Imperialism
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Development and economic engagement policies are economic imperialism hidden by benevolence --this encourages countervailing forces which turn the case.
Veltmeyer, ’11 - Professor of Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de
Zacatecas in Mexico and Professor of Sociology and International Development
Studies at St. Mary’s University, (Henry, “US imperialism in Latin America: then and
now, here and there,” estudios críticos del desarrollo, vol. I, núm. 1, segundo semestre
de 2011, pp. 89–123, http://estudiosdeldesarrollo.net/critical/rev1/3.pdf)//A-Berg
Finding itself in the wake of a second world war as the dominant economic power in the «free world» the
US strove assiduously to
consolidate this power at the level of foreign policy. Under prevailing conditions that included the potential threat posed by
the USSR and the fallout from a spreading and unstoppable decolonization movement in the economically backward areas of the world, United
States (US) policymakers
decided on, and actively pursued, a foreign policy with three pillars. One of these pillars
development of the
economies and societies on the periphery of the system. A second pillar of the post–war order was what would become
known as the «Bretton woods system», composed of three institutions (a Bank of Economic Reconstruction and Development—the World
Bank today; the International Monetary fund; and a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would morph into the WTO 50 years
was a strategy of economic reconstruction of an economically devastated Europe and the capitalist
on) and the mechanism of the US dollar, based on a fixed gold standard, as the currency of international trade.1 The third pillar was would
become the United Nations—a system of international organizations designed
to provide the necessary conditions of
(capitalist) development and collective security, a system of multilateral conflict resolution. The motivating force
behind this foreign policy was clear enough: to advance the geopolitical and economic interests of the US as
a world power, including considerations of profit and strategic security (to make the world save for US investments and to reactivate a
capital accumulation process). It was to be an empire of free trade and capitalist development, plus democracy where
possible, a system of capitalist democracies backed up by a system of international organizations
dominated by the US, a military alliance (NATO) focused on Europe in the protection of US interests and collective security, and a more
global network of military bases to provide logistical support for its global military apparatus. Within the institutional framework
of this system and international order the US was particularly concerned to consolidate its power and
influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, regarded by policymakers and many politicians as a
legitimate sphere of undue influence—the exercise of state power in the «national interest». This chapter will
elaborate on economic and political dynamics of the efforts pursued by the US to pursue these interests via the projection of
state power—and the resulting «informal empire» constructed by default. US IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA—FORMS AND
DYNAMICS The US has always been imperialistic in its approach to national development in Latin America,
but in the wake of World War II the situation that it found itself in—commanding, it is estimated, half of the world’s industrial capacity and 80%
of its financial resources; and already an occupying power of major proportions3—awakened in US
policymaking circles and its
foreign policy establishment its historic mission regarding the Americas and also the dream of world
domination, provoking the quest to bring it about in the preferred form of an «informal empire». A key
strategy to this purpose was to institute the rules for what would later be termed «global governance»—for securing its
economic and geopolitical strategic intents in a world liberated from colonial rule (id est competing empires).
The resulting world order, dubbed Bretton Woods I by some,4 provided an institutional framework for advancing
the geopolitical strategic interests of the US in the context of a «cold war» waged against the emerging power of the USSR, and
for advancing cooperation for international development, a policy designed to ensure that the economically backward countries seeking to
liberate themselves from the yoke of European colonialism would not succumb to the siren of communism, that they would undertake a
nation–building and development process on a capitalist path. This development project required the US to assume the lead but also share
power with its major allies, strategic partners in a common enterprise organised as the OECD and a united Europe,6 with a system of United
Nations institutions to provide a multilateral response to any security threats (and that prevented any one country for embarking on the path of
world domination via unilateral action. This was the price that the US had to pay for national security under conditions of an emerging threat
presented by the USSR—soviet communism backed up by what was feared to be a growing if not commanding state power. In this context the
US began to construct its empire, and it did so on a foundation of six pillars: 1. Consolidation of the liberal capitalist
world order, renovating it on neoliberal lines in the early 1980s when conditions allowed; 2. A system of military bases strategically across
the world, to provide thereby the staging point and logistics for the projection of military power when needed, and rule by military force when
circumstances would dictate; 3. A
project of cooperation for international development, to provide financial and
technical assistance to countries and regimes willing to sign on the project—to provide a safe haven for US
economic interests and pave the way for the expansion of capitalism and democracy, the bulwarks of
US imperialism ; 4. Implementation of a neoliberal agenda of policy reforms—to adjust the macroeconomic and development policies to
the requirements of a new world order in which the forces of freedom would be released from the constraints of the welfare–development
state; 5. Regional integration—construction of regional free trade agreements to cooperate with, and not discriminate against, US economic
interests regarding international trade; 6. Globalization—the integration of economies across the world into the global economy in a system
designed to give maximum freedom to the operating units of the global empire. Each strategy not only served as a pillar of imperial policy but
provided the focal point for the projection of state power in different forms as circumstances required or permitted. Together they constituted
what might be termed imperialism. Each element of the system was, and is, dynamic in its
operations but ultimately unstable
because of the countervailing forces that they generated. Within ruling class circles in the US since at least 2000 there is
an open acceptance that theirs is an imperial state and that the US should maintain or act to restore its dominant position in the 21st century
by any means available, and certainly by force if need be. The whole tenor of the debate in the past two decades over US foreign policy, Mann
(2007) notes, is framed in these terms. In this connection, Richard Hass, the current director of Policy Planning in e State Department, wrote an
essay in November 2000 advocating that the US adopt an «imperial» feign policy. He defined this as «a foreign
policy that attempts
to organise the world along certain principles affecting relations between states and conditions within them». This would not
be achieved through colonization or colonies but thorough what he termed «informal control» based on a «good neighbour
policy» backed up by military force if and when necessary—harking back to the «informal empire» of a previous era
(McLean, 1995; Roorda, 1998). Mechanisms such as international financial markets and structural reforms in
macroeconomic policy, and agencies such as the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF, would work to
ensure the dominance of US interests, with the military iron fist backing up the invisible hand of the
market and any failure in multilateral security arrangements. This system of «economic imperialism»,
maintained by US hegemony as leader of the «free world» (representing the virtues of capitalist democracy), was in place and fully
functioning from the 1950s throughout 1980s and the reign of Ronald Reagan. In the 1990s, with the disappearance of the threat of the Soviet
Union and international communism, this system of economic imperialism, bed as it was on the hegemony of «democracy and freedom» as
well multilateralism in international security arrangements, did not as much break down as it was eclipsed by the emergence of the «new
imperialism» based on the unilateral projection of military force as a means of securing world domination in «the American century».7 This
conception of a «new imperialism», a «raw imperialism» that would not «hesitate to use [coercive] force if, when and where necessary»
(Cooper, 2000), based on «aggressive multilateralism» or the unilateral projection, and strategic use, of state power including emphatic military
force, was advanced in neoconservative circles over years of largely internal debate, and put into practice by a succession of regimes, both
democratic and republican. It achieved its consummate form in George W. Bush’s White House, in the Gang of Four (Donald Rumsfeld, Paul
Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney),8 and its maximum expression in a policy of imperial war in the Middle east and the Gulf region.
Although the US also projected its military power in other theatres of imperial war such Yugoslavia9 and Colombia (viz. the covert Colombia–
centered class war «on subversives» against the FARC–EP’ overt regional «war on drugs») the policy of imperial war and the strategy of military
force were primarily directed towards the Gulf region (see, inter alia, Petras and Veltmeyer, 2003).
In the academic world the issue
as to the specific or dominant form taken by imperialism has not been generally framed as a matter of
when and under what circumstances military force might be needed or legitimately used (generlly seen as a
«last resort» but as the necessary part of the arsenal of force available to the state, conceived of as the only legitimate repository of the use of
violence in the «national interest»). Rather, the issue of armed force in the imperialist projection of military power has been framed in terms of
an understanding, or the argument. That an
imperial order cannot be maintained by force and coercion; it requires
«hegemony», which is to say, acquiescence by the subalterns of imperial power achieved by a widespread
belief in e legitimacy of that power generated by an overarching myth or dominant ideology—the idea of
freedom in the post world war II context of the «cold war» against communism and the idea of globalization in the new imperial order
established in the 1980s. Power
relations of domination and subordination, even when backed up by coercive
or armed force, invariably give rise to resistance, and are only sustainable if and when they are
legitimated by an effective ideology—ideas of «democracy» and «freedom» in the case of the American
empire or «globalization» in the case of the economic imperialism that came into play in the 1990s.
Economic development perpetuates the commodification of the environment and
North-South divide making violence inevitable
Howard, Hume, and Oslender 07 (*David Howard – PhD in Latin America Studies from the University of Oxford; he is a lecturer in
Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford, **Mo Hume – PhD in Latin American studies from the University of Liverpool; she
is a professor of Development and Latin American Politics (Department of Politics) at the University of Glasgow, and ***Ulrich Oslender – PhD
in Hispanic Studies from the University of Glasgow; former research fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Department of Geography,
November 2007, “Violence, fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25548278.pdf)
//MD
Others, however, have criticised 'Mrs Brundtland's disenchanted cosmos' and the fact that sustainable
development is still based
on the capitalisation of nature, expressed through global views on nature and environment by those who
rule, instead of through local respect for surrounding landscapes (Visvanathan 1991). And Sachs (1992) argues in his widely
read Development Dictionary that notions of ecology are merely reduced to higher efficiency, while a development
framework is still accepted as the norm. Visvanathan (1991: 384) calls for an 'explosion of imaginations' as a
form of resistance to this dominant economism and essentially violent development framework: a call echoed
by Peet and Watts (1996: 263-8) in their edited collection on 'liberation ecologies', which envisages 'environmental imaginaries' as
primary sites of contestation, which are then articulated by social movements that contest normative
visions and the 'imperialism of the imaginary'. In many ways, the very notion of development has been
radically called into question, as the concept has been linked to neo-colonial intentions of the Global North
to intervene in and keep control of the countries in the Global South. For Escobar (1995: 159), dominant
development discourse portrays the so-called 'third world' as a space devoid of knowledge, a 'chronic
pathological condition', so that the Western scientist ‘like a good doctor, has the moral obligation to intervene in
order to cure the diseased (social) body'. This intervention is always a violent one: one that ruptures the
cultural fabric, penetrates the colonised body, and inserts a homogeneous developmental reasoning,
often extirpating resistant cultural difference. To break this cycle of violent developmentalism, Escobar (1995) calls for an
era of 'post-development' as a necessary step for national projects of decolonisation and for the
affirmation of truly emancipatory political projects of self-affirmation.
The alt is to decolonize the 1AC --- reject US intervention in Latin America to interrupt the imperial
underpinnings of the 1AC
Taylor 12 - Lecturer in Latin American Studies BA University of London, Queen Mary
MPhil University of Glasgow PhD University of Manchester, (Lucy, “Decolonizing
International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America,” International Studies
Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, 11 SEP 2012, 14, 386–400, Wiley Online Library)//A-Berg
The aim of this paper is to think differently about International Relations (IR) by thinking differently about the
Americas. I write this piece as a Latin Americanist, and as such, I bring a particular geographical and disciplinary
perspective to the question of power in the region, drawing on the ‘‘coloniality of power’’ perspective developed by Latin
American academics. This perspective has an explicit political agenda which seeks to ‘‘place knowledge at the service of
decolonization’’ as the Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronı ´l suggested (2005: 148). In this way, I join a struggle against
gross inequalities of power, wealth, justice, and knowledge regimes on the global (and the local) stage by
reflecting on IR from an intellectual place to the south and at the periphery of conventional thinking.
More explicitly, I draw together insights from critical IR and coloniality theorizing in order to consider how thinking about the USA
from Latin America might not only open decolonial perspectives on the country but also suggest decolonial
strategies for IR. My aim is not to criticize US intervention in Latin America––many have spoken eloquently against its government’s
imperialistic foreign policies––but to propose a different, perhaps complementary, strategy which aims to disturb US global
hegemony from the inside out by questioning the idea of ‘‘America’’ as a unified, unproblematic, and
settled settler society. It is precisely because the USA and the worldview that it promotes are central to IR that this contributes to a
decolonial IR. Two important caveats are in order before I begin. Firstly, this article focuses particularly on indigenous experiences and it does
not explore the equally important dynamics of injustice, racism, and inequality that emerge from the African-American experience. There are
two key reasons for this. Most obviously, it would be impossible for me to do justice to both experiences in the confines of one journal article; I
find myself already generalizing about indigenous societies which are extraordinarily varied. In addition, coloniality⁄ modernity theorists focus
particularly on indigenous struggles and philosophies, making this the more obvious topic for discussion. For these reasons, I have decided to
focus on Native American dynamics in the coloniality of power. Secondly, as a white European, I can make no claim to write from a colonized
position myself. However, as a Latin Americanist, I hope to contribute insights which are anchored in intellectual activity outside the IR core–
–both academically and geographically––and in particular to reflect
on the decolonial possibilities that Latin America
presents for IR, given its relationship to the United States. Decolonial Strategies and Insights from IR What might it
mean to decolonize IR? One of the most important things that we can do, according to decolonial IR scholar Branwen
Gruffydd Jones, is to question the deep political, ontological, and historical foundations of the discipline, asking how
it came to be configured as it is and what sort of politics and social world it produces as a consequence (2006: 7–9). Many critical and
postcolonial IR scholars have taken up this challenge, writing
from and about different geopolitical and intellectual
places. My purpose here is to join that conversation by drawing the ‘‘coloniality of power’’ scholarship into the discussion (along with, for
example, Rojas (2007) who focuses on the question of development). This body of work is highly relevant not only because it dovetails with
existing critical IR but also because it refers explicitly to experiences and power relations in the Americas. Thus, coloniality
scholarship
makes a double contribution because it opens a way to think differently about the USA, locating its
critique at the heartland of international relationships and International Relations.
Links
Generic
1NC Development
Economic development is not neutral – it is a violent attempt to create satellite states
for resource extraction
Howard, Hume, and Oslender 07 (*David Howard – PhD in Latin America Studies from the University of Oxford; he is a lecturer in
Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford, **Mo Hume – PhD in Latin American studies from the University of Liverpool; she
is a professor of Development and Latin American Politics (Department of Politics) at the University of Glasgow, and ***Ulrich Oslender – PhD
in Hispanic Studies from the University of Glasgow; former research fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Department of Geography,
November 2007, “Violence, fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25548278.pdf)
//MD
violence and development are intertwined. And there is nothing innocent or
objective about the idea of development itself. In fact, 'development' - understood for the most part as modern (economic)
There are many ways in which
development - is one of the most contentious terms in the social sciences. Orthodox views perceive the process as a sustainable increase in the
economic wealth of countries or regions for the well-being of their inhabitants, particularly an increase in living standards through higher per
capita income and better education and health services. There have, of course, always been debates about how to achieve such an increase in
living standards. Yet with the discursive binary construction of the world into developed and developing (or less developed) countries after the
end of World War II, the stage was set for ferocious debates, many of which exposed the inherently violent process in which 'development' was
conceived and enacted. And to the fore came the many 'uns' of development: underdevelopment, unequal development, and uneven
development. This issue of Development in Practice addresses the impact of violence or aggressive action on the process of development in
Central and South America. The understanding of development is here considered in terms broader than the economic context alone, in order
to assess wider social, cultural, and political aspects. Five articles consider violence that ranges from direct physical harm and bodily attack to
the often more subtle aggression of racialised abuse, or the pressures on community-centred production to conform to the 'rules of the
market'. The critique of economic development was particularly strong in Latin America, which saw the emergence of
Dependency Theory as an influential, complex body of theoretical concepts with structuralist and Marxist roots that explained Latin America's
historical and continued underdevelopment in terms of a structural logic inherent in the development of global capitalism. (See also the Review
Essay by Carlos Mallorquin, in this issue.) As argued by Andre Gunder Frank (1969a), one of its principal exponents, the
metropolis (or the
and exploits peripheral satellites, from which it expropriates economic surplus for its own
economic development. The satellites thus remain underdeveloped for lack of access to their own
surplus and as a consequence of the exploitative contradictions that the metropolis introduces and
maintains in the satellite's domestic structure. Such an appropriation of surplus value from the periphery was
always a violent process, and Frank (1969b) would continue to outline the structural logic that underlies such a
'development of underdevelopment'.1 The insights of dependency theory, originally 'developed' in Latin America, have also been
core) creates
used to speak to the specificities of Africa and to explain the violent global processes that underlie the constitution of unequal development
there (Amin 1976).
2NC Development
Development rhetoric frames Latin America as a region to be exploited – this perpetuates a colonialist
narrative of dependency
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke
University, "The Idea of Latin America," 2005, slim_)
You can still see the same projects today in the appropriation of areas of “natural resources” (e.g., in the Amazon
or oil-rich Iraq). Land cannot be reproduced. You can reproduce seeds and other “products” of land; but land itself is limited, which is
another reason why the appropriation of land is one of the prime targets of capital accumulation today. The
“idea” of Latin America is that of a large mass of land with a wealth of natural resources and plenty of
cheap labor. That, of course, is the disguised idea. What the rhetoric of modernity touted by the IMF, the World Bank,
and the Washington consensus would say is that “Latin” America is just waiting for its turn to “develop.” You
could also follow the exploitation of labor from the Americas to the Industrial Revolution to the movement of factories from the US to
developing nations in order to reduce costs. As for financial control, just compare the number and size of banks, for example, in New York,
London, or Frankfurt, on the one hand, versus the ones in Bolivia, Morocco, or India, on the other. Thus, if
we consider “America”
from the perspective of coloniality (not modernity) and let the Indigenous perspective take center stage, another history
becomes apparent. The beginning of the Zapatista “Manifesto from the Lacandon Jungle” gives us a blueprint: We are a
product of 500 years of struggle: first against slavery, then during the War of Independence against Spain; then to
avoid being absorbed by North American imperialism, then to promulgate our constitution and expel the French empire from our
soil; later the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz denied us the just application of the Reform laws and the people rebelled and leaders like Villa and
Zapata emerged, poor men just like us. We
have been denied by our rulers the most elemental conditions of life, so
they can use us as cannon fodder and pillage the wealth of our country. They don’t care that we have nothing,
absolutely nothing, not even a roof over hour heads, no land, no work, no health care, no food or education. Nor are we able to freely and
democratically elect our political representatives, nor is there independence from foreigners, nor is there peace or justice for ourselves and our
children. The
“Manifesto from the Lacandon Jungle” precedes a long history rewritten from an Indigenous
perspective (as opposed to the perspective of Mexican Creoles and Mestizos/as or French or US “experts” on Mexican and “Latin”
American history). You may wonder whether the Indigenous people had a perspective because you imagine that history is history
and what happened just happened, and argue that there are of course “different interpretations” but not
“different perspectives.” Different interpretations presuppose a common and shared principle of knowledge
and of the rules of the game, while different perspectives presuppose that the principles of knowledges and the rules of
the game are geo-historically located in the structure of power of the modern colonial world. To show how this
works, we need something such as “dependency theory” for the epistemological domain.10 “Dependency theory” showed
the differential of power in the economic domain insofar as it described a certain structure of differential power in the
domain of the economy. But it also proved the epistemic differential and the distribution of labor within an
imperial geo-politics of knowledge in which political economy moved in one direction: from First to Third World countries and to
contain Second World communism. In this sense, dependency theory is relevant in changing the geopolitics of knowledge and in pointing
toward the need for, and the possibility of, different locations of understanding and of knowledge production.
The expansion of neoliberal markets into Latin America is an attempt to cloak imperial expansion by
framing it as philanthropic and legitimate.
Chapman, ‘5 – Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Hull, United Kingdom (Dennis, US Hegemony in Latin America and Beyond,
International Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 317-319, JSTOR)//A-Berg
Is globalization merely US imperialism masked as the philanthropic diffusion of neoliberalism into the
Third World? In Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial: Rethinking North-South Relations, David Slater-drawing primarily from the deconstruction methodology
of James Derrida (1992), the critical theory of Michel Foucault (1979, 1980), the structural theory of World Systems Theory (although Wallerstein is not cited), and
the postcolonial perspectives of a myriad of Latin American scholars-argues that it is. More specifically, Slater asserts that the
United States (with the
aid of such neoliberal organizations as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade
Organization) has sought to liberate the Third World from its indigence for the purpose of establishing a
Southern hemisphere of "quasi-sovereignties" (see Jackson 1996:60) that can be easily manipulated politically. Slater
argues that the neoliberal order creates an asymmetry of structure that facilitates the dominance of the
North over the South in "a conscious and often violent intervention on the part of [the US] government
which impose[s] market organization on society for non-economic ends" (p. 93). In short, the United States seeks
to use the neoliberal economic order to achieve its political goal of geopolitical imperialism. Drawing on
dependency theory, Slater explains that the neoliberal project in Latin America helps sustain the wealth of the United
States by importing raw materials from the South and exporting processed goods from the North-a relationship
that clearly favors the North. This argument is not a new one (see Wallerstein 1974). Nonetheless, as Slater argues, it is one that has been largely abandoned with
the discursive hegemony of neoliberal theory. Neoliberals take for granted the inherent goodness of the free market, which, by virtue of being regulated only by
market forces, is seen as fair for everyone. Yet, aside from the economies of Southeast Asia, which Slater treats as an anomaly, the neoliberal promise of wealth for
all has largely failed. But does this mean that Latin America is a total failure? According to Slater, the answer is "no." On the other hand, the "shadow" neoliberal
project of eliminating political opposition to Occidentalism-whether in the form of governmental regimes (for example, Fidel Castro) or the campaign of postmodern
guerilla warfare (for example, the Zapatistas in Mexico)-has succeeded in maintaining US dominance over Latin America. So, why
cloak imperialist
ambitions in neoliberal reformation? The reason is that the United States wishes to maintain a legitimate empire.
Although imperialism a la Caesar and Napoleon is rejected by the United Nations, imperialism ' la Ronald Reagan (that is, "neoimperialism") is
tolerated because any activity that supports the free market is assumed to be legitimate. Therefore, the
discursive power of Western institutions diffused into the South (what Slater calls "conceptual
framings") produces consensual exploitation. As Slater writes, "[t]he discursive power [of the United States] entails
putting into place a regime of truth that subaltern nations are encouraged, persuaded and induced to
adopt and put into practice" (p. 148). The tragedy for the South, according to Slater, is that, even though its
acceptance of neoliberal economics is presumably removed from any political agenda, in the final
analysis it is the political agenda of US hegemony that motivates the neoliberalization of the South.
Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial contributes to the study of US foreign policy toward Third World nations. Even though Slater focuses on Latin America, this book is
emblematic of geopolitics seen from a post-structural (as opposed to post-modern) perspective. By putting Latin American scholars at the heart of a study of Latin
America, Slater sacrifices a comprehensive literature review of scholars who regularly weigh in on neoliberalism, such as Robert Keohane (2001) (see also Keohane
and Ostrom 1994), Stephen Krasner (1978, 1999), Robert Jackson (1996), and even, as stated above, Imannuel Wallerstein (1974), an author who should have been
included if only because World Systems Theory is in harmony with the postMarxist theory that Slater advances. Although Latin American scholars hardly need
buttressing by a Western canon of literature, it can be useful to compare the two if only to highlight in what specific ways Northern and Southern scholars agree and
disagree. That said, by leaving out the recognizable names, more room is available for previously marginalized scholars, such as the Argentinian Sergio Bag6 (1992),
who, from an "inside" perspective, criticizes not only the aggressive penetration of US institutions into the South but also writes about the failings of the United
States in its own society. For Bagu, too little attention is paid to seeing how well the United States lives up to its own standards. Such is Derrida's "'nocturnal face' of
Western society" (p. 144). For example, the phenomena of robber barons, organized crime, and corruption--things associated most with Third World nations-are so
prevalent in some US cities that Latin American academics consider Los Angeles "the capital of the Third World" (p. 7). The strengths of Geopolitics and the PostColonial are its post-positivist methodology, disregard for discursive borders, thorough literature review of Latin American scholars who were previously
marginalized in the West, solid self-critique of methodology and theory, clarity of language, and ambition to challenge not only the mainstream discourse and
politico-economic ideology of the West, but also the postmodern discourses from which Slater partly draws inspiration. Postmodernism, Slater writes, is inadequate
for understanding the geopolitical realities of Latin America. A
North-South divide really exists, Slater argues, and even though
political borders are reinforced by acknowledging them, and even though using the expression "Third
World" partly legitimates the historic oppression of "the Other," the expression "Third World" can also
be rethought in ways that recognize those who have been subjected to its widespread acceptance as
representative of their lives in totality.
No risk of a link turn – colonialist logic is fueled by rhetoric of development and
modernization
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
The logic of coloniality
can be understood as working through four wide domains of human experience: (1) the
economic: appropriation of land, exploitation of labor, and control of finance; (2) the political: control of
authority; () the civic: control of gender and sexuality; (4) the epistemic and the subjective/personal: control of
knowledge and subjectivity. The logic of coloniality has been in place from the conquest and colonization of
Mexico and Peru until and beyond the war in Iraq, despite superficial changes in the scale and agents of exploitation/control in the
past five hundred years of history. Each domain is interwoven with the others, since appropriation of land or exploitation of
labor also involves the control of finance, of authority, of gender, and of knowledge and subjectivity.8 The operation
of the colonial matrix is invisible to distracted eyes, and even when it surfaces, it is explained through the rhetoric of modernity
that the situation can be “corrected” with “development,” “democracy,” a “strong economy,” etc. What
some will see as “lies” from the US presidential administration are not so much lies as part of a very well-codified “rhetoric of
modernity,” promising salvation for everybody in order to divert attention from the increasingly oppressive
consequences of the logic of coloniality. To implement the logic of coloniality requires the celebratory rhetoric of modernity, as
the case of Iraq has illustrated from day one. As capital and power concentrate in fewer and fewer hands and poverty
increases all over the word, the logic of coloniality becomes ever more oppressive and merciless. Since the sixteenth
century, the rhetoric of modernity has relied on the vocabulary of salvation, which was accompanied by the massive
appropriation of land in the New World and the massive exploitation of Indian and African slave labor, justified
by a belief in the dispensability of human life – the lives of the slaves. Thus, while some Christians today, for example, beat the
drum of “pro-life values,” they reproduce a rhetoric that diverts attention from the increasing “devaluation of human life” that the thousands
dead in Iraq demonstrate. Thus,
that
it is not modernity that will overcome coloniality , because it is precisely modernity
needs and produces coloniality .
