Chapter 72 Chapter 12 The Third World 6

6 The astonishing achievements of the "Great Leap Forward" of the capitalist world economy, coupled with its increasingly internationalized phenomenon, not only made the old single third world view no longer applicable, but also consciously brought all the people of the third world into the modern world .Faced with this new world, they may not like it. In fact, the so-called "fundamentalist" groups that are now prevalent in some third world countries-especially in Islamic areas, but not limited to Islamic countries-and others in The movement advocated by the traditionalists in name is fundamentally an action to challenge and resist modernization (it needs to be corrected that not all fundamentalist factions are like this).However, despite their objections, they all know that the world they are in now is completely different from the world their parents faced.This new world came to them with buses and trucks on dusty country roads, with oil pumps and battery-powered transistor radios.Transistor radios brought a whole new world before their eyes--to the illiterate people, the radio waves that reached the ears, sometimes even in their non-literate dialects.Although listening to the radio is a privilege enjoyed only by those who immigrate to the city, other than that, if I have never worked in the city, I almost have three relatives and four friends who live in the big city, where they make a living and make a living.Because rural populations are flocking to cities by the millions, even in mainly rural Africa, cities with a population of 300,000 to 400,000 are not uncommon nowadays—such as Nigeria, Zaire, Tanzania, Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast , Chad, Central African Republic, Gabon, Benin, Zambia, Congo, Somalia, Liberia, etc.Therefore, the villages and towns are inseparable from the city and are closely linked.Even the most remote places now live in a world of plastic panels, Coke bottles, cheap digital watches, and synthetic fibers.And under the wonderful historical reversal, the backward third world countries even began to sell their local skills in the first world.As a result, on the streets of European cities, small groups of Indian wanderers from the Andes Mountains in South America can be seen playing their sentimental flute music.On the sidewalks of New York, Paris, and Rome, there are black vendors in West Africa, selling all kinds of gadgets to the residents of big western cities; just as the ancestors of these big city residents once went to the black continent to do business.

Any big city naturally becomes the central point of convergence of changes. Leaving nothing else aside, a big city by definition inherently represents modernity.An immigrant from the Andes Mountains often taught his children: "Lima has made more progress and more excitement." (Julca, 1992) Perhaps after entering the city, the country people still use the tools brought from their hometown to build shelter for themselves. In the rain-sheltered land, there are pieces of dilapidated huts that are no different from the farming hometowns.But the city is too novel after all, full of events they have never experienced before, everything in front of them is so different and contradictory from the past.This feeling of change is especially pronounced in young women.And so, from Africa to Peru, there was a chorus of lamentation at the way women behaved differently when they moved to the cities.A boy who came to the city from the countryside borrowed an old Lima song (huayno) and sang his voice of complaint:

When you came from your hometown, you were a country girl; Now you live in Lima, with your hair combed like a city chick; You even said, "Please" wait, I'm going to do a twist dance; Stop pretending, stop pretending, You and I have the same eyebrows and hairlines. (Mangin, 1970 pp. 31-32) In fact, even the countryside cannot stop this stream of modern consciousness from spreading (even rural life that has not yet been swept up by new varieties, new technologies, new marketing, and new organizations), because since the 1960s, Asian In some areas, there has been a "green revolution" in grain cultivation due to scientific selection of seeds, and later, new export agricultural products have been successfully developed for the world market.The rise of bulk air freight and the new tastes of consumers in the "developed" world are two reasons why this category of perishable products (tropical fruits, flowers) and specialty crops (cocaine) have become the new favorite crops for export.The impact on rural areas cannot be underestimated.The conflict between the old and the new is most intense in the Amazon region of Colombia. In the 1970s, the area became a relay station for marijuana in Bolivia and Peru, where it was refined into cocaine.This new world appeared only a few years ago; it was opened up by pioneers who migrated here, unable to bear the control of the state and landowners.Their patron saint is the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who have always regarded themselves as defenders of small peasant life.This ruthless and cruel new market naturally conflicts with the farming lifestyle that has always been self-sufficient with one shot, one dog, and one net.How can a small field of yucca, a field of bananas, compete with an unstable but lucrative new crop?How can you resist the temptation of huge profits?How can the old-fashioned life resist the new city full of drug dealers, bodyguards, bars and karaoke bars?

