Imperialism," as defined by the analytical Marxist and "Iradical tradition, is the pro- cess and consequences of the rivalry among capitalist states.' Com- petition to dominate markets, pro- tect investments, and secure geopo- litical position drives capitalist states to divide the rest of the world into spheres of influence. Great Britain was the dominant imperial- ist power in postcolonial Latin America until the second half of the nineteenth century, when it began to lose ground irretrievably to the United States. By the end of the Se- cond World War, U.S. political and economic hegemony in Latin Am- erica was virtually complete. In the postwar period, inter- capitalist rivalry played a minor role in the hemisphere. Con- sequently, anti-imperialist politics focused almost exclusively on U.S. Liz Dore teaches Latin American history at the University of Portsmouth in England and is a member of NACLA's editorial board. John Weeks teaches development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. economic and political domination. Just as British radicals at the end of the nineteenth century treated their country's imperial role as the defin- ing and perhaps eternal characteris- tic of imperialism, U.S. radicals in the second half of the twentieth century have equated imperialism with U.S. domination. For many on the left, the term was less important as an analytical concept than as a political slogan to rally against the United States. Such a reduction of the term "imperialism" is ahistori- cal, however, since larger countries have dominated smaller ones throughout recorded history. Conflating "imperialism" and U.S. domination is also analytically problematic, since it fails to iden- tify U.S. hegemony in Latin America as a general relationship within capitalism. In 1996--thirty years after the founding of NACLA-no armed insurgency seriously threatens the ruling classes in any Latin American country. The Zapatistas, who have explicitly stated that their movement does not seek to challenge state power, confirm this conclusion. Few are the countries with the prospect of a center-left, progressive-reformist government in the foreseeable future. Given this paucity of pro- gressive alternatives, many leftists in both the United States and Latin America look back on the postwar period as one of powerful anti-impe- rialist struggles, and lament a by- gone golden age of mass activism. Whether the present low ebb of mass movements should be inter- preted as a fundamental change in postwar Latin America is, however, an important analytical question for the left to ponder. Waxing nostalgic for Latin America's purportedly radical past glosses over the basic continuities from that era to the present. Post- war Latin America can be charac- terized as a period of rule by reac- tionary, authoritarian bourgeois governments that were obeisant to the United States. Local ruling classes, in league with the U.S. gov- ernment, systematically thwarted the will of the lower classes and the movements they spawned. A brief review of the successes and failures of revolutionary and NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ IMPERIALISM The left has used "imperialism" and "U.S. domination" almost interchangeably. Yet as U.S. economic power declines and capital from Western Europe and East Asia grows in importance in Latin America, the nature of imperialism is likely to change significantly-with wide-ranging repercussions for progressive politics. The cover of the May/June 1973 issue of NACL America and Empire Report. reformist efforts of the time will make the point. In only three cases-Bolivia in 1952, Cuba in 1959 and Nicaragua in 1979--did insurgent movements successfully challenge authoritarian rule and imperialist domination. Yet, while revolutions in Bolivia and Nicaragua brought about funda- mental changes in political power and ownership, their revolutionary impact-in terms of destroying the power of the propertied classes-- proved transitory. Only in Cuba did a revolutionary insurrection result in more than a temporary set-back for the bourgeoisie. Of the long list of other Latin American guerrilla movements that failed to wrest state power, only the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and Peru's Shining Path ever posed a serious threat to the ruling classes in their respective countries. Not even the region's reformist experiments managed to bring about long-term social change. Progressive reforms in Ar6valo and Arbenz's Guatemala (1944-1954), Allende's Chile (1970-1973) and Velasco's Peru (1968- 1975) were largely undone by subsequent regimes-- in Guatemala and Chile, through a brutal reign of terror. A's Latin The U.S. government was a principal player-- directly or indirectly-in orches- trating the defeats of each of these revolutionary and reformist move- ments (with the exceptions of Bolivia and Peru in 1994). "Gunboat diplomacy," or direct intervention by U.S. troops, never occurred, however, south of the Panama Canal. The superficial explanation for this geographical limit to U.S. military intervention is that Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean constituted the United States' "backyard." The real- ity is far more complex. In South America, cohesive ruling classes adequately protected both rule by the local bourgeoisie and U.S. eco- nomic and political interests. The ruling classes of Argentina (1954), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973)- while certainly encouraged by Washington-were quite capable on their own of crushing progres- sive forces clamoring for social reform. The ruling classes