Introduction, Open Veins Revisited: Charting the Social, Economic, and Political Contours of the New Extractivism in Latin America

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Open Veins Revisited: Charting the Social, Economic, and Political Contours of the New Extractivism in Latin America
by Nicole Fabricant and Linda Farthing


Ever since the search for the elusive El Dorado began in the sixteenth century, the history of Latin America has been a tale of resource extraction. Key resources (such as silver, gold, tin, and copper) drew foreign investment but left local populations deeply impoverished. As Eduardo Galeano (1973: 29) described it, “the Spanish colonies’ economic structure was born subordinated to the external market and thus centralized around the export sector, where profit and power were concentrated.” Five centuries later, this overall pattern remains unchanged.

Its persistence propelled twentieth-century social scientists to use Marxist analytic frames, Raúl Prebisch and Hans Singer’s theories on declining terms of trade, and dependency theory more generally to explain how resource extraction created geographic and historic asymmetries between nation-states and peoples.....

Introduction to The Cold War and Latin American Studies

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Introduction to The Cold War and Latin American Studies


Those of us whose academic careers evolved during the Cold War have intensely experienced pressures on our approaches to teaching and research. Some of us in North American universities were affected by anticommunist hysteria, required to sign loyalty oaths and face surveillance by the FBI and the CIA. Our work on Latin America sometimes involved protests of U.S. policy and direct or covert intervention into the affairs of countries in the hemisphere. The predominant role of the United States in Latin America dates to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the nineteenth-century acquisition of territory through wars with Mexico and Spain. Academic interest in Latin America during the early twentieth century was largely shaped by diplomatic history and U.S. expansionism and imperialism. The end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War in 1945 saw the beginnings of Latin American studies as an interdisciplinary field.

Introduction, Democracy, Repression, and the Defense of Human Rights

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Democracy, Repression, and the Defense of Human Rights
by William Avilés and Leila Celis                                    


In the 1990s Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora, and Richard Wilson (1993) directly challenged the democratic-transitions literature through critical assessments of the relatively young democracies in Latin America and the developing world. They introduced the model of “low-intensity democracy” as a more precise classification of the limits of democratic change in the developing world after the cold war. A low-intensity democracy is a largely procedural democracy that allows political opposition, greater individual freedoms, a reduced institutional role for the armed forces, and a more permeable environment for the investments of transnational capital. Greatly expanding on this idea, William Robinson (1996) posited that, given the instability that authoritarian regimes of the past had engendered in the populace, these elite democracies were essential to the global integration of these economies. Democratization movements seeking radical change beyond formal electoral competition were pushed aside by the more conservative leaders of antiauthoritarian movements. These leaders were financed and advised by U.S. foreign policy makers, who presented them as paragons of democracy in an emerging global capitalist age. They represented economic and political factions pursuing the integration of their respective economies into capitalist globalization and fully prepared to turn to state and para-state repression of groups that challenged the state outside of the formal democratic institutions.

Introduction, The Legacy of Hugo Chavez

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The Legacy of Hugo Chávez
Daniel Hellinger and Anthony Petros Spanakos                                                                 


In 1992, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez failed to replace the beleaguered government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez but succeeded in capturing the hearts and imaginations of a broad swath of the Venezuelan population frustrated by a decade of economic crisis, shifts in the social contract, weakened institutionalized modes of representation, and the consequences of a neoliberal structural adjustment program. El pueblo (the people) found hope in the temerity of the coup attempt and Chávez’s famous “por ahora” (for now).

Introduction, The Resilience of Memory, Truth, and Justice Processes: Culture, Politics, and Social Mobilizations

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The Resilience of Memory, Truth, and Justice Processes: Culture, Politics, and Social Mobilizations
edited by Roberta Villalón                                                                 


A second wave of memory, truth, and justice mobilizations has been spreading in Latin America since the turn of the century (Villalón, 2015). The push to address unresolved human rights violations perpetrated in the 1970s and 1980s has resulted in the (re)opening of trials of perpetrators and a more complex understanding of past and present violence and inequalities. The resilient collective efforts that have fed these processes have also gained depth. Richer collective memories and the achievement of (at least partially) successful outcomes have provided movements a clear sense that not all their efforts have been in vain. Justice, reconciliation, and social equality may not be at all possible, but they are utopic ideals worth pursuing (Villalón, 2016).
This third issue on the politics of collective memory expands on the contents of the first two (March 2015 and September 2016). Theoretically, it contributes to the body of literature in the field by uncovering the politics of framing memory and is developed in terms of a critical epistemology from the bottom up. The research is intended to challenge systems and practices of inequality and contribute to community efforts to generate social change for justice. The contributors dismantle inequalities of knowledge and power by critically pointing to controversies, inconsistencies, and complexities of memory, truth, and justice processes. Their studies allow for a more nuanced comprehension of past violence, breaking up simplistic interpretations that pair victims and victimizers, left and right, pre- and postconflict, truth and injustice to explore the grey areas in between and reveal the misleading effects of dichotomous rationalizations.

