Gustavo Setrini

Guerrilla auditors: the politics of transparency in neoliberal Paraguay

the ongoing ‘Left Turn’ is a mirage or, worse still, a neoliberal hoax, as has been suggested by less subtle commentators elsewhere. Nevertheless, the one analytical shortcoming of the book is that it does not engage in more detail with the larger processes of economic development taking place thanks to the boom in natural resource exports. As Marshall Berman’s (1982) magisterial All that is solid melts into air shows, Faust’s bargain is the story of development under capitalism, and (human) development necessarily comes with a heavy price for society as well as nature as they are both transformed. Berman’s reading of Faust is instructive not only for its stark depiction of the dialectical nature of development but also for showing that many protagonists enter into a similar pact, even if they know full well the price they will be asked to pay. In other words, the Faustian bargain for development described by Berman is often struck not because the costs are not known or perceived to be unlikely. By staying too close to the conflicts it analyzes and to those who are actively confronting the Devil, this volume does not go far enough in illuminating the strategies of those who, caught between their aspiration for a good life and well-justified fears of massive socioeconomic and environmental transformation, take the deal anyway with the hope of improving their or at least their children’s futures. Thus Kirsch highlights a massively important point that should inform all those concerned with understanding extractivist development when he writes in the Afterword that ‘we also need to hear from unemployed campesinos, shopkeepers, grandmothers, indigenous farmers, fish sellers and others about how they are affected by mining’ (211). Overall, this is an excellent collection that defines the state-of-the-art in research on Latin American development in general and conflict and natural resource studies in particular. It deserves to be read and discussed widely by all those concerned with understanding the changes taking place in Latin America, indigenous struggles against socioeconomic and environmental degradation, and the ways in which the ever-continuing expansion of contemporary capitalism generates new social struggles and ways of grappling with its destructive effects.