Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The first response of most critical debaters in looking at next years topic is certainly going to be the ease of making
a critique of capitalism a topic specific kritik. Economic is right there in the resolution! While it is undoubtedly true
that it will be exceedingly difficult for an affirmative to claim no link, it is also the case that every affirmative will
be much more prepared to debate your generic kritik of capitalism using the specificity of the aff mechanism. That
is, any affirmative team that has done their own work will have designed the plan mechanism in such a way that
generic arguments about the economic system and its rampant production of harm will seem generic and not
intrinsic to their deployment of economic mechanisms of foreign policy. Thus, debaters who want to win the Cap K
will have to have a more nuanced and historically grounded criticism of the aff if you want to be a step ahead and
win. (For a good primer on why a historically grounded and nuanced kritik is strategically useful, see Max Hantels
blog post from a couple of years ago: http://utdebatecamp.com/2011/thunder-rods-and-aliens-beginning-
preparation-for-the-space-topic/) This post will not provide you with all you need to know to run the Cap K and
win; rather, I hope to provide a basis for beginning to think of historically grounded approaches to critiques of
An excellent, though dated, history on the use
economic engagement as a tool of foreign policy.
of foreign aid as an economically coercive tool to remake countries into
the US economists image and the production of the 1980s debt crises that
still fundamentally shape the economies of countries across the globe is Robert
Woods From Marshall Plan to Debt Crisis: Foreign Aid and Development
Choices in the World Economy. Woods book is an attempt to diagnose the
aid policies that led to the debt crisis that gripped the world economy in the
early 1980s, precipitated by several developing countries , including Mexico, stating
that they would be unable to pay back their external debt obligations. While
other authors have argued that this was precipitated by the oil crisis and the anti-inflationary policies of the United
Wood sees deeper roots to the
States that took place to control the stagflation of the 1970s,
crisis in how foreign aid was conceived as a tool to manage and open
developing markets to foreign investment and profit. We can understand
the foreign policy of economic engagement as bookended by two crises:
the debt crisis of the 1980s and the global financial collapse of 2008. The
period in between is dominated by an almost unchallenged dedication to
neoliberal foreign policy and economic relations. What is neoliberalism? Broadly,
neoliberalism is a belief that markets can perform the functions of government and more efficiently; thus free
markets absent governmental regulations can create the conditions for global prosperity and growth. Neoliberalism
also transforms our understanding of citizenship away from a notion of engaged members of a polity who
democratically participate to transform the conditions of governance and towards the notion of the citizen-
consumer, who must bear the burden of low wages, insufficient social support, resource wars, and military
repression. The primary positive role of individuals is to continue to sustain the market through purchasing goods
and services without any power of decision-making over the operation of the engines of economic growth. Thus,
profit over people is more than just a leftist mantra; it is the central
operative logic for neoliberal economics to function. As David Harvey writes, For
capital accumulation to return to 3 per cent compound growth will require a new basis for profit-making and surplus
absorption. The irrational way to do this in the past has been the rough the destruct on of the achievements of
preceding eras by way of war, the devaluation of assets, the degradation of productive capacity, abandonment and
other forms of creative destruction, The effects are felt not only throughout the world of commodity production
and exchange. Human lives are disrupted and even physically destroyed, whole careers and lifetime achievements
are put in jeopardy, deeply held beliefs are challenged, psyches wounded and respect for human dignity is cast
aside. Creative destruction is visited upon the good, the beautiful the bad and the ugly alike. Crises, we may
conclude, are the irrational rationalisers of an irrational system. Can capitalism survive the present trauma? Yes. of
course. But at what cost? This question masks another. Can the capitalist class reproduce its power in the face of
the raft of economic, social, political and geopolitical and environmental difficulties? Again, the answer is a
resounding Yes it can: This will however, require the mass of the people to give generously of the fruits of their
labour to those in power, to surrender many of their rights and their hard -won asset values (in everything from
housing to pension rights) and to suffer environmental degradations galore, to say nothing of serial reductions in
their living standards which will mean starvation for many of those already struggling to survive at rock bottom.
More than a little political repression, police violence and militarised state control will be required to stifle the
How is this connected to the two crises mentioned
ensuing unrest. (2010, 224-225)
above? Well, the 1980s debt crisis produce the Washington Consensus,
a ten-point plan for addressing the debt crisis through neoliberal
mechanisms. Regan whole-heartedly endorsed the plan, tying debt cancellation
to the enactment of these various elements to transform the economies of
developing countries. What are these ten points? According to John Williamson, who coined the term
Washington Consensus, the policy proposals are as follows: Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large
fiscal deficits relative to GDP; Redirection of public spending from subsidies (especially indiscriminate
subsidies) toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary
health care and infrastructure investment; Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal
tax rates; Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms; Competitive
exchange rates; Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of
quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform tariffs;
Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment; Privatization of state enterprises; Deregulation: abolition of
regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and
consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions; Legal security for property rights.
In preparing for the debate season, it will be important to understand what each of these policy aims means and
what those transformations would do to Mexico and Venezuela. As we know Cubas aid was tied to the Soviet Union
and thus has a distinctly different historical trajectory, where economic engagement form the United States took
the form of embargoes and travel restrictions. Suffice to say, these transformations called for an achieved in many
countries the end of state-run industries that caused oligarchic control of industries that further impoverished
domestic populations and the elimination of crucial elements of social safety nets that an invisible and massive
What we have
human toll to economic liberalization would remain unseen from the economists view.
seen is the development of microfinancing loans that ostensibly
transform people in poverty from the clients of state welfare that they had been
into entrepreneurial mini-capitalists that will create the freest of all behavior:
generation of profit. But as most anthropological and sociological work on micro-finance has shown, the
majority of people and collectives take out these loans to pay for day-to-day needs and special occasions like
weddings. Thus, state welfare has been replaced by a draconian system of loans, where missed payments ensure
the tenuous economic status of people in poverty is rendered intolerable.
Free trade Links
The confusion concerning the political character of the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) stems from their
earlier history in the 1970s during the days of the dictatorships. In this period they were active in providing
humanitarian support to the victims of the military dictatorship and denouncing human rights violations. The NGOs
supported soup kitchens which allowed victimized families to survive the first wave of shock treatments
administered by the neoliberal dictatorships. This period created a favorable image of NGOs even among the left.
Even then, however, the limits of the
They were considered part of the progressive camp.
NGOs were evident. While they attacked the human rights violations of
local dictatorships, they rarely denounced the U.S. and European patrons
who financed and advised them. Nor was there a serious effort to link the
neoliberal economic policies and human rights violations to the new turn
in the imperialist system. Obviously the external sources of funding
limited the sphere of criticism and human rights action. As opposition to
neoliberalism grew in the early 1980s, the U.S. and European governments and the World Bank increased their
funding of NGOs. There is a direct relation between the growth of social movements challenging the neoliberal
model and the effort to subvert them by creating alternative forms of social action through the NGOs. The basic
On the
point of convergence between the NGOs and the World Bank was their common opposition to statism.
surface the NGOs criticized the state from a left perspective defending
civil society, while the right did so in the name of the market. In reality,
however, the World Bank, the neoliberal regimes, and western foundations
co-opted and encouraged the NGOs to undermine the national welfare
state by providing social services to compensate the victims of the
multinational corporations (MNCs). In other words, as the neoliberal
regimes at the top devastated communities by inundating the country
with cheap imports, extracting external debt payment, abolishing labor
legislation, and creating a growing mass of low-paid and unemployed
workers, the NGOs were funded to provide self-help projects, popular
education, and job training, to temporarily absorb small groups of poor,
to co-opt local leaders, and to undermine anti-system struggles. The NGOs
became the community face of neoliberalism, intimately related to those at the top and complementing their
destructive work with local projects. In effect the neoliberals organized a pincer operation or dual strategy.
Unfortunately many on the left focused only on neoliberalism from above and the outside (International Monetary
Fund, World Bank) and not on neoliberalism from below (NGOs, micro-enterprises). A major reason for this oversight
was the conversion of many ex-Marxists to the NGO formula and practice. Anti-Statism was the ideological transit
ticket from class politics to community development, from Marxism to the NGOs. Typically, NGO ideologues
counterpose state power to local power. State power is, they argue, distant from its citizens, autonomous, and
arbitrary, and it tends to develop interests different from and opposed to those of its citizens, while local power is
necessarily closer and more responsive to the people. But apart from historical cases where the reverse has also
been true, this leaves out the essential relation between state and local powerthe simple truth that state power
wielded by a dominant, exploiting class will undermine progressive local initiatives, while that same power in the
hands of progressive forces can reinforce such initiatives. The counterposition of state and local power has been
used to justify the role of NGOs as brokers between local organizations, neoliberal foreign donors (World Bank,
Europe, or the United States) and the local free market regimes. But the effect is to strengthen neoliberal regimes
by severing the link between local struggles and organizations and national/international political movements. The
emphasis on local activity serves the neoliberal regimes since it allows its foreign and domestic backers to
dominate macro-socio-economic policy and to channel most of the states resources toward subsidies for export
capitalists and financial institutions. So while the neoliberals were transferring lucrative state properties to the
private rich, the NGOs were not part of the trade union resistance. On the contrary they were active in local private
projects, promoting the private enterprise discourse (self-help) in the local communities by focusing on micro-
enterprises. The NGOs built ideological bridges between the small scale capitalists and the monopolies benefitting
from privatizationall in the name of anti-statism and the building of civil societies. While the rich accumulated
vast financial empires from the privatization, the NGO middle class professionals got small sums to finance offices,
The important political point is that the
transportation, and small-scale economic activity.