Abstract, Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil by Wendy Wolford and John D. French

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Deconstructing the Post-Neoliberal State: Intimate Perspectives on Contemporary Brazil 
by Wendy Wolford and John D. French

The last three presidential administrations in Brazil, including the two presidencies of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva (2002–2010) and the first term of Dilma Rousseff (2010-2014), have complicated widely held understandings of the Brazilian state. It is no longer possible to characterize recent governments as simply authoritarian, patrimonial, or divorced from the experiences of the Brazilian public (see Pereira in this issue). The path to “deepening democracy” (Fung, Wright, and Abers, 2003) has not been an easy or straightforward one, as recent protests and ongoing corruption scandals have shown, and yet a brief history of the recent past illustrates dramatic change. In 1985 a 21-year dictatorship—what Peter Evans (1989) called a “developmental state”—was defeated only to be followed by debt-fueled crisis and a decade of economic stagnation. Hyperinflation and economic uncertainty led in turn to an era of neoliberal governance, including the privatization of state-owned enterprises, reduction of trade protections, and establishment of regional free-market zones (Baker, 2002; Corrales, 2012; Power, 1998; Wolford, 2005).

Abstract, Introduction, China and Latin America: Processes and Paradoxes by James M. Cypher and Tamar Diana Wilson

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Abstract,  Introduction, China and Latin America:  Processes and Paradoxes 

by James M. Cypher and Tamar Diana Wilson

How has the increasing economic influence of China, especially since 2000, affected Latin American countries? Has China’s recent impact led to a structural shift in the underlying political economy of the region? Has this effect been, on balance, positive, negative, or too complex to be reducible to a normative analysis? Is it the case that, because of ongoing dynamics and the generation of ever newer accords, reached annually if not biannually between China and various Latin American countries, such an assessment lies only in the future?

Abstract, Introduction, China and Latin America: Processes and Paradoxes by James M. Cypher and Tamar Diana Wilson

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Abstract:   Introduction, China and Latin America:  Processes and Paradoxes 

by James M. Cypher and Tamar Diana Wilson

How has the increasing economic influence of China, especially since 2000, affected Latin American countries? Has China’s recent impact led to a structural shift in the underlying political economy of the region? Has this effect been, on balance, positive, negative, or too complex to be reducible to a normative analysis? Is it the case that, because of ongoing dynamics and the generation of ever newer accords, reached annually if not biannually between China and various Latin American countries, such an assessment lies only in the future?

Introduction, Environmental Violence in Mexico: A Conceptual Introduction by Nemer E. Narchi

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Introduction: Environmental Violence in Mexico: A Conceptual Introduction 

by Nemer E. Narchi

In December 2010 Mexico hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Quintana Roo. The conference intentionally crossed World Forest Day, celebrated on December 5, and this gave Felipe Calderón, then president of Mexico and current chairman of the World Resource Institute’s Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an opportunity to urge the nations of the world to save the world’s forests. In his speech on that day (Calderón-Hinojosa, 2010) he urged peasants to abandon their traditional agriculture in favor of environmental-services payments, arguing that a year’s harvest would not be nearly as productive of income as the US$30–100 per hectare per year they would derive from being compensated for not planting.

Introduction by Marjorie Woodford Bray, Fundamental Change or More of the Same?

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Fundamental Change or More of the Same?
Introduction by Marjorie Woodford Bray

Determining whether the current situation of Latin America is better described as “post-neoliberalism” or as “commodities consensus” requires an analysis of recent changes in the region. Capitalism has expanded in agriculture and mining, accentuating the preeminence of basic exports. Traditional industry is declining, and remittances and tourism have increased in importance. Local capitalists associated with foreign corporations have replaced the national bourgeoisie, while the exodus of peasants consolidates labor precariousness, poverty, and inequality. At the same time, the United States is deploying troops to reorganize its domination. The South American rebellions have limited neoliberal aggression and achieved unusual victories in other parts of the world. The concept of post-neoliberalism emphasizes the region’s political turn toward autonomy but overlooks the persistence of the economic model generated during the previous phase. The opposing concept, commodities consensus, highlights the extractivism prevailing throughout the region but plays down the extreme divergences among right-wing, center-left, and radical governments in all other areas. Both concepts contain part of the truth, but neither fully explains the regional scenario.

Introduction: Fundamental Change or More of the Same? by Marjorie Woodford Bray

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Fundamental Change or More of the Same?
Introduction by Marjorie Woodford Bray

Determining whether the current situation of Latin America is better described as “post-neoliberalism” or as “commodities consensus” requires an analysis of recent changes in the region. Capitalism has expanded in agriculture and mining, accentuating the preeminence of basic exports. Traditional industry is declining, and remittances and tourism have increased in importance. Local capitalists associated with foreign corporations have replaced the national bourgeoisie, while the exodus of peasants consolidates labor precariousness, poverty, and inequality. At the same time, the United States is deploying troops to reorganize its domination. The South American rebellions have limited neoliberal aggression and achieved unusual victories in other parts of the world. The concept of post-neoliberalism emphasizes the region’s political turn toward autonomy but overlooks the persistence of the economic model generated during the previous phase. The opposing concept, commodities consensus, highlights the extractivism prevailing throughout the region but plays down the extreme divergences among right-wing, center-left, and radical governments in all other areas. Both concepts contain part of the truth, but neither fully explains the regional scenario.