The United States emerged from World War II as a hegemonic core nation, more advanced than other core nations in military power, productive capacity, levels of capital, and technology.  The emergence of the Cold War doctrine, postulating the impossibility of a lasting peace with the Soviet Union due to its supposedly expansionist tendencies, served as a justification for the strengthening of U.S. military power and a militarism, in which government spending on the military became the stimulus for economic expansion and scientific development.  The doctrine of the Cold War also functioned as a frame of reference for responding to anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World, as such movements became defined as manifestations of Soviet and communist expansionism.  As a result, the post-World War II transnationalization of U.S. capital was accompanied by the transnationalization of the U.S. armed forces, and the global neocolonial system of the post-World War II era was developed on a foundation of military power (Arboleya 2008:132-35).

      In addition to military power, the post-World War II neocolonial system was dependent on a cultural and ideological component.  The doctrine of the Cold War was itself an ideological construction that distorted reality in two important respects.  First, in reality, Soviet foreign policy was not expansionistic.  Its basic intention was to create a geopolitical cordon of security in the territory that surrounded its frontiers, while seeking to establish peaceful coexistence with the capitalist powers.  Nor was its policy oriented to the support of Third World revolutions.  It was not based on a theory of a global revolution, but on the premise that revolutions, when they occur, emerge from unique factors in each country.  The Soviet Union sometimes supported Third World revolutions when doing so seemed consistent with its geopolitical strategy, and it refrained from economic exploitation of Third World nations, believing that in the long run this would serve to protect the security of its territory.  But its general orientation was to co-exist with the capitalist nations and to leave the Third World to its fate in the face of the imperialistic intentions of the United States (Arboleya 2008:134-37, 185-88).  
 
      In the second place, the Third World revolutions, although often inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution and influenced in varying degrees by Marxism, were fundamentally anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements, driven principally by an anti-imperialist frame of reference, claiming the right of autonomous economic and cultural development in opposition to the imperialist intentions of the United States and other core powers.  This was not the expansion of communism, in essence, but the expansion of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, seeking to construct a more just and democratic world-system.  
 
      By virtue of its enormous economic power, the United States was able to disseminate the Cold War ideological construction throughout the world, presenting itself as a defender of democracy, freedom, and liberty in the face of the threat posed by an international conspiracy of totalitarian communism, when in fact the United States itself was the principal undemocratic force in the world, imposing its neocolonial domination (Arboleya 2008:136-37).

       In addition to the diffusion of the Cold War ideological construction, the United States was able to diffuse throughout the world the supposed virtues of the “American way of life” through television and radio programs, films, and comic books, seeking to establish U.S. society as the ideal toward which all nations and individuals should aspire.  The effectiveness of this technological diffusion of culture depended on the extent to which a popular movement in the neocolony could formulate and disseminate an alternative ideology that explained the material abundance of U.S. society as rooted in neocolonial domination (Arboleya 2008:136).  

     Thus the neocolonial world-system generates a fundamental global political conflict between the core nations that benefit from structures of
domination and Third World movements of national liberation that seek to develop alternative structures that would make possible the autonomous economic and cultural development of their nations.  This is the foundation of the conflicts between the United States and Vietnam, Cuba, the Chile of Allende, and the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as well as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador today.  The Islamic Revolution also represents a particular manifestation of this Third World quest for autonomous development.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana. La Habana: Editorial de
Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial


 

     In order for a neocolonial relation to be consolidated and to function in a stable form, several conditions must be met: the neocolonial power must have the productive capacity to satisfy the internal market of the neocolony and to process the raw materials exports of the neocolony; the neocolonial power must have absolute commercial and financial control, without competition from other core powers for penetration of the neocolony; the national bourgeoisie must function as a figurehead bourgeoisie, that is, there must be subordinate integration of the national bourgeoisie in the neocolonial relation, without the presence of a sector of the national bourgeoisie that is able to propose an alternative national project that seeks autonomous development; the figurehead bourgeoisie must be capable of establishing relatively stable social and political control of the country; and there must be sufficient ideological and cultural penetration to maintain stability (Arboleya 2008:9).  
 
     During the nineteenth century, the Latin American republics in some respects were neocolonies of Great Britain.  However, Arboleya considers them to have been semi-colonies rather than neocolonies, because not all of the characteristics of neocolonial domination were present. Since capitalism had not yet arrived at the stage of finance capital, British penetration was commercial rather than financial, involving an exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials without control of banking and financial institutions.  In addition, competition from the United States, also seeking economic penetration of Latin America, prevented Briain from consolidating economic control (Arboleya 2008:8-9, 42).