of Central America and the Caribbean, by contrast, were often deeply divided, and lacked the power to subdue insurgent groups without Vol XXX, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1996 outside help. In order to quell lower-class mobilization-and to buttress their position vis-A-vis rival elite factions-one sector of the rul- ing class routinely sought out U.S. intervention. The U.S. government just as routinely obliged, funding mercenary armies or sending in U.S. troops on repeated occasions: Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), Dominican Republic (1965), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s) and Grenada (1983). No period exists in Latin American history in which the pro- gressive movement was so strong that its achievements dominated an era which it could call its own. Even when successful, all revolutionary or reformist programs were rolled back-with the important exception of Cuba-often to a position more reactionary than before. In this sense, the reactionary 1990s fit comfortably into the conservative postwar history of Latin America. L atin America has changed dramatically over the past thirty years. Perhaps the most significant change has been the rapid expansion of capitalism and capitalist social relations throughout the region. In 1950, 65% of Latin America's population resided in the countryside, a crude indicator of the degree to which capitalist develop- ment was still incomplete. 2 Only 11ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ IMPERIALISM thirty years ago, most Latin Americans were tied to the land, and social relations of patronage were common. The expansion of capitalist agriculture-aided in part by land reform, even when the intended out- come was otherwise-prompted a massive rural exodus. 3 As a result, the peasantry has virtually disap- peared. Today, 76% of the region's people live in cities. 4 Market-based social relations now dominate the landscape: most Latin Americans are landless and dependent on wage labor, which many supplement through work in the informal sector. In order to quell lower-cla mobilization, the ruling classes in Central Americi and the Caribbean routine solicited U.S. intervention The U.S. government just routinely obliged, funding mercenary armies or sendii in U.S. troops. The era of the patron, the gamonal, and the hacendado is over, and the term "landed oligarchy" is no longer appropriate to describe Latin America's ruling classes. In Forbes' ranking of countries by the number of billionaires, Mexico and Brazil figure among the top ten--on par with France, Switzerland and Malaysia. While this reflects the unequal distribution of wealth that plagues the region, it is also an indi- cator of the degree of capitalist expansion in Latin America.5 A prominant interpretation of this period holds that after the Second World War, Latin American govern- ments across the political spectrum broadly agreed to pursue a national, inward-looking economic strategy based on a strong, interventionist state. This strategy, known as "import-substitution industrializa- tion" (ISI), was based on the work of Rail Pr6bisch, head of the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). According to Pr6bish's theory, the international terms of trade tend in the long run to move against primary products; in order to develop, underdeveloped countries must therefore shift from primary- product exports to manufactures via an interventionist state policy of industrial growth. According to this "regional consensus" view, Prebisch's theory was widely applied throughout the region. In vary- ing degrees, the bourgeoisie throughout Latin America sup- posedly pursued projects of ly national development based on so-called ISI that were sup- 1. ported by broad-based alliances, including the lower aS classes. ECLAC structural- g ism-and its first cousin, dependency theory-was, pur- ng portedly, endorsed across the political spectrum: from the left (Argentina's Per6n, Chile's Allende, Peru's Velasco) through the center (the PRI in Mexico, Frei Senior in Chile), to the right (Brazil after 1964, the reactionary states of Central America). Underpinning these national-development strategies was a cross-class or intra-bourgeois consensus about Latin America's need to contain U.S. economic and political influence. According to this perspective, the rise of neoliber- alism, the dismantling of so-called ISI, and the rolling back of the state's putative role in promoting economic and social welfare in the 1980s represented a dramatic shift in Latin America's political history. This interpretation fits well with the argument that the region passed through a progressive, anti-imperi- alist era that has come to an end. The neoliberal right also advo- cates the argument that the postwar period was one during which a broad, cross-class coalition supported so-called ISI. The proponents of neoliberalism blame Latin American governments' alleged inward orien- tation for all conceivable economic maladies, including inequality. In fact, the goal of "import-substitution industrialization" was not to replace foreign imports-which would have done little to change Latin America's dependency on primary-product exports-but to use the domestic market as a springboard to generate manufactured exports. "Import- substitution" is thus an ideological term that serves well the neoliberal re-writing of Latin American eco- nomic history by interpreting it as a period of "inward-looking" devel- opment. Reality is considerably different, as inspection of the historical record shows. 