more importantly of all communities, to defend themselves, be guided by a
strict adherence to a set of norms, accords, and ethical standards which
do not infringe on basic rights such as sovereignty, autonomy, self
determination, self governance, cultural identity, and of course
territory?
The Bowman Expeditions, the Mexico Indigena mapping project, and the
American Geographical Society are directly aiding the FMSO in the
gathering of preemptive military intelligence, in violation of Mexico’s
national sovereignty and indigenous autonomy. More importantly, this type
of intelligence gathering is a direct threat to the Mexican peoples’
personal and collective right to self determination. It is no coincidence
whatsoever, that the Mexico Indigena team and the FMSO chose Oaxaca,
Mexico as a “prototype” location for their Bowman Expeditions in the
summer of 2006. They chose to map “informally owned” indigenous
territories in a state amidst a popular social uprising with a very strong
indigenous base.
The attitudes expressed in the seven FMSO essays attached to this
article, and in Demarest’s book “GeoProperty”, clearly demonstrate a
systematic devaluation of indigenous culture and identity, with a
particular disdain demonstrated for indigenous or popular self
determination, self sufficiency, self reliance, and more specifically self
governance. Furthermore, the FMSO shows a deliberate intention to
segregate, marginalize, and criminalize large portions of human society
simply because they are poor. To the FMSO, it is imperative that territory
and space occupied informally by the poor, be privatized and regulated in
order for progress and security to be harvested. In the face of this
military, political and economic strategy, it is no wonder that millions
of indigenous and peasant farm workers, students, housewives, mothers,
children, workers, and communities all over the world, are beginning to
organize and train in a variety of different strategies for the self
defense of their sovereignty, autonomy, territory, identity, and self
determination.
End Notes:
The following articles are in PDF
1. Expeditionary
Police Sevice
2. Tactical
Intelligence and Low Intensity Conflict
3. The
Strategic Implications of International Law
4. Mapping
Colombia: The Correlation Between Land Data and Strategy
5. Geopolitics
and Urban Armed Conflict in Latin America
6. The
Overlap of Military and Police in Latin America
Other FMSO essays related to Mexico:
7. Law
Enforcement and the Mexican Armed Forces: New Internal Security Missions
Challenge the Military
8. US-Mexican
Border Security: Civil-Military Cooperation
9. Mexican
Security
10. Insurrection:
An Analysis Of The Chiapas Uprising
11. Mexico’s
Other Insurgents
12. Mexico’s
Evolving Security Posture
13. Mexico’s
Multimission Force for Internal Security
14. The
Death Cult of the Drug Lords Mexico’s Patron Saint of Crime, Criminals,
and the Dispossessed
Resources:
• México Indígena page at elenemigocomun.net
http://elenemigocomun.net/cat/mexico-indigena
• Dr. Zoltán Grossman’s website on the Geographic Controversy over the
Bowman Expeditions / México Indígena:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/bowman.html
• The
World Was Not Enough - Christian Parenti’s review of Neil Smith’s book
on Isaiah Bowman, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the
Prelude to Globalization
• Letter
to the Association of American Geographers (AAG) from members Joel
Wainwright and Joe Bryan:
[W]e ask that the AAG investigate (1) the
evidence that [Professor] Herlihy revealed his funding source at the time
of obtaining consent; (2) the extent that the FMSO shaped the design of
the research itself; and (3) the extent to which [Professor] Herlihy has
made the results from the research available to FMSO personnel.
homepage:: http://www.elenemigocomun.net
add
a comment on this article
SOA graduate Geoffrey Demarest
SOAW.ORG 16.Apr.2009 07:03
SOA graduate Geoffrey Demarest’s time as Military
Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala was 1988 to 1991! This covers the
time of heavy U.S. backed military repression against indigenous
communitis in Guatemala and several high-profile cases of murder and
torture (e.g. the Myrna Mack assassination in 1990. In 1989, Sister Diana
Ortiz, the founder of the Torture Abolition Survivor Support Coalition
here in DC was raped and tortured in Guatemala. During her torture, a man
called Allejandro appeared to be in charge. He spoke colloquial English
and spoke of contacts with the US Embassy. It also covers the time of the
murder of Michael Devine. Allegations have been made that Guatemalan
colonel, Julio Roberto Alpirez on CIA payroll, was involved. A review in
1996 showed that Alpirez was on the CIA payroll from 1988-1992 and that he
was involved in the cover-up of the murder of Devine and had participated
in the interrogation and likely torture of Efraim Bamaca, a captured
Guatemalan guerrilla married to an American lawyer (Jennifer Harbury).
--
http://elenemigocomun.net/2255
New Article On US Military Mapping in Mexico
elenemigocomun 04.Jul.2009 19:44
http://elenemigocomun.net/cat/mexico-indigena
Suscribirse a:
Enviar comentarios (Atom)
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario