He says that the impact of the coronavirus cannot be explained without taking into account the damage produced in the three decades prior to neoliberalism. One of these damages would be the health system, and one of its knots is that of the health systems that have developed.

Neoliberalism has put profit and capital accumulation at the centre of all nations and continents, and that has dominated everything: health, education, housing ... Costs that can be avoided and should be minimised to the maximum. Public health services around the world have been dismantled and privatized, with one exception, such as that of Cuba. A strong neoliberal policy of three decades that has dismantled welfare states.

In one of his writings, he indicated some relevant data on the European Union: In 2006 there were 574 hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants and in 2017 it fell to 504, a decrease of 12%, although the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 800 beds.

Germany is the only EU country to maintain reasonable health standards. By chance, it is the only country where there are a limited number of deaths, even though there are many people infected. Germany has 25,000 ICU beds; Italy, with a similar population, 5,000. In the case of Madrid, one of the main outbreaks in the Spanish State, trade unions and health professionals have denounced that the basic health system has been abandoned. And that has been invested in equipment and high-grade analysis, less necessary, but economically profitable. It's terrible, a suicidal neoliberal policy.

How does Cuba, a poor country, send so many doctors? How does China, a country with a much lower per capita income than the EU, send aid and masks? It is not a question of there being no respirators in the EU countries, as it can technically be somewhat more complex. There's no mask. It's the delusion that this model has brought us.

Saturated health systems, confined population, but every effort is made to keep factories running.

I have followed quite a few things from Italy. There, Cofindustria, the employer of the industry, has imposed itself on the government to keep the factories open in Lombardy. It is mind-blowing, many of these workers have very close contacts on the way to their work, have no face masks or gloves at work, minimal protection elements. In the area of Italy, where large deaths of people are being recorded. China closed the plant in the province of the outbreak and these types continue to accumulate capital in the midst of the pandemic. That's neoliberalism, it doesn't matter to send thousands of workers to death so the industry doesn't stop.

To stop it, you need deep-seated unions or purge unions themselves. In Italy there was what is called a savage strike, because part of the trade unionism, as is the case everywhere, is more in favour of employers than of workers. Neoliberalism has bought or leased some of the workers' addresses.

Another of the damage you mentioned is environmental damage. It says that natural and environmental conditions have been created so that viruses can spread faster and more deadly than ever before.

The destruction of nature has made a leap in these three decades. The animal habitat is very deteriorated. And these species, both mammals and insects, have gotten much closer to cities. Zoomosis between these species and humans has been the trigger factor for pandemics. I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that, I'm telling you rigorous scientific research.

In addition, these are populations with health problems due to contamination, mainly pulmonary and respiratory. If you pass the map of contamination and coronavirus disease in Italy, you agree. That is, the virus does not reach a healthy, non-contaminated, well-nourished and cared for population...

This crisis is being tackled in different ways in different parts of the globe. You often follow China’s social and political reality. What can we learn from the Chinese model?

In China, they've done something very Chinese: they've locked the whole world up and they've done strong population control over the Internet. China has tremendous social control capacity. It is a model that I personally condemn very much, but the government and the Communist Party have had the ability, capacity and leadership to make a decision: to bet on stepping the pyramid or the infection curve to control the coronavirus. They have an advantage that other countries do not have. China is so big and has so many inhabitants that they completely isolated the outbreak. A city of 11 million people, Wuhan, a province of 60 million people, Hubei. They completely isolated the area, closed production, locked people in their homes, took food from other places... In two months they managed to stop the epidemic. Cuts will be lifted on 8 April. It is a medical, health and political success. But from the point of view of society, it is not the place where I would like to live China, with such brutal control of the population.

And how would you define the European model of crisis management?

The worst of China and the worst of the West are at stake. They close people, they take out the police, the Civil Guard, I saw the military the other day in the streets of Vitoria or Bilbao. Like in China, control is very ugly. But at the same time, capital accumulation is maintained. Our countries follow the worst of neoliberalism and copy the worst of China. China can be criticised for many things, and I do, but it is not a purely neoliberal model.

I'm very afraid of what might happen in the West with great popular movements. This started the week after March 8. Will the movements follow? I'm in touch with a lot of people who are using the networks for solidarity: to buy older people, to help children, for jobless manterers or to raise funds for household employees. I think it's very good, but I'm very suspicious of networks. I believe that rooting in the territory is fundamental, we have to look for our own resources. For example, the busy Errekaleor neighborhood I know: I'm afraid to evict it. Other conditions for maintaining the garden are the bakery, the daily sociability, because they are where they are and because they have worked.

At this moment, power can advance above society and social movements. That is my fear, because we are locked up and those who send us to stay quiet move freely.

There seem to be two ways of dealing with this crisis that are consolidating. On the one hand, militarism: the military in the streets, the call to discipline and obedience, the language of war – we are at war, we are all soldiers…. On the other hand, mutual support and attempts to promote communitarianism.