Thus the face of the country is changed, but its transformation is entirely dependent on the development of urban civilization and urban industry.The economic situation in the country is more often determined by the income that the local people can earn in the city.For example, in South Africa under apartheid, the economy of the so-called "black homeland" was built on this kind of "foreign exchange".10% to 15% of the local economic sources come from the income of those who stayed behind, and the rest is completely dependent on the supply of income from migrants working in white areas (Ripken and Wellmer, 1978, pp. 196).When men and women from the countryside go to the city, they find that there is another world in life—whether it is their own personal experience, or their neighbors tell them about it—paradoxically, the situation in the third world is the same as in parts of the first world: just as the rural economy is growing in the city While being abandoned by the villagers under the impact, the city may turn out to be the savior of the countryside.Now everyone discovers that life does not have to be as hard and bleak as our ancestors forever, and it does not have to be exhausted on the rocky ground to earn the minimum subsistence.On the rural land with infinitely beautiful scenery all over the world—but because of this, the harvest is too little—nine rooms have been emptied since the 1960s, and only the elderly are left alone.At the same time—take the villages in the highlands of South America as an example—although the villagers have moved to the cities to make a living, and found ways to survive in the metropolis, such as selling fruit (or, more precisely, selling strawberries in Lima), the villagers in their hometown The pastoral scenery has been preserved and even reborn.Because of the complex operation integration of migrant households and resident households, rural income has shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural (Smith 1989, chapter 4).More importantly, we found in this excellent case study in the Peruvian highlands that many of the rural migrants did not switch to work. Their livelihood choice was to become peddlers and become part of the network of third world "informal economy" activities. a member.Therefore, in the third world, the medium of social change is likely to be this group of middle and lower middle-class emerging classes composed of migrants who earn money in one way or another.And the dominant form of their economic life—especially in the poorest countries—is the above-mentioned informal economic activities, which are often not recorded in official figures.

Therefore, in the last third of this century, the huge gap that existed between the small number of modernized or Westernized ruling classes in the Third World and the masses began to gradually narrow under the transformation of society.Exactly how this shift takes shape, and what the shifting self-consciousness is, we don't know.Because most of the governments of these countries do not even have decent statistical agencies, market and opinion surveys, and social science institutes and scholars.However, even in the most well-documented countries, any social activity initiated by the grassroots is often difficult to detect at first.This is why it is often difficult to predict and grasp the new culture and fashion of young people at the beginning.Sometimes even those who make money from young people, such as pop culture, are oblivious to budding trends, let alone parents.Having said that, it is clear that there is an unknown factor stirring and sprouting in the third world cities beneath the consciousness of a few privileged elites.Even in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire), which is completely silent, like a pool of stagnant water.Otherwise, how can we explain that in the dead of the 1950s, a kind of pop music that was most influential in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s (Manuel, 1988, pp. 86, 97- 101)?Speaking of this, how do we explain that until then, this colony was not only disgusted with the education of local people, but also disgusted with any internal political activities; Japan, the Congo, which is closed to the outside world and insensitive to the outside world” (Galvicoressi, 1989, p. 377), will have a sudden political awakening in 1960, causing the Belgians to give it up and let it become independent?

Regardless of the turmoil in the 1950s, by the 1960s and 1970s, the general trend of social transformation was already evident. This was the case in the Western Hemisphere, and it was true in the Islamic world, as well as in several major countries in South and Southeast Asia.Paradoxically, among the socialist countries, the Third World region, the Soviet Union's Central Asia and the Caucasus, showed the least signs of change.In fact, the world often does not know that the Communist revolution is also a conservative motive.A communist revolution aims at transforming certain aspects of human society—such as state power, property relations, economic structures, and the like—while freezing other matters in the revolutionary The previous state, at least strictly guarded against it, will never allow the capitalist society to continue to turn and change, to overthrow and shake half of it.The most powerful weapon of the communist regime - state power - is actually quite incapable of changing human behavior, far less powerful than the pros and cons of touting or criticizing it (the so-called "socialist new man", or the relative "totalitarian tyranny") imagines .It is generally believed that the Uzbeks (Uzbeks) and Tadjiks (Tadjiks) who live north of the border between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan have much higher education, culture and economic life than their ethnic groups living in the south.In fact, the people living in the south are no worse than the people living in the north who have lived under the socialist system for 70 years.By the same token, since 1930, bloody struggles between ethnic groups seem to have subsided, and probably never had to worry about the Communist authorities (although horror events still inevitably occurred in the collective social life of these decades: the Soviet Union In the legal annals there is a record of a vendetta caused by an accidental strangulation by a threshing machine on a collective farm).But time passed, and by the early 1990s, the old view had returned, prompting observers to warn that "the Chechen region (Chechen) was in danger of self-genocide, because the vast majority of Chechen families were involved in some kind of family vendetta." disputes." (Trofimov/Diagava, 1993)

The cultural effects produced by social transformation are yet to be studied in detail by future historians.But one phenomenon is obvious, that is, even in highly traditional societies, the mutual obligations and customary relations used to maintain the centripetal force in the past are now facing increasing pressure.Scholars found: "The inherent family relations in Ghana and other parts of Africa are struggling to support the operation under a huge load. It is like an old bridge that has been under the pressure of high-speed traffic for many years. Over time, the foundation of the bridge has cracked... Rural areas The older generation of the city and the younger generation of the city are separated from each other by hundreds of miles of dilapidated roads and centuries of new development" (Harden, 1990, p. 67).