The aff’s approach to latin America is grounded in a national myth that has been tried and failed --Kenworthy 95, Professor of Politics at Whitman Collegem (Eldon, “America/Américas: Myth in the Making of U. S. Policy Toward Latin America,” January 1,
1995, GoogleBook)//A-Berg
Rather than read each new situation afresh, Washington traditionally has
refurbished its historic rhetoric regarding a
common project that all “Americans" share. Such language comes naturally to U.S, leaders inasmuch as it evolved over centuries of use
within the United States. F0r_decades now Washington has attempted to unify Latin America behind U.S. leadership by
employing the same discourse of identity and common purpose earlier used to pull the colonies
together, to send the pioneers west and the marines south. (Chapter 2 fleshes this out.) This book seeks to raise that discourse to full consciousness
and to I whose purposes it serves today, l write for those who see in the present moment an opportunity to reevaluate the underlying perception of the Americas
that infuses
U.S. policy. As Edward Said, writing about the Middle East, sensitized Western readers to strategies of control-rough-difference, this work
U.S.
discourse not only contains assumptions traceable to the earliest days of the republic but that it
reproduces those assumptions today when they offer a poor guide to reality. Old images and ideas comprise a founding myth of U.S.highlights the hidden strategies of control-rough-sameness present in official U.S. constructions of Latin America. My thesis, then, is that this
hemispheric relations that has acquired paradigmatic status. I call this the America/Americas myth for its central confusion over who or what is American and
(closely related) who speaks for this hemisphere (chapter 2 describes the myth in detail). How do myths perpetuate themselves? The answer lies in a symbiosis of
the old and new. As Chapter 3 explains, advertising is a two-tiered semiotic system in which the familiar and accepted are deployed to sell the novel and the
questionable. While advertising in U.S. electoral campaigns no longer is news, few seem to notice how far it has venerated the workings of the state between
elections,including such ore activities as selecting policies and forging agreement between branches of government. The case study that anchors this book wades
into the complexity of foreign policy, showing how a policy was
sold to congress and the U.S. public using a panopoly of advertising
techniques that selectively drew upon (and thus reproduced) the America/Americas myth. This look at
how a discourse is actually reproduced bridges the tendency of discourse analysis to stick to texts and
the tendency of policy analysts to treat discourse as epiphenomena. Myths chosen by policymakers not surprisingly cast them
in heroic roles. The single case study method permits us to explore how a discourse selects policy makers as well as how policymakers select a discourse (see
Chapter 4) The Central American conflicts of the 1980s turned out the way they did largely (not wholly) because of differences in how key players constructed those
conflicts. As hard as it is to reach firm conclusions in this matter, this book explores the impact of discourse on real-world outcomes. Chapter 7 contrasts the
constructions of Nicaragua by two hemispheric presidents who otherwise shared key values: the United States' Ronald Reagan and Costa Rica’s Oscar Arias. The
realization of how differently the same situation can be perceived and of how differently the same values can be operationalized supports the book's overall
contention that sameness is as dangerous a presumption as difference. In family, gender, and ethnic group relations many of us recognize this. In the realm of U.S.Latin American relations, however, this lesson is less understood. Fortunately the U.S. repertoire contains myths that emphasize diversity as well as unity. To tap
other mythic founts, however, U.S. leaders would first have to become conscious of their use of the sameness myth. The case selected is the Reagan
administration's successful reversal of congressional prohibitions on U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras in 1986. The advantage of this case lies in the wealth
of information that came to light in the Iran-Contra investigations. What I call the 1986 advertising campaign was never a central concern of those investigations,
however. Rather than another book on IranContra, this study takes advantage of the documents unearthed by IranContra researchers to explore a different and
broader question. Here, then, myth will be wedded to advertising, the early nineteenth century to the waning twentieth. As the aphorism about weddings goes:
"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,"• The old and borrowed is the America/Americas myth; the new, advertising technique and
the power drives of beltway insiders. As for "something blue," it is the
case Central) America.
outcome: dysfunctional U.S. policies toward Latin (in this
The framing of Latin America in terms of resources makes it a convenience store for neoliberal
exploitation
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
A Convenience Store
The global idea of “Latin” America being deployed by imperial states today (the US and the imperial countries of the
European Union) is of a vast territory and a resource of cheap labor, full natural resources, exotic tourism, and
fantastic Caribbean beaches waiting to be visited, invested in, and exploited. These images developed during the
Cold War when “Latin” America became part of the Third World and a top destination for neo-liberal projects,
“Latin” America from Above:
beginning in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet (1973) and followed up by Juan Carlos Menem in Argentina (1989) and Sánchez Gonzálo de
Losada (1993) in Bolivia. Thus, for example, today many of the major technological corporations are shifting production to Argentina (postcrash) where they can hire technicians for around ten thousand dollars a year while the US salary plus benefits, for the same type of job, could
be as high as fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year.
1NC Economy
Their worship of objective human rationality and the economic sphere constructs an
ontological universe revolving around the capitalist state
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and
Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin America at a Crossroads,"
Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
The crisis of the modern project. A word about how I use ‘modernity’ in this paper (see Escobar 2008, for a lengthy discussion). I use
modernity to refer to the kinds of coherence and crystallization of forms (discourses, practices, structures, institutions)
that have arisen over the last few hundred years out of certain cultural and ontological commitments of European societies. There is
an interesting convergence between certain philosophical, biological, and indigenous peoples’ narratives in asserting that life
entails the creation of form (difference, morphogenesis) out of the dynamics of matter and energy.7 In these views, the world is a pluriverse,
ceaselessly in movement, an ever-changing web of inter-relations involving humans and non-humans. I believe it is important to point out,
however, that the
pluriverse also gives rise to coherences and crystallizes in practices and structures through processes
that have a lot do with meanings and power. With the modern ontology, certain constructs and
practices, such as the primacy of humans over non-humans (separation of nature and culture) and of
some humans over others (the colonial divide between us and them); the idea of the autonomous individual separated
from community; the belief in objective knowledge, reason, and science as the only valid modes of knowing;
and the cultural construction of ‘the economy’ as an independent realm of social practice, with ‘the market’ as a
self-regulating entity outside of social relations all of these ontological assumptions became prominent. The worlds and knowledges
constructed on the basis of these ontological commitments became ‘a universe.’ This universe has acquired
certain coherence in socio-natural forms such as capitalism, the state, the individual, industrial agriculture, and so
forth
1NC Failed States/SOI
Their rhetoric of failed states and spheres of influence reifies an imperialistic approach to Latin
America.
Slater 10 - Professor in the Department of Geography at Loughborough University, (David Rethinking the Imperial Difference: towards an understanding of US–
Latin American encounters Third World Quarterly Volume 31, Issue 2, 07 Apr 2010, Taylor & Francis)//A-Berg
Terms such as the
North–South divide, and centre–periphery relations are constructs which reflect a posited distinction
between two sets of countries within the international system. More fundamentally one can suggest that this difference is
anchored in imperial power—that the imperial difference is the difference between imperial societies and
imperialised societies; and, despite the complex heterogeneities existing within both categories, there is a profound asymmetrical relation that is
rooted in a history of power and knowledge. This relation has not been transcended—we do not live in a post-imperial world—and the imperial nature of power
continues to affect and insinuate itself into a range of social, political and cultural phenomena. It is an
imperial mentality which can be traced
through a lineage of invasiveness and penetration, of the imposition of the values and organisational forms
of the imperialising society on to the imperialised society, of a violation of political sovereignty, of an erasure or belittling of the
other's sense of indigenous cultural value, of a subordinating mode of representation, encapsulated in such notions as
‘traditional society’, ‘failed’ or ‘rogue state’, and ‘emerging economy’, and in an overarching assumption
of guidance, authority and leadership. Within this context the West is seen as special —the home of reason,
human rights, democracy, self-reflexivity—and this special-ness is interpreted as having been achieved in an independent fashion without the
need of learning from inter-cultural encounters.69 In this vision the geopolitics of knowledge is centred on the West
and the non-West is depicted as inferior, in need of tutelage and constant supervision: as Césaire put it over 50
years ago, ‘the West alone knows how to think … at the borders of the Western world there begins the shadowy realm of primitive thinking,
which, dominated by the notion of participation, incapable of logic, is the very model of faulty thinking’.70 The posited inability of the nonWest to think in terms that might be globally relevant and to have the capacity to be an independent
agent can be briefly illustrated through reference to two examples from the history of US–Latin
American relations. First, in relation to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a series of scholarly meetings was set up in the late 1980s to bring together the
key participants in the crisis. It was not until the third such meeting that Cuban representatives were even invited and then only at Soviet insistence. US
representatives resisted Cuban participation on the grounds that this would turn the meeting into a ‘political circus’.71 It emerged from these meetings that the
crisis could not end until Castro permitted the missiles to be removed, in exchange for a Soviet brigade to defend Cuba. Cuba was not recognised as an important
actor in the crisis by the US representatives; moreover Cuba was seen, in general, as not being capable of rational decision making. Second, in President Reagan's
address to the nation on the situation in Nicaragua, broadcast in March 1986, one encounters a related framing of a geopolitical issue. Reagan introduced the topic
of the address by stating that there was a ‘mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States … I'm speaking of Nicaragua, a Soviet
ally on the American mainland only two hours’ flying time from our own borders’.72 Having established the existence of a severe danger and its proximity to the US,
Reagan went on to argue that the threat came not so much from Nicaragua itself but from the fact that its territory was being used by the Soviet enemy, the ‘evil
Empire’. The Sandinistas were subsumed under the label of Soviet-bloc communists and their Nicaraguan collaborators. Reagan went on to state that the Soviets,
together with the Sandinistas, must not be permitted to ‘crush freedom’ in Central America, and ‘threaten our own security on our own doorstep’. Overall, what
happens here is that the Sandinistas are shorn of independent agency; they are depicted
as being manipulated by an external and
tyrannical power—they do not possess their own agency, and are not able to decide independently
their own path to development. At the time, García Márquez singled out this relational proclivity, arguing that within the
US there was a widespread tendency to believe that Latin American peoples were not able to think for
themselves and be independent of the two blocs, West and East. If a Latin American government was acting independently
this must have meant that it was being manipulated by an external power. Conclusions This is very much a ‘work in
progress’, being constrained by the limitations of space, and any conclusions must be seen as tentative and provisional. The way I have been trying to analyse the
geopolitics of imperial power in a context of US–Latin American relations owes a good deal to approaches that do not marginalise the insights of political economy
perspectives, but attempt to open up new multifaceted pathways for critical discussion, seen broadly in a post-structuralist, and post- or de-colonial framework.73 I
have argued that,
in the case of the US, the imperial mentality is deeply rooted in society, and affects all
spheres of social and political life. It is partly driven by economic imperatives, but crucially needs to be understood in the
arena of state–society relations, and especially within the ambit of the state, where the agents of power construct and deploy imperial policies. The desire to
penetrate, invade and restructure another society is concentrated into a political will that gives
expression to the varied compulsions working inside the imperial society. Capacities are developed to enact this will and
modes of justification are set in train to support the imperial drive. In the US and other Western societies the imperial drive has never been confronted in a
comprehensive manner and the key facets of the imperial character continue to flow through the political veins of Western society. When it is remarked that the
reaction to 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib express violent entailments of imperial history, and that they are at once anachronistic and
geopolitically resonant, it is as if they are both ‘boldly new and disturbingly the same’.74
1NC Generic
Development and economic engagement policies are economic imperialism hidden by benevolence --this encourages countervailing forces which turn the case.
Veltmeyer, ’11 - Professor of Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in Mexico and Professor of Sociology and International
Development Studies at St. Mary’s University, (Henry, “us imperialism in latin america: then and now, here and there,” estudios críticos del desarrollo, vol. I, núm. 1,
segundo semestre de 2011, pp. 89–123, http://estudiosdeldesarrollo.net/critical/rev1/3.pdf)//A-Berg
Finding itself in the wake of a second world war as the dominant economic power in the «free world» the
US strove assiduously to consolidate this
power at the level of foreign policy. Under prevailing conditions that included the potential threat posed by the USSR and the fallout from a
spreading and unstoppable decolonization movement in the economically backward areas of the world, United States ( US) policymakers decided on,
and actively pursued, a foreign policy with three pillars. One of these pillars was a strategy of economic reconstruction of an economically
devastated Europe and the capitalist development of the economies and societies on the periphery of the system.
A second pillar of the post–war order was what would become known as the «Bretton woods system», composed of three institutions (a Bank of Economic
Reconstruction and Development—the
World Bank today; the International Monetary fund; and a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would
WTO 50 years on) and the mechanism of the US dollar, based on a fixed gold standard, as the currency of international trade.1 The third pillar
was would become the United Nations—a system of international organizations designed to provide the necessary conditions of
(capitalist) development and collective security, a system of multilateral conflict resolution. The motivating force behind
this foreign policy was clear enough: to advance the geopolitical and economic interests of the US as a world
power, including considerations of profit and strategic security (to make the world save for US investments and to reactivate a capital accumulation process). It
was to be an empire of free trade and capitalist development, plus democracy where possible, a system of capitalist
democracies backed up by a system of international organizations dominated by the US, a military alliance
morph into the
(NATO) focused on Europe in the protection of US interests and collective security, and a more global network of military bases to provide logistical support for its
global military apparatus. Within
the institutional framework of this system and international order the US was
particularly concerned to consolidate its power and influence in Latin America and the Caribbean,
regarded by policymakers and many politicians as a legitimate sphere of undue influence—the exercise of state
power in the «national interest». This chapter will elaborate on economic and political dynamics of the efforts pursued
by the US to pursue these interests via the projection of state power—and the resulting «informal empire» constructed by default. US
IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA—FORMS AND DYNAMICS The US has always been imperialistic in its approach to national
development in Latin America, but in the wake of World War II the situation that it found itself in—commanding, it is estimated, half of the world’s
industrial capacity and 80% of its financial resources; and already an occupying power of major proportions3—awakened in US policymaking circles
and its foreign policy establishment its historic mission regarding the Americas and also the dream of world
domination, provoking the quest to bring it about in the preferred form of an «informal empire». A key strategy
to this purpose was to institute the rules for what would later be termed «global governance»—for securing its economic and
geopolitical strategic intents in a world liberated from colonial rule (id est competing empires). The resulting world
order, dubbed Bretton Woods I by some,4 provided an institutional framework for advancing the geopolitical
strategic interests of the US in the context of a «cold war» waged against the emerging power of the USSR, and for advancing cooperation for
international development, a policy designed to ensure that the economically backward countries seeking to liberate themselves from the yoke of European
colonialism would not succumb to the siren of communism, that they would undertake a nation–building and development process on a capitalist path. This
development project required the US to assume the lead but also share power with its major allies, strategic partners in a common enterprise organised as the
OECD and a united Europe,6 with a system of United Nations institutions to provide a multilateral response to any security threats (and that prevented any one
country for embarking on the path of world domination via unilateral action. This was the price that the US had to pay for national security under conditions of an
emerging threat presented by the USSR—soviet communism backed up by what was feared to be a growing if not commanding state power. In this context the
US began to construct its empire, and it did so on a foundation of six pillars: 1. Consolidation of the liberal capitalist
world order, renovating it on neoliberal lines in the early 1980s when conditions allowed; 2. A system of military bases strategically across the world, to
provide thereby the staging point and logistics for the projection of military power when needed, and rule by military force when circumstances would dictate; 3. A
project of cooperation for international development, to provide financial and technical assistance to
countries and regimes willing to sign on the project—to provide a safe haven for US economic interests and
pave the way for the expansion of capitalism and democracy, the bulwarks of US imperialism ; 4.
Implementation of a neoliberal agenda of policy reforms—to adjust the macroeconomic and development policies to the requirements of a new world order in
which the forces of freedom would be released from the constraints of the welfare–development state; 5. Regional integration—construction of regional free trade
agreements to cooperate with, and not discriminate against, US economic interests regarding international trade; 6. Globalization—the integration of economies
across the world into the global economy in a system designed to give maximum freedom to the operating units of the global empire. Each strategy not only served
as a pillar of imperial policy but provided the focal point for the projection of state power in different forms as circumstances required or permitted. Together they
constituted what might be termed imperialism. Each element of the system was, and is, dynamic in its
operations but ultimately unstable
because of the countervailing forces that they generated. Within ruling class circles in the US since at least 2000 there is an open
acceptance that theirs is an imperial state and that the US should maintain or act to restore its dominant position in the 21st century by any means available, and
certainly by force if need be. The whole tenor of the debate in the past two decades over US foreign policy, Mann (2007) notes, is framed in these terms. In this
connection, Richard Hass, the current director of Policy Planning in e State Department, wrote an essay in November 2000 advocating that the US adopt an
«imperial» feign policy. He defined this as «a foreign policy that attempts to organise the world along certain principles
affecting relations between states and conditions within them». This would not be achieved through colonization or colonies but thorough what he termed
based on a «good neighbour policy» backed up by military force if and when necessary—harking back to
«informal empire» of a previous era (McLean, 1995; Roorda, 1998). Mechanisms such as international financial markets
and structural reforms in macroeconomic policy, and agencies such as the World Bank, the WTO and the
IMF, would work to ensure the dominance of US interests, with the military iron fist backing up the
invisible hand of the market and any failure in multilateral security arrangements. This system of
«economic imperialism», maintained by US hegemony as leader of the «free world» (representing the virtues of capitalist
«informal control»
the
democracy), was in place and fully functioning from the 1950s throughout 1980s and the reign of Ronald Reagan. In the 1990s, with the disappearance of the threat
of the Soviet Union and international communism, this system of economic imperialism, bed as it was on the hegemony of «democracy and freedom» as well
multilateralism in international security arrangements, did not as much break down as it was eclipsed by the emergence of the «new imperialism» based on the
unilateral projection of military force as a means of securing world domination in «the American century».7 This conception of a «new imperialism», a «raw
imperialism» that would not «hesitate to use [coercive] force if, when and where necessary» (Cooper, 2000), based on «aggressive multilateralism» or the unilateral
projection, and strategic use, of state power including emphatic military force, was advanced in neoconservative circles over years of largely internal debate, and
put into practice by a succession of regimes, both democratic and republican. It achieved its consummate form in George W. Bush’s White House, in the Gang of
Four (Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney),8 and its maximum expression in a policy of imperial war in the Middle east and the Gulf
region. Although the US also projected its military power in other theatres of imperial war such Yugoslavia9 and Colombia (viz. the covert Colombia– centered class
war «on subversives» against the FARC–EP’ overt regional «war on drugs») the policy of imperial war and the strategy of military force were primarily directed
towards the Gulf region (see, inter alia, Petras and Veltmeyer, 2003).
In the academic world the issue as to the specific or
dominant form taken by imperialism has not been generally framed as a matter of when and under what
circumstances military force might be needed or legitimately used (generlly seen as a «last resort» but as the necessary part of
the arsenal of force available to the state, conceived of as the only legitimate repository of the use of violence in the «national interest»). Rather, the issue of armed
force in the imperialist projection of military power has been framed in terms of an understanding, or the argument. That an
imperial order cannot
be maintained by force and coercion; it requires «hegemony», which is to say, acquiescence by the subalterns
of imperial power achieved by a widespread belief in e legitimacy of that power generated by an
overarching myth or dominant ideology—the idea of freedom in the post world war II context of the «cold war» against communism and the
idea of globalization in the new imperial order established in the 1980s. Power relations of domination and subordination, even
when backed up by coercive or armed force, invariably give rise to resistance, and are only sustainable if
and when they are legitimated by an effective ideology—ideas of «democracy» and «freedom» in the
case of the American empire or «globalization» in the case of the economic imperialism that came into play in the
1990s.
2NC Generic
US economic policy toward Latin America is engrained in imperialist practice – the aff perpetuates
violence
Sabet 11 (Shayda Sabet – University of British Columbia, March, 2011, “US Foreign
Policy in Latin America: An Ideological Perspective”, http://www.eir.info/2013/06/14/us-foreign-policy-in-latin-america/) //MD
The predominant interpretation of the Cold War draws from a realist perspective which attributes the Soviet Union and the United States’
pursuit for economic, military, and influential superiority over one another as an inevitable characteristic of powerful states seeking hegemony
within an anarchic international system.[1] From this perspective, the two superpowers of the 20th century (the United States and the Soviet
Union) rationally designed their policies in order to serve their best interest.[2] Vladislav M. Zubok challenges this perspective, however,
arguing that throughout most of the Cold War, ideological factors shaped and influenced the Soviet Union’s decisions and policies.[3] Similarly,
the United States responded to Soviet foreign policy with ideological fervor, determined to contain (and eventually dismantle) the forces of
Communism. “U.S. presidents,” states Jorge I. Dominguez, “were committed to combat communism, not just the Soviet Union.”[4] This paper
will argue that anti-Communist ideology
shaped the United States’ foreign policy toward Latin America during
neorealist perspective by arguing that such ideological
forces drove the United States to implement irrational and costly policies toward Latin America (such as
the Cold War, particularly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. I challenge the
supporting military coups). The end of the Second World War and particularly the Soviet’s decisive victory over the Nazis at the Battle of
Stalingrad cultivated within many Russians sentiments that the Soviet Union should be and could be a global power.[5] Likewise, Zubok
maintains that the Kremlin’s expansionist ambitions, coupled with the Marxist-Leninist ideologies that pervaded the nation, gave rise to the
Soviet Union’s adoption of the revolutionary-imperial paradigm – an ideology through which the Kremlin assumed the responsibility to spread
Communism throughout the world.[6] These ideological forces prompted the Soviet Union to adopt aggressive policies toward Eastern and
Central Europe and later toward Asia and the Middle East. Like the Soviet Union, the
United States adopted policies toward
Latin America that reflect the same vision of exporting values – a vision that was significantly influenced by
ideological sentiments. Although the United States’ pursuit for economic and military power over Latin
America dates back to the 19th century, the Cuban Revolution marks a distinct period in US-Latin
American relations, since it is then when American foreign policy fell under the ideological spell.[7] At the 1960
presidential debate, John F. Kennedy accurately expressed American sentiments when he said, “Castro is only the beginning of our difficulties
throughout Latin America. The big struggle will be to prevent the influence of Castro [from] spreading to other countries…”[8] The Cuban
Revolution was the only moment in history “when a country in this region [Latin America] became a military and political ally of the chief
adversary of the United States.”[9] Moreover, the United States’ failure to prevent Castro’s
rise to power in 1959, according to
traumatic effects on US decision-making – traumatic because it punctured the rationality of US
foreign policy toward is southern neighbours, and led it to “incur costs well beyond what rational
calculations of the relationship between ends and means would suggest.”[10] Although the United States had rational reasons to counter
Castro’s Communist movement, US foreign policy became illogical when it imposed its fear of a ‘Cuban threat’
beyond Cuba.[11] Dominguez suggests that not only were the chosen policy instruments costly, but also
inappropriate for reaching the intended goal.[12] He argues that since the Cuban Revolution, whenever the United
States sensed traces of Communism among Latin American governments, it illogically sought their downfall
(through military force and other violent means), regardless of whether its economic best interest was
truly under threat.[13] Conversely, when there was no apparent ideological threat, the United States sought to protect its economic
interests through peaceful negotiations, rather than military force.[14] Latin America witnessed the rise of many guerilla rebel
movements in the 1960s.[15] In Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, and Uruguay, openly anti-American and antiimperialist revolutionaries who espoused Marxist ideology and who felt inspired by Cuba’s successful challenge of United States
Dominguez, bore
dominance, began to challenge the status quo in their own nations.[16] These movements prompted the Kennedy administration to increase
the United States’ military support for Latin America. American military
advisors were assigned to Latin American
armed forces with the aim of suppressing the revolutionary movements, and between 1950 and 1970, 54,270 Latin
American armed forces were trained under US programs. [17] Furthermore, convinced that poverty breeds revolution, the Kennedy administration proposed a development plan for Latin America called The Alliance for
Progress, which it believed was the surest way to prevent a ‘second Cuba’ in the region.[18] Through the military strategies that accompanied the Alliance for Progress, the United Sates responded to the guerilla movements of the 1960s with unwarranted force. President Kennedy’s
humiliating defeat at the Bay of Pigs, and his personal competition with the Soviet Union’s current leader, Nikita Khrushchev, may have compelled his administration’s reaction. It is clear, however, that the United States believed that these movements had close ties with the Soviet Union,
and perceived them as Soviet tools for spreading international Communism in Latin America, that is, tools of the revolutionary-imperial paradigm.[19] As Cole Blasier illustrates, though, this was not a well-founded perception, since most guerilla movements, although Marxist, had
strained and, often, hostile relations with the orthodox Communist parties in their regions.[20] Moreover, there is little evidence of Moscow or Beijing’s support for their rebel movements.[21] When Salvador Allende’s Marxist-socialist coalition party was democratically elected in Chile in
1970, his government immediately began to undertake socialist reforms such as raising wages, extending the land reforms, and nationalizing Chilean and American firms and companies.[22] Unfounded fears of a second Cuba and of Soviet-Chilean relations led the United States to act
irrationally. Before his election, the United States tried to prevent Allende’s rise to power, and after it failed, US officials ceaselessly sought to destabilize and overthrow his government.[23] Eventually, Allende suffered an American-supported military coup in 1973.[24] The Nixon
administration’s overreaction to the occurrences in Chile was “disproportionate and inappropriate” [25] since there is little evidence of any Soviet military or economic assistance toward Allende’s government.[26] According to Dominguez, “the nature of the Soviet-Chilean relationship
could hardly justify U.S. policies toward Allende’s Chile”[27] In the 1970s, Peru faced similar political changes and economic reforms. When Juan Velasco Alvarado’s new, leftist government began to expropriate American firms, the Nixon administration acted swiftly, but rationally, to
protect its interests.[28] Alvarado, who spoke openly against the international Communist movement, underwent economic reforms similar to those of Allende’s, such as land reform and the nationalization of firms.[29] Despite his economic ties to the Soviet Union and expropriation of
American firms, however, the United States resolved its issues with Alvarado through conciliatory negotiated settlements.[30] During the early 1970s, both Allende and Alvarado implemented the same social reforms in Chile and Peru, but the United States reacted to one with force and
to the other with conciliation. What explains this contradiction in US response? Alvarado’s government, although economically tied to the Soviet Union, did not “smell Communist” and even spoke out against Communism.[31] The Americans reacted to Chile’s ideological ties to Marxism,
and feared a second Marxist country in Latin American that would be independent of and hostile to the United States.[32] As stated by Dominguez, it was reasonable for the Nixon administration to oppose Allende’s expropriation of US firms, but it did not require his overthrow (an d
murder).[33] The United States could have negotiated a peaceful settlement with Chile like it did in Peru, but rather, it “attempted to subvert Chilean democracy out of the ideological fear that an Allende government might become a second Cuba, too”[34] Dominguez’s point is
strengthened by the fact that Allende’s government was democratically elected, while Alvarado rose to power through a violent coup, and undemocratically.[35] American ideological fears carried well into the 1970s and 1980s. In Nicarag ua, a coalition of revolutionaries, the Sandinistas,
defeated the authoritarian Somoza dynasty (which had close ties to the United States).[36] Most members of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, although Marxist, opposed the Nicaraguan pro-Soviet Communist party and did not accept the Soviet discipline.[37] Moreover, the
Sandinistas’ government, with its mixed economy, plural political system, and nonaligned position, provided a perfect climate for conciliatory negotiations with the United States.[38] Nevertheless, the United States took a different route. When Reagan was elected to office in 1981, in an
effort to flaunt his firm stance against Communism, he canceled all aid to Nicaragua, attempted to block aid from the IMF, and he instructed the CIA to arm and mobilize an opposition group (the Contras) and to launch a secret campaign against the Sandinistas.[39] In fact, R eagan
consistently undercut all efforts from the Sandinistas and other Latin American governments to reach a negotiated settlement (which would have been the most cost-effective option), and chose to intervene forcefully, instead.[40] Reagan’s policy toward Nicaragua underlined the
centrality of ideology since he and his policy advisers were willing to break the law and provide military and economic support for the Contras, “despite the explicit prohibition of such actions by the U.S. Congress.”[41] He justified his nation’s actions by claiming that Nicaragua had
become a military base for a Communist takeover of Central America.[42] Once more, however, US foreign policy toward Latin Am erica was unfounded, since the Soviet Union did not supply any significant military assistance to Nicaragua (i.e. weapons which could be used for offensive
purposes), nor did it offer the Sandinistas a military alliance or any security guarantees.[43] The Reagan administration also faced revolutionary changes in Grenada when the New Jewel Movement (NJM) seized power against the authoritarian, repressive and corrupt rule of Sir Eric Gairy
in 1979.[44] Upon rising to power, the NJM nationalized many Grenadian firms but did not confiscate or expropriate any. [45] Most importantly, the NJM’s power in Grenada did not threaten the US’ economic interest.[46] Moreover, Grenada’s financial and military support from Cuba
and the Soviet Union, although existent, was rather modest and not enough to project any threat to the region.[47] The Reagan administration, however, “saw red in Grenada and it charged ahead”[48] by deploying a costly and massive invasion of Grenada, in order to “kill a threat that
The Chilean, Peruvian, Nicaraguan, and Grenadian cases all demonstrate how ideological fear of a second Cuba
in Latin America influenced the United States’ foreign policy toward the region and caused it to be
costly, irrational, and unfounded. Alternate theories (such as the realist one), however, argue that US military presence in
Latin America is not unique to the Cold War. For example, Gordon Connell-Smith maintains that the United States has
been pursuing continental hegemony (i.e. seeking to exclude other powers from the region and to create
an imbalance of power among the Americas) since the 19th century when it passed the Monroe Doctrine in
1823.[50] He claims that the United States has displayed its hegemonic ambitions by attempting to expand
its economic, political, and cultural influence throughout the region, while protecting its image my
disguising its ambitions as protecting the world from Communism, drug trafficking and so on.[51] Douglas
Farah offers a similar argument, claiming that since the fall of the Berlin Wall (and the end of the Cold War), US military presence in
Latin America has not diminished, but rather, the United States has merely modified its role in the region
while continuing to carry out the same functions.[52]
existed only in ideological terms.”[49]
The desire to increase trade and investment/exclude other powers/uphold stability in Latin America is
grounded in imperialism
Gilderhus 05 - Mark T. is a professor of history at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth and the Lyndon B. Johnson Endowed Chair Holder in U.S. history,
Forming an Informal Empire without Colonies: U.S.–Latin American Relations, Latin American Research Review 40.3, 2005, 312-325 MUSE)//A-Berg
Scholarly opinion overall supports the view that three
interlocking objectives have formed the basis of United States policy
toward Latin America in modern times. Beginning with Secretary of State James G. Blaine's espousal of a Pan-American vision in the 1880s, U.S.