Both trends will collide at some point. I hope it will not be soon, but I am afraid it will happen. The pandemic shows that we do not live in democracy. If those people are able to militarize the whole country, it's because we don't live in democracy. At critical times, the military is taken out into the streets without consulting anyone. Neither the parliament, nor the regional parliaments, nor the municipalities... No, it is imposed by the centralist state. And I say this by sharing some of the measures they are taking. We are facing the end of globalisation, and at the same time a recentralisation of states, and that is very dangerous.

With all that's going on and the speed that's going on, with this mixture of fear and ignorance ... What measures are meaningful and what are not? What is reasonable and what is not? Discuss collectively and based on truthful information?

Totally. I think it is reasonable that the elderly should not leave their homes, but not the young people aged 20 or 25 who are not at risk. I can be wrong, but that is not the point. I've read that in the poorest neighborhoods of Seville, migrants, housekeepers, etc. They have nothing to eat. Precarious workers, if they run out of work, because they have nothing immediately. This has multiplied in the Brazilian favelas. I talked yesterday with my friends about favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Government propaganda tells them to wash their hands. Yeah, all right, but they don't have water. Not drinking water, that would already be a luxury, but washing water. In Brazil, 50 out of every 200 million inhabitants are precarious workers. If the poor and poor sectors of the world and Latin America do not organize themselves to solve the problems, we will be affected by the pandemic and the military.

It's curious. Neoliberalism and neoliberals have brought us here, they are the ones in governments. And now from one day to the next, states decide everything. Or we hear Luis de Guindos, former Minister of Economy with Rajoy and current Vice-President of the European Central Bank, defending a universal minimum emergency income to deal with the crisis.

All they fear is a social explosion, a revolt, a revolution. Everything else doesn't matter. That's why they militarize it. I agree with having a basic income, it is necessary and fair. But they can't pay the state's general income and then charge it in taxes. Let some great fortunes be expropriated, paid by the banks and large companies of the IBEX. The crisis has to be paid by the person who causes it, the big capital, that 1% of the world. These people have been accumulating non-stop money for 30 years.

Here we are talking mainly about the West and the East, but less about Abya Yala, and less about Africa. How do populations and governments cope with the crisis?

There is no common pattern. Most governments have adopted very harsh isolation measures, with very strict confinements. They told me that in Córdoba (Argentina), and also in small towns, the government has blocked exits with sands and stone fences. People face it, there's a lot of resistance. There are two countries where the measures are very flexible, Brazil and Mexico. The two most populous and very important countries in the production and industry sector. I believe that all lengths are going to confine the citizens.

What I feel is that the authorities do not have a clear strategy, beyond not wanting a rebellion. They're improvising week by week and even day by day. And that causes a lot of pain. I distinguish from there Cuba, China and perhaps Russia, not because I agree with them, but because they work differently.

Do you think that what we are experiencing will have geopolitical consequences? Can it cause changes in the power relations between the poles?

I do not believe that the pandemic will generate new trends, accelerate and deepen existing ones. The main one is that the center of world power moves from the West to the East, and in particular from the United States to China. China, South Korea, Japan or Singapore are the countries that have best solved the situation. In addition, they are the most advanced countries in future technologies: artificial intelligence, 5G telephony... They are the countries with the best political, economic and technological position for the future.

The United States has gone into a very strong internal whirlwind, which has caused a great humareda. Trump is drifting in his decisions and is concerned about maintaining production because he fears China’s primacy in the market. The pandemic has hit the richest and most economically important areas of the United States hard: Seattle, California with Silicon Valley, New York with stock exchange and banks... The citizens are very scared and feel that there is no clear policy. Michael Osterholm, one of the leading epidemiologists in the United States, was interviewed yesterday in New York and said the biggest problem is in the White House. And the WHO said the tendency is for the center of the pandemic to be the United States. In my view, the decline of the United States and the rise of China will accelerate.

As far as the European Union is concerned, it is becoming increasingly clear that it has lost its compass. He has long lost his way, but it is now more evident than ever. It cannot be that a country such as Italy, the G7, one of the most powerful economies in the world, is subject to the sending of masks by China, upon the arrival of doctors from Russia and Cuba, who were travelling to third world countries to help them. Except for Germany and some other country, the loss of the north is evident and is accelerating. Latin America, for its part, is even more lost than Europe. There was a time when it seemed that there was a direction, with progressive governments and with UNASUR. Then he became furious. Today it is more lost than Europe.

It is very symbolic that the European Union needs help and that this help comes from China. No one has come to the United States. Chinese experts tell us how to deal with the crisis; requests for materials to Chinese companies; donations from China to Europe.

Doesn't it look like a joke? It looks like the Marshall Plan comes from China [laughs].

Conspiracy theories are in force. One of them is that the virus was created by the United States and released in China, where it died. A representative of the Chinese Government made statements to that effect ...

I don't like conspiracy theses, because they don't help explain things. I have no doubt that this can happen, that EE.UU. You can do it, but I don't have data to confirm or deny it. It was the declaration of a Chinese political office. We will have to wait a long time for something to be known in this regard.

