Ryle, Mads

Ryle, Mads

Mads Ryle

From the Ground Down

8 March 2017Blog Mads Ryle

Countries in the Global South have been forced into the large-scale extraction of natural resources (coal, oil, minerals, land) in order to export raw materials. It is corporations based in Europe and North America who generally profit. This 'extractivism' is happening even in Bolivia, where the government once presented itself as the protector of Mother Earth.

At this time of year I am always in Cochabamba, in the middle of Bolivia, in the heart of South America. The first book anyone wanting to understand the structural dynamics of this region's history reads is Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America, charting the colonial plunder of the continent's natural resources, from timber to rubber to tin to fossil fuels, and of course in the process…