leaders consistently sought to exclude European presences, to expand trade and investment, and to
uphold peace and stability. The rank order of importance among these goals changed from time to time, depending on circumstances and
personalities, and the same held true for the tactics. In [End Page 312] contrast, the strategy of forming an informal empire without
colonies remained more or less constant throughout the twentieth century. The imperial project picked up momentum as a consequence of the
Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War in 1898. U.S. leaders first relied on unilateral measures while employing military interventions in the creation of five
protectorates. Such practices prevailed during the presidencies of McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson but ultimately entailed high costs and unwanted
obligations. As a result, a shift took place after the First World War. The German defeat eliminated for a time European threats and also the principal rationale for
intervention. These outcomes, in combination with the onset of the Great Depression, called for multilateral initiatives in efforts to embrace Latin Americans as
junior partners during the age of the Good Neighbor. A succession of new policies conjured up cooperative undertakings with hopes of increasing commerce,
policing the region against internal strife, and providing safeguards against Nazi Germany. During the Second World War, this change in favor of nonintervention
paid off in the form of Latin American support for the United States. For Latin Americans, the gringos no longer appeared as a natural enemy. Most of the books
under consideration in this essay exemplify current historiographical tendencies by bestowing
agency on Latin Americans. They also
employ various methodologies while exploring diverse aspects of complex international relationships,
including geopolitics, Pan-Americanism, economic and cultural interactions, and private initiatives by
nongovernmental organizations in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. Several of these works sparkle with originality and innovation. They also set
forth significant findings, heighten levels of understanding, and force consideration of new ideas. The least distinctive among them, Martin Sicker's The Geopolitics
of Security in the Americas, may appeal to political science traditionalists but strikes me, a historian, as something of a rehash of theories based on dated secondary
accounts. Sicker claims that geopolitics, "the relationship between geography and power politics," retains utility as "a valid approach to understanding the
realpolitik of international relations." He explores "the
geopolitical and geostrategic factors that have helped shape . . .
policies toward Latin America . . . albeit," he says, "largely unacknowledged" (2) by U.S. leaders. In his view, public statements of high purpose and
principle seldom reveal true intentions, the formulation of which more typically resides in clandestine geopolitical calculations. As he explains, his thesis holds
that "a number of relatively constant environmental factors . . . have helped condition—not determine—the course of
the political history of the Western Hemisphere over the past two centuries" (2). The ensuing quest for U.S. security
constitutes the [End Page 313] main theme, developed much in the fashion of Samuel Flagg Bemis's classic, The Latin American Policy of the United
States (1943). At the end of the Latin American wars for independence, U.S. leaders staked out their strategic claims by means of
the Monroe Doctrine, warning the Europeans to stay clear of American turf but nevertheless fearing the
possibility of European intrusions. Before the Civil War, U.S. expansionists justified aggressive acts in pursuit of a land-based continental empire,
in part because of alleged British and French threats. Later they embraced even more expansive aspirations. The French intervention in Mexico during the 1860s set
back their plans but mattered hardly at all over the long-term. In 1865 the Union victory provided enough leverage to encourage a French exit and allowed
expansionists to resume their search for security through hegemony. In Sicker's view, geopolitical imperatives, sustained by p erceptions
of European
dangers, provided the primary impetus for forming an informal American empire without colonies, except of
course in the Philippines, a steppingstone on the way to the China market. In the Western Hemisphere, in contrast, Cuba, with its potential base (Guantánamo) at
the crossroads of Caribbean trade routes, became the first protectorate, followed by Panama, the site for building a trans-isthmian canal. Strategic requirements
also called forth efforts to block presumed British and German ambitions, contributing twice to military invasions of Mexico in 1914 and 1916 and to the imposition
of protectorate status on Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. For Sicker, the key for understanding the larger strategy resides in geopolitics. For me, the
requirements of cost accounting and public relations dictated the choice of means. Serving as a kind of public fiction, the construction of protectorates in
cooperation with willing local elites conformed more readily with the desired appearance of spreading democracy and civilization for the benefit of our diminutive
brown brethren. The elimination of Wilhelmine Germany as an international menace allowed for tactical experimentation. Under Presidents Hoover and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, an
evolving conception of the United States as "Good Neighbor" resulted in the deconstruction
of the protectorates and the repudiation of intervention. Indeed, the United States jettisoned the self-proclaimed right of
hemispheric police power while moving toward new initiatives supporting multilateral engagements on behalf of
trade expansion and hemispheric defense. Similarly during the Cold War, geopolitics conditioned U.S. behavior in
reaction against the Soviet threat. U.S. leaders employed both multilateral and unilateral methods, including the
creation of collective systems of security and consultation (the Rio Pact, the Organization of American States) and military interventions,
sometimes clandestinely (Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua), sometimes overtly [End Page 314] (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama). For Sicker,
such actions demonstrate that geopolitics has consistently played the primary role in shaping U.S. policy toward Latin America. Possibly so, but historians have
drawn other inferences. For example, while researching German archives for her book, The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America
(1999), Nancy Mitchell found no evidence of designs on the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, she suggests that American
leaders, such as Theodore
Roosevelt, deliberately exaggerated such concerns as a smoke screen for their own expansionist schemes. Over the
course of U.S. history, American presidents habitually have issued proclamations about alleged European perils posed either by
the British or the French or the Japanese or the Germans or the Russians. In this way, they constructed rationalizations for their own
aggressive acts and made them palatable.
The expansion of the Western market is grounded in a racialized conception of Latin America
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
Jamaican philosopher Lewis Gordon summarized the divergence between the historical logic of modernity/coloniality as experienced in Europe
and that of modernity/coloniality in the Americas. For Gordon, class is so indigenous to Europe that it emerges even in European efforts toward
socialism. One can “feel” class in Europe as the air that one breathes, observes Gordon, looking at Europe from his subjective understanding
and personal location in a Caribbean history rooted in slavery, racism, and European colonialism. In the Americas, Gordon continues, race
became an endemic motif of New World consciousness, and that is why one can “feel” race here in the same way as in
Europe one can “feel” class.38 However, the issue is not to dwell on that distinction, but to be attentive to the consequences of it. These are
crucial to understanding that, today, the “idea” of Latin America is being refurbished against the very
backdrop of the modern/colonial world. Gordon observes that: The agony experienced globally, then, is not simply
one of intensified class division but also one of an asserted New World consciousness on those not indigenous to it .
. .Something new is being formed. Just as a new oppressive relation emerged when Europe expanded westward (and subsequently, eastward),
so, too, are new
oppressive relations emerging as the New West goes global. Is it racism? Classism? Sexism? In my
is the ethos of
counter-revolution and anti-utopia.39
view, it is none of these uniquely, but instead a pervasive ethos against humanistic solutions to any of them. In short, it
1NC Geography
Geographic constructs create zones of exclusion – these hierarchies perpetuate
imperialist imagery
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
An excess of confidence has spread all over the world regarding
the ontology of continental divides.1 While it could be
debated whether there are four, six, or seven continents, it is unquestionable that the count of six or seven includes the basic
four-way subdivision of Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. That undisputed division underlies not only
debates over continental divides but also ideas of East and West, North and South, and explicitly hierarchical
categories such as first, Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds (the last a term invented to accommodate Indigenous people in
the Americas, New Zealand, and Australia). It may be common practice to buy a plane ticket to “Australia” or “sub-Saharan Africa” as opposed
to “north Africa,” but the wide
acceptance of those geographical designations hides the fact that the division of
continents and the geo-political structures imposed upon them are all imperial constructions of the past five
hundred years. A god did not create the planet earth and divide it, from the very beginning, into four continents. “America,” the fourth,
was appended to the three that had been imagined in Christianity, which St Augustine articulated in The City of God, as
we will see in chapter 1. The narrative and argument of this book, then, will not be about an entity called “Latin America,” but on how the
“idea” of Latin America came about. One of the main goals is to
uncouple the name of the subcontinent from the
cartographic image we all have of it. It is an excavation of the imperial/colonial foundation of the “idea” of
Latin America that will help us unravel the geo-politics of knowledge from the perspective of coloniality, the untold and
unrecognized historical counterpart of modernity. By “perspective of coloniality” in this case, I mean that the center of observation will be
grounded in the colonial history that
shaped the idea of the Americas. I refer to the process as an excavation rather than an
is impossible to simply uncover coloniality, insofar as it shapes and is shaped by the
processes of modernity. After all, the Americas exist today only as a consequence of European colonial
expansion and the narrative of that expansion from the European perspective, the perspective of modernity.
archeology because it
2NC Geography
Artificial binaries of North/South and Anglo/Latin are geographic products of
coloniality
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
The geo-politics
of continental division are also of key importance for understanding the way that “Latin”
America could subsequently be imagined as part of the West and yet peripheral to it. America, as a
continent and people, was considered inferior in European narratives from the sixteenth century until the idea was
refashioned in the US after the Spanish-American War in 1898, when “Latin” America took on the inferior role. Chapter 2, therefore,
goes on to explore the divisions within “America” after the revolutions of independence (North/South, Anglo/Latin),
in which “Latin” America would come to be seen as dependent on and inferior to the United States. The
concept of “Latinidad,” an identity asserted by the French and adopted by Creole elites to define themselves, would ultimately function
both to rank them below Anglo Americans and, yet, to erase and demote the identities of Indians and Afro-South
Americans. These are, in a nutshell, the history, meaning, and consequences of the “idea of Latin” America that I explore in more detail in
the next two chapters. Many secular scholars, intellectuals, World Bank officers, state functionaries, and journalists believe that “modernity is
an incomplete project.” In my view, coming from
the perspective of coloniality, to complete the incomplete project of
modernity means to keep on reproducing coloniality, which is our current reality at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. While we no longer have the overt colonial domination of the Spanish or British models, the logic of coloniality remains in
force in the “idea” of the world that has been constructed through modernity/coloniality. Examining the evolution of the
“idea of Latin America” should show that while its materialization belongs precisely to the manifestation of that logic in
particular moments of imperial/colonial restructuring, the perspective of those who have been silenced by it can open up
possibilities for radical change. Chapter 3, then, will focus on movements among Indigenous people and Afro descendants in “Latin”
America, as well as among Latinos/as3 in the US who are unfolding new knowledge projects and making the “idea of Latin America” obsolete.
1NC Heg
Their heg advantage relies on cultural and epistemic binaries that legitimize structures of violence.
Taylor 12 - Lecturer in Latin American Studies BA University of London, Queen Mary MPhil University of Glasgow PhD University of Manchester, (Lucy,
“Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America,” International Studies Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, 11 SEP 2012, 14, 386–400, Wiley Online
Library)//A-Berg
binaries that
have helped to generate the status of the United States in its position of global powerfulness. This position is of course determined by the US’
economic dominance and military might, but also its standing in the global arena is conditioned by its image as a coherent
and progressive nation. This image calls on (at least) two dialogues of othering , which are configured through
coloniality and respond to hierarchies of knowledge and race: firstly, ‘‘domestic’’ coloniality and the Native American other; secondly,
My decolonial approach involves revealing the operation of coloniality⁄modernity, and this leads me to recognize and destabilize two intertwined
‘‘international’’ coloniality and the Latin American other. Revealing the operation of coloniality serves to problematize the naturalness of these ‘‘American’’
hierarchies and unsettles our image of the USA, opening ways to contest its superiority. Here, I am adopting the strategy of provincialization advocated by Nayak
and Selbin, but I am not proposing to provincialize from a very different epistemological position (as Chakrabarty (2000) did with reference to Europe and India, for
example) but from a place that offers many similarities. These similarities stem from their shared place in the development of modernity⁄coloniality and capitalism,
their social and cultural roots in the colonial encounter, and the ongoing dynamics of racial and epistemological inequality. Viewing the USA from a perspective
which begins in the long sixteenth century allows us to reveal and disrupt binaried thinking and question global hierarchies; that this involves rethinking the USA
makes it of primary relevance for a decolonial IR. From
a coloniality of power perspective embedded in contemporary
Latin America, the most obvious binary which contributes to US dominance is the Native/settler binary.
The USA was constructed through a process in which the superiority of northern European settler people and their
worldviews was asserted over Native American societies. This took the form of on-going territorial, economic,
and epistemological conquest over Native peoples throughout the period, but perhaps the most formative experience, according to Shari
Huhndorf, was the drive West in the nineteenth century (2001). This pivotal moment of struggle and national myth formation consolidated the US nationstate in
terms of territory, migration, and economic expansion, as well as solidifying its national identity (Huhndorf 2001: 19–64; Bender 2006: 193–241). The colonial
characterized by massacres, displacement, and deception, which decimated Native
communities and asserted the settlers’ military, political, and epistemological dominance (D’Errico 2001). As land was settled,
project of western expansion was
the country became subdued and the enclosure of Native Americans in Reservations served to confirm the hegemonic dominance of a nationstate, which could set
the terms of limited Native autonomy (Ostler 2004). Moreover, the mythology of the White pioneer who built ranches and towns in the wilderness attempted to
displace the Native peoples from their status of original Americans (Agnew and Sharp 2002; Wolfe 2006 ).
This domination was territorial but also
epistemic and ethnic, then, and the success, coherence, and completeness of political domination and ethnic silencing played a direct
role in generating a coherent and complete vision of ‘‘America’’. Thus, and in the words of Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893, ‘‘Moving
westward, the frontier became more and more American’’ (quoted in Huhndorf 2005: 56). This dominance was confirmed by the capacity of US culture to
appropriate Native imagery and practices in a wide range of scenarios from the movies to Scouting via World Fairs and fashion (Huhndorf 2001: 19–78, 162–202).
Native Americans have never ceased to resist this onslaught and to express the agonies of the colonial wound and the fresh imaginaries of the colonial difference
the ‘‘success’’ of the American Dream made for the
dominance of the hegemonic settler culture (Churchill 1997). The second dynamic of coloniality which has helped
to generate US powerfulness was the emergence of the north/south binary, hinged at the US–Mexico border zone, with
(Alfred and Corntassel 2005; Tyeeme Clark and Powell 2008), but
its economic, political, and racial dynamics. This binary developed particularly in the nineteenth century as the USA emerged to powerfulness but it is rooted in
colonial rivalries. The colonial heritage of Latin America was derived mostly from a Catholic and southern Spanish empire, which during the long sixteenth century
lost spiritual and political power in Europe to the protestant north, led by the British (who went on to become the pre-eminent colonial power). The conquistadores
were branded with the ‘‘Black Legend’’ of Spanish colonialism by an emerging intelligentsia who painted themselves as enlightened bringers of progress, in contrast
to the despotic, violent, lazy, and exploitative Spanish (Powell 1971: 39–59; Weber 2005: 2). In the USA, they chose to overlook the century of Spanish colonization
This
sense of superiority linked to a British colonial heritage was compounded by perceived racial inferiority
of Latin American elites who were descended from ‘‘darker’’ Europeans to the south and presided over countries with large indigenous and mestizo
(mixed-heritage) populations (Leys Stepan 1991: 45; Goldberg 2009). The superiority of a ‘‘White’’ and protestant USA seemed to
be confirmed by the contrasting fortunes of South and North America: While Spain fell to Napoleonic rule and lost most of
of the North, and popular histories came to mark the birth of ‘‘America’’ with the arrival of the English Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower (Horwitz 2009).
its colonies during the 1810s, the expanding USA acquired Louisiana (1812), Florida (1819) and New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, and sections of
Colorado (1848)––much of it formerly under Spanish rule (Mignolo 2005: 49–82). An
ascendant USA took up the role of regional
policeman expressed through the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, donning the mantle of Western supremacism which was being
exercised by the Old World powers across Africa and Asia. The United States went on to take possession of the Philippines in 1898 and intensified its interest in
Nicaragua, Panama, Guatemala, and Cuba, among others, at the same time. The economic benefits which accrued from such a role were, of course, also very
significant (Robinson 1996; Livingstone 2009). This policing role was expanded by the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which staked the United States’ claim to be a
global actor, a claim which was reinforced by interventionist foreign policy actions across the region (Ryan 2000: 40–54; Murphy 2005). From
an angle
which foregrounds coloniality and the powerfulness of racial– epistemic hierarchies, then, the rise of the
USA to global powerfulness occurs in dialogue with countries to the south which were understood to be
racially inferior and economically fair game for an expanding USA which sought to protect and enhance
its interests (Ryan 2000: 1–10). Thus, Latin America is a crucial site for launching the US’ career as a global agent,
economic powerhouse, norm advocate, and keeper of ‘‘the peace,’’ a site which is framed by dynamics
of race and colonialism. Understanding US powerfulness demands, then, that IR take seriously not only its
economic imperialism and interventionist bullying, but the coloniality of that power relationship, replete
with epistemological and racial dimensions. Indeed, taking seriously the coloniality of power implies asking how its domestic and
international dimensions are linked. By looking beyond the confines of ‘‘domestic’’ and ‘‘international,’’ we can perceive continuities in the exercise of coloniality
and the operation the European epistemic project. For example, Huhndorf argues that the completion of the westward expansion and ‘‘solution’’ of the Indian
Problem spelled trouble for a US identity that was made vivid through conquest. Sustaining and building that identity (and the economic and geopolitical power
which was accrued by the expropriation of land) required that new frontiers be breached, which could recreate the energizing effects of dominating the barbarian
(Huhndorf 2005: 61–4). It was in this spirit, she argues, that the United States took possession of the Philippines and intensified its interest in Central America and
the Caribbean. In this way, the practice of coloniality by the US settler elite shifted southwards and took on imperial dimensions.
2NC Heg
Colonialism is at the foundation of hegemony
Taylor 12 - Lecturer in Latin American Studies BA University of London, Queen Mary MPhil University of Glasgow PhD University of Manchester, (Lucy,
“Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America,” International Studies Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, 11 SEP 2012, 14, 386–400, Wiley Online
Library)//A-Berg
Finally, this question asks us to link
power relationships in the ‘‘domestic’’ realm to global hierarchies, inviting us to look for
continuities in racialized relationships across the globe and the operation of adapted colonial relationships in arenas outside the nation-state.
It places colonialism and the coloniality of power at the center stage of a geopolitics dominated by the
USA and suggests that global hierarchies are not separate from domestic ones but that each is interrelated and
potentially reinforcing. The caveat in turn asserts the centrality of decolonial politics to broader struggles for more equal social and global relations.
It asks IR not only to take colonialism seriously but to rethink the USA as a colonial place–– a settler society which could
potentially be destabilized by decolonial political struggle. Thinking decolonially about the USA has implications, then, for the
discipline of IR. These implications are theoretical, following Inayatullah and Blaney, for example, but they also impact on the configuration of the mainstream
discipline; conventional
IR supports US foreign policy goals, promotes Western values and practices which
the United States champions, and it is its scholarly home. For these reasons, decolonizing both the USA and IR are complementary and essential
parallel goals.
1NC “Latin America”
“Latin America” is an epistemological construct relying on colonialist power relations
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
The “invention of America” thesis offers, instead, a perspective from coloniality and, in consequence, reveals that the
advances of modernity outside of Europe rely on a colonial matrix of power that includes the renaming of the
lands appropriated and of the people inhabiting them, insofar as the diverse ethnic groups and civilizations in Tawantinsuyu
and Anáhuac, as well as those from Africa, were reduced to “Indians” and “Blacks.” The idea of “America” and of “Latin”
America could, of course, be accounted for within the philosophical framework of European modernity, even
if that account is offered by Creoles of European descent dwelling in the colonies and embracing the Spanish or Portuguese view of events.
What counts, however, is that the need for telling the part of the story that was not told requires a shift in the
geography of reason and of understanding. “Coloniality,” therefore, points toward and intends to unveil an
embedded logic that enforces control, domination, and exploitation disguised in the language of
salvation, progress, modernization, and being good for every one. The double register of modernity/coloniality has, perhaps, never
been as clear as it has been recently under the administration of US president George W. Bush. Pedagogically, it is important for my argument
to conceptualize “modernity/coloniality” as two sides of the same coin and not as two separate frames of mind: you cannot
be modern
without being colonial; and if you are on the colonial side of the spectrum you have to transact with modernity – you cannot ignore it.
The very idea of America cannot be separated from coloniality: the entire continent emerged as such in
the European consciousness as a massive extent of land to be appropriated and of people to be
converted to Christianity, and whose labor could be exploited. Coloniality, as a term, is much less frequently heard than “modernity”
and many people tend to confuse it with “colonialism.” The two words are related, of course. While “colonialism” refers to specific historical
periods and places of imperial domination (e.g., Spanish, Dutch, British, the US since the beginning of the twentieth century), “coloniality”
refers to the logical structure of colonial domination underlying the Spanish, Dutch, British, and US control of the Atlantic economy and politics,
and from there the control and management of almost the entire planet. In each of the particular imperial periods of colonialism – whether led
by Spain (mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) or by England (from the nineteenth century to World War II) or by the US (from
the early twentieth century until now) – the same logic was maintained; only power changed hands.
