Empire and Dissent

Talk of U.S. imperialism, marginalized in this country as the rhetorical language of the “old left,” has made a mainstream comeback over the past few years. This Report intends to examine the interaction of U.S. power with the dissent and resistance it has engendered. The articles herein explore the ways in which forms of dissent and resistance have been generated by the activities of Empire, as well as the ways in which the contours of Empire have been given shape by opposition, resistance and disaffection. Empires—formal or informal, at any time or place—have usually instilled an uneasy fealty among their member states. The experience of the Americas has been no exception.

September/October
2005
Volume: 
39
Number: 
2

Taking Note

Steve Cupid Theodore
Passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which also includes the Dominican Republic, by two votes in the U.S. House of Representatives this past July, should not be seen as an outright victory for the neoliberal status quo.

Intro

Fred Rosen
Talk of U.S. imperialism, long marginalized in this country as the rhetorical language of the “old left,” has made a mainstream comeback over the past few years. It has been brought back into fashion by neoconservatives, and their friends in high places, who strongly believe that the United States has an imperial right and obligation to act as global guarantor not only of its own interests, but also of the interests of the entire global community.

Report

Itty Abraham
Fifty years have passed since the historic Bandung conference, one of the first meetings of countries from the “Global South” seeking to chart their own conceptions of international order and progress. A large repertoire of counter-hegemonic ideas and actions has emerged since that time, ideas and actions that have sought—and seek—to connect the world horizontally, from South to South.
Jeffrey W. Rubin
Since trade unionist Luiz Inácio lula da Silva won Brazil’s 2002 presidential elections, he has surprised his own supporters as well as international bankers by rigorously complying with the economic prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Daniela Spenser
The world has changed considerably since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Unlike 1959, the world is now characterized by economic globalization and unipolar imperial domination, especially in Latin America. At the same time, in many locations, it is characterized by a much greater resistance on the part of civil society.
Ricardo D. Salvatore
For the past century, U.S. domination over Latin America has been a multifaceted process with military, economic, technological, financial, cultural and intellectual dimensions. Depending on the historical moment, the United States has employed particular aspects of this power through a mutually re-enforcing pattern of persuasion and coercion.
Alan Knight
Talk of empire is back in vogue. Despite repeated reassurances from Donald Rumsfeld (“We’re not imperialistic. We never have been.”) and George W. Bush (“We have no territorial ambitions; we don’t seek an Empire.”), the imperialist deployment of U.S. power is undeniable.
Neil Harvey
The Zapatista movement is probably one of the best-known examples of dissent against the neoliberal model of economic globalization. On January 1, 1994, over 3,000 indigenous people staged an armed uprising against the government of then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and issued a list of demands for basic social and political rights.
Adolfo Gilly
At a house armed services committee meeting in March 2004, the then-commander of the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), Gen. James Hill, made the obligatory mentions of terrorism and narco-trafficking as pressing issues of “hemispheric security.”
Steve Ellner
The continued ability of president Hugo Chávez to carry out significant reforms in the face of U.S. hostility and an aggressive U.S.-supported domestic opposition has important implications for progressive Latin American struggles.
Teo Ballvé
By most accounts, the opening salvo in Bolivia’s ongoing revolutionary cycle occurred in 2000.1 Mothers, unionists, campesinos, students, in fact, citizens of all kinds seized the streets and plazas of Cochabamba to take back their water. Management of city’s waterworks had been privatized in September the year before, and within weeks household water bills had skyrocketed by 200%.

Letters

Isaac Saney
Teo Ballvé’s essay “Is Venezuela the New Cuba?” [July/August] is one more musing from the “left” that seeks to denigrate and diminish the crucial role the Cuban Revolution has played and continues to play in the world, in general, and Latin America, in particular.

Tracking the Economy

Mark Weisbrot
It is sometimes asserted that Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez (1999-present) has been an economic failure. For example, a recent article in the Washington Post referred to Chávez as “the populist Venezuelan president whose giveaways to the poor have slowed economic progress.”

In Brief

Steve Liebowitz
Continuing his courtship of Latin America, President Hugo Chávez has introduced a bevy of energy proposals over the past months aimed at uniting a region where historical rivalries and economic necessity often trump sound long-term foreign policy.