     The first case of neocolonial domination, tied to the expansion of finance capital and involving ideological penetration, was U.S. domination of Cuba, established during the first decades of the twentieth century.  U.S. commercial and financial penetration of Cuba had begun during the period from 1878 to 1895.  Following the U.S. occupation of 1898 and the establishment of the Republic of Cuba in 1902, U.S. commercial, financial, and ideological penetration increased.  U.S. corporations owned the principal enterprises in agriculture, mining, and industry, producing raw materials that were exported to the United States.  The Cuban national bourgeoisie was weakened and became subordinate to and dependent on U.S. capital, in some cases reduced from ownership to management of U.S. owned companies.  U.S. producers dominated the Cuban domestic market. Cuban teachers were educated in the United States, and U.S. textbooks were used in Cuban public schools (Arboleya 2008:64-66, 76, 80).

      The stable functioning of a neocolonial system requires a consensus among principal actors, and this consensus was disrupted in Cuba during the 1920s.  U.S. protectionist policy had undermined Cuban sugar producers and banks, facilitating an even further expansion of U.S. ownership of the sugar industry and banks.  Protectionist policy also led to an increase in unemployment, giving rise to sustained popular protest, which the figurehead bourgeoisie was not able to control.  The need for a readjustment of the Cuban neocolonial system became apparent.

       Significant adjustments were made in the neocolonial system during the period of 1933 to 1959, which had two Batista dictatorships, a Batista presidency characterized by some concessions to popular demands, and two governments characterized by populist rhetoric and high levels of corruption.  The adjustment had two basic components.  First, there was recognition of the need to protect the interests of the figurehead bourgeoisie, in order to give this class a greater stake in the system and to increase its possibility for maintaining social control.  Secondly, there was greater reliance on the Cuban military for purposes of social control, necessary in light of popular opposition to U.S. intervention (Arboleya 2008:100-12).

      With the popular election of Batista as president in 1940, the system appeared to have become a perfect neocolonial system.  However, the improved and more advanced neocolonial system was unable to respond to the needs of the people, based as it was on utilizing the resources of the nation in the service of the interests of international capital and the figurehead bourgeoisie.  The anti-neocolonial popular movement continued, and it created a second major crisis of the system during the 1950s, culminating in the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, which put to an end the neocolonial system in Cuba (Arboleya 2008:114-64).

      First established in Cuba, neocolonial domination became the pattern that defined U.S. relations with Latin America during the twentieth century.  Meanwhile, neocolonial domination by the United States and the European colonial powers became the norm in Africa and South and Southeast Asia following World War II (see “Neocolonialism in Africa and Asia” 9/11/2013).  Thus, during the post-World War II era, a neocolonial world-system evolved, with the United States as the hegemonic core power.  Some nations (such as Vietnam and Cuba) were exceptions to the neocolonial pattern, and both were to be severely punished for their recalcitrance.  
 
      We will discuss the dynamics of the neocolonial world-system in the next post.


 References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial


 
 

     The Cuban diplomat and scholar Jesus Arboleya notes that colonialism was no longer politically possible by the post-World War II era as a result of the emergence of, first, the socialist bloc headed by the Soviet Union, and secondly, national liberation movements in the Third World (2008:5-6).  These dynamics made necessary the development of new forms of domination.  Since capitalism had developed to the stage of finance and monopoly capital characterized by transnational corporations and transnational banks (see “Lenin on Imperialism” 9/10/2013), the development of such new forms of domination was possible. 
 
      The independence movements in Africa and Asia during the twentieth century, Arboleya notes, were led by the national bourgeoisies within the colonies.  During the struggle for independence, the national bourgeoisie was converted into a representative of the interests of the colony and assumed a position of confrontation with the system of domination. The national bourgeoisie, however, consisted of two sectors.  The progressive sector had an anti-imperialist orientation and embraced a form of nationalism that would involve autonomous development, once independence had been attained.  The majority sector, however, sought a less fundamental change that would reform only those aspects of the colonial system that restricted the direct participation of the national bourgeoisie in the capitalist world market and limited the development of the national bourgeoisie as a class (2008:6-7).  
 
      When the independence of the colonies in Africa and Asia was attained, the majority sector of the national bourgeoisie in most cases controlled the newly independent nations, and it was able to resolve its differences with foreign capital in order to integrate itself into the system of domination and to share in the benefits resulting from the exploitation of the people.  In this new system of neocolonial domination, the national bourgeoisie no longer represented the interests of the emerging nation before the colonial power; rather, it represented the interests of the former colonial power within the newly independent nation (Arboleya 2008:6-7, 11).

       Thus, neocolonialism functions through a national bourgeoisie that is “organically subordinated” to the core power and that is capable of establishing necessary political control in the newly independent nation. Arboleya coins the term “figurehead bourgeoisie” to refer to a national bourgeoisie with these characteristics (2008:8).

      The basic function of colonialism from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century had been to obtain raw materials and to provide a world market for the manufactured products of the core (Arboleya 2008:4). This basic economic function continues under the neocolonial system:  “From an economic point of view, the neocolony is not very different from the colonial states.  Its market, internal as well as external, satisfies the interests of the metropolis and is controlled by transnational corporations….  The neocolony reproduces the colonial condition of dependency with respect to metropolitan interests, and underdevelopment is maintained as a characteristic of the system” (Arboleya 2008:7). 

      However, there is an important difference between the colony and the neocolony.  Whereas the colony depends principally on force to maintain social control, the neocolony depends to a considerable extent on ideological penetration.  Arboleya notes that a penetrating ideology is able to “embrace the entire social fabric, soothing conflicts that result from the neocolonial situation and creating a culture of dependency that weakens the self-esteem of the people, giving rise to consumerist alienation, and that seeks to adulterate national interests” (2008:8).  
 
       But military power continues to play an important role in the neocolony. Military power is “the most evident sign of the superiority of the metropolis,” and it has a psychological impact on the people, especially when it has “the capacity to mobilize with maximum efficiency to those places where, generally, it is not permanently established.” And military power is “the dissuasive force par excellence in opposition to popular resistance when social control escapes temporarily from the hands of the national bourgeoisie” (Arboleya 2008:8).

      We will continue to explore the characteristics of neocolonialism in subsequent posts.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, Africa, Asia


 

Posted October 10, 2013

     In various posts since September 18, we have explored US imperialism.  Let us conclude our reflection on the theme.

     The period of 1898 to 1932 saw the consolidation of imperialism as a basic principle of US policy.  Imperialism sought the attainment of new markets for surplus US production through military interventions and “dollar diplomacy.”  In establishing itself, imperialism had to overcome a strong tendency toward isolationism in US political culture.  This isolationist tendency was a consequence of a prevailing view that the United States was different from and more democratic than the nations of Europe, and there was a consequent desire to avoid entanglement in European wars.  Isolationism was an important factor in US delays in entering the two World Wars, although in both cases the United States provided supplies to allies from the outset. In US public discourse of the period, conservatives were isolationists, and liberals promoted imperialist interventions in Latin America.

     In the period of 1933 to 1945, imperialism adopted a softer strategy, seeking to appear as a “good neighbor.”  The quest for new markets, for control of existing markets, and for access to cheap raw materials continued, but the forms of intervention in Latin America were more indirect.  This softer form of imperialism was promoted by liberals, personified by the powerful figure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt envisioned significant reforms in the world-system for the post-World War II period, but his vision was eclipsed by the Cold War.  
 
      In the period of 1945-79, the United States emerged as the hegemonic core power of the neocolonial world-system, and US imperialist interventions became more global in scope.  The Cold War provided a justification for more active intervention than was characteristic of the “good neighbor” era.  But important components of the previous period were preserved, such as depending primarily on military repression by the neocolonial state, with direct US military intervention applied only when necessary.  Conservatives promoted an aggressive Cold War approach, but liberals shared the basic premises of the Cold War and imperialist policy, forming a liberal-conservative consensus.  Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was a short-lived and unsuccessful reformist approach, but even during the Kennedy Administration the Cold War assumptions that justified indirect and sometimes barbaric interventions in the Third World prevailed. 
 
      In the context of the deep structural crisis of the world-system and the US fall from hegemony, the nation has turned to the right since 1980.  The neoliberal project was imposed, taking advantage of external debt, through free trade agreements and international finance agencies. Military intervention in pursuit of US interests has been constant.  These policies have been justified on the grounds that they defend democracy, understood in the liberal and limited sense of political rights and economic liberty. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, US national political leaders struggled to find an enemy that could be portrayed as a threat to democratic values.  The attacks of September 11, 2001 made possible the establishment of the “war on terrorism” as the prevailing ideological frame for the justification of imperialist interventions. 

      Thus we can see that imperialism has been a policy actively pursued with continuity by US governments from 1898 to the present. During the course of the twentieth century, when Latin American reformers and revolutionaries spoke of“Yankee imperialism,” they were not merely inventing popular political slogans.  They were naming an important component of the relation between the two Americas, a relation that promoted the development of the America to the north as it promoted the underdevelopment of the America to the south.  Since 1933, imperialist policies have been presented with a democratic face. But imperialist policies, in essence, have involved the pursuit of markets, raw materials and sources of profits, without regard for the consequences for the sovereign rights of formally independent nations or for the social and economic rights of their citizens.

     Imperialist policies have practical objectives, and they have provided concrete material benefits to the people of the United States. They have been a significant factor in providing the United States with additional markets, new sources of investment and profit, and access to cheap raw materials, and they therefore were central to the ascent of the United States from 1898 to 1968.  
 
      However, the imperialist polices of the global powers are no longer practical.  When the world-system reached the geographical limits of the earth around the middle of the twentieth century, a new situation was created.  In the present historic moment, the aggressive quest for control of the raw materials, labor and markets of the planet by the global powers creates political instability in the world-system, generating endless conflicts and wars, and it threatens the ecological balance of the earth.  If the world-system continues to accept the notion that powerful nations have the right to promote and defend their interests, without concern for the interests and needs of other nations and peoples, it will collapse into chaos.

      And imperialism is no longer in the interests of the people of the United States. The expansion of military expenditures, necessary for the implementation of imperialist policies, diverts limited resources away from investments in new and sustainable forms of economic production that would provide concrete benefits to the people.  Furthermore, paying for military expenditures through government debt financed with foreign sources of capital undermines the sovereignty of the nation.

      Therefore, in the present historic moment, we the people of the United States have the duty to form a popular movement that would intend to take power and to adopt policies that responsibly promote the interests of the popular sectors, including anti-imperialist policies that seek cooperation with the movements and governments of the Third World in creating a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system. 


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, just democratic sustainable world

     Cotton was the most important raw material for European textile manufacturing at the end of the eighteenth century.  Cotton was cultivated by African slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil, and it was also produced for export in Mexico.  Cotton production in these regions was ruined during the first half of the nineteenth century with the development of large-scale cotton production on plantations in the southeastern United States, which were developed using African slaves and mechanical means to separate and bale the cotton (Galeano 2004:109, 125-28).

      During the nineteenth century, the expansion of the world economy and of global markets for a variety of raw materials such as cotton, sugar and tobacco propelled the expansion in the United States of the peripheral function beyond the limited confines of Virginia and Charleston. From 1800 to 1860, the entire Southeastern region of the United States was peripheralized and converted into the production of cotton, tobacco and sugar for export to core and semiperipheral regions, utilizing low wage labor, primarily African slave labor.  
 
      Cotton was central to the conversion of the US South into a peripheral region of the world economy.  The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 made possible the mechanized separation of cottonseeds from the fiber, thereby speeding the process of preparing the fiber for export to the cotton mills that manufactured cloth.  By 1800, cotton gins were located throughout the South, and for the subsequent sixty years there occurred “rapid geographical expansion” and an “explosion in production” (Cooper and Terrill 1991:192).  By 1860, cotton was grown throughout South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as in parts of Arkansas,Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida (Cooper and Terrill 1991:190-93).  
 
      The technology of cotton cultivation permitted its cultivation on small farms as well as large plantations.  During the eighteenth century, whites who owned small farms in the South had used their land to produce their own food and clothing.  But during the nineteenth century, white farmers turned to cotton cultivation, sometimes utilizing black slaves.  Thus plantations and farms coexisted in the cultivation of cotton, most of which was exported to Great Britain.  Although some white farmers cultivated it, cotton and black slavery became intertwined in the South.  Corresponding with the expansion of cotton production, the number of slaves grew from less than 700,000 in 1790 to more than 2 million by 1830 and to nearly 4 million by 1860.  Slaves constituted one-third of the population of the South (Cooper and Terrill 1991: 198-99, 205, 275; Franklin1974:138-39).

      The peripheralization of the US South during the first half of the nineteenth century promoted the underdevelopment of the South and the development of the North: it left the South with a legacy of limited industrial development, forced labor, and political repression; and it provided raw materials and markets for emerging Northeastern industry as well as markets for Midwestern farmers.  Indeed, slavery in the South, by fulfilling a function in a triangular trade that included the Northeast and the Midwest, was central to the spectacular ascent of the United States during the nineteenth century.  The peripheralization of the South also provoked the Civil War, as northern industrial elites and southern plantations owners had different and opposed interests, and they battled for control of the US government, generating ideologies that would successfully enlist the support of the masses in their respective causes. These ideologies functioned to obscure the economic interests that provided the motive for the political action of both northern and southern elites.  These are themes that we will discuss in future posts.  
 

References

Cooper, William J., Jr., and Thomas E. Terrill.  1991.  The American South.  New  York: McGraw-Hill.

Franklin, John Hope.  1974.  From Slavery to Freedom, Fourth Edition.  New  York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition. Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________. 2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, cotton, South


 

Posted April 22, 2015

     When Barack Obama addresses Latin American audiences (1), he expresses the view that we should not be trapped by the past and that we should look to the future; and he claims to be less interested in ideological and theoretical debates that in the solution of practical problems.

     Such points of view are common in the United States.  They also reflect an implicit epistemology that is profoundly conservative and reactionary, especially when expressed in the context of a discussion of relations between the United States and Latin America; for if we leave the past behind when we think about current challenges, we implicitly are accepting the structures that the history of colonialism and neocolonialism has created, structures that sustain inequality between the two Americas of North and South, and that increasingly deepen underdevelopment and poverty in the America of the South. 

     Present inequalities cannot be understood without explanations of the origin and development of existing patterns of production and distribution and their evolution through adaptation to new developments, including popular social movements.  Informed by such understanding of the systemic sources of underdevelopment, the current structures of domination can be transformed.  When Latin American and Caribbean leaders repeatedly refer to colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism, they are seeking to explain that these historic processes of domination have shaped their present reality, and they are maintaining that the United States continues to control and exploit, as it has done in the past, and as can be seen from the prism of the past.

     As Obama expressed his “leave the past behind” and “end of ideology” view at the Seventh Summit of the Americas (2), his counterparts from Latin America and the Caribbean were speaking from an alternative set of epistemological premises.  They believe that history explains the present, and that historical interpretations require theoretical analysis and evaluations of right and wrong.  In contrast to Obama, they believe that addressing practical problems requires examination of history, theoretical debates, and ideological reflection.

     Raúl Castro, for example, in his address to the Summit, traced the history of the relation between the United States and Cuba, in which the United States has never respected the sovereignty of Cuba.  He maintains that if the United States and Cuba are to enter a new era, it must be on a basis of mutual respect for the sovereignty of each, overcoming the patterns of the past.

     Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela, in insisting that his nation is a threat to the national security of no country, and in expressing the long-standing desire of his people for true independence, quoted a letter by Simón Bolívar, written 200 years ago.  Clearly, this former bus driver, whose education was acquired through the experience of union leadership, does not want to lead the past behind.

     Cristina Fernández, President of Argentina, took issue with Obama’s expressed desire to avoid ideology.  She maintained that the expression of values and the formulation of ideology are the most important weapon of the oppressed peoples.  I am in agreement with the epistemological perspective of la Presidenta Cristina.  The poor do not have nuclear weapons and smart bombs, nor do they control corporations and banks.  But they do have the capacity to discern and express what is right and wrong, to do so in social organization and social movement, and therefore, in a powerful collective voice, to demand a world in which the global powers act in accordance with the values that they themselves proclaim, albeit without reflection or commitment.

     Obama, in his remarks, responded to the address by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who had observed that the United States had no moral authority to lecture the peoples of Latin America, given the long US history of systemic violation of the rights of the people of Latin America and also the people of the United States.  In his response, Obama focused on the historic denial of the political and civil rights of African-Americans and the overcoming of this injustice nearly fifty years ago.  With this focus, Obama conveniently ignored the denial of the social and economic rights of African-Americans, continuing in the present; and the century-long implementation of imperialist policies with respect to Latin America, continuing in the present, with some new and creative techniques, as Cristina Fernández pointed out.

    In the new political reality of Latin America and the Caribbean, many of the presidents and heads of state have been brought to power by popular social movements, and they express themselves on the foundation of an alternative epistemology that reflects the quest by the colonized, the exploited and the poor for an alternative world.  Not so Obama.  He was brought to power through the campaign contributions of the wealthy.  His epistemological assumption that history and ideology are not important for the resolution of the global crisis serves the interests of transnational corporations and the global powers, precisely in an historic moment in which the survival of humanity requires a reflection from below.

     Whereas Obama wants to leave history behind, Latin American leaders are unable to forget history, and they consider it their duty to remember it, if they are to understand the present and act with justice.

     We, the people of the United States, should do what the peoples of Latin America have done since 1995.  We should create a popular movement that, informed by study and intellectual work, discerns the characteristics of a just, democratic and sustainable world-system, and that seeks to put into positions of political power those charismatic leaders who will have the capacity and the commitment to speak on a foundation of an epistemology from below, relegating to the past political leaders who reflect an implicit imperialist epistemology.


Notes

1. See, for example, “Remarks by the President and the Summit of the Americas Opening Ceremony,” Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, April 17, 2009; “Remarks by President Obama at the First Plenary Session of the Summit of the Americas,” Panama City, Panama, April 11, 2015.
2. Held in Panama City, Panama, April 11-12, 2015.

     When Charles Goodyear discovered in 1850 that combining sulfur with rubber enabled it to preserve its elasticity under conditions of changing temperature, the technical basis for the development of rubber tires was established.  At that time, the Brazilian Amazon was home to nearly all of the rubber trees of the world.  By 1890, rubber became the second most important export from Brazil, second only to coffee, which also was at its height at that time.  The city of Manaus, the capital of the world rubber commerce, had seen its population grow from 5000 inhabitants in 1849 to 70,000 by 1900 (Galeano 2004:119-20).

     The labor for the product was provided by farmers who had emigrated from areas that had been struck by draught.  They traveled to the Amazon River, where they were stacked in ships’ holds for transport to their final destination.  Already weakened before they began the journey by low levels of nutrition and the spread of disease, many died en route.  In 1878, for example, 120,000 of the 800,000 inhabitants of Ceará left for the Amazon, but less than half were able to arrive (Galeano 2004:118).

     The forced labor for the export of rubber was a form a debt peonage similar to slavery.  In addition to the original debt for transport to the Amazon, other debts accumulated for work tools and food.  In general, the older the worker, the greater was the debt that had accumulated.  There was an agreement among the companies that no worker with pending debts with another company would be employed, and rural guards were placed along the rivers, firing shots at fugitives (Galeano 2004:118-19). 

     But by 1919, the Brazilian exportation of rubber had crashed.  In 1873, an Englishman named Henry Wickham had clandestinely taken seeds of the Brazilian rubber trees, and this would eventually lead to the cultivation of rubber trees on plantations in Malaysia and Ceylon in a rational system of production, which did not have the extractive problems of the natural production in the Amazon.  There was, however, a brief revival of Brazilian rubber during the World War II with the Japanese occupation of Malaysia (Galeano 2004:121). 
 

References

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________.  2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, rubber, Open Veins of Latin America, Galeano, Brazil, Amazon

 

Posted October 14, 2013

     During the fourth stage of the modern world-system, coinciding with the emergence of monopoly and finance capitalism and facilitated by the development of imperialist policies and neocolonial structures, Latin America continued to play a peripheral role in the world-economy, supplying cheap raw materials to the core on a base of low-waged labor.   Natural resources flowed from the region, as though it were destined to have open veins, as expressed by the imagery of Eduardo Galeano.  
 
      The reader is invited to review various posts that are relevant here. On the four stages of the world-system, see “Immanuel Wallerstein,” 7/30/2013; on monopoly and finance capital, see “Lenin on Imperialism,” 9/10/2013; on imperialist policies, see “Imperialism as basic to foreign policy,” 10/10/2013; on neocolonial structures, see “The characteristics of neocolonialism,” 9/16/2013; on the peripheral role in the world-economy, see “The modern world-economy,” 8/2/2013; and on previous discussion of the open veins of Latin America and coffee, see “The open veins of Latin America: Gold and silver,” 8/16/2013, “Indigo, coffee, and liberal reform,” 9/2/2013, and “The Open Veins of Latin America: Coffee,” 9/4/2013, which are found in the section on Latin American history.. 

       Coffee, as we have seen in the post of 9/4/2013, was first developed as a significant export in the nineteenth century, and it became an important commerce during the twentieth century.  By the 1950s, Latin America produced four-fifths of the coffee that was consumed in the world.  Brazil, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Haiti were the principal producers.  The plantation workers were salaried, but their wages were at the level of superexploitation (see “Unequal exchange”8/5/2013), and the forms of social control had in some respects feudal characteristics (Galeano 2004:129-41).

      A general tendency during the twentieth century was declining terms of exchange for raw materials exports.  Galeano notes, for example, that in 1967, Colombia had to pay the equivalent of fifty-seven bags of coffee in order to buy a jeep, whereas in 1950, sixteen bags had been enough. In 1967, Brazil needed 350 bags of coffee to pay for a tractor, but in 1953 seventy bags had been enough (Galeano 2004:132).