NGOs depoliticized sectors of the population, undermined their
commitment to public employees, and co-opted potential leaders in small
projects. NGOs abstain from public school teacher struggles, as the
neoliberal regimes attack public education and public educators. Rarely if
ever do NGOs support the strikes and protests against low wages and
budget cuts. Since their educational funding comes from the neoliberal governments, they avoid solidarity
with public educators in struggle. In practice, non-governmental translates into anti-public-spending activities,
freeing the bulk of funds for neoliberals to subsidize export capitalists while small sums trickle from the government
In reality non-governmental organizations are not non-
to NGOs.
governmental. They receive funds from overseas governments or work as
private subcontractors of local governments. Frequently they openly collaborate with
governmental agencies at home or overseas. This subcontracting undermines
professionals with fixed contracts, replacing them with contingent
professionals. The NGOs cannot provide the long-term comprehensive programs that the welfare state can
furnish. Instead they provide limited services to narrow groups of communities. More importantly, their programs
are not accountable to the local people but to overseas donors. In that sense NGOs undermine democracy by taking
social programs out of the hands of the local people and their elected officials to create dependence on non-
elected, overseas officials and their locally anointed officials.
Immigration Link
Affs Economic and Immigration Dialogue flawed- fails to
contextualize benefits within the dimensions of US-Mexico
economic interaction and labour migration
Delgado-Wise 04 [Raul Delgado-Wise, Critical Dimensions of Mexico-US Migration under the Aegis of
Neoliberalism and NAFTA, Canadian Journal of Development Studies 25.4 (2004): 591-605, Director of Doctoral
Program in Migration Studies, Professor of Development Studies, Universidad Autnoma de Zacatecas, Mexico]
Another dimension for debunking the myth of the Mexican export
miracle is the peculiar dialectic that is interwoven between what is
euphemistically called the successful sector and the rest of the economy.
This dialectic questions two classical concepts that attempt to explain the underdeveloped insertion of economies
in classical Latin American economic development theory. The functionalist concept of structural dualism
(Germani 1974) does not apply, and neither does the concept of enclave (Cardoso and Faletto 1974), which has
been dusted off to explain the economic integration of Mexico and the United States (Calva 1997, 71101). In
contrast to what those concepts assume, there is no divorce between the successful
sector and the rest of the economy, nor can the two be analysed in
isolation. On the contrary, the relative increases in the export sector are based
on the impoverishment of the remaining sectors. The export orientation
of the Mexican economy demands certain macroeconomic conditions that are obtained by
squeezing internal accumulation: in particular, reduced public investment expenditure, the
states withdrawal from strictly productive activities, privatizations, budget deficit
controls, and interest rates that are attractive to foreign capital but that,
in contrast, depress domestic activity within the economy. This further
heightens social inequalities and generates an ever-growing mass of
workers who cannot find a place within the countrys formal labour
market; as a result, a third of the economically active population work in what is called the informal sector.
This is the breeding ground that fuels the vigorous process of cross-
border migration that currently exists. The contradictory dynamic that arises between
migration and economic growth in that context can be summarized as follows.
The Dynamic of Capital Expansion Imperialism is older than capitalism. The Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and
Mongol empires all existed centuries before the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Emperors and conquistadors were
Capitalist imperialism differs from
interested mostly in plunder and tribute, gold and glory.
these earlier forms in the way it systematically accumulates capital
through the organized exploitation of labor and the penetration of
overseas markets. Capitalist imperialism invests in other countries,
transforming and dominating their economies, cultures, and political life,
integrating their financial and productive structures into an international
system of capital accumulation. A central imperative of capitalism is
expansion. Investors will not put their money into business ventures unless they can extract more than they
invest. Increased earnings come only with a growth in the enterprise. The
capitalist ceaselessly searches for ways of making more money in order to
make still more money. One must always invest to realize profits, gathering as much strength as
possible in the face of competing forces and unpredictable markets. Given its expansionist nature,
capitalism has little inclination to stay home. Almost 150 years ago, Marx
and Engels described a bourgeoisie that "chases over the whole surface of
the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish
connections everywhere. . . . It creates a world after its own image." The
expansionists destroy whole societies. Self-sufficient peoples are forcibly
transformed into disfranchised wage workers. Indigenous communities
and folk cultures are replaced by mass-market, mass-media, consumer
societies. Cooperative lands are supplanted by agribusiness factory farms,
villages by desolate shanty towns, autonomous regions by centralized
autocracies. Consider one of a thousand such instances. A few years ago the Los Angeles Times carried a
special report on the rainforests of Borneo in the South Pacific. By their own testimony, the people there lived
contented lives. They hunted, fished, and raised food in their jungle orchards and groves. But their entire way of life
was ruthlessly wiped out by a few giant companies that destroyed the rainforest in order to harvest the hardwood
for quick profits. Their lands were turned into ecological disaster areas and they themselves were transformed into
disfranchised shantytown dwellers, forced to work for subsistence wageswhen fortunate enough to find
employment. North American and European corporations have acquired control of more
than three-fourths of the known mineral resources of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. But the pursuit of natural resources is not the only reason for capitalist overseas expansion.
There is the additional need to cut production costs and maximize profits
by investing in countries with cheaper labor markets. U.S. corporate
foreign investment grew 84 percent from 1985 to 1990, the most dramatic increase
being in cheap-labor countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Spain, and Singapore. Because of low wages,
low taxes, nonexistent work benefits, weak labor unions, and nonexistent
occupational and environmental protections, U.S. corporate profit rates in
the Third World are 50 percent greater than in developed countries. Citibank,
one of the largest U.S. firms, earns about 75 percent of its profits from overseas operations. While profit margins at
home sometimes have had a sluggish growth, earnings abroad have continued to rise dramatically, fostering the
four
development of what has become known as the multinational or transnational corporation. Today some
hundred transnational companies control about 80 percent of the capital
assets of the global free market and are extending their grasp into the ex-
communist countries of Eastern Europe. Transnationals have developed a
global production line. General Motors has factories that produce cars, trucks and a wide range of auto
components in Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Singapore, Philippines, South Africa,
South Korea and a dozen other countries. Such "multiple sourcing" enables GM to ride out strikes in one country by
stepping up production in another, playing workers of various nations against each other in order to discourage
wage and benefit demands and undermine labor union strategies.