6 National, inward- focused development was not the general tendency in postwar Latin America. Governments implemented a deliberate, interventionist indus- trial policy only intermittently, and often in the face of opposition from segments of the bourgeoisie. The argument that a consensual strategy for national development existed in the postwar period has been widely accepted partly because ISI was pur- sued longest and with greatest consis- tency in Latin America's two largest countries-Mexico and Brazil. This strategy was also applied in Argentina and Chile, though it was not pursued consistently, or for very long, in either. In Argentina, ISI was partially abandoned after the fall of Juan Per6n in 1954, then further undermined by his successors. Chile-reviled by neoliberals as the country most afflicted by ISI- implemented the policy inconsis- tently until the mid-1950s, then abandoned it with a vengeance in 1973. The idea that ISI dominated Chile's development strategy in the 1950s and 1960s is in great part a NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ IMPERIALISM creation of the neoliberals-a crude attempt to glorify the supposedly bold economic "reforms" of the murderous Pinochet regime. Peru, another severe sinner in neoliberal eyes, was in the ISI camp for an even shorter period. Velasco's reformist military regime (1968- 1975) followed the ISI strategy, but it was dropped with his ouster and revived only briefly under Alan Garcia's government a decade later. With the possible exception of Venezuela, ISI was not imple- mented consistently and seriously in any other Latin American coun- try. Nor was ISI a Latin American version of economic nationalism. To the degree that some Latin American governments flirted with interventionist industrial policy at all, such interventionism was the general orthodoxy of the postwar period both in developed and under- developed countries. Economic strategies pursued by governments of the region, such as tariffs, protec- tionism and exchange rate controls, were part of mainstream Keynesian policies pursued by governments worldwide from 1945 to 1975. In fact, it could be argued that the vast majority of Latin American coun- tries were less protectionist and less interventionist in economic matters than the Christian-Democratic and Social-Democratic governments of Western Europe. ince the turn of the century, U.S. corporations-Anaconda, Kennecott, ITT, Cerro de Pasco, Standard Oil, W.R. Grace, United Fruit, Coca-Cola-domi- nated much of Latin America's economy. This preponderance of U.S. capital gave class politics in this period its anti-imperialist char- acter. Two types of progressive movements emerged to challenge capitalist penetration and authori- tarian rule in the region. Peasants in places like Peru, Chile and Colombia engaged in vast mobi- The cover of the January/February 1978 issue of NACLA's Report on the Americas. lizations against land expropria- tion-essentially an effort to resist proletarianization. At the same time, workers and students through- out Latin America became active in populist and anti-bourgeois move- ments whose politics were domi- nated by anti-imperialism-to be more precise, anti-Americanism. Today, we are on the cusp of a sig- nificant historical change, with broad implications for progressive politics in Latin America: the rela- tive decline of U.S. economic power. At the founding of NACLA in 1966, the United States accounted for one-third of worldwide GDP. In the 1990s, this proportion has fallen to about one-fourth. 7 The United States still dominates capital invest- ment in Latin America. Yet Western European and East Asian-espe- cially Japanese-capital is increas- ingly important, marking what promises to be an increase in inter- capitalist rivalry in Latin America into the next century. 8 At the same time, the influence of the United States in the international financial community has shifted notably. By the early 1990s, Japan had displaced the United States as the largest donor to the World Bank and the Vol XXX, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1996 International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was also the largest bilateral foreign-aid donor. 9 The Brady Plan, for example, famous for restructur- ing Latin America's debt, was largely financed by the Japanese. Other East Asian countries have also emerged as important players in Latin America. Nothing symbol- izes this more dramatically than the closing of Fort David, a U.S. mili- tary base in Panama, and its conver- sion into an industrial park devel- oped with Taiwanese capital.10 The historical parallel to these changes may very well be the shift after the First World War from British to U.S. economic and political leadership in the capitalist world. This relative decline of U.S. eco- nomic power may seem paradoxi- cal, given that the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War seemed to herald the unprecedented hegemony of the United States worldwide. During the period of ideological and geopolitical rivalry between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union acted as a partial constraint on U.S. political domination of Latin America. The clearest example is the Soviet backing of the Cuban revolution, which prevented the United States from imposing a mil- itary "solution" to Cuba's assertion of independence. Although Wash- ington has not intervened militarily in the region in the 1990s, except in Haiti, it has retained its role as the dominant external political power. Most observers expected that Washington's unchallenged politi- cal hegemony would translate into an