      Galeano also observes that as the price of coffee fell, a greater quantity of dollars was taken by the consuming country, the United States.  But these dollars did not go directly to US citizens, as the price to the consumer continued to increase.  The dollars were usurped by US companies that managed its distribution in the United States. But US citizens benefited indirectly, as the distribution and sale of coffee provided jobs for hundreds of thousands of persons, and the usurped capital may have had other positive secondary effects for the US economy (Galeano 2004:132-34).  Galeano writes: “Coffee benefits much more those who consume it than those who produce it.  In the United States and in Europe it generates income and employment and generates a high level of capital; in Latin America it pays hunger wages and accentuates the economic deformation of the countries placed in its service.  In the United States coffee provides work to more than 600,000 persons: the North Americans who distribute and sell the coffee earn salaries infinitely higher than the Brazilians, Colombians, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, or Haitians that plant and harvest the grain on the plantations” (2004:134; 1997:101).

      Brazil developed an industry for the production and export of instant coffee.  It produced cheaper and higher quality instant coffee than a younger US industry dedicated to the fabrication of the same product. But the core countries, preachers of free trade, imposed taxes on Brazilian imports of instant coffee, establishing a protectionist obstacle to the development of the Brazilian industry (Galeano 2004:134).  Instant coffee, a manufactured product developed on a base of higher wages, is a core-like activity, beneficial for the development of a nation’s economy.  The cultivation and export of coffee beans or ground coffee beans is a peripheral activity based on low-waged labor, promoting underdevelopment of the regions where it is produced, particularly when the region is characterized by mono-production rather than a diversity of production.

       Like a grain of sugar, a coffee bean provides a lesson in political economy, helping us to understand the structures of domination that are integral to the modern world-system.  
 

References

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________. 2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, coffee, open veins of Latin America, Galeano

Posted October 15, 2013

     Banana enclaves in Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica were developed by North American companies at the beginning of the twentieth century (Galeano 2004:141, 144).  In the 1870s, a company owned by a US citizen was granted land in Costa Rica.  The company, which later became the United Fruit Company, was granted the land as payment for the construction of a railroad.  The company used the land to cultivate bananas for export to markets in the United States.  The labor utilized was low-wage labor of African descent imported from the English-speaking Caribbean (Booth and Walker 1993).  
 
      In 1899, the United Fruit Company began to operate plantations in the Caribbean coast in Guatemala.  Three decades later, it established banana plantations on the Pacific coast.  The plantations utilized labor primarily from the Caribbean and from El Salvador (Booth and Walker 1993).  
 
      In Honduras, banana production grew rapidly in the 1890s, and by the 1920s Honduras had become the world's leading exporter of bananas.  Prior to 1899, there were more than 100 small-scale enterprises, owned by Hondurans, which sold bananas to North American merchants, who in turn sold them in North American markets. In 1899, two North American banana-producing enterprises were formed, and a third was founded in 1905.  As the demand for bananas in the world market rapidly expanded, an increasing amount of capital became necessary in order to clear the tropical forest, develop a transportation system, modernize the productive process and develop a system of refrigeration for maritime transport. The North American producers, with greater access to the necessary credit and capital, were able to become more competitive than the Honduran producers.  By 1911 the three North American producers had displaced the Honduran producers and completely dominated the market (Booth and Walker 1993; Murga 1978:58).

     The North American banana companies were aided by concessions from the Honduran government in their rapid domination of Honduran banana production and in their rapid expansion after 1911.  These concessions included free grants of the richest land, permission to construct railroads and to control the administration of the railroads, and exemptions from taxes and tariffs on imported equipment and construction materials and on exports.  The government permitted the North American companies to have complete control of the entire system of transportation and commerce on the north coast, the region of the banana  production.  These concessions to the banana companies were the culmination of the liberal reform program of the late nineteenth century (Murga 1978:63-66; Molina 1976).

     The liberal reform program in Honduras depended on the development of foreign capital, due to the limited amount of capital in Honduras.  As the government pursued a policy of attracting foreign investment in raw-materials export production, foreign capital became the most important economic and political force in the country.  The banana companies came to own not only banana enterprises, but also related industries, including transportation, communication, energy, food, and retail outlets.  This dominance by foreign economic interests inhibited the development of a national bourgeoisie able to formulate and defend national interests.  Local elites became employees or consultants of foreign companies, serving as intermediaries between them and the government, defending their interests and seeking new concessions.  In this role, local elites were not in a position to accumulate capital.  Given the limited potential for local accumulation of capital, and given the low-wage labor in raw materials export production, the country would not be able to develop the capital or the home market necessary for industrial development (Murga 1978:26, 68, 74-85, 97-98; Meza 1982).

