Latin America and US Techno-Empire
Latin America and US Techno-Empire
by Mateo Pimentel / September 12th, 2014
The notion that history tends to favor the hegemonies that would write it is nothing new. This is especially the case for the United States today. Take US-Latin American international relations, for example: they are indelibly stippled with gunboat diplomacy and seditious coups; even the many perverse trade agreements and subsequent growing poverty belie the neoliberal overtures that America continually makes. Yet, in spite of a most basic realpolitik approach to assessing America’s litany of hegemonic aggression, history is still quick to cite the anarchic nature of international relationships in general, and in doing so, it excuses fratricidal US ‘diplomacy’ throughout Latin America by simply referencing a manifest ‘self-help’ system amongst states.
America, in other words, is not to blame; rather, the anarchy of inter-state relationships is to be understood as a given, and its inherent culpability, understood.
This road, of course, is too easily taken. Though it may explain the what, it does not explain the why apropos general US meddling in Latin America. And while polemical inter-state issues between the US and its closest neighbors are well documented and investigated with some frequency, an “empire for empire’s sake” argument does not suffice as a believable impetus for such aggressive behavior in Latin America—at least, not any more than a phenomenon like self-interest can or does. No. To truly understand these international affairs, one must look beyond hackneyed tautologies. One must weigh the interest that runs the state, the lifeblood of the state’s moneyed organs, the whip that drives the imperial mule. Then, the raison d’être for America’s imposition and coercion in Latin America becomes clear.
From 1947 to 1973, Latin America experienced a 70% rise in real wages per capita. States had the capacity to both distribute wealth and sustain growth. They showed no need to subscribe wholesale to the capitalism that dominated the American economic scene. Many of the Latin American intelligentsia even thought their region’s economic momentum portended a powerful trading bloc would emerge. Some international economists speculated the same. What did occur, however, was quite to the contrary.
Between the Reagan and Clinton administrations (1980 to 1998), Latin America’s average per capita income did not increase at all. In the same two decades, US multinational corporations and Latin American elites grew awfully rich through the sale of virtually entire Latin American state industries. Thousands were sold; American multinationals assumed ownership of rails, energy, ports, mining, agriculture, mail, infrastructure, factories, communication, education, health care, jails, waste, water, television, pensions, etc. Indeed, Latin American states themselves commanded a lot of economic power when they co-operated these industries. As a result, the region boomed.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/09/latin-america-and-us-techno-empire/
