Abstract
In Power and Resistance: U.S. Imperialism in Latin America, James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer analyze the changing nature of U.S. imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance in Latin America over the last seventy years. The book addresses three main issues, which roughly correspond to the book’s three parts. The first concerns theorizing imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism in its past and contemporary manifestations, in Latin America and globally. The second is how to evaluate the left and center-left governments that took and held office during Latin America’s “pink tide,” which began in the late 1990s and appears to be coming to an end in many if not all countries in the region. The third is analysis of the case of Venezuela during the administrations of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) and Nicolás Maduro (2013–present), with a dual focus on 1) U.S. and domestic opposition to Chávez and Maduro, and 2) a critical evaluation of the Chávez/Maduro regimes’ strengths and weaknesses.
A central argument is the need to address imperialism along its economic, military, and political-ideological dimensions and to examine how both imperialism and anti-imperialist struggles have shifted over time. The book makes a strong case that the economic and military dimensions of imperialism do not always coincide. This is particularly clear in the early twenty-first century, when a sharp conflict has developed between competing factions within the U.S. “imperial state,” pitting an economic-minded faction comprising multinational corporations and state officials seeking to maximize global capital accumulation against a military-minded faction that has prioritized defense, particularly defense of Israeli interests. Petras and Veltmeyer make a convincing argument that recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and punitive actions toward other countries (e.g., sanctions against Iran) have had adverse economic consequences for U.S. and multinational corporations in the form of lost opportunities for capital accumulation. This analysis illustrates the folly of monolithic characterizations of imperial states, which fail to capture the competing interests and projects of different state factions.
The book does a nice job analyzing the multiple stages of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Prior to the First World War, direct military action was prioritized. After the war, in the import-substitution-industrialization era (lasting from the 1940s through 1970s), the United States prioritized international aid and development assistance. This was,in no small part, a response to the Cuban Revolution, with programs such as Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress promoting agrarian and other forms of reform as an alternative to socialist revolution.
Petras and Veltmeyer note that the United States was more than willing to use military force during this period, more often than not covertly. Thus, the United States supported the overthrow of nationalist, populist, and socialist governments and the installation ofbrutal military regimes in numerous countries, including Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1963), Brazil (1964), and Chile (1973), among others. This was done in support of the interests of U.S.-centered multinational corporations. (As Petras and Veltmeyer note, this is very distinct from the current “war on terror,” which does not serve U.S./multinational capital, with the exception of military businesses.) During this period, class struggle took two primary forms: rural struggles for land reform, and union struggles for higher wages and improved working conditions.
A series of factors—an unresolved world-systemic crisis of overproduction, fiscal crisis in the global North, the debt crisis in Latin America, and the drastic weakening of peasant and labor organizations—led to a new, neoliberal phase of imperialism, lasting from 1980 until 2000. This phase was marked by a push for free markets, with trade, labor, and capital-investment regulations rolled back and austerity imposed. This resulted in a substantial increase in foreign direct investment in Latin America. The result, however, was devastating for Latin America: weak or negative growth and increasing poverty and inequality. Petras and Veltmeyer claim that social movements in Latin America increased in strength during the 1990s. This seems overstated with the important exception of Brazil’s landless workers’ movement and indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador.
The failure of neoliberalism did, however, open the door to the “pink tide,” with left and center-left governments taking office in countries throughout the region. The sympathetic but highly critical analysis of these governments is one of the strongest points of the book. Petras and Veltmeyer note a crucial factor that made the “pink tide” possible: the commodities boom of 2003 to 2008, which was driven by rapid growth in China (in particular) and India. This allowed left/center-left governments to fund generous social programs. Yet, with the (partial) exception of Venezuela, none of the pink tide regimes broke with capitalism. Given their fiery rhetoric, the fact that Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, alongside more moderate leaders like Lula da Silva, Tabaré Vasquez, and Michelle Bachelet, sought increased investment from multinational corporations, particularly in extractive industries, is quite striking. Petras and Veltmeyer show that the pink tide resulted, ironically, in increased dependency in Latin America, since there was a return to extractive industry (oil, natural gas, mining) and production of primary commodities. Thus, the pink tide very decisively failed to chart a new course that could lead to genuine independence for Latin American countries vis-à-vis global capital.
Petras and Veltmeyer see Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro as a partial exception to the limitations of the pink tide. While other pink tide governments refused to break with capital and private property, Chávez charted a more radical course, expropriating hundreds of private businesses, nationalizing key sectors of Venezuela’s economy, dramatically boosting state spending on health and education, and supporting grassroots popular organization and mobilization. This allowed Chávez and Maduro to survive numerous U.S. attempts to unseat them: the April 2002 coup, a management-led lockout of the oil industry in 2002–2003, the 2004 recall referendum, and recent episodes of actual and planned violence in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as new sanctions in 2015 and 2016 under the Obama administration. Petras and Veltmeyer are clearly sympathetic to Chavismo, but do not overlook the serious flaws of the Chávez and Maduro administrations, in particular 1) the state’s continuing extreme dependence on oil, which accounts for 95 percent of export earnings, 2) the gross incompetence, negligence, and corruption of many supposedly “revolutionary” Chavista state officials, and 3) the personalistic nature of Chávez’s rule, leading to problems when he died.
I have three main critiques of Petras and Veltmeyer’s analysis of Chávez and Maduro. The first is the relatively monolithic portrait of the anti-Chávez/Maduro opposition, which does not capture the fissures within this broad group.The second is the tendency to see a one-to-one conflation between the domestic opposition and the U.S. government. Thus, writing of middle- and upper-class support for the 2002 coup, Petras and Veltmeyer declare, “There were no objective material reasons for the middle classes or even the economic oligarchy to support the coup except for the fact that their status, consumerist dreams, life style and economic investments were closely linked with the United States” (p.179). This is simply inaccurate. Chávez issued a series of decrees in 2001, three of which directly impinged on private property rights, including oil managers’ ability to control the state’s all-important national (but at the time quasi-privatized) oil company. There were undoubtedly “objective material reasons” for the middle classes and “economic oligarchy” to oppose Chávez. Third, Petras and Veltmeyer provide very little analysis of one of the key reasons for the severity of Venezuela’s current crisis: the state’s profound mismanagement of the currency, which has led to galloping inflation and shortages, issues Petras and Veltmeyer do address.
A major shortcoming of the book is a lack of editing and proofreading. There are dozens of typos, incorrect dates, and numerous missing bibliographical entries. This, alongside the lack of sourcing for much of the information provided in the book, means readers cannot trust the accuracy of information provided. Despite this not inconsiderable flaw, the book contains solid analysis, which is grounded in the two authors’ many decades of research and writing about U.S. imperialism and leftist resistance movements in Latin America. For the reader willing to look past the book’s flaws, there is much to be learned.