Mexican Engagement Link
Discourse link The way the 1ac frames the interactions
between the US and Mexico spreads imperialism by
maintaining a distance between the colonizer and the
colonized
Toths 09
[Margaret A. Toth, Framing the Body: Imperialism and Visual Discourse in Mara Cristina Mena's Short Fiction,
Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, 2009,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/legacy/v026/26.1.toth.html]
In 1913, Century magazine commissioned Mexican American writer Mara Cristina Mena, only twenty years old and
unknown at the time, to write a series of stories about life in Mexico. Over the course of the next few years, these
stories were published in Century, while several others appeared in journals like American Magazine. When Mena's
final short story was printed in Household Magazine in 1931, the periodical billed her as "the foremost interpreter of
Mexican life" (Mena, The Collected Stories 137).1 Largely forgotten today, Mena carved a distinct, if modest, space
for herself on the early-twentieth-century US cultural landscape. She cultivated professional friendships with such
literary figures as D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, published numerous short stories in well-known periodicals
(most appearing between 1913 and 1916), and, later in life, authored several children's books.2 Recently, critics
have revisited Mena's stories, interrogating, among other things, the author's tricksteresque discourse, gender
politics, and role as cultural interpreter.3 In this essay, I adopt a new interpretive lens through which to read Mena's
work, as I situate her short fiction within a framework attentive to the colonialist dynamics at work in early-
twentieth-century US-Mexico relations. Broadly speaking, Mena's stories provide a sustained, if at times veiled,
commentary on the imperialist interests of the United States in Mexico. More specifically, they think through how
this particular imperialist drama plays itself out in and on subaltern bodies. By engaging both theoretical questions
about imperialist visual production and pragmatic ones about living within the shadow of US colonialism, Mena asks
people of color are shaped not only figuratively, within the
us to see how bodies of
imperialist imaginary, but also literally, by the daily realities of
imperialism.4 To argue these claims, I turn first to stories in which Mena grapples with [End Page 92] broad,
conceptual questions about imperialist visual practices.5 In the opening section of this essay, I illustrate that Mena's
stories, themselves steeped in ocular language, respond in complex ways to imperialist art's construction of the
other. In their discussion of colonialist photography, Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson maintain that the genre
relies on "[t]he colonial constructions of racial, cultural, and geographic difference" (2). This emphasis on and
production of difference in colonialist photography, and in imperialist visual texts more
often
abets imperialist political projects, fueled as they are by a power
generally,
distribution that requires maintaining a distance between colonizer and
colonized. Imperialist images of human subjects, in particular, turn upon a self/other dichotomy, with the
separating bar representing an insurmountable difference: On the one side, we have the normative white, western,
imperialist subject; on the other, the colonized, exoticized, and racialized other, emptied of subjectivity. Images
grounded in this ideology were popular in early-twentieth-century US publications, including Century. Yet Mena's
stories, published alongside exoticizing pieces like the photo-essay "Unfamiliar Mexico," which I will discuss below,
challenge images that position Mexicans' bodies as ineradicably other. In the first part of this article, I examine two
stories, "The Vine-Leaf" and "The Gold Vanity Set," in order to show how Mena undermines such imperialist
practices. In these stories, Mena implicitly destabilizes the status of the image as bearer of truth. That is, she
exposes imagesincluding the photograph, which tends to carry an objective truth valueas manipulable, biased,
and, therefore, suspect. Yet while Mena debunks exoticizing mythsthose that would emphasize the difference of
Mexicans, representing them, whether textually or visually, as othershe is more overtly concerned with the threat
of sameness inherent in the tangible processes of imperialism and globalization. The characters in her stories
consistently confront the infiltration of US values and market goodsincluding the imported, generic white Anglo
body itselfinto their daily lives, and this confrontation sets in motion a renegotiation of identity, both
psychological and corporeal. Therefore, in the second half of this essay, I will shift gears, turning to stories in which
Mena articulates this danger of sameness. This issue isn't entirely unrelated to imperialist visual production. Indeed,
as a transition into this section, I will gesture toward a very relevant, and under-examined, facet of imperialist
media: the systematic use of visual apparatuses, particularly photography, to identify assimilable bodies, a practice
that turns on sameness rather than difference. In the second half of the essay, I will largely leave behind the
theoretical concerns of imperialist images to focus instead on stories about what I call embodied imperialism. Along
with "The Gold Vanity [End Page 93] Set," both "John of God, the Water-Carrier" and "Marriage by Miracle" register
the real, lived burdens that imperialism thrusts upon native bodies. While the characters in these stories face
various physical dilemmas, they are all targets of an imperialist machinery that would wipe out difference, leaving
behind a homogenous, markedly anglicized culture and people. Before examining how Mena's stories engage with
and disrupt imperialist narratives, I want to turn briefly to an example of how Century participated in the project of
conditioning its target audience, "the Anglo-American middle- and upper-class" (Doherty, Introduction xvii), to read
racialized images of Mexico. According to Tiffany Ana Lpez, "Century promoted itself" as "cosmopolitan" but built
this reputation on written and visual practices that tended to devalue non-Anglo cultures ("'A Tolerance for
Contradictions'" 64, 65). The magazine's most popular genre storiestravel and adventure narrativesare shot
through with covert and often overt racism. Its visual production, including photo essays, drawings, and
advertisements, tends to reproduce not only racist but also imperialist thought, as it takes up and redeploys a
hegemonic way of seeing non-Anglo peoples, cultures, and landscapes common in other visual media from the
period. Century's visual texts resemble, both formally and ideologically, early-twentieth century tourist photography
and pictorial postcards of non-Anglo subjects. For example, postcards of Mexico from the period fall into several
identifiable categories: views of various laborers, including water carriers and pulque drawers; hand-painted
illustrations and photographs of Mexican architecture, most commonly dilapidated churches and simple dwellings;
landscapes; and exotic pictures of people generally classified as "natives."6 Such postcards, often titled generically
as "Aspecto Tipico" 'Typical Sight,' emphasize how different Mexicans are from the US patrons who are buying and
sending the cards, a difference that supports a hierarchical system. For example, the visual and textual elements of
a postcard like "A Mexican Bath Tub" (Fig. 1), which depicts partially clad women and naked children in a stream,
are structured around a cluster of value-laden binaries that produce a gap between Anglo-American and Mexican
experience, including, to name just a few, progress versus regress, culture versus nature, and private versus public.
The production and reception of such images are governed by what Homi K.
Bhabha calls the "rules of recognition." These rules refer to "dominating discourses" that
"articulate the signs of cultural difference and reimplicate them within the
deferential relations of colonial powerhierarchy, normalization , [End Page 94]
marginalization, and so forth" (11011). In other words, the rules demand and in
fact beget an epistemological framework organized around hierarchical
difference, most commonly cultural and racial. While Bhabha uses his rules to describe
colonialist literature and the colonialist encounter more generally, his metaphorical references to visionthe rules
rely on "the visible and transparent mark of power" (111)suggest that a visual logic undergirds the system.
Indeed, it is not difficult to see how such codes apply to visual production, since visual texts like "A Mexican Bath
Tub" have the capacity literally to make visible the power dynamics that Bhabha describes.
majority support from the North American people and which meant an
order of summary execution against the Mexican Indigenous people . On the
dawn of 1994 we rose up in arms. We rose up not seeking power, not responding to a foreign order. We rose up to say "here we are." The
Millions of dollars were lent to that man and his government. Without the approval of the American people, an
and justice .
Today, the
single party dictatorship in Mexico? Should it fear the violence that the lack of freedom, democracy and justice usually brings about irrevocably?
state party system in Mexico, whatever the name of the man or the party, the North American
people are supporting an uncertain and anguishing future. By supporting the people of Mexico in
their aspirations for democracy, liberty and justice, the North American people honor their history...and their human condition. Today, in 1995 and after 20 years and tens of thousands
of dead and wounded, the American government recognizes that it made a mistake getting involved in the Vietnam war. Today, in 1995, the U.S. government has begun to get involved
in the Mexican government's dirty war against the Zapatista population. War material support, military advisors, undercover actions, electronic espionage, financing, diplomaticc support,
activities of the CIA. Little by little, the U.S. government is beginning to get involved in an unequal war condemned to failure for those who are carrying it on, the Mexican government.
Today, in 1995 and 20 years before 2015, it is possible to stop and not to repeat the error of other years. It is not necessary to wait until 2015 for the U.S. government to recognize that it
was an error to get involved in the war against the Mexican people. It is time for the people of the U.S. to keep its historical compromise with respect to its neighbor to the South. To no
longer make a mistake as to which man to support. To support not a man but a people, the Mexican people in its struggle for democracy, liberty and justice. History will signal,
implacable, on which side were the people and the government of the U.S. On the side of dictatorship, of a man, of reactionarism, or on the side of democracy, of a people, of progress.
Health and long life to the people of the United States of America
curtailed the role of Enlace Civil (an organization that had served
the FZLN and
as a clearinghouse for NGOs working in autonomous territories), reflecting the new
emphasis on direct decision making by Zapatista community-based civil
authorities.
Venezuela Links
The US has and continues to view Latin America as its backyard and
Venezuela has historically been at the forefront this is especially true
with Chavez dead now
Greene 5 [Cort Greene Writer for US Hands Off Venezuela, The Monroe Doctrine,
US Imperialism and Venezuela, published 11/8/5, accessed 7/16/13, <
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/monroe_doctrine_venezuela.htm>] //pheft
US Hands Off Venezuela Campaign organizer Cort Greene writes: This December marks the
anniversaries of two of the most important documents of the United
States ruling class imperialist policy. These documents epitomize the
American imperialists paternalistic worldview, which they use to maintain
their political and economic interests, and to expropriate the markets, raw
materials and labor of the peoples of not only the western hemisphere but
of the world. The Monroe Doctrine of December 2, 1823, and the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine of December 6, 1904, are the bedrocks of expansionism and intervention which has caused so much
misery, death and impoverishment for millions across Latin America. The country of Venezuela has
played no small part in this history. In the early decades of the 19th century, the South
American Wars of Liberation were raging against Spanish domination in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and
Venezuela. One figure who rose to international prominence during these struggles was Simon Bolivar. His vision of
freedom from foreign domination, as well as the necessity of economic and social integration of the region has
become the inspiration for Venezuelas Bolivarian revolution But he was not just a man of words. At the Battle of
Carabobo on June 24, 1821, his brilliant military maneuvers sealed the fate of the Spanish forces in Venezuela, and
The Monroe Doctrine was
shortly thereafter, assured the demise of their empire in the region.
created to project the United States sphere of influence into the Americas
and fill the void left by Spain. It was also due to the upstart nations fear of
Latin American colonization by other more powerful European imperialists. In short,
they saw Latin America as their own "backyard" and field for exploitation.
