One of the great pleasures of my job is surprise—when I’m looking for something that’s supposed to be obvious and I come across an idea, character, or action quite different from what I expected. And then it happened to me the night of June 12, in Paris, while I was reporting on the breakthrough of NUPES, the left-wing alliance cobbled together by Jean-Luc Mélenchon that prevented President Emmanuel Macron from to have a second legislative majority and which has strongly shaken up French politics.
In search of a NUPES member who could explain to me the success of this unlikely coalition — a mixture of communists, socialists, ecologists and militants of La France insoumise, the party founded by Mélenchon —, I found myself in a brasserie of 14e rounding among supporters of Rodrigo Arenas, candidate for the 10e constituency of Paris in the National Assembly, then occupied by a member of Ensemble, the renamed Macronist coalition. Surrounded by happy supporters, Arenas, sleeves rolled up and smiling, looked like a winner, despite the fact that his position at the top of the electoral list with 42.6% did not guarantee victory in the second round.
Exiled from Chile at the age of four with his family during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Arenas was a communist by inheritance, his father being a supporter of the Marxist president Salvador Allende, who died in a coup in 1973. In France, the Arenas family settled in Champigny-sur-Marne, stronghold of Georges Marchais, long-time Secretary General of the French Communist Party (PCF). Through public education, the Arenas have re-established themselves as French-style intellectuals/activists — the father, Patricio, notably holds two master’s degrees, one in social engineering and another in political economy. However, the son evolved in his policy, leaving the PCF for the environmental movement and the struggle to reform schools within a federation of parents of students. A father of four, Rodrigo Arenas was particularly sensitive to the COVID-19 crisis and the resulting deterioration in relations between teachers and students, as well as between parents and government. Today, he told me, the worst problem is inequality in a supposedly free and non-discriminatory education system. Already, teachers in private schools are paid by the government with taxpayers’ money, which often does not have the resources to pay the costs of a private school. In addition, “you have to add your credit card” when considering the education of your child in a state school. How what ? In an egalitarian France? “If the teacher resigns in the middle of the school year and is not quickly replaced [situation de plus en plus fréquente à cause de la pénurie actuelle de professeurs], who will help the child to pass his baccalaureate? You have to hire a private teacher. »
There, I said to myself that I was dealing with a different politician. In fact, Arenas was running for the Assembly for the first time, and he had the freshness of a less shrewd candidate than the average. However, thoughtfully, he abruptly changed the subject to discuss capitalism and the environment, key political terrains in Mélenchon’s grand strategy (Arenas dubs the head of the NUPES “Yoda” with a certain ironic admiration). And here it is, my surprise: according to Arenas, “there are many people [écologiquement corrects] who think it’s cool to cross Paris in an electric car. What’s not cool is the children working in the lithium mines in Chile”. Damn it ! I was completely unaware of the existence of child lithium miners in Chile, let alone the exploitation of those who work in the Congo in the cobalt mines, another essential element for the lithium batteries that power the ultra cool Teslas. Indeed, Chile is the world’s second largest producer of lithium; and indeed, Chile has a lamentable tradition of employing children in industry. How many are assigned to the task of lithium mining, a water-intensive process that can wreak havoc in communities adjacent to mines and their huge salt ponds? I couldn’t find any figures dealing with underage children in Chile — the US government estimates that 4% of Chilean children between the ages of 5 and 14 work — but experts at the Department of Labor in Washington note that Chile has no has been studying child labor since 2012, before lithium mining became prominent in the country. They describe more generally the practice of “forced labor” of children in various sectors, including mining. It is not Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla considered very cool by Wall Street and many American greens, who will clarify the facts about the lithium mines in Chile, nor the cobalt mines in the Congo, where the exploitation of children as young as six years old is well documented. As Arenas told me, “when something is cheap, someone somewhere is paying”.
On June 19, Rodrigo Arenas was elected in the second round of legislative elections and sits, on behalf of LFI and NUPES, on the Commission for Cultural Affairs and Education. I’m happy. After all, he lectured me concisely. On a moral level, “saving the planet” is more complicated than buying an electric car.
John R. MacArthur is editor of Harper’s Magazine. His column returns at the beginning of each month.