BLEEDING OUT DEPENDENCY

1985

By late XVIII century the Latin American mode of production was in its final stage of consolidation. In Western Europe the industrial revolution was in its mid-way to completion. In Latin America there existed a self-sufficient economic structure shifting vigorously from mining to agricultural economy (1). This development changed colonial Latin America from being outpost for Spanish and Portuguese plunder to a social formation being plundered by the force of two alien colonial powers. Thus, a society was being plundered by another society, and part of the colonial ruling class wealth was being removed by the Iberian ruling classes. Therefore, unlike earlier times, even the ruling class in Latin America (the white creoles) was being submitted to an external power, and the struggle to get rid of that submission became more and more apparent (2).

2008

1985

In my thesis I attempted to explain the state of social and economic backwardness (generally labelled as "underdevelopment") in Latin America by going beyond some of the major limitations which exist in the theories of underdevelopment (Gunder Frank et al), dependency (Dos Santos et al), development (mainly ECLA), and capitalist world system (Wallerstein, Amin, Warren, et al). The major limitations of these theories are that they locate, in various forms, the expansion of the world market as the origin (cause) of the capitalist development, on the one hand, and that, therefore, the underdevelopment of the peripheral areas is a consequence of the former's development, on the other hand. Such analyses are based on the assumption that the extra-historical universe of individual profit maximizers competing in the market are the cause of capitalist development (and capitalist underdevelopment as a necessary condition of the former); hence the development of societies is located outside, or above, any system of relations of exploitation ( social relations of production which make possible the expropriation of a surplus belonging to one social group by another social group ). Consequently, the logic of such analysis is that the rise of specific class relations based on a specific dominant relation of production, is not the basis of that specific development, but its result. It seems to me that this is an analysis that cannot explain much of the historical evidence, let alone the fact that in Latin America there is a relatively extended capitalist development and, nevertheless, the class structure prevailing in the region does not correspond to that capitalist development.

The United States has long been criticized for it's neo-colonial policies in the Central and Latin Americas. In Particular, the US interference in the domestic sphere of the Caribbean nations under the umbrella of protection and fear of communism in the Cold War period, when intruth these intereferences demonstrates a long pattern of protecting economic interests of the US capitalists. Historically, and particularly in the case of Guatemala, such interference has come at the price of both the proclaimed principles of the United States. This paper interprets such interferences to be imperialistic in nature. Dependency theory can be one explaination as to why despite state attempt and public support, countries were not able to ward off from the clutches of US control. The paper takes the case of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala as a quintessential representative of American imperialism in Central America. "Latin America doesn't matter, Long as we've been in it, people don't give one damn about Latin America."

2014

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual "Brill" typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1573-4234 isbn 978-90-04-26885-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-26886-9 (e-book)

Historical Materialism

The paper challenges mainstream theories of Latin American development, showing their theoretical weaknesses and pointing to their role in ideologically mediating the region’s ‘truncated’ capitalism. To that end, the paper presents an alternative view of Latin American development that starts by considering capitalist social reproduction as a worldwide process and regional/national politico-economic development as mediations in the structuring of global capital accumulation. Latin America’s specific variety of capitalism is understood to have emerged from its original transformation by expanding European capital into a place to produce raw materials under favourable natural conditions. On the one hand, this has reduced their price and that of the labour-power directly or indirectly consuming them; on the other, it has resulted in a flow of surplus-value towards the owners of those natural conditions of production. The historical development of Latin American societies has expressed ...

an astonishingly informative study about the history of exploitation of Latin American countries, their people and resources by imperialist and colonialist powers. Starting his study five hundred years ago with the arrival of the colonizing Spanish conquistadors and their desire for gold, Galeano's work traverses from this initial invasion up to modern times with the current invasion by neocolonial powers, such as America and other oil hungry nations, and the unscrupulous methods of exploitation perpetrated by these countries' multinational corporations, such as Standard Oil and Shell, and the continuing violence that these entities enact against Latin America, its people, and resources. Galeano's thesis is clear. His goal is to reveal the cycle of violence that has led Latin American countries into a state of dependency and poverty due to the plundering and profiteering of their vast natural resources by a revolving door of colonial and imperial powers. However, as much as Galeano points his finger outwards at these countries, he is also quick to point his finger inwards at the petit bourgeoisie, a cabal of "native overseers" or, that is, local politicians, 1 military leaders, opportunistic intellectuals, and corrupt capitalists who form an oligarchy that Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America, Pg. 2.

World History Connected, 2018

The Cambridge History of Capitalism (2 vols., 2014), vol. 1, pp 403-430, 2014

the exceptional philosophical work Leviathan by the renowned theorist Thomas Hobbes. He describes the sovereign state as an artificial man "… in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul; the magistrates and officers, artificial joints; reward and punishment, the nerves; wealth and riches its strength; equity and laws, an artificial reason; all united by covenants like to the 'Let Us Make Man', pronounced by God in the Creation" (Lloyd-Hughes 142) The key terms I focus on are wealth and riches (which translates to economy), as these he describes as being the strength of the sovereign state. This is the basis of my brief discourse on the sovereignty of Latin America. Are these nations of Latin America truly independent, or are they still prized game to the old-age imperialism that has in recent times reemerged in more subtle, indirect ways as neocolonialism? This work aims to provide an economic overview and brief history of Latin America by major regions, as well as relevant data in the domain of economic influence thereof by foreign entities. With this information, we can arrive at an answer to the question posed.