Even before setting out to impose their will on the peoples of Latin America, one of the first applications of the spirit
of the doctrine was the "internal imperialism" against the indigenous peoples of North America, oppressing and
obliterating entire civilizations in the countrys move westward. Hundreds of thousands of square miles belonging to
Mexico were "acquired" as well. A succession of presidents invoked the Monroe
Doctrine in the annexations of Texas, California, Oregon and to fend off
European interest in the Yucatan and Mexico, and it was used as the
justification for the building a canal in Central America to control shipping
and commerce. President Cleveland used it to force a settlement in land dispute between Venezuela and
Britain in 1895. The Roosevelt Corollary In 1902, Venezuela could no longer placate the
demands of European bankers and pay back its debt, so the navies of
Great Britain, Italy and Germany blockaded and fired on its coastal
fortifications. Theodore Roosevelt became fixated on the prospects of re-
colonization of the hemisphere, and in 1903, he matched threat with
threat, warning the combatants that Admiral Deweys fleet would
intervene. The navies withdrew, and negotiations returned to the field of diplomacy. Roosevelts
Corollary, in an address to Congress, became an amendment to the Monroe Doctrine
which launched the era of the US as an international police force through
the use of its infamous "big stick." This opened the bloody history of US involvement on a grand
scale, which haunts the peoples of the region and the world to this day. Though it has gone through
many ideological contortions including "dollar diplomacy," the "good neighbor" policy, the "Reagan
Doctrine" and most recently, the "Bush Doctrine," the content has remained the same. Some of
the mechanisms of control include the School of the Americas, the Organization of American States, the Inter-
American Defense Board, Plan Colombia, the IMF and World Bank, NAFTA, CAFTA, and now the Free Trade
Agreement of the Americas. It is clear from the above how the Monroe Doctrine has been used
to dominate the cultures, political life, and economics of the Latin
America, all the while integrating the labor, natural resources, productive
and financial structures into a system of capital accumulation for the
benefit of US hegemony. As Karl Marx explained, "The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of
bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to
The US has long considered Latin America its own
the colonies, where it goes naked."
backyard and has tried to keep a stranglehold on the region. But through its own
policies, a beacon of light has appeared: Venezuelas Bolivarian Revolution. Hugo Chavez and above all the
Venezuelan grass roots movement have shown the masses of Latin America a way out. Revolutionary waves are
sweeping the region, and working people are engaged in a war with the exploiters on a mass scale. The masses
have shown an unquenchable fighting spirit: there is not one stable pro-US regime from the Rio Grande to Tierra del
From 1798 to 1993, the US used its
Fuego, and Washington is terrified of the implications.
armed forces to intervene in other countries 234 times. Since then we
seen the bombings of Yugoslavia and Sudan, the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the US intervention in Haiti which was aimed also at
Venezuela and Cuba. In Venezuela the US has been waging a protracted
covert struggle, fighting what the US Army manuals call "fourth
generational warfare" by using the National Endowment for Democracy, AID, the AFL-
CIOs Solidarity House, some NGOs, corporations and others.
There are scare stories coming from Venezuela. The border is heating up,
infiltration is taking place, a new Colombian military base near the border, US access to
several new bases on Colombia and constant subversion. Is the regime
concerned about a possible invasion? If yes, who is going to intervene? The Venezuelan government is
concerned about a possible US invasion and certainly an outright invasion cannot be ruled out. However I think
the US is pursuing a more sophisticated strategy of intervention that we
could call a war of attrition. We have seen this strategy in other countries,
such as in Nicaragua in the 1980s, or even Chile under Allende. It is what in CIA
lexicon is known as destabilization, and in the Pentagon's language is
called political warfare - which does not mean there is not a military component. This is a
counterrevolutionary strategy that combines military threats and
hostilities with psychological operations, disinformation campaigns, black
propaganda, economic sabotage, diplomatic pressures, the mobilization of
political opposition forces inside the country, carrying out provocations
and sparking violent confrontations in the cities, manipulation of
disaffected sectors and the exploitation of legitimate grievances among
the population. The strategy is deft at taking advantage of the
revolution's own mistakes and limitations, such as corruption, clientalism, and opportunism,
which we must acknowledge are serious problems in Venezuela. It is also deft at aggravating and
manipulating material problems, such as shortages, price inflation, and so forth. The goal is
to destroy the revolution by making it unworkable, by exhausting the
population's will to continue to struggle to forge a new society , and in this way to
undermine the revolution's mass social base. According to the US strategy the revolution must be destroyed by
having it collapse it in on itself, by undermining the remarkable hegemony that Chavismo and Bolivarianismo has
been able to achieve within Venezuelan civil society over the past decade. US strategists hope to provoke Chavez
into a crackdown that transforms the democratic socialist process into an authoritarian one. In the view of these
strategists, Chavez will eventually be removed from power through any number of scenarios brought about by
constant war of attribution - whether through elections, a military putsch from within, an uprising, mass defections
from the revolutionary camp, or a combination of factors that can not be foretold. In this context the military bases
in Colombia provide a crucial platform for intelligence and reconnaissance operations against Venezuela and also
for the infiltration of counterrevolutionary military, economic sabotage, and terrorist groups. These infiltrating
groups are meant to harass, but more specifically, to provoke reactions from the revolutionary government and to
synchronize armed provocation with the whole gamut of political, diplomatic, psychological, economic, and
Moreover, the mere threat of US
ideological aggressions that are part of the war of attrition.
military aggression that the bases represent in itself constitutes a
powerful US psychological operation intended to heighten tensions inside
Venezuela, force the government into extremist positions or into "crying
wolf," and to embolden internal anti-Chavista and counterrevolutionary
forces. However, it is important to see that the military bases are part of the
larger U.S. strategy towards all of Latin America. The US and the Right in
Latin America have launched a counteroffensive to reverse the turn to the Left or
the so-called "Pink Tide." Venezuela is the epicenter of an emergent counter-hegemonic bloc in Latin America. But
Bolivia and Ecuador, and more generally, the region's burgeoning social movements and left political forces are as
much targets of this counteroffensive as is Venezuela. The coup in Honduras has provided impetus to this
counteroffensive and emboldened the Right and counterrevolutionary forces. Colombia has become the epicenter
regional counterrevolution - really a bastion of 21st century fascism.
Impact Stuff
Mexico Specific stuff
Mexican neoliberal political change strain democracy and sells out
Mexico to the US Imperialism
Kim 2013 [Kim, Dongwoo. "Modernization or Betrayal: Neoliberalism in Mexico." Constellations 4.1 (2013)]
Carlos Salinas trampled the workers rights, one of the key victories of the Mexican Revolution enshrined in the
Constitution of 1917, as part of his neoliberal economic agenda. The article 123 of the Constitution of 1917,
among many other things, guarantees the right of the workers, whether employed by public or private enterprises,
to organize and strike; it states that [t]oda persona tiene derecho al trabajo digno y socialmente til; al efecto, se
promovern la creacin de empleos y la organizacin social de trabajo, conforme a la ley.29 Salinas brutal
crackdown on union workers, which completely contradicted the article 123, symbolized the continuation of the
PRI governments betrayal and oppression. For Salinas, the crackdown of the unions was a necessary step before
the implementation of his neoliberal policies.
In the context of free trade with Canada and the
United States, the competitive advantage of Mexico consisted of
cheap labor and a minimum of state intervention in the economy , and
thus the labor had to be subdued before anything else.30 According to Mark Eric Williams, most of the scholars
agree that the weak labor opposition, diluted in the CTM, was one of the key characteristics of the Mexican
industry that allowed Salinas to implement his privatization policies.31 However, the labor leaders who wielded
significant influence in Mexican society, such as Joaqun Hernndez or Agapito Gnzalez definitely posed a threat
Instead of
to Salinas agenda and hence it was necessary for him to overcome this opposition beforehand.
negotiation, which would have been preferred in modernized countries
and more in line with the Constitution of 1917, Salinas chose a rather caudillo and PRI
method of resolving conflicts: brutal crackdown. The arrest and sentencing of Joaquin La Quina
Hernandez demonstrates the undemocratic and classical PRI method of
dealing with dissidents which completely disregards the article 123 of the constitution. Carlos
Salinas launched a war against the unions with the controversial arrest of La Quina in
January of 1989. Galicia was the de-facto leader of the union of Petrleos Mexicanos
(PEMEX) that represented the interests of more than 200,000 workers.32 Hernndez staunchly opposed the
privatization of the petroleum industry and this belief was echoed when he said that the oil should always be in
the hands of the Mex-i-cans.33 Hence, he was an enemy who had to be overcome by Salinas in order to privatize
one of the greatest industries of Mexico. Eventually, Hernndez was arrested on January 10th, 1989
on charges of corruption and possession of firearms.34 Expectedly, Hernndezs arrest sparked a series of strikes
across the nation, which were quickly subdued by the federal government. Hernndez acquiesced to the charges
laid against him when the chief commander of the Federal Judicial Police threatened to harm his family, and was
PEMEX was then gradually privatized
sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.35
eventually having its petrochemical plants out for sale (open to both domestic
and foreign buyers) in early 1993.36 Subsequently, Salinas went after the dockworkers union in Veracruz
and another prominent labor leader Agapito Gonzlez Cavazo, a day before his union was scheduled to protest against the maquiladora
plants owned by the American investors.37 The foreign media regarded Salinas as a competent leader who maintained the stability of the countryand
commented that Mexico was being well prepared for the neoliberal market economy.38 However, the brutal crackdown of the union leaders and their
strikes demonstrate Carlos Salinas disregard for the promises of the PRI government embedded in Article 123 of the Constitution of 1917.The
privatization of public corporations not only prepared the markets for foreign investmentbut also strengthened the PRI governments grip on the power.
