💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › noam-chomsky-latin-america-declares-independence.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:57:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Latin America Declares Independence Author: Noam Chomsky Date: October 3, 2006 Language: en Topics: Latin America Source: Retrieved on 1st October 2021 from https://chomsky.info/20061003/ Notes: Published in the International Herald Tribune.
Five centuries after the European conquests, Latin America is
reasserting its independence.
In the southern cone especially, from Venezuela to Argentina, the region
is rising to overthrow the legacy of external domination of the past
centuries and the cruel and destructive social forms that they have
helped to establish.
The mechanisms of imperial control – violence and economic warfare,
hardly a distant memory in Latin America – are losing their
effectiveness, a sign of the shift toward independence. Washington is
now compelled to tolerate governments that in the past would have drawn
intervention or reprisal.
Throughout the region a vibrant array of popular movements provide the
basis for a meaningful democracy. The indigenous populations, as if in a
rediscovery of their pre-Columbian legacy, are much more active and
influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador.
These developments are in part the result of a phenomenon that has been
observed for some years in Latin America: As the elected governments
become more formally democratic, citizens express an increasing
disillusionment with democratic institutions. They have sought to
construct democratic systems based on popular participation rather than
elite and foreign domination.
A persuasive explanation for this has been offered by Argentine
political scientist Atilio Boron, who observed that the new wave of
democratization coincided with externally mandated economic “reforms”
that undermine effective democracy.
In a world of nation-states, it is true by definition that decline of
sovereignty entails decline of democracy, and decline in ability to
conduct social and economic policy. That in turn harms development.
The historical record also reveals that loss of sovereignty consistently
leads to imposed liberalization, of course in the interests of those
with the power to impose this social and economic regime.
It is instructive to compare recent presidential elections in the
richest country of the world and the poorest country in South America.
In the 2004 U.S. presidential election, voters had a choice between two
men born to wealth and privilege, who attended the same elite
university, joined the same secret society where young men are trained
to join the ruling class and were able to run in the election because
they were supported by pretty much the same conglomerations of private
power. Their programs were similar, consistent with the needs of their
primary constituency: wealth and privilege.
For contrast, consider Bolivia and Evo Morales’ election last December.
Voters were familiar with the issues, very real and important ones like
national control over natural gas and other resources, which has
overwhelming popular support. Indigenous rights, women’s rights, land
rights and water rights were on the political agenda, among many others.
The population chose someone from its own ranks, not a representative of
narrow sectors of privilege.
Given its new ascendancy, Latin America may come to terms with some of
its severe internal problems. The region is notorious for the rapacity
of its wealthy classes, and their freedom from social responsibility.
Comparative studies of Latin American and East Asian economic
development are revealing in this respect. Latin America has close to
the world’s worst record for inequality, East Asia the best. The same
holds for education, health and social welfare generally.
Latin American economies have also been more open to foreign investment
than Asia. The World Bank reported that foreign investment and
privatization have tended to substitute for other capital flows in Latin
America, transferring control and sending profits abroad, unlike East
Asia.
Meanwhile, new socioeconomic programs under way in Latin America are
reversing patterns that trace back to the Spanish conquests – with Latin
American elites and economies linked to the imperial powers but not to
one another.
Of course this shift is highly unwelcome in Washington, for the
traditional reasons: The United States expects to rely on Latin America
as a secure base for resources, markets and investment opportunities.
And as planners have long emphasized, if this hemisphere is out of
control, how can the United States hope to resist defiance elsewhere?