Aff Specific
1NC Biotech
Expanding biotechnology is an attempt to re-order the world as more open to colonization and
imperialism
Jasanoff 06 - Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, (Sheila, Biotechnology and Empire: The Global Power
of Seeds and Science, OSIRIS 2006, 21 : 273–292)//A-Berg
As if echoing the explosion of historical and political writing about empire, there has been an explosion of writing on the uses of science in the cause of imperial
expansion, with the scientific management of nature commanding center stage. Colonial historians have observed that the
human and biological
sciences came into their own to serve imperial needs from the eighteenth century onward, in much the same way that Scott’s twentiethcentury planning states used engineering and social sciences to achieve legibility. Anthropology, botany, ecology, geography,
linguistics,and even early forensic sciences have deep colonial roots: to rule effectively, occupying
governments had to map their territories, classify populations into identifiable groups, and catalog flora,
fauna, languages, and cultural practices.29 Making things grow, often under unfavorable natural conditions in nonnative habitats,
gave a push to imperial ecology, conservation biology, and agricultural science.30 Sometimes the motives were crassly
extractive and exploitative, as in the harvesting of wild rubber in King Leopold II’s Belgian Congo, where violence and force were the notorious instruments of
colonial rule.31Elsewhere,colonists heedlessly harvested tropical timber or took commercially useful plants such as cinchona (from which quinine is derived) or
breadfruit for cultivation in new territories.32Sometimes otherwise well-intentioned migrations had disastrous results. For instance, rabbits transported to Australia
for hunting became an uncontrollable pest, as Morris colorfully records.33Yet more altruistic motives also prevailed. Richard Grove traces the roots of western
environmentalism to early modern European encounters with tropical islands.34As self-contained and containable spaces, these islands appealed to voyagers’
Edenic and Romantic sensibilities, as well as to their protective instincts. Lush islands brought to life idyllic conceptions of the gardens of paradise; at the same time,
in those bounded preserves, travelers could easily observe the destructive effects of resource depletion and environmental degradation. The island of Mauritius, in
Grove’s account, became the site of some of the world’s earliest systematic efforts at nature conservation and scientific forest management. These practices, in
turn, provided practical models for conservation efforts in India and elsewhere from the 1830s onward.35 Colonial
enterprise also laid the
basis for western ideologies of development. Along with concerns for the moral and religious education
of the strangers they went to live among, the rulers of empires exhibited a compelling desire to improve
the new territories under their command. British engineers laid roads and railways, built irrigation systems, and left indelible architectural
imprints throughout India. Just as pervasive was Britain’s (and in other regions, France’s) engagement with botany and agriculture. Already in
the early nineteenth century, a coalition of professional scientists and administrators had converted the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew into a publicly run
center of knowledge for the productive management of nature.36Problems of sugar cane cultivation in the West Indies led to the
formation of the Imperial Department of Agriculture at the end of the nineteenth century. A source of scientific expertise for West Indian sugar cane growers, the
department also became, under the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain, the Liberal secretary of state for the colonies, a breeding ground for early discourses of
development.37Like enlightened estate managers back home, hose entrusted with the welfare of colonial “properties” felt a need to ameliorate the conditions of
life for the local poor. Promoting
development abroad, they also thought, would transform the colonies into
more advantageous trading partners, thereby producing useful returns for domestic constituencies.
Improving agricultural production was a favored route to achieving these goals, although access to metropolitan
knowledge remained stratified, with native farmers, in many cases, continuing to cultivate their lands without the benefits of modern science.38 The first half of the
twentieth century cast the
imperial project of biology in a darker light as the improvers’ attention turned toward standardization
for control, and broadened to include humans in addition to plants and animals. The enthusiasm of progressive social
reformers for eugenics at the turn of the century led to decades of discrimination in the United States, including the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924,
numerous state sterilization laws, and Buck v. Bell, the infamous 1927 Supreme Court decision upholding the sterilization of a Virginia woman, Carrie Buck, on the
ground that “[t]hree generations of imbeciles are enough.”39The eugenicists’ concern for selective breeding and race purity was carried to pathological extremes in
the Nazi period, when millions of humans deemed undesirable by German race theorists— Jews, gays, Gypsies—were uprooted and eliminated throughout the
Third Reich. For the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, these atrocities were the natural descendants of the same enlightenment ideals that had led Frederick the Great
of Prussia to exclaim, “It annoys me to see how much trouble is taken to cultivate pineapples, bananas and other exotic plants in this rough climate, when so little
care is given to the human race.”40 The modern “gardening state,” Bauman argues, turned Frederick’s metaphor into crude reality by ruthlessly weeding out
everything that its planners saw as standing in the way of reason, order, and progress. In spite of these midcentury turmoils and disruptions, the
alliance
between biology and power has only grown more intimate and pervasive in subsequent decades.
Foucault saw biopower and biopolitics as essential technologies with which modern states must control their populations—by assuming responsibility for the
health, safety, and stability of citizens’ collective lives.41Central to the exercise of biopower, then, is the state’s ability to characterize human bodies and behavior in
ways that rationalize and, in democratic societies, publicly justify that state’s policies. Increasingly, the
state asserts itself under the
umbrella of epidemiology: as the master diagnostician of ills that threaten groups of people in society. The
polarizing debates on gay marriage before and during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign may be seen in this light as part of a more general discourse on sexuality
and the family, with competing political factions claiming citizens’ allegiance by defining what counts as deviance in sexual behavior and family mores. In the
culturally heterogeneous United States, as in Stoler’s East Indian colonies, the rules of sexual conduct serve as powerful instruments for building social cohesion, by
decreeing who falls inside and who outside the accepted forms of domestic order. Today as before, moreover, biopower
extends into all of life
on the planet, not only the lives of humans but also the natural worlds with which humans live in close
symbiosis. Sick and failing plants, no less than sick and failing people, fall within the biopolitical imagination of the
neoliberal state and its corporate partners, whose innovative capacity is as essential to underwriting
state action as is the capacity of expert professionals to define and apply the technical criteria of
governmentality.42Governing bodies, after all, proceeds not only through exclusion, or weeding out, but also through therapeutic processes of making
whole and bringing the previously sick back into the community of viable beings. The ordering state is most powerful when it is at the same time, demonstrably, a
healing state, and such a state engages science for therapeutic, as well as diagnostic, ends. Let us return, then, to agricultural
biotechnology as a
field of contemporary biopower that continues the historical partnership of the life sciences with the state and,
in so doing, intersects with each of the modes of empirebuilding described above. PLANTS FOR THE PLANET:THE EMPIRES
OF BIOTECHNOLOGY Apart from occasional radical social misfits such as the so-called Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski,43few any longer question the vital role of
science and technology in human development. Even opponents of particular technological projects—large dams,44for example, or genetically modified (GM)
foods45—rarely dismiss technology outright; rather they favor smaller, more transparent, or more locally governable technological systems. The question that
preoccupies students of science and technology, then, is not whether, but how, to integrate innovation into people’s lives so as to make a positive difference. Years
of research in the social psychology of risk perception46and public understanding of science47have established that popular fear or rejection of new technology
often rests, at bottom, on an uneasiness about the ways in which technology is managed or, more accurately, governed. What do these observations imply for an
industry with global ambitions, like agricultural biotechnology? How, more specifically, does
biotechnology contribute to ways of
political worldmaking beyond the nation-state, and what implications do the engagements between
biotechnology and global politics have for democratic governance? In reaching for answers, it is useful
to think of biotechnology operating politically in several different registers. It is, of course, most plainly a material technology: it makes
new instruments for warding off harm and disorder, such as plants that resist insects, weeds, or drought, and it redesigns pieces of nature, such as genes, to
perform new tasks in new environments. In this respect, biotechnology is, concurrently, a metaphysical device; it brings
new entities into
the world and through that process reorders our sense of rightness in both nature and society.48At the same
time, biotechnology is a discourse: to some, of progress and improvement, beneficence and utility; to
others, of risk, invasiveness, and domination from afar. Proponents of agricultural biotechnology tell particular stories about a world in which plant
genetic modification is possible, and these stories carry political and cultural weight. Lastly, biotechnology is an institution of governance;
it shapes forms of social life by influencing how people choose to, or are able to, live with the products of bioindustry. Each of these registers, as we see below, has been activated in the global politics of biotechnology.
2NC Biotech
Biotech aid forcefully develops countries for imperial purposes – causes biopower.
Jasanoff 06 - Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, (Sheila, Biotechnology and Empire: The Global Power
of Seeds and Science, OSIRIS 2006, 21 : 273–292)//A-Berg
Empires, no less than nation-states, engender and depend on feelings of belonging. Devices for producing imperial imagined
communities have included, besides the grand, polarizing, ideological discourses of the cold war, mundane practices such as performing national
celebrations,68teaching a common language, training administrative ansd judicial élites, and building infrastructures for commerce and communication. Science
and technology, we have seen, have long served as agents of imperial governmentality, helping to produce the mission
consciousness and the associated forms of knowledge and skill that serve as instruments for extending power.
Modern biotechnology, similarly, provides a discourse of development that continues colonial traditions,
although the agents, recipients, and specific mechanisms of the development project have been partially reconfigured in modern times. The discovery of Africa as a
site for biotechnological development, through the propagation of crops such as golden rice,offers perhaps the clearest illustration. In
the rhetoric of
development specialists, and the scientific and industrial institutions that serve them, Africa is represented through tropes of crisis and
charity that render the continent’s condition as dire and the offers of scientific and technological solutions as
salvationary.69In one instructive example, Gordon Conway, former president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and a colleague wrote an article in the
prestigious journal Scienceon biotechnology’s capacity to help Africans. Though presented as scientific, the article merged the empiricist register of science with a
narrative register that was little short of missionary. At the center of the discussion was a fictional African housewife, “Mrs. Namurunda,” who the authors said was
not a real person but “a composite of situations existing in Africa.”70The story begins with Mrs. Namurunda, a farmer and single mother, eking out a hard-scrabble
existence on fields infested with every form of insect blight, under adverse conditions of drought and soil degradation. It ends with scientific biotechnology solving
her problems, enabling her to turn a profit and secure a brighter, better educated, more enlightened future for her children. This script follows Foucault’s
delineation of biopower with uncanny precision. An
entire continent becomes a medicalized body, requiring urgent
therapeutic intervention, both as a collective and for its individual members. The fictional person of Mrs. Namurunda,
unveiled in the pages of one of the world’s leading scientific journals, becomes a symbol for Africa’s “composite” ailments. Advanced societies’power
to develop and deliver the requisite treatments offers them the right, indeed the obligation, to engage
in a new mission civilisatrice—built on a biomedical ethic of cure rather than, as in earlier times, a religious model of grace. But,
this time, eschewing the forceful, state-led constellations of power that undergirded colonial rule, the neoliberal state works through a lightly regulated global
industry and a largely selfregulating scientific community. Their expansion into new territories carries the promise of better jobs and higher incomes back in the
home country,thereby allowing the economically more powerful state to justify itself where votes are counted, in its own national community of citizens. The
sick and incapacitated recipient, however, has little or no say in either the diagnosis or the treatment of
the alleged pathology.
Biotechnology legitimizes management of life and spreads imperial governance
Jasanoff 06 - Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, (Sheila, Biotechnology and Empire: The Global Power
of Seeds and Science, OSIRIS 2006, 21 : 273–292)//A-Berg
Imperial projects, as many are arguing today, did not end with the end of colonialism but may be resurfacing in new guises with the
passage of time. Since early modernity, these projects have benefited from the enterprises of science and technology ,
and the biological sciences in particular have been caught up for centuries in the spread of imperial forms of
governance. It is no surprise, then, to find contemporary biotechnology enrolled in various modalities of empire-making,
whether through bottom-up resistance, top-down ideological imposition, administrative standardization, or consensual
constitutionalism. In particular, as shown above, the capacity to engineer the genetic characteristics of plants has blended
seamlessly with state and corporate projects of managing human populations so as to legitimate the
exercise of power. Both nation-states and,in an era of neoliberalism,the multinational corporations that states are in league with have displayed their
readiness to deploy agricultural biotechnology in advancing their interests on a global scale. Struggles over the governance of biotechnology complicate any easy,
linear narrative of progress. Instead, the nexus of globalization and technological innovation emerges on closer inspection as a politically contested site, where
opposing conceptions of how human societies should live, and what other life forms should sustain them, remain very much at play. The example of European
integration around biotechnology strongly suggests that there is considerable cross-cultural variation in the lines that human societies, even closely similar ones,
choose to draw between nature and culture and the extent to which they are willing to tolerate line-crossings between those two domains. Given a chance to
express themselves democratically, moreover, stable societies often opt to retain old boundaries and forms of life, preferring gradual,internally motivated change to
imported,alien visions of progress,no matter how glittering the offerings presented to them
1NC Counter-Narcotics
Funding counter-narcotics is an alibi to expand military operations and destabilize Mexico
Watt and Morales, ’10 - Peter Watt teaches and researches Latin American Studies at the University of Sheffield, Daniela Morales is a journalist who
writes for La Jornada Michoacán, “Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Neoliberalism and a Militarized State,” Interview, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives79/2696-narcotrafficking-in-mexico-neoliberalism-and-a-militarized-state)//A-Berg
In an interview with La Jornada Michoacán, Daniela Morales talks to British academic, Peter Watt, who argues that neoliberal
policies and the war
on Mexican drug cartels are part of the same project; to maintain a weak democracy and a militarized
state with the purpose of preserving economic and political control of the United States in the region.
Daniela Morales: To what extent has the war on narcotrafficking in Mexico been effective? Peter Watt: When one studies the results those policies have had and
analyzes the motivations the US and Mexican governments have for implementing them, one finds that the declared goals differ from the real goals. If the Mérida
Initiative and the 'War on Drugs' have to do with the security of Mexicans, they have been a complete failure; but if they're to do with other things, perhaps they're
quite successful. DM: What type of other things? PW: One example would be the Zapatista controlled territories, where despite being the last corner of Mexico
where there haven't been executions committed by the cartels, there has been an increase in state violence against those communities under the pretext of looking
for narcotics. And why the rise in the number of elite military commandos in Chiapas? Why so many military bases? I think there are two reasons. Firstly, it's part of
Plan Sur, an initiative agreed by the US and Mexican governments to prevent Central Americans heading for the US from crossing Mexico's southern border. The
in southern Mexico many multinationals have significant interests because there are so many natural resources . Developers want to use
those lands for eco-tourism, they want to exploit the natural resources contained in the forests, etc. The pretext is
always the 'war on drugs' or 'security', but there is more behind the justifications and Chiapas is just one example.
other is that
DM: The Mérida Initiative has objectives that are not exactly to do with combating narcotrafficking? PW: Initially they called it Plan Mexico but changed the name
probably because people associated it with Plan Colombia. Critics of the Mérida Initiative still call it Plan Mexico because they identify it with Plan Colombia. In the
case of Colombia, where financial
backing of the army and paramilitaries by the US was justified as a war on the
cartels and narcotraffickers , the effect was that production and export of cocaine either stayed the same or increased, so if it was a 'war on drugs',
against the narcos, it was a disaster. But at least some representatives of the US government were honest enough to admit that the war was not only on drugs but
on the insurgents, the guerrilla and in order to safeguard the interests of multinationals. So from that perspective the policy was successful in safeguarding the
interests of capital and maintaining control of a Latin America that is integrating economically. The US has two very strong allies in the region, Mexico and Colombia,
the countries that have received the largest amount of military aid. The only countries that receive more are Israel and Egypt. Outside that category at the moment,
the real goals have to do with
counterinsurgency , with the establishment of a system of military control in North and Central America, it makes sense. DM:
the largest program of foreign aid from the US is to Mexico under the rubric of the Mérida Initiative. Thus, if
Money in exchange for economic and political control of Mexico and the region. PW: There are many things. There's the fact that the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) has been a disaster for the majority of Mexicans, for farmers and for the poor who stopped farming because they couldn't demand a decent
price for their products and who have now left the country. Migration from Mexico to the United States is by now the largest cross-border movement on the planet,
with some 500,000 people crossing annually, perhaps a little less in the last few years, a phenomenon which was provoked by the same neoliberal policies which
have been implemented since 1982. Migration has had the effect of liberating a lot of land which multinational corporations are buying up. So on one hand,
developers are taking over the land, and on the other, narcotraffickers are using them to grow poppies and marijuana. Those two sectors are the prime beneficiaries
narcotrafficking is a consequence of neoliberal policies in Mexico ? PW: Yes.
created the perfect conditions for the growth of the
cartels. The cartels are merely following neoliberal doctrine – fierce and free competition, veneration of private property –
and are taking advantage of the poverty and of the debilitated society as much as the corporations.
Neoliberal policies weakened the Mexican state and public institutions. After 1982, and particularly following the
of NAFTA. DM: Do you think the problem of
Narcotrafficking existed long before neoliberalism, but accords like NAFTA
implementation of NAFTA in 1994, Mexico was importing maize and beans, the country's most ancient products, and now those products are imported from the
richest countries because Mexican farmers don't receive a decent price and cannot compete with cheap imported goods. For example, by 2007 a kilo of illicit drugs
could get a price 300 times higher than a kilo of maize; a kilo of marijuana or poppies was worth more than a ton of beans. That's a result of NAFTA and for that
reason there are now more hectares in Mexico dedicated to growing poppies than maize. So what are farmers to do in such a context? It's not difficult to
understand why growing illegal drugs expanded so rapidly. DM: In the 'War on Drugs' then, there are at least two aspects which hardly ever get discussed:
counterinsurgency and protection of powerful economic interests. Does that explain the ambiguous discourse and participation of the US in that war? PW: It's
estimated that 90 percent of illegal arms in Mexico originate in the US and that by now there are about 15 million illegal arms – some come from the US military – in
a country of 105 million people, and those are only the illegal arms, a problem that the Mérida Initiative includes no provision for countering, something which
would surely be a step in reducing levels of insecurity. If it were really a war on narcotrafficking, another way of controlling it would be to rehabilitate drug addicts
in the US, but not a cent goes towards rehabilitation programs. Those who support US policy say that proof that it is working is that there has been a rise in violence
in northern Mexico, they say that so much violence is the result of the cartels panicking. But the violence contributes to guaranteeing a high price for drugs, because
it makes it more expensive and risky to transport drugs from Colombia or Mexico and to cross them over to the US side. So again, if it's really a war on the
narcotraffickers then the policy of presidents Calderón and Obama isn't working because drugs are readily available everywhere and cocaine is getting purer. DM:
What about human rights? PW: At the Summit of the American in August 2009, Obama said that with the training of elements of the Mexican Army he was sure that
the Mexican government and military would guarantee protection of human rights, but the Mexican Army has always acted with total impunity. Last year, under the
Mérida Initiative, the US Congress had asked that 15 percent of the funds go towards the protection of human rights so one of the first things Obama did was to
have removed paragraphs relating to such protections. So he can talk about human rights in Mexico, but reality is quite different. Meanwhile, there are figures
which show that between 1993 and 2009, 217, 000 soldiers deserted from the Mexican Army among whom some were trained by the DEA, by the FBI and who
formed part of special elite forces, taking their arms with them. Some are now working for the cartels who pay better. I imagine Obama knows all this. Mexican and
US human rights groups, like Human Rights Watch, agree that the militarization of society has led to a rise in violations of human rights, so how can Obama say that
he is sure that the military and the government can guarantee security and protection of human rights? DM: Is Mexico now lacking a functioning state? PW: There
are those who say that Mexico is on the path towards that of a failed state. For example, when Felipe Calderón went to Ciudad Juárez following the incident on
January 30, when workers from the US consulate were assassinated, he said that he had the country under control, but he has to go to Juárez in secret, he doesn't
appear in public and he can't, because the state does not control the city, so in that sense there's a failed state in Ciudad Juárez because the government cannot
guarantee the security of its citizens and that is one of the most obvious qualifications for becoming a failed state. The neoliberal policies applied in Mexico since
1982 have left a weakened state and it is very ironic that now, after the supposed democratization of the country in 2000, Mexico is now a weak democracy where,
for example, remittances sent home from Mexicans working in the US are often used to build infrastructure and to provide services which are normally the
obligation of the state. The sad irony is that during 70 years of PRI government, Mexico was virtually alone in Latin America in not having fallen under the hammer
of a military dictatorship, but now, with the so-called democratization, it's
going very quickly towards a military state. At the moment
there are more troops and police on the streets of Mexico than the British government sent to invade and occupy Iraq. DM: So there's the possibility of a military
state?
2NC Counter-Narcotics
Their rhetoric of narco-terrorism fuels militaristic intervention and violence.
Watt and Morales, ’10 - Peter Watt teaches and researches Latin American Studies at the University of Sheffield, Daniela Morales is a journalist who
writes for La Jornada Michoacán, “Narcotrafficking in Mexico: Neoliberalism and a Militarized State,” Interview, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives79/2696-narcotrafficking-in-mexico-neoliberalism-and-a-militarized-state)//A-Berg
PW: I think that in 2006 the Mexican political system got scared because the progressive candidate in the general elections, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, almost
won. Well, it seems he did win but was prevented from taking power in a situation reminiscent of 1988, when the PRI fixed the election results to prevent the more
progressive Cuathémoc Cárdenas from taking power. What's striking is that the
population is totally against neoliberal policies,
against NAFTA, that they want to change the Mexican system, reduce inequality, make wide-ranging
changes. For example, Carlos Slim, the richest man on the planet, gains around 27 million dollars a day while the majority of Mexicans live on less than two
dollars a day. Of course, in Mexico there's no organized insurgency on the scale of the FARC in Colombia, but there are many different groups fighting for the rights
of workers, for protection of the natural environment, for the rights of women and I think the fear of Mexican elites and the US government was the threat of a
deepening democracy, a democracy which rejects neoliberal economics and the political control of the US. DM: But don't you think that the US has forgotten Latin
America somewhat because it is distracted by its invasions in the Middle East? PW: If only they would forget it a little! But it's not like that. The
presence of
US troops in Mexico would be illegal, but it would also provoke as much popular dissatisfaction in
Mexico as in the US. Furthermore, Mexico was one of 12 Latin American republics to follow a decision by the International Criminal Court to deny
impunity to US soldiers abroad. It's better for the US to train foreign police and soldiers, in this case Mexicans, because that way it will be their problem if someone
complains about violations of human rights. In this way Washington has the advantage of appearing before the world as a neutral observer while it finances the
regime with arms, training, paramilitaries and helicopters. The
discourse of US politicians changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall; it's no
longer Communism because in the 1980s they found another pretext – narcotrafficking – and following the attacks in New York in 2001
the justifications of the 'War on Drugs' became associated with themes like security, the terrorist threat
from Islamic extremists, the left, guerrilla insurgents, those who are supposedly transporting Weapons
of Mass Destruction through Latin America to mount an attack on the US. So when US politicians link all of that
together they are planting the thought in the public mind that there is a terrorist threat from Mexico, from
Colombia, leftist groups, left-leaning governments like those of Venezuela, Bolivia or Ecuador and they are associating
them with narcotrafficking and it provides a very good pretext, particularly in the US where clearly there's little awareness of what's really going on.
The discourse of the Cold War is being repeated but now under the pretext of narcotrafficking,
terrorism, Chavismo. Meanwhile, the US military is overstretched in the Middle East, but the preoccupation has to do with the fact that many Latin
American countries are integrating with each other. The traditional domination of the north is looking increasingly
undermined and the manner in which they try to control the system that they have always dominated,
and which is rejected by the people, is by means of coercion, by force, by arms. There has been talk of
establishing a military base in Veracruz, for example, which would be, I suppose, to maintain and ensure the export of
Mexican petroleum, but also for surveillance, to gather intelligence on what is happening in the Caribbean, in Mexico and in
Central America. There's another US base in Puerto Rico and there are now some further seven military bases in Colombia because there's no longer a base in
Ecuador and these things are all connected. If you look at US policy towards Mexico in terms of combating narcotrafficking it makes no sense. If you look beyond
that, from a perverse perspective, it makes a lot of sense to US planners..
1NC Democracy Promotion
Democracy promotion is paternalistic and Eurocentric--provoking resentment and turning the case.
Slater, ’07 - Ph.D from London School of Economics and Professor Emeritus of Geography at Loughborough University, (David, Imperial Geopolitics and the
Promise of Democracy, Volume 38, Issue 6, Article first published online: 13 NOV 2007, Wiley Online Library)//A-Berg
From the nineteenth century onward — and Wilson (1901) had already referred to that century as a ‘century of democracy’ — US
expansion went
together with an emerging narrative that stressed the political significance of ‘self-government’3and
‘democracy’. For Woodrow Wilson, democracy supplies the ‘frank and universal criticism, the free play of individual thought, the open conduct of public
affairs, the spirit and pride of community and of cooperation which make governments just and public spirited’ (ibid.: 296). Closely linked into the
validation of democracy has been a belief in the importance of self-government and the need to extend
it geopolitically . Wilson wrote that it is our task to ‘extend selfgovernment to Porto Rico (sic) and the Philippines, if they be fit to receive it’ (ibid.). This
sense of extending self-government and the foundations of democratic politics remained relevant throughout the twentieth century(Robinson, 1996) and in today’s
situation we still find a strong emphasis on the
US’s perceived need to spread democracy globally . For example, the National Security
Strategy for 2006 is founded upon two pillars: (a) to promote freedom, justice and human dignity; and (b) to lead a growing community of democracies. Specifically
on democracy, it states that the policy of the US is to seek and support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture (The White House,
2006). This support is conditional on the kind of democratic politics encountered, so in the Quadrennial Defense Review Report for 2006, the
Chávez
democratic experiment in Venezuela is characterized as being populist and authoritarian and a source of
political and economic instability (Department of Defense, 2006: 28). Notions of spreading self-government and
democracy to other worlds were accompanied by subordinating modes of representation. For example, Woodrow
Wilson, one of the most interventionist of US Presidents (see Weber, 1995), wrote that the ‘East is to be opened and transformed...the standards
of the West are to be imposed upon it; nations and peoples which have stood still...are to be quickened and made part of the universal world
of commerce and of ideas’. Furthermore, the US was to ‘teach them order and self-control in the midst of change; impart to them, if it be possible by contact and
sympathy and example, the drill and habit of law and obedience’ (Wilson, 1901: 297–8). A sense of sympathy and example was expressed some years later by a
State Department instructor who advised new US envoys to Latin America that: if the United States has received but little gratitude, this is only to be expected in a
world where gratitude is rarely accorded to the teacher, the doctor or the policeman, and we have been all three...but it may be that in time they will come to see
the United States with different eyes, and to have for her something of the respect and affection with which...a child looks upon the parent who has molded his
character. (Schoultz, 1999: 386). Schoultz goes on to suggest, in his comprehensive
investigation of US– Latin American relations,
that ‘a belief in Latin American inferiority is the essential core of United States policy toward Latin
America because it determines the precise steps the United States takes to protect its interests in the
region’ (ibid.: xv).4 This kind of imperial mentality which is deeply rooted in US society , and is also linked internally to the
treatment of Native Americans, can be juxtaposed to a dissonant stress on the validity of popular self-determination. In other words it can be suggested that a
particular project of imperial power gradually emerged out of an initial anti-colonial struggle for independence from British rule so that such an emergence has
given the US a contradictory identity of being a ‘post-colonial imperial power’, with the determining emphasis falling on the ‘imperial’ (Slater, 2004). The postcolonial essentially refers to the specificity of origin and does not preclude the possibility of a coloniality of power, as was exemplified in the case of the Philippines,
or (it can be argued) continues to apply to Puerto Rico (Pantojas-Garc´ıa, 2005). Such a paradoxical identity has two important implications. First, one finds
juxtaposed an affirmation of the legitimacy of the self-determination of peoples with a belief in the global destiny of the United States. Historically, the
contradiction between support for the rights of people to decide their own fate and a belief in the geopolitical destiny of ‘America’ has necessitated a discursive
bridge. This bridge has been formed through the invocation of a democratic mission that combines the national and international spheres. In order to go beyond the
contradiction between an identity based on the self-determination of peoples and another sedimented in imperial power, a
horizon is created for
other peoples who are encouraged to choose freedom and democracy, thereby embedding their own
struggles within an Americanizing vision and practice .5 Second, the primacy of self-determination provides
a key for explaining the dichotomy frequently present in the discourses of US intervention where a distinction
is made between a concept of the people and a concept of the rulers . Given the historical differentiation of the New
(American) World of freedom, progress and democracy from an Old (European) World of privilege, class and colonial power, support for anti-colonial struggles has
been accompanied by a separation between oppressed people and tyrannical rulers. For example, in the case of US hostility towards the Cuban Revolution, the
Helms-Burton Act of 1996 makes a clear separation between the Cuban people who need supporting in
their vulnerability,6and the Castro government which was portrayed as a tyrannical oppressor of its own
people and a security threat to the international community. Similar distinctions have been made in the contexts of interventions
in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). Overall, it can be suggested that geopolitical interventions have been couched in terms of a concern for the rights of peoples
the US is represented as a benevolent
guardian of the rights of a subordinated people and an imperial ethic of care is projected across
who are being oppressed by unrepresentative and totalitarian governments. In this context
frontiers to provide one form of legitimization for interventions. This particular ethic of care can be seen as an intrinsic feature
of the imperial, and although imperial power is certainly anchored in the deployment of force, equally it requires discourses of legitimization wherein ideas of care
and guidance continue to play a leading role. Before expanding on questions of legitimization it is necessary to proceed with a kind of ‘geopolitical reality check’ and
recall in more detail the nature of US interventions in Latin America, where, in a predominant sense, force and its institutional foundations are clearly manifest.
