Geopolitics of the Amazon - Part IV: Three colonialist fallacies of opponents of the proposed TIPNIS roadway

[Bolivia Rising]

Alvaro Garcia Linera writes:

"Some people, resorting to the classic racist and criminalizing
arguments, point out that the damage to the TIPNIS is not the physical
construction itself, but the use that the highlands Quechua-Aymara
indigenous-peasants are going to make of the highway. They argue that
the park will be invaded by peasants who “will clear the forest and
grow coca for narcotrafficking.” We have been hearing those prejudices
voiced by the U.S. government and the DEA [Drug Enforcement
Administration], in order to expel peasants in years gone by, as well
as by the landholding elites of the lowlands as a means of discourse
of cohesion and conservative regional legitimation in opposition to
the presence of indigenous peoples from the highlands. But that the
same arguments are used by some environmentalists or pseudo-leftists
denotes an irreparable intellectual poverty. Three linked fallacies
can be distinguished in this prejudice, and we will now list
them".....

continue reading here
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/alvaro-garcia-linera-geopolitics-of_15.html