The Role of Militarization in Building U.S. Hegemony in Latin America
In his book, Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano demonstrates that the U.S. economy and its ability to wage war depend on the consumption of Latin America’s resources. During the 20th century, the U.S. has been able to control the resources in many Latin American nations. Under the guise of development or security, the U.S. has dispossessed through military intervention, controlling the economy through loan systems, and by establishing U.S. capital interests in the region. The result of this U .S. economic hegemony, often created and reinforced with military aid, has in fact not promoted stability, but rather has created uneven development in the South. Galeano writes, “Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others” (Galeano, 2). In addition to uneven economic development, the effect of militarization to control resources has significant cultural, political, and economic impacts on the nations in which it is employed. The atrocities and lasting effects of state terror are explored in the anthologies When States Kill and Death Squads. Through these sources, it is clear that dispossession either through military or proxy intervention facilitates the hegemonic control of resources and creates legacies of violence and poverty. This essay explores U.S. military intervention as the key apparatus for establishing economic and political control in Latin America.
Galeano tells the history of resource extraction in Latin America, especially after the industrial revolution and during the development of modern capitalism. In this period, U.S. companies extracted resources like iron, tin, nitrate, and oil in many Latin American nations and established economic and political control in the region while quickly exhausting the resources. A good example of economic domination through embargos, taxation, and political manipulation, is the case of the Standard Oil cartel in several nations during the middle of the twentieth century. Standard Oil, or one of its many subsidiaries, had been established in Latin America since the turn of the century. Galeano writes, “The structure of the cartel implies the domination of many counties and the penetration of many governments” (158). Stand Oil was able to extract crude petroleum from Venezuela, México, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia; while they refined the resource elsewhere, quickly turning a big profit without returning any of the benefits to the providers. In 1939, the Mexican government attempted to take control of the black gold and nationalize their oil, but the Stand Oil cartel organized a mass blockade of Mexican petrol (Galeano, 159). Uruguay tried to resist foreign domination by constructing a refinery, but they still had to buy their own raw product from the Stand Oil cartel, eliminating the nation’s profit margin (Galeano, 161). In Venezuela, members of the cartel played key roles in creating tax cuts and evasion of worker rights, insuring over $300 million in additional annual profits (Galeano, 168). It is clear that any resistance by workers, unions, or governments, was met with new mechanisms to maintain economic control. Through this example and in all of Galeano’s work, one can see that as early as the nineteenth century, the western capital structure controlled the resources, the economy, and the government in Latin America.
Galeano demonstrated with the case of Standard Oil that corporations had already well established control in the economic and political sectors of Latin America by the mid twentieth century. However, as further internal resistance grew against foreign intervention, the U.S. turned to military intervention to secure capital investments. The U.S. used, and continues to use, military intervention to ensure capitalism as a world economic system. It seems that the public would widely protest violent military intervention for resources, but the U.S. has found several ways to skirt around this issue. For example, in the post WWII era, one major theme that was used to legitimize military intervention was anticommunism and counterinsurgency tactics. Both of these tactics lacked validity since they only served to maintain control by preventing countries from nationalizing their resources. Furthermore, these interventions have perpetuated violence and kept nations economically dependent on the U.S. Nonetheless, the U.S. has found many opportunities to fund military action to preserve capitalist hegemony.
Galeano notes that most of the military projects in Latin America are in areas rich in resources and previous capital investments (Galeano, 136). Direct military intervention has not only been used to protect specific corporations, but also to protect the larger idea of the free market. One has to ask themselves how free a market can be staring down the barrel of a gun. For example, military action has ensured the power of governments which supported foreign investment. Such is the case of U.S. military involvement in Nicaragua. Chomsky writes, “The region is one of the world’s most awful horror chambers, with widespread starvation, semi-slave labor, torture and massacre by U.S. clients. Virtually every attempt to bring about some constructive change has been met with a new dose of U.S. violence…” (Chomsky, 4-5). During a 1927 occupation of Nicaragua, the U.S. marines established La Guardia, insuring the rule of Somoza and a military state able to crush any opposition (Grossman, 64). During the fifty-two year Somoza dictatorship, La Guardia controlled the country with violence and torture methods they learned in U.S. military training camps. Almost 5,000 La Guardia cadets attended the School of the Americas during these years and in addition the U.S. military had over 164 separate programs for training proxy armies during the Somoza regime (Grossman, 67). La Guardia killed tens of thousands of people and became the elite upper class in Nicaragua, benefiting from U.S. foreign investments and their own clandestine enterprises.
In When States Kill, Grossman writes that eventually anticommunism became the U.S.’s main justification for supporting the violent La Guardia rule. Chomsky writes that the development of the anticommunist and anti-Sandinista sentiments shows the U.S.’s fear of Nicaragua’s potential economic independence (81). The result of the Nicaraguan intervention met several key goals for the U.S.: the threat of communism and nationalized resources was destroyed while U.S. capital investments were secured. Furthermore, the U.S. was later able to call on its proxy Nicaraguan army during occupations of neighboring nations.