OVERLAPPING FORMS OF INTERVENTION: THE LATIN AMERICAN CASE A discussion of the various modalities of US intervention is always needed not only to counter
the official narratives of governmental truth but also as part of our attempt to nurture an alternative geopolitics of memory which, inter alia, returns the gaze on to
the violence of sanctioned power. For Latin America, it is possible to identify six types of intervention which, taken together, have formed the building blocks of a
generalized strategy of penetrating power.7 Terminating Elected Governments In contrast to the repeated argument that the West, and especially the United
States, has been responsible for the diffusion of democracy to the Third World, it needs to be recalled that the United States has intervened to close down
democratic governments that have sought to develop policies that were independent of US power. In 1954 in Guatemala, a CIA-backed coup overthrew the
democratically elected government of Arbenz, who had initiated a programme of land reform which was strongly opposed by the United Fruit Company. The US
preferred the installation of a military regime to the possibility of a reforming, redistributing government acting as a possible example for other Latin American
societies. The coup initiated a forty-year period of state terror, death squads, torture, disappearances and executions with an estimated 200,000 deaths (see, for
example,Cullather,1999;Grandin, 2004).Other interventions took place in 1965 in the Dominican Republic and in Chile in 1973 where a vibrant democratic
government was replaced by the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship. In the case of Nicaragua, the Sandinista government which had won an election in 1984 — an
election which was judged by independent observers to be fair and legitimate (Cornelius, 1986), was destabilized by the Reagan Administration and subsequently
lost the 1990 elections. Transgressions of National Sovereignty Such transgressions, which have not entailed the over throw of democratically elected governments
are exemplified by such cases as Cuba in 1961, with the unsuccessful US-planned Bay of Pigs invasion, Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. In the Panamanian
example, the US invasion was codenamed ‘Operation Just Cause’ and its primary objectives were to ‘defend democracy in Panama’ and ‘combat drug trafficking’. In
thirteen hours, more than 400 bombs were dropped by US war planes with an estimated 4,000 civilian deaths and over 50,000 people left homeless (Boggs, 2005:
180–1). In the case of Grenada, the Reagan Administration justified its invasion in relation to article 6 of the Rio Pact of 1947 which, it claimed, legitimized
intervention when regional security was threatened by an extra-continental conflict or by any other situation that might endanger the peace of America. The US
acted unilaterally in accordance with its own strategic imperatives and failed to convene a meeting of the Organization of American States as was required by article
6 of the Rio treaty. Support for Dictatorships The termination of independent, democratic governments and the transgression of national sovereignty have had their
reverse side — a historical record of support for pro-Western dictatorships. In South America, military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay were not
destabilized and undermined but rather supported. For example, in the case of the 1964 military coup in Brazil, the United States provided up to US $1.5 billion in
financial support during the regime’s first four years (Kolko, 1988:159). In Argentina, the US gave support to the Argentinian military in their treatment of dissent,
the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, in conversation with the Argentinian Foreign Minister in 1976, noting that, ‘if there are things that have to be done, you
should do them quickly...but you must get back quickly to normal procedures’ (McPherson, 2006: 160–1). In the case of Chile, US support for Pinochet is wellknown, and Kissinger commented on the Allende government that ‘I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the
irresponsibility of its own people’ (quoted in Schoultz, 1987: 284). Assassinations A more targeted and covert form of intervention has been that of the CIA policy of
assassinations which was made illegal in 1976 only to be re-activated by President Bush in the wake of 9/11. Blum (2000) has indicated that from the early 1950s to
the mid-1970s there were over forty recorded incidents of assassination plots, largely aimed at Third World leaders. In the single case of Fidel Castro, official US
records have shown that the CIA launched at least eight attempts on the Cuban leader’s life in the 1960s, including attempted shootings and bombings, lethal pills
and on one notorious occasion, an exploding cigar (for some details see Tisdall, 2007: 18). Disregard for International Law The policy of assassinations can be
interpreted within the wider framework of a disregard for and violation of international law. The more than forty-year blockade of Cuba stands as one example of
such a disregard: the strategy has been condemned by the UN, the European Union and the Inter-American Juridical Committee, which has ruled that the trade
embargo against Cuba violates international law (see Chomsky, 2000: 2). In the case of US support for the contras in Nicaragua during the 1980s, the International
Court of Justice in The Hague found the United States guilty of violating both international law and its treaty obligations to Nicaragua. The Court ordered
Washington to stop its intervention and negotiate a reparations settlement with Nicaragua. However, after winning the 1990 elections, the US-backed government
of Chamorro, under pressure from Washington, withdrew the lawsuit, the costs of which had risen to US$ 17 billion, and subsequently Washington forgave US$ 260
million in loans to Nicaragua (Holden and Zolov, 2000: 300–1). Other examples of a disregard for international law are reflected in the use of US-defined powers of
extra-territorial jurisdiction (see Slater, 2004: Ch. 7) and in a reluctance to abide by international treaty obligations, as argued in the American Journal of
International Law, 1998 (quoted in Chomsky, 2000: 216). More recently, the use of the naval base at Guantánamo Bay for the detainment without trial of so-called
‘unlawful combatants’ constitutes a breach of the Geneva Conventions (Rose,2004). Counter Insurgency Training: School of the Americas Based inside the United
States, the activities of the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation, have a history that is
relevant to geopolitical interventionism. Located at Fort Benning in Georgia the School has, since it was founded in 1946, trained more than 60,000 soldiers and
police, mostly from Latin America, in counter-insurgency skills. In a recent investigation, Gill (2004) shows how the School’s institutionalization of state-sponsored
violence was a key pillar in the US’s support for military rule in Latin America. Seven US Army training manuals used by the School between 1989 and 1991 were
declassified in 1996; they provided instruction on the detection and suppression of anti-government political and military activities, and also contained information
indicating how the US Army trained Latin American military and police officers in a variety of interrogation techniques.8It is important to recall that SOA graduates
have led a number of military coups, and as Blum (2000) notes, what has also been documented is evidence of the training by the US Army of Latin American
military and police personnel in the skills of institutionalized terror. These six overlapping facets of geopolitical intervention provide a glimpse of an alternative
reality to the official narrative surrounding the role of the United States in the world, past and present. They can provide a source of critical analysis which brings
the ‘dark side’ of North–South encounters into sharper focus. They underline the invasive effects of imperial power and help subvert the image of a beneficent
America; but analytically, although they might concentrate the mind, they are not sufficient. POWER AND DEMOCRACY: A CLASH OF INTERPRETATIONS The
desire to penetrate another society and help reorder that other society is a key part of the imperial
project. In general imperialism may be defined in terms of the strategy, practice and advocacy of the penetrative power of a Western state over other
predominantly non-Western societies, whose political sovereignty is thereby subverted. The word ‘predominantly’ is used here since I would argue that imperialism,
or more specifically US
imperialism, while having potentially dominating effects on other Western nation-states, is most clearly manifest in
penetrative power of imperialism goes together with a determination to
impose a set of institutions and values on to the imperialized society — for example, to ‘impose democracy’
(Ferguson,2005:52)—and this imposition is rooted in a lack of respect and recognition for the society being
penetrated. The geopolitical will to intervene resides with the agents of power working in and through the apparatuses of the imperial state. The processes
the context of West–non-West relations. The
of legitimization for that will to power are produced both within the state and in civil society. In the case of the United States and its relations with the societies of
the Latin South the processes of legitimization have been particularly significant in supporting its power and hegemonic ambition. Concretely in this context the
aim of diffusing democracy or a specific interpretation of democracy has been and remains a key element in the justification
of geopolitical power. The appeal and impact of the democratic US political system has been accompanied by an entrepreneurial economic model
which emphasizes global free trade and the benefits of competition. In this sense it can be suggested that
democratic model
the US exports a neoliberal
which represents one form of democratic politics . For Brzezinski (1997), given the fact that the US is both a globally hegemonic power
and a democracy, one can pose the question of whether the projection of American democracy is compatible with a ‘quasi-imperial responsibility’. More acutely,
one can suggest that democracy has an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ so that dominating power at home can lead to the corrosion of the democratic ethos that helps to
sustain the consensuality of hegemonic power, whilst the intensive deployment of what Nye (2002) has called ‘hard power’ can undermine the seductiveness of the
democratic promise abroad. War and militarization, together with transgressions of international law, are inimical to the health of democratic politics in general, as
well as being a source for the undermining of the US-made image of democracy for export, an image which Fukuyama (2006) has called the US’s ‘benevolent
hegemony’ for spreading democracy globally. In her discussion of a terrorized and privatized democracy, Eisenstein (2007) gives us a different picture. She shows in
detail how the ‘war on terror’ has led to a severe erosion of democracy with the rise of an excessive and extremist politics, as is seen in White House memos on
torture. Human Rights Watch documents the continual circumvention of law in the treatment of prisoners and detainees in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and in Abu
Ghraib. ‘Humiliation and degradation as well as coercive interrogation are now permissible; the Commander-in-Chief is not bound by international laws; offshore
and undisclosed and off-limits sites are created in which to detain terror suspects’ (Eisenstein, 2007: 54). In addition to this demise of a democratic spirit, one can
point to a number of egregious contradictions concerning US foreign policy. For example, the United States justifies war for the purposes of removing weapons of
mass destruction whilst holding the largest nuclear arsenal in the world; it ignores the will of the Security Council on the grounds that another nation has ignored
the will of the Security Council; it threatens consequences for those who contravene the Geneva Convention, while insisting that this convention does not apply to
those prisoners it holds in Guantánamo Bay; and whilst it argues for the importance of a respect for international law, it organizes the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of
terrorist suspects who have no recourse to the due process s of international law. But it can be argued that rather than see these dissonances as contradictions one
can posit that they reveal a logic of exception, rooted in the assumed power of a ‘global sovereign’. Thus, as Ross (2004: 26) suggests, in spite of demanding respect
for the law, the global sovereign always reserves the right to act outside this law in exceptional circumstances, just as it reserves the prerogative to decide when
circumstances are exceptional, as, for example, in its declaration of a war on terror in the wake of 9/11. As the exceptional power, as the guarantor of world
the US perspective on exporting democracy. In the official narrative
of bringing democracy to the world there is a hidden assumption that the US has the right, under circumstances chosen by the
global sovereign, to spread democracy to others through the use of force. For Ross (2004: 41), ‘ democratic
imperialism is the claim that a democratic state has some kind of duty, as a citizen of the world, to act
with the goal of ending non-democratic governments everywhere’. This is a relevant point but equally we must remember
that whilst force has been used, ‘democratic imperialism’ requires a more subtle and multi-dimensional legitimization. This includes
the idea that democracy is being called for, or in other words that democracy US-style is being invited by peoples yearning for
freedom. Rather than democracy being imposed, it is suggested that the US is responding to calls from other societies
to be democratized, so that through a kind of cellular multiplication, a US model can be gradually introduced; the owners will be the peoples of other
cultures, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, who will find ways of adapting the US template to their own circumstances. What is being proposed here is a
kind of ‘viral democracy’ whereby the politics of guidance is merged into a politics of benign adaptation. President Bush has expressed this idea quite
security, US action is assured of its propriety. This also helps to explain
clearly, noting that the US’s faith in freedom and democracy is now ‘a seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations’. ‘Our democratic faith’, he goes on, ‘is more
than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along’ (quoted in Gardner, 2005: 25). At
the same time, it is a specific form of democratic rule that is being projected and alternative models that include a critique of US power and attempts to introduce
connections with popular sovereignty and new forms of socialism are singled out for disapproval — the Chávez government being a clear example. In the post-9/11
period, the ‘war on terror’, with its erosion of civil liberties, violation of human rights and overall diffusion of a politics of fear, has undermined the effectiveness of a
benevolent image of US democracy for export. Neoliberal democracy as the universal model has come to be associated more with a bellicose unilateralism than
with a seductive template for political adaptation. Here we have a key limit on the potential of US power, as ‘anti-American’
sentiment is
deepened. Moreover, other democratic imaginations emanating from Latin America have been offering vibrant
alternatives to the US model. Whilst the centrality of US imperial power is being challenged, there is an amplification of democratic politics (Slater,
2006). In the context of US– Latin American relations the mission to universalize a US model of democracy
is being contested by a wide range of social movements and political forces. The promotion of democracy
from above is being actively called into question in a continent impatient at being framed as the passive recipient. For democracy to
flourish, it has to be home-grown and autonomously sustained, not exported as part of a legitimization of subordinating power. The imperative to
‘democratize’, just like the injunction to ‘globalize’, creates an asymmetry between those announcing the imperative and those subjected to it,
between those who ‘democratize’ and those who are ‘democratized’. When the imperial and the democratic are brought
together, a series of irresolvable tensions and contradictions emerge. The imperial relation entails, as we have briefly discussed above, processes of penetration and
anchored in a Western ethnocentrism . Such
relation requires a discourse of justification and it is here that the promise of democracy
assumes a key relevance. However, the effectiveness of a democratic promise is continually subverted by the subordinating practices of the actual
imposition, processes which the Woodrow Wilson perspective, for example, clearly shows are
an imperial
deployment of imperial power. Similarly, the vibrant process of democratization, in the sense of the renewal of the forms of participation, as reflected in the will
and capacity of social subjects to be self-reflexive and critical of governmental authority, will always transcend democracy as a fixed system of political rule, and
especially so when such a system is introduced from outside.
2NC Democracy Promotion
Projects of “development” and “democracy” mask colonial expansion
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
Colonialism is the shameful member of the family – it’s always there, people know about it, but they prefer not
to mention it, like talking about money with an aristocratic family. As such, colonialism is not a project of which imperial leaders and global
designers could be proud – and they openly declared themselves against it. The explicit projects are described in positive terms,
like civilization, development, or democracy, but not as colonization, even if colonization is the necessary
step to “bring” Good to deserving and wanting people. “Civilization,” “development,” “modernization,” and “socialism,” for
instance, are all projects that conservatives, liberals, and Marxists are eager to promote and carry to distant places – but not colonialism!
(Recent situations such as the post-9/11 period, when even good liberals accepted colonialism as a necessity of US foreign policy, may be
exceptions to that observation.) Colonization, in that view, is something that cannot
be avoided if you want to “bring”
prosperity, democracy, and freedom to the world. Eurocentrism could be defined precisely in those terms – a view of
history in which modernity is there to supersede traditions and colonialism is a means to a better end.
1NC Environmental Regulation
Their attempt to regulate Latin American economies is green imperialism
Fuentes 11 – editor, (Federico, “Bolivia: Against "Green Imperialism,"” 25.09.11,
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/fuentes250911.html)//A-Berg
Behind these very real interests lies a campaign by rich
nations and conservative environmental groups to promote policies that
represent a new form of "green imperialism." After centuries of plundering the resources of other countries, wiping out
indigenous populations, and creating a dire global environmental crisis, the governments of rich nations now use environmental
concerns to promote policies that deny underdeveloped nations the right to control and manage their own
resources. If they have their ways, these groups will reduce indigenous people to mere "park rangers," paid by rich
countries to protect limited areas, while multinational corporations destroy the environment elsewhere. Bolivia's
indigenous majority has chosen a very different road. They aim to create a new state in which they are no longer marginalized or treated as
minority groups that require special protection. In alliance with other oppressed sectors, they aim to run their country for the collective benefit
of the majority. The Bolivian masses have successfully wrested government power from the traditional elites, won control over gas and other
resources, and adopted a new constitution. Mistakes have been made and are likely in future. But they are the mistakes of a people
of a small, landlocked, and underdeveloped country fighting constant imperialist assaults. Key to the Bolivian peoples' fight is the worldwide
front for climate justice, in which Bolivia is playing a vital leadership role. One example was the 35,000-strong People's Summit on Climate
Change organized by the Morales government in Cochabamba in April 2010. The summit's final declaration named developed countries as "the
main cause of climate change." It insisted that those countries must "recognize and honor their climate debt," redirecting funds from war to
aiding poorer nations to develop their economies "to produce goods and services necessary to satisfy the fundamental needs of their
population." To achieve this, the
international climate justice movement must focus its efforts on forcing rich
nations to accept their responsibilities. The global movement must explicitly reject imperialist
intervention in all its forms, including the "green imperialist" policies of US-funded NGOs. Only through such a
campaign can we support the efforts of poorer countries to chart a development path that respects the environment
2NC Environmental Regulation
Their attempt to regulate and control environment in Latin America is imperialistic
Soomin and Shirley 09, - Keimyung International College, Daegu, Republic of Korea, (Lim and Dr. Steven, “Eco-Imperialism: The Global North’s Weapon
of Mass intervention,” Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, 2009, Vol 1, No 3, 846-860)//A-Berg
To break the cycle of poverty and dependency that exists in the less developed world, much hope and attention
has been placed on
technological breakthroughs, for new technologies are supposed to bring improved standards of living for all, and at the very least
bring hope for a better life for billions of individuals who have none. Electricity offered this hope a century ago, as did sanitation and modern medical practices. So
too did the internal combustion engine, jet travel, and modern agricultural techniques. Yet
the reality of new technology has not always
equaled the promise. This is in large part due to how the developed world has continually found ways to
exploit each new technology to their advantage, turning potential growth into a stranglehold on the less
developed countries (Omamo & Grebmer, 2005; Borlaugh, 2001; Shiva 2000). Today is no different, but in the 21st century, the exploitation of the
global South, comes with a level moralism that never accompanied previous developments. There was never, for example, a moral superiority
attached to agricultural advancement. There were no necessary violations of sovereignty to lay phone lines, provide cellular services, or export
of petroleum. Indeed, embracing these technologies often meant a lift in the standard of living for the LDC that received or possessed these resources. In the past,
the developed world did not hold the LDCs hostage in terms of technology, and yet today, we see precisely this. We
see the North, the developed world,
meddling in the affairs of less developed states, and their global elites using contentious science to talk
down to nation-states struggling to provide a basic standard of living for its people (Bender, 2006). We are
seeing a new type of imperialism emerge, an imperialism based not on the acquisition of territory, but on a radical
environmentalist agenda, an agenda that seeks to reserve the earth and its resources for the wealthy and
elite, to freeze energy use at current levels, and to restrict nationstates from exploiting indigenous
resources for the benefit of their people. The hypocrisy and ill-informed policy of the new EcoImperialists, as they have
been rightly called, seems to know no bounds. Just a few years ago it would have been almost inconceivable that in a world where starvation is a reality, the most
advanced nation-states would follow the radical environmental idea of using food supplies for fuel oil (Clayton, 2008). Moreover, in a world where malaria still
kills millions of men, women, and children, it is absurd that the global North would attempt to restrict and even deny the
technology to eradicate disease-baring mosquito populations (Roberts, 1997). It is absurd, ridiculous, but true. While the promise of
alternative fuels is decades if not centuries away from reality, the affordability of fossil fuels holds the
key to lifting entire populations out of poverty today, and yet the developed world is looking to tax and
restrict its use, as well as outlaw new exploration of this most vital form of energy (Carbon, 2009; Evans, 2007). Again,
it is absurd, ridiculous, but true. The developed world has enjoyed the benefits of a century’s worth of energy technology and development; however, they are
trying to deny access and equitable usage of vital natural resources to the LDCs. These are not resources owned by or even controlled by the wealthy nations;
instead, the
global North is pressuring, demanding, and sanctioning LDCs in order to influence the amount
and type of development that can take place within their borders. Think about that again. Developed countries
are violating the sovereignty of less developed countries, and imposing upon them their values, their ideals, and their belief
systems. Developed countries are forcing LDCs to behave in a manner that the developed countries wish them to
behave. Does this sound familiar? By any definition these behaviors reek of imperialism, an imperialism meant to foster an
environmental agenda completely fabricated by elites in the North. There may not be soldiers marching through the capitals
of LDCs, there may not be colonies in name, nor ships of the line sailing from the North to the South as in the 19th century, but in every possible way one state can
seek to control the political and social behavior of another state, this is imperialism. Eco-Imperialism
is singularly focused on the global
North’s environmental agenda, and casts aside respect for sovereignty and fair play. Moreover, it seeks to
impose “western” and the developed world’s ideas of what is fair, good, and appropriate in matters of
environmental policy. Eco-Imperialists seek to control not merely ideas, culture, or resources but also
want to restrict development of LDCs because of the their idea of what is correct and just, what is good
and what is not, what is environmentally friendly and what will contribute to man-made climate change.
The less developed world is given little to no voice in matters of environmental policy, or their leadership is bribed to go along with the desires of the global North,
not unlike the political puppetry of the 19th century. 3. Eco-Imperialist
Intervention and Activism Eco-Imperialists work through a
variety of channels. Sovereign governments can and do apply direct pressure, but more often than not, EcoImperialists use existing international organizations and non-governmental organizations to promote
their agenda. The United Nations has its tentacles in almost every facet of environmental policy, and regularly
publishes, promotes, and pressures member states to comply with their findings, whether they have
been scientifically proven rigorous or not (Buse, 2007). Non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF), and others are at the forefront of the Eco-Imperialist movement as well, being pushed and funded by the global North. How ironic, that groups
typically associated with leftist agendas have become the main tool in promoting a form of eco-fascism
on the developing world. Case studies of Eco-Imperialist activities abound, one need only follow the latest rounds of negotiations in Copenhagen on a
new climate change treaty or read daily reports out of Europe and the USA on the various schemes to “cap and trade” carbon emissions, one of the EcoImperialist’s
greatest schemes which seeks to make energy prohibitively expensive except for the elites who make the policies, and promises to enrich those who already own
stock in companies that will sell these carbon credits. Another way is to observe country-specific examples of Eco-Imperialism, where developing and less developed
countries are battling for their environmental sovereignty against the Eco-Imperialists who would force
the populations of those
countries to deal with an international bureaucracy and have policy dictated from the top down, with
little or no voice from the citizenry.
We have an intellectual responsibility to oppose this eco-imperialism
Soomin and Shirley 09, - Keimyung International College, Daegu, Republic of Korea, (Lim
and Dr. Steven, “Eco-Imperialism: The Global North’s Weapon of Mass intervention,”
Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, 2009, Vol 1, No 3, 846860)//A-Berg
Given the resources of the Eco-Imperialists, resisting their activities will be a daunting task for the global
South and countries such as Brazil. When nation-states and the organizations they support have little regard for sovereignty and rule of law in pursuit of their
agenda, or are in control of writing and implementing international law, the push back against such activities is doubly difficult. But it is a fight worth
taking, and winning, for the losers in this struggle against Eco-Imperialism will be the people of the less developed
world, as is always the case. As the North-South gap potentially grows larger due to the efforts Eco-Imperialists, it borders on tragic that the
amount of money spent on fundraising and propaganda campaigns meant to terrify populations in the North
about climate change, could be better spent on helping less developed countries build infrastructure, safely utilize natural resources,
and make a better lives for their citizens. It pains the authors of this piece that hundreds of millions people are left in poverty,
forced to live without modern conveniences, so that the global North can feel “good” about “Saving the
planet” from their self-perceived “destructive” activities (Applebaum, 2008). With each new technological
breakthrough that might improve the lives of millions, resistance is thrown up from vocal segments in the developed
world (O’Conner, 2008). Eco-Imperialists have till this point been content with only the global North enjoying the
benefits of fossil fuels and technology, while they research how the rest of the world can use cow dung more efficiently (Brown, 2008). If the audacity
of the Eco-Imperialists was not true, it would be a comedy of global proportions. However, this comedy is alarmingly real, and it falls upon the lap of the reader to
make sure the world is aware of this global double standard. There
is hope, that as more people become informed, the EcoImperialists will be forced to retreat from many of their more extremist campaigns. As we look towards the next decade, the
showdown between Eco-Imperialists and the less developed world will become more significant. It is the duty of all educated
individuals to delve deeper than the headlines, to grasp the real struggle taking place around the globe.
It is a struggle of consequence, not only for the environment but for hundreds of millions of human
beings eager to break free of the chains of poverty and enjoy a standard of living that the bountiful
earth can provide.