expansion of U.S. economic con- trol over the hemisphere. The approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) seemed to indicate that this was indeed the case. Yet NAFTA can be interpreted as an attempt by the United States to arrest growing East Asian and Western European influ- ence over markets and financial investments in Latin America by constructing a regional trading bloc over which it exercises complete domination. While many see NAFTA as the ultimate expression of U.S. domination, it may actually symbolize the long-term decline of U.S. economic power and increased competition among capitalist pow- ers in Latin America. The case of Great Britain again offers a histori- cal precedent. After the Second World War, the government of Great Britain attempted to bind its colonies and former colonies closer through the creation of the "Commonwealth" in order to stave off its decline as a "Great Power." Another recent example of grow- ing conflict among capitalist powers in Latin America is the Helms- Burton Act, which seeks to prevent foreign investment, mainly Canadian and Western European, in Cuba. Governments and capitalists in Western Europe, Canada and East Asia have, without exception, ex- pressed their outrage at this flagrant attempt by the United States to assert its control over Cuba-- perhaps the most intense display of intercapitalist rivalry in Latin America since before the Second World War. The relative decline in impor- tance of the United States as an economic power in the postwar period will have significant effects on Latin America, particularly for progressive politics. Anti- Americanism was central to pro- gressive politics in the region. To- day, Asian firms are increasingly prominent in manufacturing, timber and fisheries. Investors from Western Europe, Asia, and other Latin American countries have bought recently privatized industries, such as telecommunications and utili- ties. This may explain in part why anti-Americanism fea- tures less prominently in stu- dent and trade-union struggles than it did a generation ago. In general, class politics plays a less important role in contem- porary Latin America than was the case thirty years ago, partly because trade unions have been seriously weakened by neoliberal policies. Progress- ive politics today tend to focus The on women's and indigenous Latii issues. In identity politics of this kind, patterns of capital invest- ment and geopolitics seem to be less central than they were to the class-based struggles of a few decades ago. Progressives working on behalf of social change in Latin America ponder the future with a sense of pessimism, which deepened after the electoral defeat of the Workers' Party in Brazil in 1994. This pes- simism is misplaced. Latin America today is not in a progressive phase. But the past triumphs of a progres- sive option-the Cuban revolution, the election of Allende-were iso- lated moments. The present, rather than a contrast with the past, is actu- ally an extension of Latin America's history of conservative rule. cover of the April 1972 issue of NACLA's n America and Empire Report. Capitalist development in Latin America has not improved the living conditions of the vast majority of the continent's population." On the contrary, only select groups have prospered, while nearly half live in poverty. 1 2 The development of capi- talism-and the contradictions that it engenders-lay the basis for reform through the rise of the work- ing class as an economic force. Today, wage labor is more important economically in Latin America than ever before. On this basis, new and strong progressive movements may well be built in the future. As in Brazil, the fortunes of workers' par- ties will ebb and flow, but they are nevertheless an essential part of the current. N 1. See Tom Kemp, Theories of Imperialism (London: Dobson Press, 1967), and Tom Bottomore, ed., A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (London: Blackwells, 1983), pp. 223-27. 2. J. Wilkie et al., Statistical Abstract of Latin America, Vol. 30, Part 1 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), p. 140. 3. William C. Thiesenhusen, ed., Searching for Land Reform in Latin America (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 4. Projected figure for 1995, UN Development Program and World Resources, World Resources (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 287. 5. "Tenth annual ranking of individual and family fortunes," Forbes Magazine, June, 1996, as cited in "The World's Billionaires," The Guardian, July 2, 1996, p. 3. 6. Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Life After Debt The New Trajectory in Latin America (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1992), and The Economic History of Latin America since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 7. Based on World Bank figures cited in the Financial Times (U.K.), June 25, 1996, p. 16. 8 Ulmaz Akyuz, "New Trends in Japanese Trade and Foreign Direct Investment, Post-Industrial Transformation and Policy Challenges," East Asian Development: Lesson for a New Global Environment (Geneva: UN Conference on Trade and Development, 1996). 9. UN Commission on Trade and Development, Yearbook of Trade and Development (Geneva: UNCTAD, 1995). 10.Central America Report, Vol. 23, No. 23, July 20, 1996, p. 7. 11.Capitalism can develop during periods of crisis as well as periods of growth. See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1970), pp. 652-58. 12.Victor Bulmer-Thomas, ed., The New Economic Model in Latin America and Income Distribution (London: Macmillan Press, 1996).