       The strategy of the government of Honduras in the development of the banana export industry illustrates a dependent capitalist model of economic development.  It takes as given that the nation ought to assume the peripheral role in the world-economy.  It provides free and open access of foreign companies to the natural resources and labor of the country.  It does not seek to defend the interests of emerging national producers.  This strategy precludes the possibility for the autonomous economic and cultural development of the nation.  It retards the development of a national bourgeoisie. It condemns the nation to underdevelopment, and it ensures the continued impoverishment of the people.  It was developed in the service of particular interests.

     During the course of the twentieth century, popular movements in Latin America and the Caribbean would emerge that would reject the dependent capitalist model of development.  The popular movements have experienced renewal since 1995, creating a new political reality in the region, a phenomenon that we will discuss in future posts.  
 

References

Booth, John A. and Thomas W. Walker.  1993.  Understanding Central America, Second Edition. Boulder:  Westview Press.

Meza, Victor.  1982.  Honduras: La Evolución de la Crisis. Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.

Molina Chocano, Guillermo. 1976.  Estado Liberal y Desarrollo Capitalista en Honduras.  Tegucigalpa: Banco Central de Honduras.

Murga Frassinetti, Antonio.  1978.  Enclave y Sociedad en Honduras. Tegucigalpa: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, open veins of Latin America, Galeano, banana, Honduras, Central America


 
        
 

     Watching CNN, it’s hard to avoid the thought that there is credible evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, killing more than one thousand people, including children.  The CNN discourse for the most part presumes that the Syrian government is guilty, although Wolf Blitzer occasionally uses the word “alleged.”  For CNN, the debate is focused on the question of what kind of reaction or punishment to this crime should be carried out against the government of Syria. 

      Cuban television broadcasts an hour-long news discussion program, La Mesa Redonda, each weekday evening at 7:00 (with rebroadcast at 11:00), in which journalists and academics discuss world events.  The program, widely watched in Cuba, offers an alternative to the perspective found in the major international media.

      For several months, the situation in Syria has been one of the themes of discussion on La Mesa Redonda.  From the perspective of Cuban journalists and academics, Syria attracted the hostility of the United States by deepening relations with Iran and Russia, thereby challenging US efforts to control the politics of the Middle East.   Thus the United States and its NATO allies have been trying to discredit and overthrow the Syrian government by providing support to opposition groups in Syria, which would have little strength were it not for foreign support. 

     La Mesa Redonda of September 2 dedicated 30 minutes to the possible US strike against Syria.  Two Cuban journalists, specialists on the Middle East, responded to questions posed by Randy Alonso Falcón, director and frequent moderator of the program.  It was maintained that, although the international press refers to the conflict in Syria as a civil war, in fact it is not a civil war but a war of aggression by the United States and its NATO allies against the legitimate government of Syria, a war waged by means of supplying arms and equipment to opposition groups, and a war motivated by US and European neocolonial interests in the Middle East.

      Concerning the alleged use of chemical weapons, one of the journalists cited a news report filed from Syria, based on sources in the opposition, indicating that the chemical attack was carried out by the opposition and not by the government.  This commentary is consistent with what the Cuban press has been reporting for several days: the government of Syria denies that it is responsible for the attack, arguing that, having agreed to a visit by UN inspectors, it would be absurd to conduct such an attack on the day prior to their arrival.  And the Cuban press has been reporting that Russia does not believe that the government of Syria carried out the attack.  This was reaffirmed later during the evening news of November 2, in which it was reported that Russia is not convinced by the evidence presented by the United States and its NATO allies that the government of Syria carried out the chemical attack.

      The second part of La Mesa Redonda on November 2 was devoted to the Summit of Presidents of UNASUR, the Union of Nations of South America.  It was noted that UNASUR passed resolutions condemning the arming of Syrian opposition groups by the Western powers and expressing opposition to foreign intervention in Syria.

      The Cuban press presents an alternative to the major international news media.  The major news media is integrally tied to the capitalist world-economy, and they function to ensure that the people will not learn to ask questions that would challenge the structures of neocolonial domination.  The Cuban press is integrally tied to the Cuban revolutionary project, which seeks to construct an alternative to the neocolonial world-system.