Neoliberalism and the Subjugation of Latin America
Neoliberalism and the Subjugation of Latin America
by Mateo Pimentel / June 18th, 2014
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Latin America proved to the world that it was poised to grow. Its collective determination for social equality and economic reform promised many viable alternatives to alignment with Washington. Despite the fact that the region was by no means a fabric of interwoven utopias, Latin America was still able to distribute wealth and to sustainably grow sans the flavor of capitalism espoused by the US. The effects of this period in Latin American history had a global reach, inspiring countless other developing nations around the world to explore their economic options. For this reason, Latin America’s economic sovereignty was perceived as a threat to US hegemony everywhere. In order to maintain its hemispheric supremacy, and to send the world a message vis-à-vis nonalignment, the US intruded, subverted, usurped, couped, warred and assassinated in perhaps every way imaginable. In fact, the precedent America set in its own back yard during this epoch would become the general norm for managing future decades of global dominance. No place on Earth since has gone unaffected by US international, political and economic caprice; the current status of locales such as Eurasia or the Middle East shows this to be true. As for US interference with Latin America’s moment of heightened growth and trending social equality, it had only one true raison d’être: The US sought to economically indenture an impoverished albeit resource rich Latin America ad infinitum.
After so many coups, bombings and puppet regime installations, America became increasingly more aggressive with its economic weapons. Neoliberalism midwifed many policies that helped the US reach its financial ends in Latin America with new inroads. ‘Free trade’, one of the biggest hallmarks of neoliberalism, received much bipartisan political support under Reagan. After Reagan, Bill Clinton took neoliberal efforts, and especially free trade, to unprecedented extremes. Globalization took on new dimensions, becoming a veritable vertebra in the backbone of Clinton’s foreign policy. Two economically indelible outcomes thus manifested during his presidency: the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). They have affected Latin America from the moment of their inception. The ensuing consequences for Latin America, its sovereignty and its economic freedoms were unparalleled in their destructivity; there was to be no recalibration or balancing of development and private enterprise in Latin America ever again. After both Reagan and Clinton, only corporate and property rights were to be protected. Every president since has in some way or other upheld this agenda.
Ratifying free trade and establishing a more rapacious species of international commercial law left Latin America pigeonholed. The region experienced some of the greatest cases of dispossession in its history for the sake of profiting foreign interest and contrived politics. Countries, whose state industries lacked sufficient capital, green-lighted disadvantageous laissez-faire policies through legislation; new policy and laws left them desperate to attract foreign investment and other forms of capital. The region also assumed that the US would make good on its promises of investment, thinking that America might comply with its vocalized desire to help. Even though the US pledged assistance with badly needed technology and capital, nothing materialized. Instead, many nationalists and socialists suffered a great deal of retribution for their political activity. The violence that many proponents of heterodox economics suffered during this period was largely symptomatic of the alterations made to the international legal landscape that affected Latin American nations. Ultimately, the costs of challenging Washington’s economic yoke became bloodier with the passage of time.
How did some of Latin America’s countries grow so poor from the forced adoption of laissez-faire neoliberal policies, especially after such an incredible twenty-year economic upturn? The answer begins in part with Reagan’s acting job at the 1981 International Meeting on Cooperation and Development in México. At the meeting, Reagan delivered the system that America envisioned for its neighbors and itself. Latin America was to ultimately become an experimental cadaver for the untested free market debauchery. As a result, the region largely became the economic Frankenstein that it is today. Moreover, much of the strife that Latin America experienced after Reagan’s presentation, whether economic, political or otherwise, predestined the region to be a financial stepping-stone for the US as globalization metastasized in other spheres.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/06/neoliberalism-and-the-subjugation-of-latin-america/
