The Next 50 Years

For 50 years Latin American Perspectives has been at the forefront of left scholarship on Latin America. From politics and economics, to theoretical debates on capitalism, socialism, dependency and development, U.S. intervention, military dictatorships, revolutionary struggles, social movements, feminism, culture, country specific reports, and environmentalism, among so much more, LAP has been the go-to journal for scholars who want to explore in depth and debate hemispheric processes beyond mainstream scholarship. As the world capitalist system enters an uncertain period of crisis and transformation what may be some of the major themes that the journal will want to continue to cover in the years and decades to come?

We are now witnessing a highly conflictive transition in the international system from unilateral U.S. domination to multiple centers of power involving violent geopolitical realignments and the rise of China as a major world economic and increasingly political power. China has displaced the United States as Latin America’s principal trading partner and in the future may well overtake the United States and Europe as the most important source of financing and foreign investment. Brazil, among other Latin American countries, plays an increasingly prominent role on the world stage. Notwithstanding its waning hegemony, the United States will continue to intervene in the region. The evolution of Latin America’s political and economic relationships with the rest of the world will surely have an important place in the pages of the journal in the years to come.

Latin America’s political economy and class structure have experienced fundamental transformation over the past 50 years. If the earlier post-colonial story was that of a region trapped in an international division of labor that relegated it to the export of raw materials to a world market dominated by the traditional Western core of world capitalism, followed later on by significant industrialization, especially among the larger national economies, the Latin American political economy has experienced more recently a reintegration into world capitalism through new transnational circuits of accumulation. This reintegration through globalization has included participation in globally decentralized and fragmented production chains, the dramatic expansion of transnational tourism, the spread of non-traditional agricultural exports (just look at the takeover of vast stretches of the South American countryside by King Soy!), a major increase in the export of Latin American migrant labor to other parts of the global economy and the reverse import of remittances, transnational services, integration into novel circuits of global finance, and the rise of powerful Latin American-based transnational capitalist groups.

While LAP has covered these developments in its 50 years of publication, global capitalism is now mired in a deep structural crisis best described as overaccumulation and financial turbulence amidst chronic stagnation, at the same time that it is experiencing a new round of expansion and transformation that will have profound impacts in Latin America and will elicit the attention of the journal. What impact will the new digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, have on Latin American economies and societies? How will new global financial architectures, including gradual de-dollarization or at least a global economy operating through multiple currencies and the introduction of central bank digital currencies, affect the region? There may be, further down the road, the rise of a post-neo-liberal model, perhaps a global neo-Keynesianism involving transnational redistributive and regulatory regimes. What new capitalist paradigms may emerge? Surely the journal will be concerned with the theoretical work may come out of Latin America from scholars in and of the region with regard to such profound transformations.

The crisis of the planetary ecosystem and its multiple ramifications will loom large over Latin America and assuredly occupy a significant portion of the journal’s attention. How will the region cope with the climate emergency? How will popular and environmental struggles around the Amazon and fragile ecosystems throughout the continent unfold? Will there be an energy transition away from fossil fuels and how will that effect such oil producing powerhouses as Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil, or the producers of new energy resources, such as lithium in Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico? There is already underway a new round of transnational capitalist expansion in the region, especially in extractive industries, sparking ongoing conflict among multiple communities.

The migrant and refugee crisis will continue well into the future, driven by the climate emergency, land grabs and displacement by transnational capital, the crisis of small-scale agriculture and the collapse of whole rural economies, escalating inequalities and increasing precariatization and pauperization – conditions that in fact throw the working and popular classes all around the world into crises of social reproduction. Already in 2023, remittances by Latin American migrants abroad surpassed $150 billion, sustaining countless families and communities, while the passage through Central America and Mexico and across the Rio Bravo has already taken thousands of lives and will take many more as the migrant flow increases and harsh anti-immigrant polices and fortress borders harden. Given these conditions it is hard to imagine that social upheavals and violent conflict will not continue to escalate in the decades to come. The journal will play an important role in covering all of this.

The journal will continue to cover the left and social movements. Will there be new revolutions beyond “progressivism” to challenge global capital? What will new revolutionary movements in upcoming years and decades look like and what types of projects will they put forward? What types of relationships will they develop with the sectoral struggles of labor unions and social movements of women, the indigenous, peasants, youth, students, Afro Latin Americans, environmentalists, human rights workers and so on. How will these movements confront the criminal cartels and mafias that have now become fused with many of the region’s police and military forces and corrupt civilian governments. There will be heightened militarization in the face of acute social polarization and political tensions. What is the future of democracy, authoritarianism and dictatorship in the region? What is the future of the Latin American Right? What type of political systems will emerge in future years that contributors to the journal will theorize and debate?

This is as far as I get in 1000 words that I have been invited to contribute. I, for one, by way of conclusion, want to say that I am proud and honored to serve as a participating editor and be part of the LAP family as the journal begins the next 50 years. ¡Que viva Latin American Perspectives!