Bové, José (1953–)

José Bové is a farmer, activist, cofounder of the Confédération Paysanne farmers union, and spokesperson for the international peasant movement Via Campesina. His advocacy of an alternative form of globalization based on popular democratic participation reflects a primary concern for human and environmental welfare over corporate interest and is typified by support for traditional agriculture over genetic modification and industrialized food production. Bové comes from the Bordeaux region of France, where he spent his infancy and teen years, and attributes many of his motivations to regional influence: anarcho-syndicalism, nonviolent direct action, and the combination of symbolic action with mass struggle.

In an interview given to the New Left Review in 2001, he describes the relevance of these factors to his involvement in struggles against military service and for the rights of conscientious objectors and deserters during the early 1970s. Around the same time, Bové and others involved in that campaign joined farmers in the Larzac region of France in resisting the expansion of a military base. They symbolized their opposition through the building of a stone sheep barn on military [Page 262]land between 1973 and 1975 and establishing squats in vacant farms owned by the military in 1976. This and much of Bové's subsequent activity and tactics are clearly informed by the principles of nonviolent direct action and the use of bold gestures to publicize and make connections between causes.

As part of Confédération Paysanne, for example, he helped organize the 1988 “Plowing the Champs Élysées” demonstration in Paris, which involved farmers in tractors protesting against European agricultural policy. Opposition to genetic modification of food has involved the destruction of modified maize in a Novartis facility at Nerac, genetically engineered rice at a CIRAD crop agency research center in Montpellier in 1999, and Brazilian corn and soybeans grown by Monsanto in 2001. Again in 1999, Bové helped other activists to dismantle a half-built McDonald's restaurant in Millau, Aveyron, in protest of 100% duties placed on imports of Roquefort cheese into the United States. Typically, the target was chosen because it was considered to represent a symbol of fast food, industrialized agriculture, and the use of hormone-treated beef.

On the international stage, Bové has sought to demonstrate the connectivity of different causes. Examples include joining Greenpeace action against renewed French nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean in 1995, demonstrating against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, and attending protests against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 2001 in Al-Khader, Bethlehem, and in Ramallah during 2002. In 2006, however, he was refused entry to the United States, where he had been invited to address a conference on Global Companies organized by the Cornell University Labor Center.