From Santo Domingo to Mexico: The Changing Face of Intervention As we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, we are witness to a new display of U.S. power in the hemi- sphere, this one long in the making, but brought to a head by Bill Clin- ton's signature on a loan-guarantee form. The Mexican "rescue" is more complex and ambiguous an exercise in U.S. power-and on the surface a good deal less brutal-but it has no less profound an effect on a sister country's sovereignty, is no less concerned to show U.S. resolve to the world, and is no less motivat- ed by a need to bolster a U.S.-dom- inated world system. Clinton has been criticized-- from the right as well as the left-- for having the interests of wealthy investors in mind with his Mexico rescue package, but this criticism is misplaced. Clinton did not inter- vene to save a few wealthy U.S. cit- izens, but to salvage a system of global investment and production-- a system upon which U.S. wealth and power rest. Mexico had been the bright shining star in what has come to be called the "Washington Agenda" for developing-now known as "emerging"-nations. Demand from new markets like Mexico is meant to be the motor force of the U.S. export-led future. Low-wage Mexican industry is meant to act as a high-return stimu- lant for U.S. investment funds. A massive outflow of those funds would not only dim the luster of the Mexican star, but would severely damage the entire Agenda. It would trigger an outflow of confidence-- and capital-from the dozens of "emerging markets" around the world dependent on those same investment funds, and playing the same role vis d vis U.S. capital. These investment flows have severely constrained national sov- ereignty, holding the policy mak- ing process hostage to the dictates of transnational capital and to the mass-psychology of the financial marketplace. The salvation now being proposed for Mexico-- already effectively adopted in Argentina-is known as a "curren- cy board." This is as sovereignty- depriving a measure as having the U.S. Marines in charge of your army. A currency board is a scheme to prevent virtually all budget deficits, prevent the printing of pesos not fully backed by dollar reserves, fix the value of the peso to the dollar, and make pesos fully convertible, upon demand, into dollars. It would effectively remove all discretionary power from fiscal and monetary authori- ties. This is the face of the new dependency: He who holds the dol- lar calls the tune. Thirty years ago this April 28, President Lyndon B. Johnson effectively robbed the Dominican Republic of its sover- eignty by sending 23,000 troops to subdue a popular uprising. The insurrection sought to restore Juan Bosch, the country's social-democ- ratic-but independent-president, to power, and was opposed by the United States not so much on its merits, but as a way to demonstrate to the other countries in the hemi- sphere the lengths to which Wash- ington was willing to go to prevent "another Cuba" in Latin America. The Dominican invasion radical- ized a nascent "new left" in the United States, and midwifed the birth of NACLA. Coming in the midst of the escalation of, and growing opposition to the war in Vietnam, the invasion was both a spur and a revelation to a sector of the U.S. public already angry, uneasy and politically active. In the invasion's wake, a radical move- ment grew up in the United States focused largely on the question of U.S. military domination of other countries. The invasion was also more evidence that the anti-war movement was up against a sys- tem-a new kind of imperialism. Over the past 30 years, much has changed and much has remained the same. Today, as progressives view the effects of what the Pope has called "savage capitalism," the range of options seems a good deal narrower. The Cold War is over- settled not in the Third World, but for the Third World; there will not be "another Cuba" for some time to come. Revolutionary struggle has, for the most part, reached the stage of the negotiation of scaled-down demands; the call for socialist transformation has given way to an attempt to salvage basic rights and protections. The dictators have stepped to the background; the investment brokers have moved to the fore. But just as Lyndon Johnson kept an insufficiently anti-Castro Dominican social democrat out of office 30 years ago by force of arms, the logic of the world system now encourages Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo to hunt down the reform-minded Zapatistas because they make investors nervous. While the basic dynamic that shapes inter- American relations has changed, it maintains a familiar cast. We are still up against a system which, as the recent events in Mexico have shown, lets good neighbors live together as long as it's clear where the servants' quarters are.