In any case, in this flood of information it is difficult to distinguish reliable news from fakes. And it's hard to choose between opinions. I often follow different epidemiologists, scientists, WHO representatives, and there are very divergent views. At first, Boris Jonson was a scientist who was advised not to take any action and let everyone get infected.

What scenarios do you see for the future?

I think there are two great dangers. One, let the pandemic never end, let it be periodic. For example, lifting the measures in July, but coming next winter and re-emerging the pandemic, the same or different: the state of emergency is continuously deactivated and activated, and we spend much of our confined life. Another great danger is that those States that were already in the process of deepening militarization are moving in that direction. We're kind of like Franco, and I don't know if in the 1960s we're going to go back in that direction.

In the world, the tendency is for democracies to stay skinned. Syriza's experience is a sign of today's democracies in Greece. A radical leftist government that for years does not change anything. Syriza was clearly told the field: "You can't move from here. The other thing is to admit it, it was a shame. But democracies have very narrow margins. We have to learn from our experiences, or we will have a very bad time.

If militarism and confinement are normalized, we are in a very poor position to deal with grass-roots movements, struggles and militancies. The exception are some native peoples, such as the Mayans, the Zapatistas, the Mapuches a little, the Nasas in the south of Colombia, especially the Amazon. Despite poverty, they are in better condition. Because it's not about having much or little; in this context, it's rich to have water by hand, a piece of land, a few chickens. That's what it's like today to be rich because it's to be autonomous.

It seems that we are immersed in a life model in which we are not able to stay alone. In this regard, has there been an opportunity to rethink everything? Can there now be more ears ready to listen to more radical approaches that go to the root?

Five years ago, the Zapatistas called us to an international meeting on the capitalist hydra. The meeting focused on systemic collapse. When I left, I had already read the books on the collapse, among others, Ramón Fernández Durán and Luis González. And yes, I saw it, but as something distant, something that is not present in your life. Then I thought, well, you have to take the collapse more seriously. But I didn't prepare for the coup! [laughter].

The figure of the Great Flood is found in the Bible, but also in the prophecies and worldviews of Indigenous Peoples. These peoples were prepared and are a little better than the citizens. Urbanites are a curious species: the tap turns and hot water comes out. But that's something about the last 80 or 100 years. We have to learn how to live in a simpler, more humble way, but who is willing to leave the car, leave the city? It's time to rethink everything. My life, that of my children and that of my neighbors. From food to the way you relate to nature. If we do not change, the world will take us in front of us. We have an opportunity like never to say, "Enough! Let's change it."

Is this "one more crisis," or are we at the center of something deeper?

Do not hesitate. This is a phase of collapse. It bothers me a lot when I listen to my colleagues, as I did before, talking about this situation as a normal crisis: a parenthesis opens and then closes. No. Here is a radical turn and nothing will be like before. Normality is not going to return, as normality was part of this problem. Let's go to an unknown situation. So I ask my peers to think about the Great Flood of the Bible and build boats. The state will not save us, neither the employers, nor the unions nor the parties. We can only be saved if we build community. Thousands of small communities, in coordination with other coffers. With access to land and water, access to commons and territorial connection. Let's meet in small or medium-sized groups, 20 or 30 people, but not 20,000. Because it creates the need for a state, for a government, and that is what is failing in our days. States and governments defraud their people. That's the collapse.

It knows Europe and our land. He argues that the indigenous peoples of Abya Yala are the ones who best advertise what we should do, but our lives and our values are far from them...

Following the 2008 crisis, Spain, Italy and Greece have been the most visited European countries. In all three of them, I've found some very interesting experiences. Workshops occupied without patterns from Greece and Italy, community gardens from Catalonia and Andalusia. In the periphery of Barcelona I met Can Masdeu, a former convent of families with communal garden, rooted in the territory... And I would say to them, "Imagine for each of these experiences that there are two hundred more. You would fight for independence with popular autonomy." But with one or two Errekaleor we don't go too far, we need 100, 200, thousands. Che called for the creation of two, three, many Vietnam, for imperialism to sink. That's where we are. The 2008 crisis opened up many prospects for European movements. I believe that we need to deepen and multiply.

What kind of militants and militias are calling for this objective?

At this moment, militants are needed that are closely linked to the popular sectors, able to listen, interact and respond to the demands and needs of the citizens. In Latin America, for example, the sectors most affected are the precarious, the informal, the market salespeople and the ambulances, those who live up to date, those who go hungry if they don't sell for a week. They do not serve the logic of trade unions and parties, which is often welfare. That's not worth it.

The most interesting experiences are the territorial ones, those of people linked to parishes or grassroots groups, integrated in the neighborhoods, willing to organize and promote collective self-help without pretending to “capitalize” this militancy politically. Welfare is not very useful either; militants are needed that are not central, which help to strengthen the best of the popular sectors. I think traditional militancy has to unlearn traditional logic and know how to be like one more.

** Interview with Hala Bedi. Listen to the audio of the interview here.