After the crushing of the key labor leaders, the Salinas administration started to privatize various key corporations with free rein. Interestingly, many
close associates of the PRI government, most notably Carlos Slim Her, benefited the greatly from the series of privatization efforts.39 Furthermore, Jorge
the series of privatizations and
Castaeda, who was then a professor of political science at UNAM, asserted that
Imperialism is Bad
Ottoway & Lacina- 03, Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
Center, Political Analyst
Marina Ottaway and Bethany Lacina, International Interventions and Imperialism:
Lessons from the 1990s, The SAIS Review, Summer-Fall 2003,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/sais_review/v023/23.2ottaway.html
TheevolutionofinternationalinterventionssuggeststhatU.S.unilateralism,asexpressedinthedoctrineofpreemptiveintervention,isinpartan
extensionofideasandtrendsthatemergedinthe1990s.TheUNsincreasingrelianceonpartnershipswithothermultilateralorganizationand
membercountryforces,forexample,ledindividualcountriestotakeonresponsibilitiestraditionallyreservedfortheUN,albeitwithUNconsent.
U.S.unilateralismisalsoareactionagainstthefrustratingdelaysandcompromisesrequiredtoobtainSecurityCouncildecisions.Buttheideas
setforthinthedoctrineofpreemptiveintervention,andtheU.S.attitudetowardtheUNondisplaybeforeandduringtheIraqwar,breakwith
thattrendinsignificantways.First,theUnitedStatesisseekingtoshiftfinalauthorityforauthorizinginternalinterventionsawayfromtheUN
andtowarditself,relegatingtheUNtoapositionofsecondaryimportance,tobecalleduponwhenconvenientasamarginalcontributorto
essentiallyAmericanundertakings.Second,by
arguing that the United States has the right to
intervene not only to eliminate threats to itself and international peace,
but also to put in place new regimes, the doctrine of preemptive
intervention poses a new threat to the principle of state sovereignty. Not
surprisingly, the debate on imperialism has intensifiedunilateral
American interventionism constitutes a far greater threat to the
foundations of the international system than even the most aggressive
multilateral missions of the 1990s.InNamibia,Haiti,andSierraLeonemultilateralinterventionssupported
regimechange,butthesecaseshavebeenjustifiedasthereturnoflegallyrecognizedpowersinplaceofanillegaldefactoregime.The
unilateralistAmericanprojectappearstogomuchfurther.Itjustifiesregimechangenotsimplyasameansofrestoringalegitimategovernment,
butasameansofremovingthreatstoU.S.securityinterestsasdefinedbytheU.S.administration. Though
all states have
the right to defend their security interests, U.S. unilateral interventions,
based on preemption of vaguely defined threats and undertaken without
an international process of legitimization, would provoke widespread
international resentment against the United States, as the war in Iraq
already has. U.S. unilateralism may also furnish a license for unilateral
interventions by other states, and thus become a source of instability .In
additiontothethreatunilateralinterventionsposetotheinternationalsystemandU.S.moralcredibility,theexperienceofmultilateralpost
conflictreconstructionduringthe1990sshouldbeamajorcheckonsuchaproject.Thatexperiencedemonstratesthat
interventions, even those with imperial characteristics and significant
resources, often result in very little change to internal power dynamics.
Even the tremendous military power and financial resources of the United
States cannot necessarily keep its attempts to rebuild states and support
stable, benign, and democratic regimes from being thwarted by local
political realities.Rapidly transforming rogue and failed states will prove a
daunting task, and unilateral intervention, shackled by international
resentment and charges of imperialism, is especially unlikely to prove an
effective tool.Theinternationalcommunitystilldoesnothaveasatisfactoryanswertotheissuesofcivilconflict,humanitarian
crisis,andstatecollapsethathavebroughttheprincipleofstatesovereigntyintoconflictwiththeinternationalinterestinpeaceandsecurity.
What is now necessary,however,isnotaunilateralU.S.projectofregimechangesandstatetransformations,butthe
reinvention of international mechanisms in order to make multilateral
interventions more responsive and more effective, while avoiding threats
to state sovereignty and independence.
Extinction
Unlimited imperialist conquest inevitably results in extinction,
every modern war has been a byproduct of the spread of
colonialism
Harvey 06
[David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, May 17 2006,
Chapter 13]
At times of savage devaluation, interregional rivalries typically degenerate into struggles over who is to bear the
burden of devaluation. The export of unemployment, of inflation, of idle productive
capacity become the stakes in the game. Trade wars, dumping, interest rate wars,
restrictions on capital flow and foreign exchange, immigration policies, colonial
conquest, the subjugation and domination of tributary economies, the
forced reorganization of the division of labour within economic empires,
and, finally, the physical destruction and forced devaluation of a rival's
capital through war are some of the methods at hand. Each entails the aggressive
manipulation of some aspect of economic, financial or state power. The politics of imperialism, the
sense that the contradictions of capitalism can be cured through world domination by some omnipotent power,
surges to the forefront. The ills of capitalism cannot so easily be
contained. Yet the degeneration of economic into political struggles plays its part in the long-run stabilization
of capitalism, provided enough capital is destroyed en route. Patriotism and nationalism have many functions in the
contemporary world and may arise for diverse reasons; but they frequently provide a most convenient cover for the
devaluation of both capital and labour. We will shortly return to this aspect of matters since it is , I believe, by
far the most serious threat , not only to the survival of capitalism (which matters not a jot), but to
the survival of the human race . Twice in the twentieth century, the world has been
plunged into global war through inter-imperialist rivalries. Twice in the space of a
generation, the world experienced the massive devaluation of capital through
physical destruction, the ultimate consumption of labour power as cannon
fodder. Class warfare, of course, has taken its toll in life and limb, mainly
through the violence daily visited by capital upon labour in the work place and through the violence of primitive
accumulation (including imperialist wars fought against other social formations in
the name of capitalist 'freedoms'). But the vast losses incurred in two world
wars were provoked by inter-imperialist rivalries. How can this be explained on the basis
of a theory that appeals to the class relation between capital and labour as fundamental to the interpretation of
history? This was, of course, the problem with which Lenin wrestled in his essay on imperialism. But his argument,
as we saw in chapter 10, is plagued by ambiguity. Is finance capital national or international? What is the relation,
then, between the military and political deployment of state power and the undoubted trend within capitalism to
create multinational forms and to forge global spatial integration? And if monopolies and finance capital were so
powerful and prone in any case to collusion, then why could they not contain capitalism's contradictions short of
destroying each other? What is it, then, that makes inter-imperialist wars necessary to the survival of capitalism?
The 'third cut' at crisis theory suggests an interpretation of inter-imperialist wars as constitutive moments in the
dynamics of accumulation, rather than as abberations, accidents or the simple product of excessive greed. Let us
see how this is so. When the 'inner dialectic' at work within a region drives it to seek external resolutions to its
problems, then it must search out new markets, new opportunities for capital export, cheap raw materials, low-cost
labour power, etc. All such measures, if they are to be anything other than a temporary palliative, either put a claim
on future labour or else directly entail an expansion of the proletariat. This expansion can be accomplished through
The
population growth, the mobilization of latent sectors of the reserve army, or primitive accumulation.
insatiable thirst of capitalism for fresh supplies of labour accounts for the
vigour with which it has pursued primitive accumulation, destroying,
transforming and absorbing pre-capitalist populations wherever it finds
them. When surpluses of labour are there for the taking, and capitalists have not, through competition,
erroneously pinned their fates to a technological mix which cannot absorb that labour, then crises are typically of
short duration, mere hiccups on a general trajectory of sustained global accumulation, and usually manifest as mild
switching crises within an evolving structure of uneven geographical development. This was standard fare for
nineteenth-century capitalism.The real troubles begin when capitalists, fating shortages of
labour supply and as ever urged on by competition, induce unemployment through
technological innovations which disturb the equilibrium between
production and realization, between the productive forces and their accompanying social relations.
The closing of the frontiers to primitive accumulation, through sheer exhaustion of possibilities, increasing
resistance on the part of pre-capitalist populations, or monopolization by some dominant power, has, therefore, a
tremendous significance for the long-run stability of capitalism. This was the sea-change that began to be felt
increasingly as capitalism moved into the twentieth century. It was the sea-change that, far more than the rise of
monopoly or finance forms of capitalism, played the crucial role in pushing capitalism deeper into the mire of global
crises and led, inexorably, to the kinds of primitive accumulation and devaluation jointly wrought through inter-
capitalist wars. The mechanisms, as always, are intricate in their details and greatly confused in actual historical
conjunctures by innumerable cross-currents of conflicting forces. But we can construct a simple line of argument to
illustrate the important points. Any regional alliance, if it is to continue the process of accumulation, must maintain
access to reserves of labour as well as to those 'forces of nature' (such as key mineral resources) that are otherwise
capable of monopolization. Few problems arise if reserves of both exist in the region wherein most local capital
circulates. When internal frontiers close, capital has to look elsewhere or risk devaluation. The regional alliance
feels the stress between capital embedded in place and capital that moves to create new and permanent centres of
accumulation elsewhere. Conflict between different regional and national capitals over access to labour reserves
and natural resources begins to be felt. The themes of internationalism and multilaterialism run hard up against the
desire for autarky as the means to preserve the position of some particular region in the face of internal
contradictions and external pressures - autarky of the sort that prevailed in the 193Os, as Britain sealed in its
Commonwealth trade and Japan expanded into Manchuria and mainland Asia, Germany into eastern Europe and
Italy into Africa, pitting different regions against each other, each pursuing its own 'spatial fix'. Only the United
States found it appropriate to pursue an 'open door' policy founded on internationalism and multilateral trading. In
the end the war was fought to contain autarky and to open up the whole world to the
potentialities ofgeographical expansion and unlimited uneven development.