As the case in Nicaragua shows, the military apparatus is essential to securing U.S. hegemony in Latin America. The use of proxy armies in military intervention for the control of resources is complicated because the nature of indirect intervention further separates the oppressor and the oppressed. For example, Regan and Carter administration both supported regimes that secured what Chomsky calls the fifth freedom, “the freedom to rob and exploit” (Chomsky, 47). U.S. supported violence has been systematically conducted under the guise of development plans, anticommunist sentiment, and promotion of democracy or the Four Freedoms.
Just as the U.S. trained La Guarida to combat to the supposed evils of communism and then reaped the economic benefits, the U.S. continues to provide a great deal of military assistance to Columbia. The U.S. officially intervened in the civil war in Columbia in 1989 when the Clinton administration designed Plan Columbia to eradicate the problem of illicit crop growing (Dugas, 242). However, it quickly became clear that Plan Columbia increased military funding to an already very complicated and violent situation. The U.S. aid plan financed arms and training for the state military in counterinsurgency tactics to fight guerillas and paramilitary. However, many state military officials are deeply imbedded in the paramilitary regimes (Dugas, 237). The military aid to Columbia keeps the U.S. in a certain position of power over the economic and social conditions of the country, while continually violating human rights. Dugas writes, “These decisions have sent a clear message to Colombian military officers that human rights violations will not stand in the way of receiving U.S. arms and training” (240). Plan Columbia became even more contradictory during the Bush administration. Particularly after 9/11, the goal of Plan Columbia changed to include rhetoric of counterterrorism and is currently focused on protecting the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline (Dugas, 242-243). This adapted plan continues to ignore human rights and furthermore it protects foreign capital investment. In 2003, the U.S. sent seventy U.S Army Special Forces troops to aid in protecting the pipeline, and continues to train state military in counterterrorist tactics (Dugas, 247). Plan Columbia perpetuates civil unrest, human rights abuses, military conflict, and at the same time it is conveniently protecting one of the biggest oil pipelines in Latin America.
We have discussed in class that the conditions in Latin America are not an absence of development, but rather the product of development. The conditions in Nicaragua, Columbia, and arguably any other Latin America country with a history of U.S. involvement, will continue in states of violence and oppression under the U.S. hegemonic economic model. At the same time, the U.S. has continually drawn at-home support by creating dominant discourses and common fears of communism, terrorism, or equally obscure campaigns. The U.S. economic and military domination has left the South largely mis-developed and reliant on U.S. support. In examining the evidence of the situations in both Nicaragua and Columbia, it is apparent that Galeano’s theory is correct: the U.S. capitalist model’s ability to function is solely based on its ability to control the extraction of resources by any means necessary, in many cases with the use of the military apparatus.
Postscript
The role of the military apparatus in securing the capital interest of the U.S. is described very clearly in these materials. Yet, we can see the same situation clearly in the U.S. involvement in Iraq repeating the sequence. The contradiction that is most striking to me is that while there is published material about this connection, the media and the system that is promoting the “war on terror,” “war on drugs,” and the “spread of American Democracy” seems to overpower the much more logical arguments. History does repeat itself, especially the history of U.S. military intervention for resources.
People slap stickers on their car “to support our troops” and I have wonder if they are choosing to look the other way or if they really believe in the system they supposedly support. Sadly, I think most people really believe in the U.S. foreign relations policy. It makes me ashamed to be a part of a culture that is so easily controlled by the glowing box streaming into most U.S. kitchens and living rooms. The main threat to international security is not a “terrorist” group, but in fact the larger force of military and economic dominance.
The other issue I find highly problematic about the mainstream cultural interpretation of U.S. intervention is the fact that violence on the part of the resistance is portrayed as the root of all evil, as “terrorism,” yet violence at the hand of a U.S. soldier is seen as noble. I don’t agree with either interpretation. War is not noble and I don’t necessarily admire insurgence violence either. One of the popular questions that exemplifies this dichotomy is “did the U.S. deserve the 9/11 attack?” I think it is important to establish the difference between deserving violence and understanding the events that may have lead to said violence. I think the distinction needs to be clear between deserving the attack and there being reasons for it.
This is not a new game, just different players. The U.S. is attacking terrorist in the same way we saw them attack communism in many Latin American nations, nations rich in resources. Our nation has some of the worst geography and history ratings in public schools and it certainly shows in popular thought.
Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, and as we have discussed in class, one can understand the oppression in a region by understanding the amount of resistance.
Bibliography
- Dugas, John C. “The Columbian Nightmare: Human Rights Abuses and the Contradictory Effects of the U.S. Foreign Policy.”
- When States Kill. Ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor Rodríguez. University of Texas Press: Austin, 2005.
- Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Monthly Review Press: New York, 1997.
- Grossman, Richard. “The Blood of the People: The Guardia Nacional’s Fifty-year War against the People of Nicaragua.” When States Kill. Ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor Rodríguez. University of Texas Press: Austin, 2005.
- Noam, Chomsky. Turning the Tide: The U.S. and Latin America. Black Rose Books: Montreal,1987.