1NC Expertise Assistance
Expertise sharing reifies imperial notions that the west is better and superior to the other
Burr 3 - Associate Professor, History U of Windsor (Christina, “Some Adventures of the
Boys: Enniskillen Township's "Foreign Drillers," Imperialism, and Colonial Discourse,
1873-1923,” Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 51 (Spring, 2003), pp. 47-80 JSTOR)//A-Berg
I will explain in this essay how Enniskillen township's "foreign
drillers," both as British subjects of the settler colony of Canada and
agents of imperialism, went about constructing a coherent representation out of the new realities they con fronted while
working in the colonial oil fields. I draw on a variety of post-colonial theories, histories, and works in literary criticism to illuminate the
"peculiarities of the Canadians," and to explicate how they went about reinforcing
the project of European capitalist
imperialism while simultaneously disavowing the agency of non-white native Others. Second, I examine this
group of workers as bearers of class, gender, and racial privilege in the oil fields where they were sent to work. For a
significant proportion of Enniskillen's "foreign drillers," working for a large in ternational oil company provided them with the
opportunity to secure supervisory and management-level jobs and a position of class privilege while living
abroad. This no doubt would have eluded them had they spent their entire lives working at home in the local oil industry. Enniskillen's
"foreign drillers" became part of an imperial "overclass" by virtue of their "whiteness," "Britishness," and technical
expertise in the mining and refining of petroleum. Third, this essay contributes to the more recent body
of historical literature on imperialism, which seeks to break down the boundaries between "Empire" and
"colony" and "home" and "away." The co lonial oil fields became a space for the re-invention of Victorian ideals of domestic ity. The
connections between the imperial economy and the local Enniskillen economy and the process of class formation are explicated in the essay.
The wives of Enniskillen's "foreign drillers," who both maintained households in their hus bands' absences and sometimes joined them abroad,
particularly after World War I, are also discussed. In a 1924 Maclean's article commemorating the golden jubilee of foreign drill ing, Victor
Lauriston, a journalist and local Lambton County amateur historian, dubbed Petrolia "The Town of World Travelers." According to Lauriston,
134 drillers from Enniskillen township went on exploration and drilling expeditions to "foreign fields" between 1873 and the outbreak of World
War I.6 Many of them went abroad more than once. A little-known aspect of Canadian history is that the "foreign drillers" from Lambton
County, many of them from the town of Petrolia and the village of Oil Springs, provided the skilled
labour and technical expertise
necessary for the development ofthe global oil industry. The vagaries ofthe local oil market and the depletion ofthe oil
resources in Enniskillen township by the late 1890s forced many skilled oil drillers to seek employment in "foreign fields." In an era when only
the wealthy, soldiers, and diplomats travelled abroad extensively, Enniskillen drillers travelled to the oil-rich fields of Java, Borneo, Sumatra,
Persia, Galicia, Germany, India, Newfoundland, Russia, Italy, the West Indies, and the United States. Virtually anywhere in the world where oil
was discovered Enniskillen's drillers provided the skilled labour and technical expertise.
1NC Food Aid
Food aid reproduces power imbalances and reinforces rich-poor gaps.
Edkins 08, Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, (Jenny, “Whose Hunger?: Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid”
08/2008, eBook)//A-Berg
The concepts of famine produced with the shift to the episteme of modernity have generated specific
practices of aid. These practices are variously presented as global food aid, emergency famine relief, and
development programs. These distinctions play an important role in negotiations between donors and implementing agencies.
Agencies rely for their identity on particular constructions, each having concern and legitimacy historically in a particular area. The distinctions
can be crucial in policy making and when matters of power and control are disputed between the different agencies involved.| However, the
disciplinary processes are similar, whether it is food aid, famine relief, or development that is the legitimizing discursive framework.
Practices of aid, like famines themselves, benefit some groups at the same time that they make victims of
others.l Powerful groups exploit those less powerful. Particular aid practices, such as food for work programs, produce and
reproduce these power relations. Food for work (PFW), in which food aid is distributed not as a gift but as a payment for work
performed, has grown up as part of the food aid process. Here the priorities of the implementing agencies (internal and external) and the donor
and recipient governments are inscribed on the bodies and in the work of those employed on the schemes. The
"failure"• of food aid
programs is central to their "success"•they produce and reproduce relations of dependency between
first and third world states and within those states. Foucault contends that the failure of prisons to rehabilitate offenders is
best seen as part of their achievement.3 Prisons produce political consequences, disqualifying a whole range of political action by redefining it
as criminal. The failure of food for work programs to improve agriculture or the environment ensures their continuation as a disciplining
process. According to Mark Duffield "relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of relations of accountability and power in relief
operations. "* This chapter begins to remedy this, looking at the workings of aid from a Foucauldian perspective in terms of discursive and
disciplinary practices.5 I discuss global food
aid discourse before turning to famine relief in Ethiopia and Ireland and food for work
practices in Eritrea. GLOBAL FOOD AID Discourse is socially embedded and institutionalized in its interactions with other
social practices. Foucault was interested in exploring why, irrespective of what grammatically could be said at certain periods, certain things
and not others were said, and how the limits of things said were transformed from one era to another. This is distinct from a notion that treats
discourses as groups of signs referring to signifieds. Discourses do more than use the signs of which they are composed to designate things, and
"it is this more that renders them irreducible to the language and to speech"• and makes them instead "practices that systematically' form the
obiects of which they speak. At a particular period in time, for a specific social group, there are rules that define the limits and forms of the
sayable and the conservation, memory, reactivation, and appropriation of cliscourses of Certain things can be said in specific domains of
discourse (scientific, literary, etc.), and certain things said will be remembered and reiterated while others will be forgotten or repressed. Some
things said in the past will be regarded as valid and not others, and these things will be reconstituted in different ways. Prescribed
individuals and groups will have access to particular discourses, and relations of authority will be
defined; there is a struggle for control of discourses. This approach runs counter to the traditional study of discourse as "a
pure surface of translation for mute objects; a simple site of expression of thoughts, imaginings, knowledges, unconscious themes. "3 It negates
the view that supposes "that all operations are conducted prior to discourse or outside of it, in the ideality of thought or the silent gravity of
practices; that discourse, consequently, is no more than a meagre additive . . _ a surplus which goes without saying, since it does nothing else
except say what is said." On the contrary, discursive practices are bound up with other social practices and together constitute relations of
power/knowledge. Specific power relations make possible particular forms of discourse: Each society has its rêgime of truth, its "general
politics"• of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one
to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the
acquisition of truth; the status of those charged with saying what counts as true.'" The discursive background that produces and legitimizes
food for work practices is found in the food aid debate. This centers on questions of whether and how food aid should be provided-is it
effective in helping third world countries and what are the arguments in its favor? There is a great deal of academic literature that looks at
these questions." The debate has been particularly prominent in the United States, where the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance
Act (Public Law 480) in 1954 began a program of food assistance to poor countries. Food
aid, as distinct from foreign aid in
general, was seen to have a number of overt purposes: for surplus disposal and overseas market
development; as an instrument of foreign policy in the Cold War context; and to provide basic needs via links to
human rights programs. These purposes were often contradictory. However, food aid, in contrast to foreign aid,
received wide support in the United States from the public and Congress.' Nevertheless, a number of controversies have surrounded food aid
Opponents in North America argued that surpluses generated by U.S. agricultural policies were avoidable and that food
aid was merelv
designed to fit U.S. farm policy. In addition, according to Theodore Schultz, food aid, far from benefiting the recipient countries,
was having harmful effects on their agriculture,"• the socalled disincentive hypothesis. The energy and food crises of the 1970s
moved the debate away from issues of agricultural economics into concerns of the ethics of food aid, involving writers such as Garrett Hardin
and Peter Singer."• It also led to a popular debate about food aid, which, following Theodore Schultz, questioned the impact of development
project food aid on the recipients and looked at concerns about resource scarcity and environmental degradation. More radical critics saw
structural causes for third world poverty and hunger and argued that the rhetoric of food aid was serving to obscure these.'5 In a special issue
of the journal Intermzlional Organisations in 1978, conceived in response to what was perceived as world food shortages in I973/74, Hopkins
and Puchala addressed the chronic problems of the global food system and its institutions. They identified a global food regime, by which they
meant something more than just the global food system." Although they stressed the importance of decisions about production, distribution,
and consumption, they adopted a largely Malthusian view of the crisis. Global food shortage was the problem, and the modernization of
agriculture, by and large, was the solution. However, the regime failed to tackle chronic hunger: "regime
norms facilitated global
humanitarianism and enhanced survival during shortfalls and famines _ . . but contributed to lunge gaps in living
standards between richer countries and poorer ones. "'3 The failure is attributed to the way that "the
political forces shaping norms of the food regime are largely divorced from the majority of people most
severely affected by problems in the global food system. These are the rural poor of the third world. Food trade and aid,
investment and information do not affect these people significantly since they are simply not part of the modern interdependent world. In the
1980s much work focused on how effective food aid was in the context of development programs. Structural adjustment programs,
international food stamps, and EEC policy were debated."• According to Vernon Ruttan, despite the arguments favoring development over aid,
it has become generally accepted that "food aid has been important in meeting emergency food needs, in meeting the sub~ sistence needs of
poor people, and in providing budgetary support for fragile governments."•3' The international epistemic community agreed that food security
was a central goal of food aid, which should be targeted to countries categorized as food insecure on the basis of caloric intake and income
criteria. Hopkins argues that "the evolv-ing consensus about the uses of food aid has stemmed from academic studies and from the experience
of officials administering programmes in donor and recipient states."• He claims that this represents a shift in approach from emergency aid to
aid more oriented to development and achieving food security. According to Hopkins, "motivation for change has come principally from a
developmentorientated epistemic community of food aid specialists. Nevertheless, commodity groups, grain traders, farmers, shipping firms,
marketing managers in LDCs, and other interest groups seeking specific economic gains have also made proposals to shape food aid
practices."•33 This epistemic community can be distinguished from another, "a more critical, leftist community"• of "radical critics of food
aid,"• but they are outside the agenda. The basic rationale underlying the priority given to food security goals rests on links forged between
population growth, food, and the environment. Hopl<ins's interpretation is contested by Peter Uvin, who argues that in the international food
regime there are two competing principles: the neo-Malthusian principle (hunger is caused by too little food or too many people) and the
"hunger is caused by poverty"• principle. These lead to different norms and solutions. The distinction Uvin makes reflects the discussion in
chapter 3 where Sen's work was contrasted with Malthusian approaches. The Malthusian ap~ proach is dominant because "it pleases . _ _
financing institutions . . _ donor governments . . . third world governments and _ . . elites [and| industrial and commercial interests," whereas
"important political processes militate against the operational translation of the poverty principle on an international level." In the discursive
practices surrounding food aid, we find the Malthusian approach dominant. Even in Hopkins, despite his assertion that the regime has moved
away from emergency food aid to development, the primacy of food and agricultural development is undisputed. Famine and third world
poverty can be solved by the provision of food aid or by the development in the third world of self-sufficiency in food through agricultural
modernization. In addition, the role of expertise is unquestioned: the problems of the third world are to be solved by the West."• The
discursive practices of food aid are institutionalized under the control of "economic develop~ ment
specialists, agricultural economists and administrators of food aid." Interestingly, the institutions of the food aid
regime have managed to take over the entitlement argument-initially aligned with the radical critics-by a rearticulation that links poverty with
population growth and shortages with the environment. As Hopkins describes it, there is "a growing consensus among development experts
that population growth, food needs, and pressures on the environment are linked." Amartya Sen's entitlement argument claims that famine
and starvation are not caused by a general shortage of food but by lost entitlements. It is not that there is no food, but that people do not have
access to food. If lost entitlements can be blamed on environmental degradation, which threatens food security, then projects to remedy this
can be seen as proiects to replace lost entitlements. The crucial move is to regard the fertility of the land as part of the entitlement bundle of
third world peasant farmers. Food aid thus needs to be reoriented toward environmental improvement, rather than feeding programs. This
could account for the predominance of environmental projects in food for work programs: it is through a reference to the environment that the
relief (food shortage/ emergency) and development (distribution problems/long-term poverty) can be linked. Environment is a Malthusian
monster, a scarce resource; environmental sustainability represents the aim of a modernized agriculture. Food for work programs are the site
at which the linking of Malthusian and entitlement discourses takes place. They are a way of replacing lost entitlements (by providing
employment on public works) while at the same time combating environmental degradation [implicitly caused by overpopulation) and
providing sustenance (needed because of failure of the food supply). Despite
the changes in the food aid discourse that we
predominance of the development and food security approaches has to be continually
maintained and reproduced. The Ethiopian famine, and the enormous public response it generated, is seen by many' commentators
have charted, the
as having shifted the balance back again from development aid to immediate relief: "despite the unresolved debate concerning the cost
effectiveness and morality of food aid, few voices were raised in 1984/85 against a mass mobilisation of emergency food to Ethiopia."33 In the
1990s, this trend has continued, with increasing amounts of money spent on expensive, high-profile, and dramatic humanitarian relief efforts,
many involving food aid and centered on relief to starving populations. The U.S. contribution to Operation Restore Hope, which was around
$1.6 billion, represented five times the total U.S. development assistance to Somalia over the preceding three decades.3° Following 1984/85,
development NGOs argued that the emphasis on relief had been unhelpful."• In the 1990s they seem to have accepted the public commitment
to relief. They are now arguing for the linkage between the two in a discourse of a relief-development continuum. The concept is expressed in a
variety of ways: "linking relief and development,"•3' "the interface between relief and development," "relief-development strategies,"• and
"famine mitigation."•3l In this way, resources that the donors want to regard as relief can be used by the recipients for development or
rehabilitation purposes. As I argued in chapter 3, the discursive practices of both Malthusians and entitlement theorists lead to the vision of
famine as a disaster-a natural disaster in one case, and an economic disaster in the other. There are two approaches to solving the problem,
once it is identified in this way. The first is rapid relief-the provision of food, cash, or whatever-by humanitarian agencies. This disaster relief
seems to attract immediate public support."• The second response is one that aims to avoid a recurrence of the disaster by reducing what is
perceived as the vulnerability of the population. This involves development, and it brings into play a completely different set of organizations
and approaches. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, disaster relief was carried out largely independently from development practitioners.
Development was being marginalized in terms of resources and public support.
2NC Food Aid
Their famine impact enforces technological control of populations (biopower impact)
Edkins 08, Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, (Jenny, “Whose Hunger?: Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid”
08/2008, eBook)//A-Berg
Famine is embedded in the discursive practices of modernity. Hunger
has only recently been brought within the province of
the human sciences, and these disciplines themselves, with "man"• as their object, only came into being at the end of the eighteenth
and beginning of the nineteenth centuries.| The incorporation of hunger into the episteme, or way of thinking, of the modern
human sciences has refashioned it according to different, specifically modern, rationalities. It has been
removed from the realm of the ethical and the political and brought under the sway of experts and
technologists of nutrition, food distribution, and development. Its position there, as an appropriate subject for expert
knowledge, remains a political position, but one that can lay claim to a political neutrality because of the specific way
that science is construed as "truth” in modernity. Famine's incorporation into the human sciences defines
famine and food in scientific ways and leads us inexorably to particular technical forms of solution. Famine is seen as a
disaster with a scientific cause. Ending famine is reduced to the question of acquiring the appropriate knowledge of the
causes of famine and developing the techniques needed to apply that knowledge to produce a cure. Other
views see food as more than fuel for the human machine and hunger as a recurring social tragedy, not a problem that can be solved by
technology. Famine, as a scarcity of food, is part of the struggle of modernity' with the question of scarce resources more generally. Modernity
sees the solution to scarcity in progress: progress that leads from a past of privations and primitivism to a future of abundance and civilization.
Contemporary accounts of prehistory confirm this perspective, but these and their assumptions have been questioned. Malthusian approaches
to famine are central to the modernist view and remain influential as the base for commonsense conceptions. Contemporary neo-Malthusians
combine optimists (the technical fixers: those for whom technological advances can be relied upon to find the solutions) and pessimists (the
prophets of doom). Famines
occupy a central place in the political configuration of modernity. Modern
politics is biopolitics: a concern for the regulation and control of populations, which replaces a politically
qualified life with bare life-a form of life that can be killed but not sacrificed.3 Power over life displaces
political participation and debate. Even the institutions of politics are technologized.
1NC Foreign Investment
Foreign investment is an attempt to transform the societies of target countries to be receptive toward
US imperialism
Petras and Veltmeyer, ’07 - *Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Binghamton University in New York and Adjunct Professor in International
Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University; **Professor of Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in Mexico and Professor of
Sociology and International Development Studies at St. Mary’s University, (James and Henry, Multinationals on Trial: Foreign Investment Matters, 10/2007,
eBook)//A-Berg
Foreign investment, fundamentally, is a matter of capital accumulation and the international flow of privately owned ‘capital’. For
over a hundred years capital accumulation has been the fundamental driving force of economic growth, capitalist
expansion and societal transformation. The process can be traced out in the dynamics of ‘economic growth’ and associated social changes.
There are six phases of this development:
1. from the beginning of the nineteenth century to around 1870, a period of capitalist industrialization based on the factory system, the market and an extension of
the social relation of wage labour;
2. a period, from around 1870 to 1914, characterized by the fusion of industrial and financial forms of capital, a trend towards the concentration of capital and the
emergence of monopolies, the export of capital, the globalization of trade migrant u, and the territorial division of much of the world among capitalist powers and
European colonialism;
3. a period of imperial war, economic depression, mass-production based on the ‘scientific management’ of labour (Fordism), the ‘taming of capitalism’ based on
government-led social reforms, and the rise and defeat of fascism (1914−1945);
4. a period of exceptionally high growth (‘the golden age of capitalism’) accompanied by a process of decolonization, nation-building and state-led ‘international
development’ (1945−1973);
5. a transitional period of crisis and restructuring (the 1970s); 6. a period of neoliberal globalization and free market ‘reforms’ – and ‘neoimperialism’
(1980−2007).
The term ‘imperialism’,
in this historic context, defines the dynamics of a longterm process of social change and
transformation, together with associated class struggles. Imperialism in this historic context has taken diverse forms, old
and new. These transformations provide changing contexts for understanding the dynamics of capital accumulation, foreign investment and antiimperialist movements. It also provides the framework for our analysis of these dynamics.
Old and New Imperialisms The ‘old imperialism’ emerged in the late nineteenth century as direct consequence of industrial capitalism and engaged Europe,
the US and Japan and in a competitive struggle for markets and territorial control, carving up much of Africa and Asia among them. Imperialism was
based on an ‘international division of labour’ in which the imperial states produced and exported
manufactured goods in exchange for raw materials, minerals and other industrial inputs or consumer
commodities from their colonies or semi-colonies. The imperial system was set up in the nineteenth century but continued
well into the twentieth century even in the context of two devastating world wars that brought on a decolonization and national liberation movement. It found
support in the ideas advanced by proponents of a neoclassical theory of economic growth – a theory that saw
the world market as the fundamental agent of economic growth and the existing international division of u as a system that would provide ‘mutual
benefits’ to countries both North and South.
The actual workings of this system, adumbrated by orthodox economists in terms of the law of comparative advantages, also gave rise to a very
different school of thought, one much less sanguine about the anticipated outcomes of this economic system. In fact, most theorists at the time were generally
critical, arguing that rather than providing mutual benefits to countries that were well along the path towards development and those seeking to enter this path,
the economic structure of the system (world capitalism) did
not provide ‘mutual benefits’ but worked to the advantage of
the countries at the centre.
This system has been analyzed from different theoretical perspectives, giving rise to various debates about the development process. One of these theories was
that the centre-periphery structure of the world capitalist system was particularly advantageous to the
transnational corporations, allowing them to accumulate capital via relations and conditions of ‘unequal exchange’ and
‘unequal development’ (Amin, 1976) and ‘deteriorating terms of trade’ (Prebisch, 1949). In effect, it was argued that the economic
structure and imperialist domination of the world capitalist system works to siphon off an economic
surplus produced by workers and producers on the ‘periphery’ of the system.
This theory of ‘dependent capitalist development’ or ‘dependency’ was advanced with diverse permutations in the 1960s and 1970s
(Kay, 1989). It was countered by several other theories, including a theory of imperialism that drew attention to the absence of class analysis, a presumed failing of
‘dependency theory’ in its diverse formulations. At the very least a theoretical focus on dependency shifts the attention of analysts away from relations of
production, i.e. class relations of property in the means of production, to relations of economic exchange among countries. Nevertheless, ‘dependency
theory’ caught the imagination of many on the political left, with a consequent inattention to class
analysis and the dynamics of imperialist domination.
The basic argument advanced by ‘dependency’ or ‘world system’ theorists was that the centre-periphery structure of the world system inhibited the
capitalist development of economies on the periphery, resulting in an ‘underdevelopment’ of these economies, including a disarticulated structure of
capitalist production, a deepening of social inequalities worldwide and a growing social divide between the
wealthy few (within the transnational capitalist class) and the many poor (the direct producers and the working class). The basic theory was that
the system of global capitalist production worked to the advantage of countries at the centre and to the
disadvantage of those on the periphery; that, in effect, the critical structural factor explaining the development of some economies and the
underdevelopment of others was location in the world capitalist system. The growing and deepening global inequalities that have emerged over several decades of
globalizing capitalist development suggests that the theory, which had been largely abandoned, a victim of trenchant criticism from both the left and the right,
retains some explanatory power. Table 2.1 (see Chapter 4 for more details) provides a snap shot of some regional dynamics of this unequal development and
associated social inequalities over the past 25 years of capitalist development.
The income statistics presented in Table 2.1 expose little of the basic structure and changing regional patterns of global income disparity (on this see Chapter 4).
Economists have theorized a tendency for income levels across the world to converge after an initial period of increasing disparities. 2 And indeed it is possible to
detect a slight tendency towards convergence between 1950 and 1973. 3 But developments in the subsequent period of capitalist development, marking 25 years
of free-market ‘structural reforms’ under the Washington Consensus, show no such convergence, even when the atypical trend towards rapid economic growth in
East Asia and China, and more recently in India, are taken into account. Breaking down world income statistics by ‘region’ and isolating the poorest and richest
countries, as well as the countries that once constituted the socialist bloc (now ‘in transition’ towards capitalism), shows that the North-South disparity in national
incomes, the product of decades of uneven development, has worsened in recent decades.
Economic Mechanisms of Imperialism The major mechanisms of exploitation and surplus transfer identified by dependistas are aid (Hayter, 1971), monopoly over
technology (Dos Santos, 1970), unequal exchange (Amin, 1986), 4 the structure and terms of trade (Prebisch, 1949), foreign debt payments (George, 1986) and,
more generally as in this volume, foreign direct investment. Through a combination of these and other mechanisms a substantial part of the social product is sucked
out of the periphery and transferred to the centre, there converted into capital, leaving workers and producers on the periphery to bear the heavy social costs of
this ‘development’ and survive in the wreckage left in its wake. 5 In this context the concept and theory of dependency can be viewed as particularly relevant.
However, this book and recent studies point towards imperialism rather than dependency as the more
relevant concept. Linkages among bankers, investors, agromineral elites and their Euroamerican
counterparts and allies, as well as subsequent polarized socioeconomic and political developments,
suggest that a dependency analysis has to be supplemented with class analysis and an analysis of international
power relations derived from a theory of imperialism rather than dependency.
2NC Foreign Investment
Foreign investment is a tool of imperialist domination, perpetuating North-South divide
Galeano 71 (Eduardo Galeano – Uruguayan novelist; former editor at Marcha and Epoca,
1971, “OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE 0F A
CONTINENT
”, http://www.e-reading-lib.com/bookreader.php/149187/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf) //MD
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from
that business. Our inquisitor-hang-man systems function not only for the dominating external markets; they also
provide gushers of profit from foreign loans and investments in the dominated internal markers. Back in 1913,
President Woodrow Wilson observed: "You hear of ‘concessions' to foreign capitalists in Latin America. You do
nor hear of concessions to foreign capitalists in the United States. They are not granted concessions." He was
confident; "Slates that are obliged ... to grant concessions are in this condition, that foreign interests are apt to dominate their
domestic affairs. . . . ," he said, and he was right.1 Along the way we have even lost the right to call ourselves Americans, although the
Haitians and the Cubans appeared in history as new people a century before the Mayflower pilgrims settled on the Plymouth coast. For the
world today, America
is just the United States; the region we inhabit is a sub-America, a second-class America
of nebulous identity.
Foreign investment pillages resources and perpetuates oppressive dependency
Galeano 71 (Eduardo Galeano – Uruguayan novelist; former editor at Marcha and Epoca,
1971, “OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE 0F A
CONTINENT
”, http://www.e-reading-lib.com/bookreader.php/149187/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf) //MD
Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been
transmuted into European— or later United States— capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of
power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources
and human resources. Production methods and class structure have been successively determined from outside for
each area by meshing it into the universal gearbox of capitalism. To each area has been assigned a function, always
for the benefit of the foreign metropolis of the moment, and the endless chain of dependency has been endlessly
extended. The chain has many more than two links. In Latin America it also includes the oppression of small countries
by their larger neighbors and, within each country's frontiers, the exploitation by big cities and ports of their internal sources of food
and labor. (Four centuries ago sixteen of today's twenty biggest Latin American cities already existed.)
1NC Humanitarian Aid
Humanitarian aid creates west/non-west discursive divide that reinforces imperial power imbalances
and racist
Gurd, ’06 - Visiting Research Fellow at the Unit for Global Justice, Goldsmiths College, University of London, U.K., Kiri, “Connections and
Complicities: Reflections on Epistemology, Violence, and Humanitarian Aid,” March 2006, Journal of International Women's Studies, 7 (3), 24-42
http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol7/iss3/4)//A-Berg
In general, deconstructive analyses maintain a disbelief towards metanarratives (Lyotard: 1984). The argument asserts that
metanarratives, such as liberalism and Marxism, are fictions of the modern era whose assumptions of modernity and
progress, reason and Enlightenment, need to be questioned. In this way, metanarratives are no longer 'truths' but
privileged discourses (Parpart: 1995). For Michel Foucault, discourse is a historically, socially and institutionally specific structure of
statements, terms, categories and beliefs (Scott 1988: 36). Furthermore, discourses are the sites where meanings are
contested and power relations are determined, and the ability to control this meaning and knowledge is the key to exercising
power in society (Foucault: 1980). For Foucault, power and knowledge are inseparable (Diamond and Quinby 1988: xxii). The analyses work to
expose the discriminatory ways that discourses function and call for a deconstruction of the relationship between discourse, knowledge, and
power. Jacques Derrida takes up such a deconstruction and emphasizes the power dynamic in binary opposites. He points to the
predominance of binary opposites in Western discourse such as truth/ falsity, reason/emotion,
peace/war whereby the first term is deemed superior to the second and yet it is defined by, and thus
reliant on, its opposite (Derrida 1976). Derrida extends this understanding to a notion of 'drawing boundaries'.