That solution, pursued single-mindedly under United States's hegemony
after 1945, had the advantage of being super-imposed upon one of the
most savage bouts of devaluation and destruction ever recorded in
capitalism's violent history. And signal benefits accrued not simply from the immense destruction of
capital, but also from the uneven geographical distribution of that destruction. The world was saved
from the terrors of the great depression not by some glorious 'new deal' or
the magic touch of Keynesian economics in the treasuries of the world, but
by the destruction and death of global war.
Economy
Even under the affs framework you vote neg globalization
and imperialism have destroyed Latin Americas economy and
it is steadily bringing down the worlds as well
Robinson 2002
[William I. Robinson, Latin America in the Age of Inequality: Confronting the New Utopia, International Studies
Review, December 17 2002, Wiley interscience]
Globalization has played a determinant role in the shift in Latin America
from a regional model of accumulation, based on domestic market expansion, populism, and
import-substitution industrialization, to the neoliberal model based on liberalization and integration to
the global economy, a laissez-faire state, and export-led development.3 The transition from predominant
worldwide model of Keynesian or Fordist accumulation to post-Fordist flexible accumulation models involves a
process in each region of internal adjustment and rearticulation to the global system. It has accelerated diversity
and uneven development among countries and regions in accordance with the matrix of factor cost
considerations and the configuration of diverse social forces in the new globalized environment. The particular
form of rearticulation to the global economy, including new socioeconomic structures and a modified regional
The dismantling of the
profile in the global division of labor, has varied from region to region.
preglobalization model of development and its replacement by the
neoliberal model began in Latin America in the 1970s. But the imbroglio in Latin
Americas development hit in the 1980s, often referred to as Latin Americas lost decade. At the
beginning of the decade, Latin America was hit by an economic crisis
unprecedented since the 1930s crisis of world capitalism, and that
endured throughout the decade. Latin American development not only
stagnated in absolute terms, but perhaps more significantly, the region
has experienced backward movement in relation to the world economy .
Some have referred to the regions marginalization as the Africanization of Latin America, in reference to Africas
severe marginalization from the centers of world power and wealth and the increasing structural similarity of the
Latin Americas share in world trade and production
two regions in the global system.
has declined steadily since 1980. Income and economic activity have
contracted relative to the global system. As growth stagnated worldwide during the world
recession that began in 1973, Latin America fell behind developing countries as a whole. The average annual
growth of real Gross Domestic Product per capita in Latin America dropped to 0.4 percent, compared to 2.3
Between 1980 and 1989 world economic activity
percent in developing countries.4
expanded by an annual average of 3.1 percent. Growth in Africa dropped
from 4.2 percent (19651980) to 2.1 percent (19801989), and in Latin America it dropped
even more precipitously, from 6.1 percent (19651980) to 1.6 percent (1980
1989).5 Between 1980 and 1990, Latin Americas share of manufacturing value added
fell from 6 percent of the world total to 4.9 percent.6 Latin Americas share of world
exports and imports has declined steadily from 1950, but it dropped precipitously from 1980 into the 1990s.7 In
contrast, the volume of Latin American exports increased significantly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In other
words, Latin Americans have worked harder and produced more for the global economy, even as they have
become more impoverished and marginalized. Between 1983 and 1985, the volume of the regions exports rose
by 16.2 percent, but the value of these same exports dropped by 9.9 percent. Between 1992 and 1994, the volume
rose by 22.3 percent, but the value only increased by 3.3 percent.8 The steady deterioration of the terms of trade
for Latin America must be understood as a consequence of the regions increasingly asymmetric participation in
the global division of labor at a time when adjustment has shifted resources toward the external sector.9 Latin
Americas increasing marginality in the global system should not be
confused with its contribution to global capital accumulation . Latin America was
a net exporter of capital to the world market throughout the 1980s, exporting $219 billion between 1982 and
1990.10 Ironically, therefore, Latin America continues to be a supplier of surplus for the world and an engine of
growth of the global economy. In a liberalized global capitalist economy, surpluses may be transferred just as easily
The
as they are generated, which reminds us that growth alone does not involve development.
permanent drainage of surplus from Latin America helps to explain the
regions stagnation, declining income, and plummeting living standards.
The poor have to run faster just to remain in the same place. The social crisis in
Latin America is not as much a crisis of production as one of distribution. Inequality is a social relation of unequal
power between the dominant and the subordinate, we should recall, and more specifically, the power of the rich
locally and globally to dispose of the social product. Latin America experienced renewed growth and a net capital
inflow of $80 billion between 1991 and 1994.11 But the vast majority of the inflow of capital is not a consequence
of direct foreign investment that could have helped expand the regions productive base as much as from new
loans. It also did not result from the purchase of stock in privatized companies and speculative financial
investment in equities and mutual funds, pensions, insurance, and so on.12 The dominance of speculative financial
flows over productive capital, reflecting the hegemony of transnational finance capital in the age of globalization
and its frenzied casino capitalism activity in recent years, gives an illusion of recovery in Latin America. In
addition, Latin America continued to export annually between 1992 and 1994 an average of $30 billion in profits
and interests. Although there has been a resumption of growth, recovery has not generated new employment
opportunities but has been accompanied by increased poverty and inequality.13 Given the outward drainage of
surplus combined with liberalization and deeper external integration, it is not surprising that the external debt has
continued to grow throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s, and that its rate of growth is again increasing in
the 1990s.14 Latin
Americas development debacle is clearly linked to the
crisis of global accumulation, which also hit Africa in the 1980s and finally caught up with the
miracle economies of East Asia starting with the currency crises of 1997. Yet, there are also region-specific
considerations. The particular preglobalization structures and the form of articulation to the world economy help
shape each regions fate under globalization. Africas relegation to a world preserve for mineral and agricultural
raw materials (with some notable exceptions, among them South Africa) placed that region at a severe
disadvantage as globalization unfolded. East Asia and Latin America shared a more advanced level of import
substitution industrialization (ISI). But East Asias ISI model was based on the simultaneous expansion of the
domestic market and increasingly higher value added exports for the world market, along with growing sectoral
articulation and forward-backward linkages, a pattern that it sustained into the mid-1990s. Latin American ISI, in
contrast, was characterized by an internal-external dualism: industrial expansion largely for the domestic market
and continued articulation to the world economy through primary exports.18 By eliminating the domestic market
globalization has placed Latin America in a structural
as a factor in development,
situation parallel to that of Africa. But this is only part of the story. Regional adjustment in Latin
America to the global economy has been effectuated through the neoliberal program, which is most advanced in
this region, and is based on creating the optimal environment for private transnational capital to operate as the
The fact that the domestic market is not
putative motor of development and social welfare.
of strategic importance in development and accumulation has important
implications for class relations and social movements, and is, I suggest, at the
heart of the development crisis in Latin America.
