Controlling Interest

"Not a nut or a bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we will do everything in our power to condemn Chile and Chileans to the utmost deprivation and poverty". This statement by Edward Kerry, US Ambassador to Chile, exposes the role US businesses and the US Government play in the third world. It is one of many in the film Controlling Interest, shown on campus last week by the Students' Association.

The film belongs to CORSO, who use it as part of their policy of working to both eliminate poverty and expose its causes. Contrasting interviews with company directors and workers in cramped Singaporean factories, shanty town squatters on the outskirts of major third world cities with Latin American nightspots, the film, reveals the way in which multinationals actally increase the poverty of the third world.

Economic Manipulation

It also shows the role of the multinationals in the West. It follows the struggles of workers in Greenville, Massachusetts, to prevent their factory shifting its operations to South Carolina. Many multinationals close down factories in the US and Europe, only to open again somewhere in the third world. The advantages are a cheap and "stable" labour force, and often hefty tax incentives as well.

The drive is for profits, without concern for the unemployment they leave behind or the deplorable conditions they subject third world workers and their families to. One businessman even went so far as to claim that Singaporean "girls" like repetitive work because it suits them!

Controlling Interest focuses on Brazil, where a so-called economic miracle has tripled the GNP since 1974. But 80% of the people have grown poorer, victims of the multinationals' manipulation of their economy: For example, the staple crop blackbeans used to provide an important source of protein in the Brazilian diet. These days, blackbeans are no longer grown in any -significant amounts. They have been replaced by export crops, leading to huge profits for the multinationals and widespread malnutrition for the masses of the people. Their poverty, being forced to live in dwellings made of wooden boxes and tin cans, makes the barracks of Soweto look luxurious.

Political Manipulation

In Chile the multinationals were forced out when Allende came to power. The West responded with an economic blockade in an attempt to starve the Chilean government out. Not satisfied with this, the US bolstered the Chilean army and made the coup possible. In the bloodbath that followed, 30,000 Chileans were killed.

Overthrowing Governments that are unfriendly to the US used to be a favourite past time of that superpower. In 1965, 25,000 US troops overthrew the first democratically elected President of the Dominican Republic for 40 years. One of the US Government spokesmen interviewed in Controlling Interest described this as "slight overkill"!

It is interesting to look at this film in relation to the New Zealand experience. Our Government also encourages foreign investment into New Zealand. Many people who are concerned that wages and working conditions should not be further eroded, believe that the Government will control foreign investment properly.

But why should we assume that multinational investment will not play the same role here that it does everywhere else in the world? Why would a Government that readily changes the laws to suit its own interests (or ignores them altogether), that cuts vital welfare such as health and education while continuing to subsidise big business, and consistently attacks the living standards of most of the people, change its tack when it comes to the multinationals.

To preserve its own interests, does it have any choice? The West Germans were attracted by New Zealand's cheap energy and cheap, relatively stable, white labour force. They and the Government that makes these things available to them certainly do not have our interests at heart.

Leonie Morris.