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).
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