Environment
Neoliberal imperialism causes environmental destruction turns case
Zimmerer 9 [Karl S. Zimmerer is chair of the Department of Geography, University
of
Wisconsin, Madison, Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics
at the Crossroads, published in 2009, accessed 7/16/13, p. 157]//pheft
transformation of the sexual division of labor . New forms of labor market segmentation
between men and women and wage differentials in the formal sector converge with unpaid domestic labor and
hardship imposed in the sphere of gendered social reproduction, resulting in a deterioration of
the status and social condition of most women . From the maquilas of Mexico, Central
America, and the Caribbean to the new transnational agribusiness plantations in Chile and Colombia and the new
industrial complexes in Brazils northeast, women in Latin America disproportionatelyand in some cases,
exclusivelyengage in unskilled, laborintensive phases of globalized production.39
Alt Stuff
Mexico/Zapatista Alt Evd
The Zapatista antiglobalization movement is unique in its focus on
discourse and symbolic strength
Wagner and Moreira 2003 [Valeria Wagner and Alejandro Moreira, Towards a Quixotic
Pragmatism: The Case of the Zapatista Insurgence, PDF Academic Journal, 2003,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/boundary/v030/30.3wagner.html]
"As Che Guevara would have said: When the dream of evolution dissipates, the time of revolutions returns.'" It is on
this optimistic note that Ignacio [End Page 185] Ramonet ends an editorial article marking the thirtieth anniversary
of the revolutionary's death in the magazine Manire de voir. 2 The issue is significantly titled Amrique Latine: du
Che Marcos, thus framing the analysis of Latin America's predicament upon the death of one charismatic
revolutionary figure and the advent of another. 3 According to the editorial,this period is
characterized by an apparent political "evolution" that is undermined by the
failure of democracies to guarantee economic development and, above all, to attend
to economic justice: even when countries grow richer, inhabitants still
grow poorer. As a result, for most Latin Americans the situation is definitely worse than it was thirty years
ago. Hence the "spectacular" irruption of the Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (EZLN), the
Zapatista National Liberation Army, in Chiapas in 1994, which Ramonet reads as "the
first response, weapons in hand, of the south against economic
globalization [mondialisation] and neoliberalism." This implies, of course, that it will not be
the last response: "social revolts will multiply"; the time of revolutions is back. Three years later, Ramonet sees at
least part of his prophecies fulfilled: the dawn of the new millennium "glows" with the victory of what "seems to be
the embryo of an international civil society" over the World Trade Organization (WTO), after massive demonstrations
against the November 1999 summit in Seattle. 4 Ramonet does not hesitate to qualify this [End Page 186]
international protest against globalization as a "turning," thus recalling the "time of revolutions" he had announced
in Che's voice and seen heralded by the 1994 Zapatista uprising. The continuity between the 1994 uprising and the
Seattle demonstrations is suggested from the outset by his account of the motives of the protesters, who, echoing
the now famous Zapatista "Ya Basta!" have had enough of globalization and of the passive role to which it assigns
them. And in March 2001, following the Zapatistas' march to Mexico, Ramonet decidedly argues that, having chosen
the date of the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for the Zapatista uprising, "Marcos
signs . . . in a sense, that day, the first symbolic revolt against globalization." 5 The
reader will have
noticed the change of status of the Zapatistas' insurgence: it is the first
armed and local response to globalization, announcing similar local responses
throughout the South; then it lends its voice ("Ya basta!") to the
antiglobalization movement; finally, it becomes the first symbolic revolt
marking not just the beginning but the mode of struggle of the
antiglobalization movement. Whether considered as the "model" for antiglobalization movements or
as representing the transition from armed to symbolic struggle that characterizes them, the Zapatista
insurgence clearly emerges as paradigmatic of the new forms of
resistance, political organization, and transformation that have been
called for, with growing consensus, to understand and cope with
globalization. This has not gone unnoticed by the Zapatistas themselves: "We have learned,"
Marcos tells Ramonet, "that we are a kind of mirror and that we reflect, in
our way, other movements of resistance throughout the world." 6 Their
"way," as Ramonet points out, is with words, and it is indeed undeniable that, having secured the
attention of the Mexican government and the international community
through the impact of their weapons, the Zapatistas owe their longevity mainly to the
force of their discourse. 7 It is their discourse that now sustains their
weapons, and it is in their discourse that other movements find their
"reflection," as Marcos says. If, however, the Zapatista discourse functions as a mirror, it is as much because
it offers, as mirrors do, the image of oneself as anotherthat foreign look, the expression surprised with a sidelong
glanceas because it gives an image to the self, which can then be corrected, adapted, the hair combed back, the
jacket redressed. If a mirror, then, the Zapatista discourse transfigures what it
reflects, and what it reflects and transfigures, as we will argue, is the
prevailing political and historical imaginaryin particular, in its formulation of
the relationship between power and praxis. If the "time of revolutions" has "returned" with the
Chiapas uprising, it is not, as we will see, the same time, nor the same revolution, that is associated with the image
of Che.
United States imperialism began in the late 1800s and since its inception Americans have been debating the moral
validity behind the idea. Through the tenacious leadership of American presidents, the United States has been
The effects of United States
influencing other countries in political, economic, and cultural ways.
imperialism have been positive and justify the concept because the ideals
of democracy have been spread to the nations of Panama and the
Philippines, and Puerto Rico continue to be positively influenced by
American politics, economy, and culture. Since interaction began between
America and Panama in the early twentieth century we have been able to
see how both parties benefit from the United States intervention. America
originally went into Panama because they wanted to build the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal would benefit the
United States in trade because it was a good passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans - it could save
Americans time and money. However, Columbia owned Panama at the time, and would not let the United States
build and use a canal in Panama; Panama, displeased with Columbias rule in their country, turned to the United
Once independent, Panama granted America the canal and both
States for help.
nations walked away from the situation very pleased. America stayed in
Panama to build and use the canal until 1977, when the Panamanians
wanted to be fully independent. In 1989, however, the United States
helped Panama overthrow the dictator Noriega and restored democracy to
the Central American nation. The United States has stayed in Panama ever
since, and the Panamanians are happy with their involvement because
America has helped them maintain both liberty and democracy. Panama is just
one example; America has also maintained freedom and democracy in Puerto Rico. The United States originally
They gained Puerto Rico
became involved in Puerto Rico as a result of the Spanish American War.
from the war, and helped Puerto Rico by guiding them and controlling the
island's politics and economics for the first few years of independence.
Times have changed, and, Puerto Rico has become a commonwealth; they
have their own their own government, we support them economically.
Politically, Puerto Ricos government is democratic due to the exposure
the island received in prior years from the United States. The democratic
government ensures that all Puerto Ricans are free and equal and entitled to suffrage. Without Americas
involvement, Puerto Rico might not have become the democracy that it is today; America spread democracy to
them, and perhaps there is one less dictatorship because of that. Although America is no longer taking over other
countries as much as they used to in the twentieth century, but a different kind of imperialism still exists cultural
imperialism. Cultural imperialism is the promotion of American beliefs in morals through the growth of our industry
While some say that cultural imperialism does not affect other
in other nations.
countries positively, it is clear that there many benefits linked to cultural
imperialism. Those who don't support imperialism believe that America needs to listen to Gandhi, who said
that I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off
my feet by any. While the quote has its truths, this is indeed and opinion that can easily be argued. Gandhi is
saying that he is open to learning about other cultures, but doesnt want to be forced to take part in one.
However, America is not forcing anyone to take part in their culture and
has not in the past; countries like France and China have limited American
cultural programming through satellites and the Internet. With six billion
people in the world, one culture taking over would be impossible. And
even if it were possible, what constitutes American culture? It is my belief
that our culture is just a homogenized cluster of all the cultures in the
world, so in part, nations are scared to accepted a "tainted" version of
their original culture? Cultural imperialism is spreading though American culture to those who want it,
just as the most successful imperialism in the twentieth century resulted when countries were happy overall with
The majorities of both Panama and Puerto Rico (based on a
American influence.
vote) are happy with the current involvement of the United States. The
United States helped them economically and politically. They are both
democratic, and cultural imperialism is just spreading other American
beliefs through American movies goods, and brand names, to those who
want them. After analyzing historical growth of the American empire, it is
safe to say that there has been an overall positive affect of United States
imperialism. Panama has been helped economically with the building of the canal, and the ideal of
democracy made their government democratic. Puerto Rico also has a democratic government, and the United
States economically supports them. Americans spread the ideal of democracy, and as a result these two countries
are democratic. American cultural imperialism exists today for those countries who want to learn about American
culture. Thus, the United States has positively affected other countries with the ideal of democracy, and continues
to spread their culture to other countries today, justifying the validity of imperialism.
Our commitment to political autonomy sets up a moral paradox. Even the mildest imperialism will
be experienced by many as a humiliation. Yet imperialism as the midwife
of democratic self-rule is an undeniable good. Liberal imperialism is thus a
moral and logical scandal, a simultaneous denial and affirmation of self-
rule that is impossible either to fully accept or repudiate. The counterfactual offers
a way out. If democracy did not depend on colonialism, we could confidently forswear empire. But in
contrast to early modern colonial history, we do know the answer to the
counterfactual in the case of Iraq. After many decades of independence,
there is still no democracy in Iraq. Those who attribute this fact to
American policy are not persuasive, since autocracy is pervasive in the
Arab world, and since America has encouraged and accepted democracies
in many other regions. So the reality of Iraqi dictatorship tilts an admittedly precarious moral balance in
favor of liberal imperialism.
The heavy burden being imposed on the United States does not require
that the United States remain on hair-trigger alert at every moment. But it
does oblige the United States to evaluate all claims and to make a
determination as to whether it can intervene effectively and in a way that
does more good than harmwith the primary objective of interdiction so
that democratic civil society can be built or rebuilt. This approach is better by far than
those strategies of evasion and denial of the sort visible in Rwanda, in Bosnia, or in the sort of "advice" given to
At this point in time the possibility of
Americans by some of our European critics.
international peace and stability premised on equal regard for all rests
largely, though not exclusively, on American power. Many persons and powers do not
like this fact, but it is inescapable. As Michael Ignatieff puts it, the "most carefree and confident empire in history
America's
now grimly confronts the question of whether it can escape Rome's ultimate fate."9 Furthermore,
fate is tied inextricably to the fates of states and societies around the
world. If large pockets of the globe start to go badhere, there,
everywhere (the infamous "failed state" syndrome)the drain on
American power and treasure will reach a point where it can no longer be
borne.
The two critical points that I have made converge on a central issue: how
can one find a limit to the expansive tendency of
empire? The inscription of a border and a politics of place both pertain to the construction of a limit to
expansion and thus to hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges (xii). While
deterritorialization cannot be exactly reversed, it is not true that this implies that emancipation must
lie in further deterritorialization and that all reterritorializations are perverse, or fundamentalist.