Necessarily, in drawing boundaries, there is an 'inside' and 'outside', the assumption being that the inside (included)
is superior and the outside (excluded) inconsequential. Derrida questions this dichotomy. He argues that the inside is constitutionally
defined and created by the existence of the outside, and so the outside is of necessity and certainly consequential (Derrida: 1992). In taking
these insights to humanitarian aid, the ways in which power and knowledge function to maintain hegemony and create violence becomes
clearer. 7The discourse of humanitarian aid begins with a crisis in the international order. In this post-cold war
story, ethnic, religious and political fragmentation, unprecedented levels of conflict, and ruthless dictators within the rogue states of the Third
This threat then requires Western 'aid,' necessary for 'the rescue of huge numbers of
the world's people' (Orford 1999: 692). The story works to represent the West as the guarantors of progressive values such as
security, freedom, and peace and, in opposition, the Third world as the symbol of poverty, violence, and
helplessness. Correspondingly, the narrative constructs the identity of those in the West as heroic saviours and
those of the Third World as either powerless, passive victims (usually women or children) or savage, irrational
barbarians (Orford 1999: 697). These constructions can be traced back to the period of colonialism, in which the White colonizer
represented civility, rationality and righteousness. The black 'colonized', the Other, represented opposite values that
therefore required the impartation of civility and reform (Orford 1999). In both narratives, the necessity of intervention is
naturalized and legitimized. Humanitarian aid is thus not a neutral story of benevolent assistance. Rather, it is an imperial
World threaten the established liberal order.
discourse
of liberal modernity, in which
its production and deployment has profound political, economic, and
cultural effects and results in concrete practices of thinking and acting through which imperialism is
incessantly
reinforced
(Escobar 1995). The empirical examples noted above helps make clear the ways this discourse impacts material
conditions. In the case of Ethiopia, the legacy of the inferior 'other' underpinning humanitarian aid may have helped the government to
conceal, and therein continue, its war. By manipulating the representations of Third World 'underdevelopment' the government was able to
mobilize an unprecedented amount of international assistance (agencies; funds; media) and hijack the publicity and supplies for its own
political objectives. In addition, the
representation of the Third World as passive and helpless may have contributed
to the international community's dismissal of the politically and socially astute indigenous relief operations organized by the TPLF
(De Waal 1997). Furthermore, by ignoring the strategies of the TPLF, the aid narrative was reinforced: the Western aid operations were
considered necessary and heralded as heroic and the image of the Third world as helpless and inferior was re-inscribed. The problematics of
Western psycho-social trauma relief provides another example of the way particular representations work to create practices that have harmful
consequences. Again here, the narrative of underdevelopment may work to justify and legitimize the universal
application of
Western trauma methodologies and the subsequent dismissal of local healing strategies. Furthermore, critics8 argue that
excluding these strategies worsens and prolongs distress, fueling hatred and resentment and laying the emotional
and psychological foundations
for violent retribution (Gilligan 1999). The analysis highlights the way the narrative of
humanitarian aid constructs representations that reify unequal power relations and, therefore, elucidates the
connection between discursive and material violence. In addition, the analysis is a necessary deconstruction of the
discursive oppositional binaries that obfuscates alterity. The argument demonstrates that this liberal metanarrative is constructed upon
an imperial understanding that attributes the North with certain positive, progressive characteristics and the
South with inferior, primitive ones. In this way, the North is deemed superior and the South inferior and the
North/ South power binary made explicit. Following Derrida's understanding of binaries, such an oppositional positioning works
to erase the ways the superiority of the North is dependant upon the inferiority of the South. Orford makes this erasure clear in the context of
today's global economy: Those who celebrate the age of globalization 'actively forget' the extent to which access to the bodies, labor and
resources of people in states subject to monetary intervention is the condition of the prosperous lifestyles...In turn, the exploitation of the
suffering of people in civil wars or famines enriches global media corporations and their shareholder...The attempts to disavow this leads to
more violence (2002: 287-90). The quote explains the ways in which the coercive action undertaken to maintain this positioning, namely the
exploitation and control of people and resources in developing states, becomes hidden (Orford 2002). This
discursive oppositional
staging also masks the ways that western political foreign alliances, policies and practices often counter the
democratic and humanitarian values that they claim to personify and that afford them their 'superior' status. Uma
Narayan (2000) explains: Political rhetoric that polarizes Western and Non-western values risks obscuring the degree to which economic and
political agendas, carried out in collaboration between particular Western and Third World elites, work to erode the rights and quality of life for
many citizens in both Western and Third World contexts. Such polarization detracts attention from real-politik-driven collaborations that result
in Western economic and military support for brutal and undemocratic Third World regimes (Narayan 2000:93). Narayan highlights the way in
which the
'Western' and 'Non-Western' discursive binary ignores internal contestations and contradictions. In this way, the
a particular political articulation that strategically and selectively
depicts the North and South in ways that maintains unequal power relations. Humanitarian aid as a liberal
modern discourse is positioned within the 'center'. Complex emergencies, in so much as they are represented as
endemic to the Third World and as not connected to the practices of the North, are relegated to the 'outside'.
North/ South binary is not essential or self-evident but
As discussed above, it is the repression or negation of the 'outside' that enables the positive and superior position of the 'inside' to be
maintained. Complex emergencies, therefore, are simply obstacles on the road to liberal modernization (Edkins 2000: 167). The critiques noted
above worked to undermine this positioning by highlighting the ways humanitarian
aid is implicated in situations of conflict by
fueling conflict, subverting local strategies, and undermining political accountability. In this way, the critiques
worked against the established representations of the North/ South binary and place humanitarian aid on the outside, displacing it from its
exalted position (Edkins 2000). Such an analysis was an important attempt to repoliticize aid, drawing it out from its philanthropic roots and
placing it within discussions of geopolitical economy. However, the transformative potential of the critiques fail in so much that the conclusion
of their analysis only reverses the binary, in which aid becomes not the solution to the conflict but the cause: The conclusion is that not only
does international emergency intervention and aid not solve the problem of famine: aid, through the mechanisms of power and control that it
enables to operate, produces famineYThis is a situation of inversion: where aid is no longer the remedy, aid is the cause (Edkins 2000: 146).
Jenny Edkins explains here that the critics' conclusion that aid produces famine (or conflict) does not disrupt the binary – the imperial logic
underlying the discursive oppositions remains intact – it simply switches the positions. In this way, the critiques have done little to provide a
challenge to the discourse and practice
of humanitarian aid: whether aid is positioned as the 'inside' or 'outside', the way that it is
implicated in epistemic violence is dismissed and/or suppressed (Edkins 2003).
2NC Humanitarian Aid
Humanitarian aid is rooted in a Eurocentric narrative that presumes Western exceptionalism.
Kinzer 10 – reporter for the Guardian, (Stephen, End human rights imperialism now, 31 December 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/31/human-rights-imperialism-james-hoge
For those of us who used to consider ourselves part of the human rights movement but have lost the faith, the most intriguing piece
of news in 2010 was the appointment of an eminent foreign policy mandarin, James Hoge, as board chairman of Human Rights Watch. Hoge
has a huge task, and not simply because human rights violations around the world are so pervasive and egregious. Just as great a challenge is
remaking the human rights movement itself. Founded by idealists who wanted to make the world a better place, it has in recent years
become the vanguard of a new form of imperialism. Want to depose the government of a poor country with
resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the
world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they don't conform to the tastes
of upper west side intellectuals? Use human rights as your excuse! This has become the unspoken mantra of a movement that has
lost its way. Human Rights Watch is hardly the only offender. There are a host of others, ranging from Amnesty International and Reporters
Without Borders to the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard and the pitifully misled "anti-genocide" movement. All
promote an
absolutist view of human rights permeated by modern western ideas that westerners mistakenly call
"universal". In some cases, their work, far from saving lives, actually causes more death, more repression, more brutality
and an absolute weakening of human rights. Yet, because of its global reach, now extended by an amazing gift of $100m from
George Soros – which Hoge had a large part in arranging –Human Rights Watch sets a global standard. In its early days, emerging from the
human rights clauses in the 1975 Helsinki Accords, it was the receptacle of the world's innocent but urgent goal of basic rights for all. Just as
Human Rights Watch led the human rights community as it arose, it is now the poster child for a movement that has
become a spear-carrier for the "exceptionalist" belief that the west has a providential right to
intervene wherever in the world it wishes. For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human
rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the
first place. Now,
I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights. The problem is its narrow,
egocentric definition of what human rights are.
1NC Oil
The aff’s attempt to gain access to oil is part of a strategy of imperialism that ensures violence
Altvater 06 - Prof of PolySci @ Free University of Berlin, Elmar “The social formation of capitalism, fossil energy, and oil-imperialism,”
ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Altvater%20energy%20imperialism.pdf)//A-Berg
The highly developed countries, particularly the
United States, rely on both, on market power in the play of free trade and on
military power in conflicts about oil-resources and in defending the country against coming climate conflicts. The
combination of market forces and (military) power is central in the ideologies of American neo-conservatives – the
neo-liberal glorification of a free market in a “geo-economy” and a “geo-political” recourse to military power. The invisible hand of the
market must be completed by the visible fist of the American army, in the cynical words of Thomas Friedman. This is
only at the first glance a contradictory position, considered more closely, it refers to a long tradition of “oil-empire”.
American wealth, power and supremacy are founded on “cheap and abundant oil flows” (Klare 2004) from the
19th century and the RockefellerBaku-connection until the present days. “Oil security” is one of the priorities of USAmerican politics (Cheney report 2001; Klare 2004) and of other powerful oil consuming countries. It refers to several dimensions:
first, to a strategic control of oil territories; secondly, to the strategic control of oil logistics (pipe lines, routes
of oil tank-ships, secure refineries and storage); thirdly, it aims to influence the formation of the oil-price by
controlling supply and demand on markets; and fourthly, it aims to determine the currency in which the
price of oil is invoiced. When we consider the many strands in a complex strategy of oil security or “oil imperialism”, the formula
of “blood for oil” seems much too simple. Yet it is essentially correct. Firstly. The strategic control over oil regions can be secured either
by means of diplomacy and the establishment of friendly relations as in the Gulf region, or by means of
subversion as in some Latin American and African countries, or by using massive military power as in Iraq and to a lesser extent also
in Central Asia and perhaps against Iran and Venezuela. The war waged on Iraq seems to be an irrational undertaking, because a military
occupation imposed on a country against the resistance of a hostile population is extremely expensive and, in ways which are difficult to
estimate, may well involve a demoralising impact on hegemony of the global superpower. Nevertheless, the USA after 2001 are well prepared
to control the oil-regions; they dispose on more than 700 military bases in all parts of the world, many of them aiming at controlling the
Caucasus Region, Central Asia, the Gulf and parts of Africa. The
USA also hold military bases in many Latin American
countries, from Columbia and Ecuador to Paraguay, trying to militarily encircle and politically isolate Venezuela, even
by threatening with an invasion of the country and by trying to control Columbian and Ecuadorian pipeline-systems and Bolivian
water reserves and the stocks of hydrocarbons. Secondly. The strategic control of oil logistics is expensive too, although to a lesser extent.
It requires the collaboration of many governments in countries traversed by pipelines, and of countries with coasts where the routes of tankers
are passing. Central Asia has been labelled “Pipelineistan”, that is the group of states in the region which provides transit for the Caspian oil.
Based as it is on authoritarian and corrupt regimes, US
dominance over these states is however precarious, and faces
challenge, not only by “terrorists”, but by considerable parts of the population. The crucial role of pipelines became evident
in the course of the conflict between Russia and the Ukrain in 2005/06 about the transit of gas from Siberia to Western Europe and on the
occasion of the planned construction of a direct pipeline from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea without crossing neighbouring Baltic
countries or Poland. In Latin America the governments of Venezuela, Brasil, Argentina and Bolivia try to establish a continental pipeline
system with the intention of intensifying Latin American integration by providing common infrastructure and not by creating an open market
from Alaska to Fireland (Free Trade Area of the Americas) as it was intended primarily by the USA. Networks of gas and oil pipelines are gaining
importance together with the globalisation of the fossil energy regime and the increasing scarcity of oil, and to a lesser extent of gas.
1NC Trade Agreement
Trade agreements are a tool of empire building and encourage resentment, turning case.
Petras and Veltmeyer, ’07 - *Professor Emeritus in Sociology at Binghamton University in New York and Adjunct Professor in International
Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University; **Professor of Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in Mexico and Professor of
Sociology and International Development Studies at St. Mary’s University, (James and Henry, Multinationals on Trial: Foreign Investment Matters, 10/2007,
eBook)//A-Berg
Empire builders operate through a variety of unequal ‘treaties’ and agreements. These include: 1. Bilateral
relations between the empire and client state; 2. Multilateral agreements – relations between the empire and regions (Central American Free
Trade Area, LAFTA – Latin American Free Trade Area) 3. Sub-regional pacts – relations between the empire and specific clients. These agreements are
based on the scope and degree of subordination of the particular ruling elite(s) in each geographical unit. The
‘easiest’ and least complicated mode of empire building is to move step-by-step – the salami tactics – of incorporating countries with
compliant rulers via bilateral agreements. This does not preclude imperial policymakers from looking
toward incorporating broader geopolitical units into the empire. The playing off of one region over another in terms of marginal
trade and loan concessions and regimes changes in neighbouring countries can set the stage for the incorporation of sub-regions into the empire. Eventually, the
empire builders may ‘go for’ entire regions, via continent-wide agreements. Two fundamental
limitations to the strategy of empire building
via geographical incorporation have emerged: 1) The internal opposition of the majority of the population
adversely affected by imperial domination and 2) the non-reciprocal nature of the treaties adversely
affecting the elites within the country to be incorporated in the empire. The latter contradiction is more acute in the everyday debates,
negotiations and conferences between the empire and its clients. The US and European imperial states depend on the political
support of non-competitive groups, especially in the powerful agricultural sector to sustain imperial expansion. There is
also an important dialectic of conflict and complementarity between the ‘advanced’ sector of the
capitalist system represented by the global multinational corporations, and the relatively backward,
highly subsidized and government protected local capitalists. In order to secure the support of client states
and the ruling elites in the Developing World for the incorporation of their countries into the empire (i.e. globalization),
imperial policy makers in the US and Europe, and Japan, are forced to lower trade barriers and end protectionism
and subsidies to the backward sectors and industries that are unable to compete against Third world producers. However, while Third
World export elites are quite willing to shortchange workers, manufacturers, and public employees, they are not willing to commit economic suicide. The dilemma
for the empire builders is that they need the political support of both their own country’s backward (in terms of the globalization imperative) economic sectors and
the export-oriented elites in the Third World, in countries such as Brazil and India, whose economic interests are directly opposed to them. This
conflict has
resulted in the collapse of the Doha round of WTO free trade negotiations and it has killed the Bush regime’s
proposal of a continental free trade zone in the Americas.
1NC Trafficking
The 1AC’s rescue discourse is a mask for imperialism – their moral outcry fuels intervention in the name
of the superior American identity
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
In this paper I will argue that the
‘traffic in women’ issue and the US government response to it is part of the
construction of a new imperial gender identity of brave and resolute men and civilized women who seek to
rescue the downtrodden of the world. As many a post-colonial theorist has informed us, ‘rescue’ discourses – especially
those directed at majority world women – are never really about these women and their rights, rather they are ways to
establish and anchor the ‘superior’ identities of the colonizers and both make possible and justify imperialism.
While such discourses go back a long way, this particular discourse over traffic in women in the US is new in that it has taken on new (or
perhaps, renewed) overtones of religious moralism, evidenced in the coming together of radical feminist organizations against the traffic in
women and the religious right in the United States – an alliance that has found extraordinary power and influence in the “faith-based”
government of the Bush administration. Thus, the campaign
against traffic in women as espoused by the current administration
helps to anchor a new imperial identity, a masculinism that is rejuvenated in its (white, heterosexual) morally
upright and “muscular” manliness – a manliness that contrasts with more liberal, bourgeois, corporate masculinity of the Clinton
era. This new man has ‘the guts’ to enforce his standards worldwide, to force others to live up to the
standards of this new American masculinity.
2NC Trafficking
The 1AC’s rescue discourse maintains imperialism and makes exploitation inevitable
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
This new anti-trafficking discourse is also a racialized discourse, based predominantly on white masculinities -- although
the role of the masculinity discourse of Louis Farakhan and the Million Man March, for example, should certainly be analyzed in the context. It
is certainly articulated in unspoken contrast to racialized masculinities understood to be sexually aggressive, irresponsible or abusive. The
discourse around the need to rescue women from sexual slavery strengthens the claims of white men to
being the proper caretakers and holders of power. Immigrant men (e.g. ‘Asian gangs’) and aboriginal men (whose reserves are
suspected to play a role in aiding illegal cross-border movement) are suspected of the wrong kind of masculinity. It is also a discourse
that strengthens the position of the ‘heterosexual family’ as the proper container for sexuality – in the face
of demands for full marital and family rights by gays and lesbians. This new gendered discourse, however, is not just domestic but global –
indeed imperial – in its reach. ‘Proper’ masculinity is, of course, a classic trope of imperialism: ‘we’ treat ‘our’ women right;
‘our’ women are ‘emancipated’, therefore ‘we’ need to ‘teach you some respect’. This new gendered discourse helps support an
aggressive foreign policy. That is it helps explain the (formerly) widespread support, even among ‘liberal’ elites, for
aggressive international action. This foreign policy stance is popular in part because it is underlain by a gender model that appeals to
so many men and women. The masculinity that both the radical feminists and the religious right find so appealing is one that will discipline
others into the correct behaviour – punishing those that fail to live up to these masculine standards and unafraid to act very forcefully in the
defense of ‘correct principles’. The powerful impact of this discourse, and the action that follows from it, is apparent in the attempts of other
governments to ‘live up’ to these standards and to fit themselves into this new standards of masculinity in order to gain international
respectability. Again, the implications of this are felt very strongly by sex-workers. Governments are acting to strengthen their
laws against both trafficking and the sex trade and to live up to this desired order. Finally, this new masculinity has implications not only at the
inter-state and state levels but at the level of new social movements. This new masculinity underlies an economic as well as moral
approach to the world, one that plays an interesting role in a world were social movements are coalescing against global corporate neoliberalism. The new right, in this ‘human rights’ ‘anti-trafficking’ masculine agenda taps into some of the anger and frustration of the broader
social movement against global corporate neo- liberalism, while simultaneously defending a free-market, free-trade approach. That is, it
successfully de-links
the issues of trafficking and migration from economic globalization – blaming corporations
reflects a
broader pattern of religious right global activism which makes common cause with majority world countries on ‘moral’
issues (defending the family, critiquing western decadence) while remaining silent on economic issues (Butler
and corporate masculinity and the lack of ‘morals’ in global relations, but not the free market or neo-liberal agenda per se. This
2000, 10-11). While the de-linking of moral and economic issues is not new -- the Clinton government similarly argued that “most aspects of
equality for women have no direct link to international economic and financial issues” (Butler 2000, 11) -- the religious right does not claim to
be ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ (now widely understood as self-interested) like the denizens of global financial institutions. The religious right, like the
anti-globalization movement, is impassioned and brings its values to international affairs. This broadens its appeal to the new anti-globalization
movement, especially among those feeling frustrated with the lack of progress on social issues. It is, of course, especially appealing to ‘socially
responsible’ men who perhaps mourn their loss of manliness in the new, equitable, feminist and feminized social-justice movements of today.
In the ‘rescuer of innocent maidens’ role they can find a renewed sense of masculinity. 11 Once again, however,
without an analysis of imperialism , such activism can only undermine the struggles of global sex
workers.
Their view of human trafficking replicates cultural imperialism
Desyllas 07 - Ph.D. in Social Work & Social Research from Portland State University,
(Moshoula Capous, “A Critique of the Global Trafficking Discourse and U.S. Policy,”
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, December 2007, Volume XXXIV, Number 4,
globalfop.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/traffiking-discourse.pdf)//A-Berg
The media play a major role in the reproduction of racial stereotypes and in the construction of images
that reinforce power hierarchies. Kempadoo (2001b) describes how the media portray the global sex trade as one-dimensional,
where women are just “victims” of male violence, even though the issue of migratory sex work is more complex. In western culture,
the dominant image of the victimized sex worker is of a “young, brown, Asian or Black woman” (Kempadoo, 2001b, p. 169). This
illustration plays into the discourse by “othering women” to justify the current U.S. policy that objectifies
women, by turning them into oppressed, dependent victims in need of rescue. A critical analysis of why this
occurs is presented by Kempadoo (1998), who explains that the “bad girl” illustration “threatens male control and domination.” This
simultaneously distorts the real lived experiences of migrants (Long, 2004), assumes homogeneity and denies women their agency. The
terminology being used shows a culturally imperialistic discourse on prostitution and trafficking. The speech
delivered by U.S. President Bush in July of 2004 included this perpetuation of what Mohanty (1991, p. 57) calls “the construction of
third world women as a homogenous powerless group often located as implicit victims of particular
socio-economic systems.” To a group of law enforcement officers and human services providers, President Bush declared, “The lives
of tens of thousands of innocent women and children depend on your compassion, they depend on your determination, and they depend on
your daily efforts to rescue them from misery and servitude. You are in a fight against evil, and the American people are grateful for your
dedication and services.” These
women of the global South are also presented as victims of dire socioeconomic conditions who need to be rescued by those of the global North. However, no responsibility is
taken by the global North in the perpetuation of this poverty in third world countries through their
imposed SAP and transnational corporations. bell hooks (2000) maintains that discounting women’s agency and
constructing non-western women as needing to be rescued perpetuates the idea of the weak “other”
and the powerful westerner, further colonizing through the use of a hegemonic framework. Western NGOs
construct the ‘third world woman’ as a ‘damaged other’ to justify their “own interventionist impulses” (Doezema, 2001, p. 1). Women are
infantilized in the name of protecting and ‘saving’ them (Agustin, 2003b, p. 8), which takes away their power and agency.
Also, requiring women to participate in a criminal justice model aimed at ‘catching the bad guy’ traffickers calls into question whether this
policy is another way of regulating and possessing control over a woman’s body through the withholding of services unless women can assist in
the ‘war against trafficking.’ The
re-inscription of western imperialism and colonialism is evidenced through the
creation and implementation of trafficking policies. A more inclusive and constructive discourse is one that takes into
account the variety of conditions and agency of men and transgender individuals, as well the perspectives of sex workers who do not have
rights as sex workers due to the illegal nature of their work. It is also crucial to hear the diverse experiences of migrants who are in a more
threatened position due to their illegal status. The focus will have to shift away from associating trafficking primarily with sexual slavery and the
sex industry. Agustin (2003b, p. 8) asserts, “when the subject is not a minority of women who are duped, sequestered and enslaved, we should
be able to give credit where it is due to women and transsexuals, as well as men, who dare to make decisions to better their lives by leaving
their homes to work abroad, no matter what kind of work they have to do.” The
current U.S. government prefers repressive
strategies because they are simple and in accordance with other agendas, such as immigration control,
ending organized crime, imposing ideologies onto other countries, and maintaining women’s morality
and sexuality. By accepting the current abolitionist framework on trafficking, the multiple realities of migrants, sex workers
and other groups are ignored, agency is denied, and all experiences are assumed to be the same. When
western policy makers and feminists homogenize experiences and ignore contextual differences, this leads
to a disregard of the historical, cultural and socio-political background of migrants.
Their framing of trafficking is wrong – the image of the innocent girl Joanna fuels violent crackdown
which turns the case
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
While the initial impulse behind the
traffic in women discourse appears to be one of protecting the rights of exploited women, it
has been heavily condemned by sex- workers, including sex-workers from the global South, as paternalistic
and imperialist. As sex-workers have pointed out time and time again, the trafficking mythology is straight society’s
way of explaining away women’s entry into prostitution, as innocent girls captured by evil men and
forced to do what no good woman would ever do. Such a mythology maintains the madonna/whore
division among women and justifies paternalist and criminalist approaches to the sex-trade that fail to
provide sex-workers with the decent working conditions that they have been demanding. Indeed, such an approach
contributes to worsening the conditions for women in the trade because it strengthens the hand of
officials without empowering the women themselves. This puts sex-workers at greater risk e.g. by
strengthening the powers of police to raid sex-work establishments, which will push the industry further
underground and into less and less safe areas. It also often means that women are either jailed or put into
protective state programs, where they are trained in more ‘fitting’ feminine occupations such as
domestic work or sewing.
Their framing of trafficking fuels a violent us-them dichotomy which makes imperialist
violence inevitable and turns the case
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
The resistance
to seeing third world sex-workers as agents, however well intentioned in trying to recognize the structural
constraints faced by women in the third world, creates a dichotomy of first world women as ‘free’ and third world
women as ‘forced’. Kempadoo argues that such a (false) dichotomy “reinforces the notions that (western)
women who freely transgress sexual norms deserve to be punished, while (non-Western) young,
innocent women forced into prostitution by poverty, trafficking or age, need to be rescued.” (Kempadoo
1999b, 30) Such a portrayal, therefore, re-creates imperialist norms. Simultaneously, the division of “victims” from
those who choose to enter the trade, focuses world attention on the victims -- a much easier category to deal with
-- and away from sex-workers’ rights. As pro-sex-workers’ rights analysts have pointed out, the easy championing of the
campaign against “forced” as opposed to “chosen” prostitution, reinforces the notion that only
“innocent victims” are worthy of human rights efforts, not self-chosen ‘whores’ (Doezma 1999a, 41-42). Once
again, this dichotomy fails to recognize the real source of human rights abuses in prostitution, which
lays not so much in the entry into prostitution as in the conditions under which sex-work is carried out. Sex worker
organizations, such as the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee in India are among those organizing world-wide to
empower sex-workers and protect sex-workers rights rather to ‘rescue’ or ‘reform’ them.
The image of the unempowered trafficking victim is not neutral – it fuels a racialized understanding of
the problem that turns the case
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
Indeed, the
trafficking panic is often based on misconstrued evidence that relies on racialized
understandings. Reliable statistics on the number of ‘trafficked’ women are yet to be found, and there is a growing
tendency simply to equate the number of foreign women in any particular nation’s trade with the number of trafficked women. Indeed,
media and, perhaps more importantly, police reports on the trafficking issue frequently refer to the “growing number
of foreign women” as a stand-in for “trafficking victims”. There is no attempt to distinguish even between
those who came under their own power and those who did not. This tendency underscores the implicit
racism in much of the anti- trafficking discourse. Third world women, or women of colour are assumed to have no
agency because of their racialized/ third world status. Third world women are assumed to be, and in media
reports on trafficking are often characterized as, “naive, poor and unempowered ... unable to act as agents in their own
lives or to make an uncoerced decision to work in the sex industry”(Doezma 1999b). Indeed, I would argue, that even if entry into the trade was
a less than perfect option, it does not mean that once in the trade women do not define their interests as making as much money as possible in
the safest environment possible nor that these interests should be ignored as ‘false consciousness’. That is, trafficking, understood as
exploitation within sex-work, occurs
because of the ignoring of sex-workers’ rights to decriminalized and safe
working conditions. However, attempts to address ‘trafficking’ as it is currently understood only worsen
conditions for women in prostitution by further criminalizing and stigmatizing the trade.