As for political contradictions, it is easier to clarify.As large numbers of people—at least young people and urban dwellers—influx into the modern world, the monopoly of the small Westernized elite who created the first generation of post-colonial history naturally began to be challenged. to the challenge.Also challenged are the founding charters, ideology, and vocabulary and grammar used in public affairs discourse on which the new country was founded.Because these batches of new urban or urbanized residents, no matter how educated they are, are not the old elite class in terms of numbers alone.The objects of the latter are foreign colonists, or the same kind who have returned from overseas.Most of the time—especially in South Asia—the former hate the latter.All in all, poor people do not agree with the 19th-century Western outlook on life in pursuit of secular success. In several Islamic countries in the West, the conflict between the original non-religious leaders and the emerging forces of the Muslim people is becoming more and more explosive. .From Algeria to Turkey, in all countries that practice Western liberalism, the values ​​of constitutionalism and the rule of law, especially the protection of women's rights, are mostly defended by the secular regime that led the country's liberation from the colonial regime, or its descendants. or (if it still exists today).Therefore, the government uses military power to compete with public opinion.

Such conflicts are not limited to Islamic countries; those who oppose progressive ideas are not limited to the poor.The strong exclusivity of the BJP's Hindus, ie the support of the burgeoning corporate and middle class. In the 1980s, an unexpected trend of ethnic-religious nationalism turned Sri Lanka, an originally peaceful and prosperous Buddhist country, into a killing field. Only El Salvador could compare to its ferocity.The dispute is rooted in two factors of social transformation: the disintegration of the old social order, a huge self-identification crisis in the countryside; and the emergence of a group of young people with improved education (Spencer, 1990).The vast rural ground is changed by the coming and going of people; the cash-based transaction economy has deepened the gap between the rich and the poor and split; the uneven distribution of social mobility driven by education has brought turmoil; The inherent class status that allows everyone to know where they are, and its specific symbols and language are gradually disappearing.All of these make the rural population uneasy, and live in anxiety about the future of their homeland every day.As a result, some new symbols and rituals emphasizing the meaning of "collective union" began to appear one after another—in fact, even the consciousness of "collective union" itself is an unprecedented new phenomenon—such as the sudden emergence in the Buddhist circle in the 1970s. Congregational worship replaces the inherently private nature of family prayer in the past.In addition, at the school sports meeting, the opening ceremony of the national anthem played on a borrowed tape recorder also belongs to this mentality.

All of these are the political aspects of a changing world, a society that can ignite an explosion at any time.The so-called national politics was originally invented and recognized by Westerners since the French Revolution.Adding to the vagaries is the fact that, in many countries of the Third World, there is nothing foreign at all, or at least not permitted.As for other regions, if there has always been a political tradition of the nature of grassroots mass movements, or a quiet majority has always acquiesced in the legitimacy of the ruling class, then a certain degree of community consciousness will continue, such as Colombians, born Everyone has a little bit of this consciousness, either liberal or conservative, and this tradition has lasted for more than 100 years-every reader of Garcia Marquez should know this situation.Old bottle of new wine, maybe the content of the bottle is changed by them, but the label outside the bottle is the same.The same is true for India’s National Congress Party. During the half century since India’s independence, the party has split and reformed several times, but until the 1990s—except for a few short-lived exceptions—the winners of India’s general elections always belonged to those People who are targeted by the party's historical goals and traditions.Similarly, communism may have collapsed elsewhere, but in Hindu West Bengal, the deep-rooted tradition of the left, combined with a good record, has made (Marxist) communists in power almost forever.There, the symbol and representative of the resistance to the British struggle for national power was not Gandhi or Nehru, but the terrorist and armed anti-British leader Bosch.

What's more, the change in the basic structure itself has caused the politics of certain countries in the Third World to follow the same old path familiar to the First World.For example, the rise of the working class, the struggle for workers' rights and trade unions, is reappearing in the "newly industrialized countries", as evidenced by the development of Brazil, South Korea, and Eastern European countries.Although it does not necessarily become a replica of the large-scale social democratic movement that appeared in Europe before 1914, it is not necessarily possible to establish a political Labor People's Party; but Brazil in the 1980s, after all, successfully produced a similar national political party , the Labor Party (Workers'party PT). (However, in the auto industry in São Paulo, the headquarters of the Brazilian labor movement, its political tradition is a combination of populist labor laws and communist militancy. The local Catholic clergy, who were instrumental in gaining a foothold, also belong to the leftist tradition.) Similarly, the rapid growth of industry has also created a large class of well-educated professionals who, although less subversive, are equally as leadership We welcome the original authoritative rule of modernization to embark on the road of civilianization.Their desire for openness can be seen in Latin America in the 1980s, the newly industrialized countries and regions in the Far East (Korea, Taiwan), and the countries of the Soviet bloc.The results of their style of striving for openness may be different, but their intentions are the same. In the Third World, however, there are still vast areas of uncertain future.Exactly what political impact social changes will have on them is still unknown.The only certainty is that the half century of unrest since the end of World War II will continue. Next, we have to turn our heads to see another world.This part of the world, for the Third World after colonial liberation, seems to provide a more appropriate and stimulating model than the Western model: that is, the socialist system modeled on the Soviet Union, the so-called "Second World" .