They are artificiala matter of human artificeto be sure. However, it can be argued that the most profound and effective
anti-neoliberal globalization politics in recent years has been inspired precisely by inventive
reterritorializations, localizations that retrieve that which has been pushed aside by empire and
preserved by borders. It is a politics of limit to empire so that a plurality of differences can occur
differences from empire, not the putative consumer differences that are equalized by exchanges . Leonard
Cohen has pointed to the problem of empire in this fashion. Things are going to slide in all directions. Wont be nothing. Nothing you can measure
anymore.24 How exactly to define limits, draw borders, to open a space where measure can be taken, will take a great deal of political debate and action in
deciding. There is a lot more to be said and done about this, but I doubt whether the perspective put forward in Empire will be of much use in this important
matter. Their
concept of abstraction is too dualistic, their concept of border too one-sided, their concept of
history too uni-linear, their concept of place too shallow, to have much long-term resonance in the anti-
neoliberal globalization alliance. I would put my bets on the construction of borders that allow Others to flourish, a politics of place and a
defence of communities against exchange value. This is a very different politics whose difference is perhaps now obscured by the common opposition to
empire. But it is different enough that one may expect it to become generally visible before too long.
To the extent that advertising constitutes a pervasive public "art form," however, it has
become the dominant mode in which
thoughts and experiences are expressed. This trend is most evident in U.S. society. While alternative
values and ideologies do exist in this culture, it is harder to find representations for them. Advertising
distorts and flattens people's ability to interpret complex experiences, and it reflects the culture only
partially, and in ways that are biased toward a capitalist idealization of American culture. 47 At this level, goods are
framed and displayed to entice the customer, and shopping has become an event in which individuals purchase and consume the meanings attached to
goods. The
ongoing interpenetration and crossover between consumption and the aesthetic sphere
(traditionally separated off as an artistic counter-world to the everyday aspect of the former) has
led to a [End Page 182] greater
"aestheticization of reality": appearance and image have become of prime importance. Not only have
commodities become more stylized but style itself has turned into a valuable commodity. The refashioning and reworking of commoditieswhich are
themselves carefully selected according to one's individual tastesachieve a stylistic effect that expresses the individuality of their owner. 48 This
provides the framework for a more nuanced and sometimes contradictory second order of meaning.
The dynamics of cultural change therefore entail both processes of "traveling culture," in which the received culture (in this case
globalizing capitalist culture) is appropriated and assigned new meaning locally, and at the same time a "first order" meaning that
dominates and delimits the space for second order meaningsthus retaining something of the
traditional meaning of cultural imperialism. The latter is, ultimately, a negative phenomenon from the
perspective of self-determination by local people under the influence of the imperial culture. Traditional
critiques of cultural globalization have missed the point. The core of the problem lies not in the homogenization of cultures as such, or in the creation of a
"false consciousness" among consumers and the adoption of a version of the dominant ideology thesis. Rather, the
problem lies in the global
spread of the institutions of capitalist modernity tied in with the culturally impoverished social
imagery discussed above, which crowd out the cultural space for alternatives (as suggested by critical analysts like Benjamin
Barber and Leslie Sklair). The negative effects of cultural imperialismthe disempowerment of people
subjected to the dominant forms of globalizationmust be located on this plane. It is necessary, of course, to
explore in more detail how the very broad institutional forces of capitalist modernity actually operate in specific settings of cultural contact. The practices of
transnational corporations are crucial to any understanding of the concrete activities and local effects of globalization. A state-centered
approach blurs the main issue here, which is not whether nationals or foreigners own the carriers of globalization, but whether
their interests are driven by capitalist globalization.
Did the
Then came the total collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of a peculiar form of gangster capitalism in the world.
triumph of capitalism and the defeat of an enemy ideology mean we were in a world without conflict or
enemies? Both Fukuyama and Huntington produced important books as a response to the new situation. Fukuyama, obsessed with
Hegel, saw liberal democracy/capitalism as the only embodiment of the world-spirit that now marked the end of history, a phrase
that became the title of his book.3 The long war was over and the restless world-spirit could now relax and buy a condo in Miami.
Fukuyama insisted that there were no longer any available alternatives to the American way of life. The philosophy, politics,
and economics of the Other each and every variety of socialism/Marxism had disappeared under the ocean, a
submerged continent of ideas that could never rise again. The victory of capital was irreversible. It was a
universal triumph. Huntington was unconvinced, and warned against complacency. From his Harvard base, he
challenged Fukuyama with a set of theses first published in Foreign Affairs (The Clash of Civilizations? a phrase originally coined
by Bernard Lewis, another favourite of the current administration). Subsequently these papers became a book, The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of the World Order. The question mark had now disappeared. Huntington agreed that no ideological
alternatives to capitalism existed, but this did not mean the end of history. Other antagonisms remained.
The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. . . . The
clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. 4 In particular, Huntington emphasized the continued importance of
religion in the modern world, and it was this that propelled the book onto the bestseller lists after 9/11. What did he mean by the
word civilization? Early in the last century, Oswald Spengler, the German grandson of a miner, had abandoned his vocation as a
teacher, turned to philosophy and to history, and produced a master-text. In The Decline of the West, Spengler counterposed culture (a
word philologically tied to nature, the countryside, and peasant life) with civilization, which is urban and would become the site of
industrial anarchy, dooming both capitalist and worker to a life of slavery to the machine-master. For Spengler, civilization
reeked of death and destruction and imperialism. Democracy was the dictatorship of money and
money is overthrown and abolished only by blood.5 The advent of Caesarism would drown it in blood and
become the final episode in the history of theWest.Had the Third Reich not been defeated in Europe, principally by the Red Army (the
spinal cord of the Wehrmacht was broken in Stalingrad and Kursk, and the majority of the unfortunate German soldiers who perished are
buried on the Russian steppes, not on the beaches of Normandy or in the Ardennes), Spenglers prediction might have come close to
realization. He was among the first and fiercest critics of Eurocentrism, and his vivid worldview, postmodern in its intensity though not
its language, can be sighted in this lyrical passage: I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history, the drama of a number of
mighty cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its
whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will
and feeling, its own death. Here indeed are colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet discovered. Here the Cultures,
peoples, languages, truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and stonepines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves. Each Culture has
its own new possibilities of self-expression, which arise, ripen, decay and never return.6 In contrast to this, he argued, lay the destructive
cycle of civilization:Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed
humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, death following life, rigidity following expansion, intellectual age and the stone-built
petrifying world city following motherearth . . . they are an end, irrevocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and again. . . .
Imperialism is civilization unadulterated. In this phenomenal form the destiny of the West is now
irrevocably set. . . . Expansionism is a doom, something daemonic and intense, which grips forces into
service and uses up the late humanity of the world-city stage.7
No Links
They confuse the distinction between hegemony and
imperialism, by simply cooperating we are maintaining peace
and avoiding imperialism
Yilmaz 10
[Sait Yilmaz, State, Power, and Hegemony, December 2010]
According to Cox, theories like Realism and Neo-realism were coined to preserve the status quo serving the
interests of rich dominant Western countries and their elite (Cox, 1981: 16-155). Those theories aimed to make the
international order seem natural and unchangeable. Hegemony enabled the dominant state to spread its moral,
political, and cultural values around the society and sub-communities. This was done through civilian society
institutions. Civilian society consists of the net of institutions and practices that are partly autonomous from the
state.Hegemony is to produce social and political systems that are to be
applied on the nations targeted. There are many ideas about the relationship between hegemony
and imperialism. Imperialism is defined as enlarging the dominance of one
nation over the other by way of open political and economical instruments
(Heywood, 2007: 392). To explain the basic difference between the imperialism
and hegemony Keohane says that as hegemony manipulates the relations with no
superior body, imperial powers set their superiority with a senior political
body (Keahone, 1991: 435-439). However imperialists have an approach for expansion
by conquering new territory. Another scholar, Duncan Snidal separates hegemony into three;
hegemony implied by conviction, kind but forceful hegemony, and colonialist hegemony based on force (Snidal,
1986: 579-614). Discrimination between hegemony and dominance is another study subject argued by many
scholars including Machiavelli, Gramsci, and Nye. According to those three intellectuals, a major power should not
just rely on dominance, force, and hard power. Machiavelli advocates respect as a source of obedience to a major
power (Wright, 2004). Gramsci says that a major power itself evokes willingness and cooperation instinctively (Cox,
1993: 49-66). Nye believes that a superior power becomes a hegemonic power by
persuading others to cooperate. Persuasion would be ensured by the utilization of soft power that
makes other countries believe in common interests (Nye, 2002). However, according to hegemonic
stability theory, major powers achieve their position unilaterally with the
deployment of hard power but retaining consent and convinction (Keahone,
1984: 11). In another definiton, hegemony is the position of having the capability and power to change the rules
and norms of international systems based on ones own motivation and desire (Volgy, 2005: 1-2). If you dont have
enough power to affect global events in line with your own road map, that would be a dangerous illusion. Susan
Strange envisages that hegemony requires two kinds of strength; relational and structural based (Strange, 1989:
165). Relation based power is the strength to persuade and force the other actors one by one or in groups.
Structural power is the essential capacity to realize the desired rules, norms, and operations in the international
A hegemon creates or maintains critical regimes to cooperate in the
system.
future, and reduces uncertainty while other states are in pursuit of their
own interests.
FW Evd