The construction of the helpless other is a guise for imperialist expansion and condemns victims to
suffering
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
Radical feminism has had a particularly powerful role to play in US feminism, most importantly on those issues involving sexuality such as
prostitution. The condemnation of prostitution as exploitation of women has been most forcefully put forward by US-based organizations (with
allies in other parts of the world) such as CATW founded by radical feminist Kathleen Barry. Jo Doezma has put forward the most cogent
analysis of Barry and CATW’s position in her article “Ouch! Western Feminists Wounded Attachment to the Third World Prostitute”. Doezma
of 'third world prostitutes' is part of a wider western feminist impulse to
construct a damaged 'other' as the main justification for its own interventionist impulses.…The 'injured
body' of the 'third world trafficking victim' in international feminist debates around trafficking in women serves
as a powerful metaphor for advancing certain feminist interests, which cannot be assumed to be those of
third world sex workers themselves” (Doezma 2001). Doezma draws on Wendy Brown’s formulation of the “injured body” as part of
the new identity politics that, Brown contends, seek protection rather than power. As Doezma explains: Brown suggests
that politicized identity's potential for transforming structures of domination is severely limited because
of its own investment in a history of 'pain' (1995: 55). The 'pain' or 'injury' at the heart of politicized identity is
social subordination and exclusion from universal equality and justice promised by the liberal state (1995: 7). This historical pain
becomes the foundation for identity, as well as, paradoxically, that which identity politics strives to bring to an
end. In other words, identity based on injury cannot let go of that injury without ceasing to exist. This paradox
results in a politics that seeks protection from the state rather than power and freedom for itself. In
seeking protection from the same structures that cause injury, this politics risks reaffirming, rather than subverting,
structures of domination, and risks reinscribing injured identity in law and policy through its demands
for state protection against injury (Doezma 2001). The result, according to Brown, is a politics that seeks to
reinscribe state protective power, a power that has been particularly problematic for women.
argues that “CATW's construction
2NC Trafficking – Modeling
The idea that the world should replicate the US’s trafficking strategy is imperialist
Desyllas 07 - Ph.D. in Social Work & Social Research from Portland State University,
(Moshoula Capous, “A Critique of the Global Trafficking Discourse and U.S. Policy,”
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, December 2007, Volume XXXIV, Number 4,
globalfop.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/traffiking-discourse.pdf)//A-Berg
The TVPA of 2000 is composed of features that emphasize prevention, protection and prosecution. One aspect of the TVPA’s prevention
component includes the
U.S.’s demands on other countries to take preventative measures to end sex
trafficking. The U.S. has written into policy its responsibility to make yearly assessments of other countries’ anti-trafficking
efforts and to rank each country according to the procedures a country takes in order to ‘combat’ trafficking.
The Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons with the State Department has a mandate from Congress to issue annual Trafficking in
Persons (TIP) reports that rates each country’s progress on eliminating trafficking. Each country is judged on a ‘Tier’ system, and the
U.S.,
along with a few other western European countries, has awarded itself Tier 1 status, which represents ‘sufficient’
efforts at combating trafficking. However, those countries that do not demonstrate adequate means and efforts to end trafficking, as judged
appropriate by the U.S., are ranked on either Tier 2 or Tier 3. Those countries judged as being on Tier 3 are then subject to sanctions by the U.S.
(except for sanctions on humanitarian aid). Mezler (2005) has called to attention the interesting parallel between those countries that are
ranked as Tier 3 countries and their poor political relations with the U.S., such as Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. Venezuela’s Tier
3
ranking may be more about the country’s refusal to acknowledge the U.S. program than with its efforts
to eliminate trafficking (Mezler, 2005). Not only does the Tier system reinforce imperialist and hegemonic
relations between those in power and those not in power, but it also raises additional issues related to
the U.S. role within the world. Additional countries that were placed in Tier 3 and defined as sanctionable by the U.S.
State Department consisted of countries who oppose U.S. imperialism, such as Iran, and countries made up of Arab or
Muslim populations, such as Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Lebanon, Sudan, Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia
(Kempadoo, 2005, p. xxi). Enloe (2000, p. xvi) highlights
the unique position of the U.S. as a nation that offers itself
up as “a model to be emulated” while playing the role of a term she coins as “global policeman.”
Modeling is an imperialist form of integration
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
Presidential backing of the
anti-trafficking initiative, in the aftermath of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, gave added power
to the drive to bring other nations into line with American standards and practices on trafficking and, I would argue
therefore, right-wing American masculinity. It is important to remember at this point that one of the key provisions of
the TVPA, insisted on by the evangelical right, was the inclusion of reporting and sanctions procedures to keep
other countries in line with US standards. That is, in line with the neo-imperial agenda, other countries and
other men were to live up to American dictates of proper behaviour. The ranking of nations as Tier I, II or III according
to their compliance with American anti-trafficking standards began to take on real meaning as the reality of American willingness to take
punitive action had been made clear. The president appears John Wayne-like in a Miller statement: The government officials I've just met with
on my recent trip were aware of the problem, and a lot of the countries that were listed in the report as Tier 3 [the most serious offenders who
invite sanctions] knew that if things didn't change the president would take advantage of the legislation. There were massive arrests from
Serbia to Montenegro. Ten of the 15 countries started doing incredible things because they knew the president meant business. The president's
speech reinforced the seriousness of the issue. I think the president has basically said 'Hey, not on my watch. We're gonna shut these exploiters
down.' Whole nations are listening and taking him seriously (Miller in O’Meara, 2003).
Their modeling argument is not neutral – it a violent form of surveillance that seeks to
remake the world in the US’ image
Leslie 04 (Jeffrey Leslie – Professor of History and Politics at the University of New
Brunswick, Saint John, March, 2004, “US Anti-trafficking Policy and Neo-Imperial
Masculinity: The Right Man for the Job”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/7/2/9/5/pag
es72953/p72953-1.php) //MD
The critiquing of other countries’ behaviour is not, of course, limited to former Eastern bloc or majority world states, both Canada and Australia
expressed discomfiture at being listed as Tier II countries (not threatened with sanctions but not living up to the US standards either) in US
reporting procedure itself, aside from the sanctions, serves as a disciplinary mechanism in
the way of Foucault’s panopticon, making all other countries the object of surveillance by the US.
Canada (in the aftermath of refusing to support the invasion of Iraq and suspicions of being insufficiently vigilant against terrorists) has
been harshly criticized for its “lax immigration laws”, which a 2004 US report saw as contributing to the “rapid rise in human
trafficking reports. The
smuggling” (Alberts 2004). Interestingly, while many Canadians resisted earlier, post-9-11 efforts to “harmonize the border” and stiffen
immigration laws (although this was done) this new ‘human
rights’ critique has resulted in swift action to achieve precisely
these same objectives and yet received little public attention or criticism. The Canadian Justice Minister has recently announced “plans to
step up efforts at cooperating with the US Justice Department to tackle what officials are calling the “new global slave trade”, which will include
the creation of a new RCMP human trafficking investigative team (i.e. not human rights, but law and order, measures)(Alberts 2004). The
Department of State Trafficking Office has even produced a “model law” to help these other nations
conform to US standards (Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, 2003). According to Rep. Chris Smith, this is indeed
the way things should be: The beauty of the president bringing this up at the United Nations is that the U.S. is leading the way on this issue. We
have the best laws in the world and we’re trying to get other countries to do the same. The Russians have taken our law, which we translated
for them, and they’re about to enact it - and it’s almost identical to ours. This isn’t lip service. The president believes in this issue and he’s got
people around him who are effectively implementing it. This is heartfelt on the part of the president and, believe me, he’s going to do
something about this trafficking in human beings (Smith in O’Meara, 2003). What
is clear here, however, is that what is
important is the act of forcing others to change their behaviour, not what happened to the women who
are ‘rescued’ – who often fail to make an appearance in these celebratory speeches. Sex workers’ groups such as Zi Teng in Hong Kong
have argued that sex workers are now coming under increasing pressure: “the immense power of Western aid,
couple with the third-world states’ desire for modernization (that is putting up fronts of democracy and equality so as to
gain aid funds without moving towards social justice) has led to further criminal harassment of sex workers” (Crago 2003).
Country Specific
1NC Mexico
US intervention in Mexico is a ruse to increase foreign domination of markets and create unequal
economic ties.
Hart 02 – John and Rebecca Moores Distinguished Professor of History at U Houston, (John Mason, Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the
Civil War, 04/2002, eBook)//A-Berg
The American experience in Mexico offers a partial answer to the question of why the United States has so frequently
supported oppressive tyrants with material aid, even while criticizing other governments for doing the same. Over1'iding material concerns,
specifically the desire to extract wealth without opposition despite moral pronouncements, prompted financiers, railroad
men, and ranchers to support military strongman Diaz against democratically elected Lerdo. Subsequently they backed Victo1'iano Huerta. Wilson supported Huerta
with arms for over six months, hoping that the Mexican dictator could restore order; because he respected American property interests. Next the American financial
elite briefly supported Francisco Villa but then shifted to Carranza as the lesser of two evils. Finally they lent their support to Alvaro Obregên Salido and Plutarcho
Elias Calles. In every case the
powerful Americans in the private sector had a far-reaching influence on official U.S.
policy. During the 19905 those sectors of the American business community seeking relief from the demands of American labor supported President Bill Clinton
and Treasury Secretary Robe1't E. Rubin in the approval of NAFTA. Meanwhile, they rushed to help Presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de
Leon in their p1'ivatization efforts. The
American elites' continuing interest in access to strategic resources in other
parts of the world is an integral part of U.S. policymaking. The interests of elite American property
holders and investors has been the most important factor in relations between the United States and other nations
throughout the Western Hemisphere, outweighing objections to dictatorships in the countries in question even in the cases represented by "Papa
Doc"• Duvaliel; the Somoza patriarchs, and the Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean, Uruguayan, and Central American generals of the 19705 and 19805. Although the CIAsupported overthrow of the democratic government of Guatemala in 19 54, the boycott of Nicaraguan products in 1980, and the ensuing support for the Contras
were explained by the U.S. government in purely political terms, it is clear that a perceived nationalistic danger to the elaborate structure of American land
ownership and trade hegemony in Central Ame1'ica was the deeper concern. Cooperative
collaborating elites gained power as a
result of U.S. intervention. In Africa, Ame1'ican support for the deployment of Belgian troops in Zaire by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
du1'ing the early 19605 provides another example of a misleading political emphasis given to strategies rooted in the effort to control strategic resources. Zaire
contained one of the world's largest copper producing complexes, and American support for the creation of a client state run by a right-wing dictator instead of his
nationalistic and left-wing counterpart ensured continued Western ownership of the copper mines. The violent, CIA-supported overthrow of the Sukarno
government in oil-rich Indonesia underscores the mix of political and economic considerations behind American activism in the creation of client regimes.
American corporate leaders and liberal and conservative U.S. administrations have worked with these antidemocratic
regimes, including Nigeria in the mid 1990s, because they supported private enterprise and free trade, which were controlled
by American elites. Middle-class Americans were also a strong cultural force in Mexico, and they remain so today. During the twentieth century their actions and
attitudes reinforced the Mexicans' need to participate more fully in public affairs. Today American immigrants-retirees, spouses, scholars, students, and workerscontinue to bring the American dream to Mexico. Their complexity of interests and activities sometimes creates an impression of fractionalization. Yet if we
remember that most applied themselves to an occupation in order to survive, then we will understand why the main thrust of day-to-day middle-class American
activity in Mexico has been in the workplace and in home life. This vision of individualism, competition, efficiency, religious practice, free markets, social mobility
and democracy was and continues to be passed to Mexico's people with an intensity possible only between neighbors. As Americans have immigrated to Mexico on
a massive scale, Hollywood movies, television shows, fast-food joints, baseball, blues, disco, jazz, and folk and rap music have permeated Mexican culture. The
American dream represents a unique mix in which Western ideas about progress and individualism
combine with a preoccupation with individual perfectibility and a belief that consumerism represents
the ultimate path to human happiness. These American values and ideals transcend even the attraction of electoral democracy and political
liberty. At its deepest level the American dream teaches that individuals are perfectible when emphasis is placed on education, personal and public hygiene, and
physical fitness. The search for individual happiness has an even more common course. It is achieved through the materialism that developed alongside the growth
of American businesses, first in Mexico during the late nineteenth century and now in the rest of the Third World. Happiness
through
consumerism is achieved by competition, efficiency and productivity. In daily life the people of Mexico and the Third World
learn these lessons via advertising, television programs, and Hollywood movies that promise fulfillment through the acquisition of elegant clothing and sporty cars.
The new individualism has replaced the community and family economic and cultural commitments once found in the traditional villages of the countryside.A major
cultural component of the change has been the rise of Protestantism. The American Protestant sects that grew in Mexico during the nineteenth century are now
flourishing in Brazil and Guatemala and spreading to the rest of Latin America. It relieves individuals of the responsibility to donate their savings to community
welfare through fiesta rituals, and it offers them the right to communicate directly with God, removing the village priests from their mediating role between the
deity and the people.2 America
is an imperial force in Mexico because U.S. government authorities and
privileged American citizens assert their power there in search of advantages. Beyond their personal resources, they
use the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and multinational banks and corporations as instruments
of that power. With their demands for reducing investment in social programs that would benefit Mexico's citizens and awarding budget priorities to debt
payments for foreign creditors, the leaders of these institutions emphasize the goal of development. This ideology distinguishes them from middle-class Americans
who hold more democratic beliefs. The elites who participate in these institutions are distinct from their counterparts during the age of European colonialism, when
the rich and powerful sought the direct exploitation of openly enslaved peoples. The
attempts to link the economies and peoples of
Mexico and the United States have always been problematic and sometimes disastrous, but they have also been mutually beneficial.
The benefits, howeven are lopsided, since the continuing relationship indicates roles for Mexican labor in American inclustrialism and American
capital in the Mexican marketplace. Probable benefits include an increased per capita output for Mexico, which could potentially relieve the Mexican government of
The challenge of
and problem with NAFTA, however, lie in the idea of economic growth induced and effectively controlled by
capitalists from out-side Mexico rather than from within. Under the coordinated plan of trade and investments represented by
its onerous national debt by creating a larger economic base and providing a substantial marketplace for both A1ne1'icans and Mexicans.
ADRs and NAFTA, the Mexican leaders are attempting to bypass the gradual, centuries-long, internalized process of commercial and then industrial growth that
acculturated the peoples of Western Europe, the United States, and Iapan. Mexican prosperity, like that of the Four Tigers of Asia, depends upon outside
investments and buyers and oscillates accordingly. In Mexico's case the outsiders are Americans. Unlike the Four Tigers, Mexico is a geographically large and socially
diverse nation. It has the world's thirteenth largest economy and a population of approximately 1oo,ooo,ooo, half of whom live in what the government admits is
extreme poverty. The rural population-30 percent of Mexico's citizens-lacks educational opportunities and will not be able to participate in an economic expansion
in either the short or the mid term, except as menial laborers.
2NC Mexico
That colonial logic shapes US policy toward Mexico.
Hart 02 – John and Rebecca Moores Distinguished Professor of History at U Houston, (John Mason,
Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War, 04/2002, eBook)//A-Berg
In 1883 a group of the most prominent capitalists and politicians of the United States gathered with their Mexican counterparts in the banquet hall of the Waldorf
Astoria Hotel in New York. The cabinet members and financiers took their seats at the long dining table. Facing each other at the left and the right of the head chair
were General Porfirio Diaz and Ulysses S. Grant, both former presidents. Collis R Huntington, one of the leading railroad industrialists and financiers of his time, took
the head chair In the meeting that ensued, the Mexican officials presented their case for pervasive American participation in the development of their economy,
and the American
investors bargained for access to Mexico's abundant natural resources. The program of free
trade, foreign investment, and privatization of the Mexican countryside that they agreed upon that evening continues to
resonate. The benefits and detriments of the agreements that they struck have influenced the relationship
between the peoples and governments of the United States and Mexico to this day. It was the Americans' first step
in a progression that has determined the relations between the United States and the nations of the Third World in the
twenty-first century. The story of the American experience in Mexico is one of intense interaction between two peoples and the relationship that developed
between two nations as a result. Mexico was the first of the many legally recognized but economically and militarily weak nations that Americans encountered after
the Civil War. Between 1865 and 2000, when this narrative concludes, the contacts and connections between Americans and Mexicans were marked not only by
intervention and revolution, but by accommodation and cooperation as well. The history that unfolded during those 135 years offers critical insights into how the
United States became a global empire, the impulses behind neo-liberalism, the growth of American culture in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and the process of
globalization. Americans
entered Mexico well before they developed the capacity to exercise a powerful
influence in the farther reaches of the world, but the most powerful among them already had a vision of world
leadership. From the beginnings of the nineteenth century until the present era, the citizens of the United States attempted to export their
unique "•A1nerican dream "• to Mexico. Their vision incorporated social mobility Protestant values, a capitalist free market, a consumer
culture, and a democracy of elected representation.
1NC Venezuela
The plan is an alibi to allow the US the opportunity to overthrow the government of Venezuela and
integrate it into the neoliberal economy
Robinson and Gindin 05 - Jonah Gindin is a Canadian journalist living and working in Caracas, Venezuela, William I Robinson is professor of sociology
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, “The Battle for Global Civil Society,” June 13th 2005,
http://web.archive.org/web/20130314033424/http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1186)//A-Berg
**The website this was originally posted on was taken down, but DHeidt managed to find it in the web archive.
Let me clarify that my argument in no way suggests that democratization movements around the world are creatures of foreign policy, on the contrary, the
argument is that changes in U.S.
foreign policy and new modalities in U.S. intervention are meant specifically to
challenge, and undermine, limit, and control the extent of social and political change in countries where masses of
people—including the elite—are struggling for democracy and democratization. Entirely to the contrary , U.S. political intervention under the
banner of “democracy promotion” is aimed at undermining authentic democracy, at undermining and gaining
control over popular movements for democratization, at keeping a lid on popular democracy movements, at limiting any change that may be
brought about by mass democratization movements so that the outcome to democracy struggles will not threaten the elite
order and integration into global capitalism . If by democracy we mean the power of the people, we mean mass participation in the vital
decisions of society, a democratic distribution of material and cultural resources, then democracy is a profound threat to global capitalist interests and must be
mercilessly opposed and suppressed by U.S. and transnational elites. What is new about the strategy of “democracy promotion” is that this opposition, this
suppression, is now conducted ironically under the very rhetorical banner of promoting democracy and through sophisticated new instruments and mo dalities of
political intervention. Having said that, the question is very legitimate. I think what’s going on is that as every country and every community in the world becomes
turned upside down by the penetration of capitalist globalization and the massive changes that we’ve seen in the last ten to twenty years, older forms of political
authority—authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc.—are delegitimated and challenged from below. It’s at that point that the
U.S. attempts with these
democratization movements to control the type of political change that’s going to take place, attempts to control the outcome
of these democratization movements, and attempts to get certain groups in power and marginalize other groups. In this context,
if the U.S. moves into a country such as Kyrgyzstan—which I haven’t studied in as much detail as the Ukraine, for example—all different groups that are going to be
involved in the democratization struggle are going to, in some way or another, come under U.S. purview. Some will be brought into U.S. programs through funding
and technical liaisons and advisors, and so forth, while others will be marginalized. You asked if all these different groups are stooges of U.S. foreign policy. Not at
all; those that are struggling
for a completely different vision, one contrary to U.S. interests and global capital’s
interests are going to be marginalized if they can’t be bought. There are going to be alternative or parallel organizations set up by U.S.
operatives (and their local allies and agents) and funding that are more powerful, more moderate, more centrist, more elite-oriented. These organizations and
NGOs are going to receive international media attention, they’re going to receive funding, they’re going to liaise with other forces abroad. So we could summarize
by saying that there are three different categories of groups. There are those that are clearly instruments of U.S. foreign policy objectives, and these are not groups
that are promoting democratization but are trying to limit democratization and control change. There are those that are marginalized and pushed aside, and then
there are those that the U.S. cannot or it is not in the interest of U.S. foreign policy to marginalize or challenge, and then they attempt to co-opt these organizations
and to moderate them. Very often you get well intentioned people and you get people who have a legitimate political agenda: democratization, regime change
from an authoritarian regime, and so forth, that because structural or on-the-ground circumstances don’t allow anything else, become sucked up in U.S. and
transnational elite foreign policy operations or interventions. Where does the US seek to “promote democracy”? There are two different categories of
“democracy promotion” programs: The first are programs in those countries that are already ruled by elites and in the
camp of global capitalism. In these countries, political intervention programs seek to bolster neo-liberal elites,
to achieve this elite’s control over the state and to cultivate its hegemony in civil society. Cultivating this
neo-liberal elite and its domination and hegemony is the political dimension that complements the
economic dimension, which is neo-liberal structural adjustment and integration into the emerging global
capitalist economy. The flip side of this effort is to isolate, marginalize, and discredit popular, nationalist, revolutionary and other progressive forces that
may pose a challenge to the stable domination of local pro-US elites or neo-liberal regimes. These types of programs have been conducted in dozens of countries
around the world. To mention just one example, in el salvador, “democracy promotion” programs that had been conducted throughout the 1990s and early 21st
century were expanded in 2003 as presidential elections approached. These programs provided diverse forms of support for civic and political groups aligned with
the ruling ARENA party and marginalized the FMLN. The other is to use “democracy promotion” to overthrow regimes that the U.S. is not favorable towards or to
bring about a “transition to democracy” in cases where so-called “regime change” is seen by Washington as necessary for the country’s stability and continued
integration into global capitalism. Countries
that Washington wishes to destabilize in recent years through
“democracy promotion” (along with other forms of intervention) include Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua in the 1980s, and so on. The
groups and individuals that participated in the destabilization of the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide and that are now in power in Haiti were precisely those
groomed and cultivated by U.S. “democracy promotion” programs dating back to the late 1980s and undertaken continuously right up to the march 2004 U.S. coup
d’état. In Venezuela, the opposition to the government of Hugo Chávez has been working since the late 1990s closely with the U.S. “democracy promotion”
network. Then there are those countries targeted for a “transition to democracy,” that is, a U.S.-supported and often orchestrated changeover in government and
state structures. South Africa and Eastern European countries fell into this category in the 1990s, as does the current situation in Iraq. What is the connection
between the NED and the U.S. government? The fact that the NED receives its funding from Congress is hardly its most direct link to the government. NED
operations are designed in the State Department and the White House, often in coordination with [CIA headquarters at] Langley, and everything is undertaken in
liaison with the Embassy on the ground in a particular intervened country. The officials put in charge of these operations are typically engaged in a revolving door
relationship with the U.S. state. They move in and out of other government positions at the White House, the State Department, and so on. What
we’re
seeing is the battle over global civil society, and it’s heating up, because there’s no place left in the
world that has not been integrating very rapidly into the global system. Venezuela is one of those places
at the front-line of this battle. The overt funding channels established through NED operations, which even then are not entirely above ground,
generate an infrastructure of contacts, networks, channels of influence, and so forth, that are then available for covert funding and operations. That’s the pattern
that we see everywhere. In Nicaragua around the 1990 elections, for every dollar of NED or AID funding there were several dollars of CIA funding. We know that
much from the tip of the iceberg we were able to uncover. The NED—though maybe it has gotten the most attention—is hardly the only organization involved in
this kind of intervention conducted under the umbrella of the U.S. State Department and the Executive. There are many other branches of the U.S. State dedicated
to promoting “democracy,” and other countries are setting up similar branches as well. I think the weakness in progressive forces internationally is to see the
political dynamic in the world today as an effort at U.S. empire. And so the story becomes the U.S. against the rest of the world, and that’s a grave mistake. One of
the things that has taken place—one of the key aspects of globalization—is the
rise of a transnational elite that shares an interest in
attempting to preserve the current global capitalist order, in defending it and extending it, and they
also share the view that “democracy promotion” is one key instrument in advancing and stabilizing this
global capitalist order . There might be tactical differences and there might be strategic differences in how to do that—what happened in Iraq, for
example. In Venezuela we see the same thing: Western Europe, Canada, and most Latin American governments would like to see Chávez out of power and an elite
order restored, but the question is how to go about it. The U.S. strategy has largely backfired so far. So there are tactical and strategic differences, but there is a
commonality of interest among the leading capitalist states. Do you think that the academics and policymakers behind the “democracy promotion” strategy believe
that they are promoting genuine democracy? Or are they cynically aware of their imperialist role? You ask me if academics from the “democracy promotion”
industry actually believe they are promoting democracy. Antonio Gramsci once pointed out that popular masses don’t have a false consciousness; they have a
contradictory consciousness, due to their lived experience. But intellectuals – who are never free-floating, always attached to the projects of dominant or of
subordinate groups—they have a false consciousness. Perhaps Gramsci was giving the benefit of the doubt to these intellectuals. There are many respectable and
well-intentioned academics from the “First World” who unfortunately trumpet the new modalities of U.S. intervention conducted as “democracy promotion,” and
others who deceive themselves, intentionally or otherwise, into believing they can participate intellectually – or directly – in U.S. political intervention in order to
somehow steer it into a wholesome or acceptable foreign policy. We should recall that intellectual labor is never neutral or divorced from competing and
antagonistic social interests. To state this in overly harsh terms, some—perhaps many—academics who defend U.S. “democracy promotion” are organic
intellectuals of the transnational elite. Some are outright opportunists who know before whom they need to prostrate themselves in order to secure funding and
status in the halls of global power. They are intellectual mercenaries. Others, as I’ve said, are well intentioned. But there is almost always an arrogance of power and
privilege that many first world intellectuals bring to their “study” of the global South; there is an academic colonial mentality at work. Let’s face it: so-called
“democracy promotion” has become a veritable academic industry that has numerous organic, ideological, and funding links with the U.S. intervention apparatus.
Let us recall that projects of domination always have their organic intellectuals. The prevailing global order has attracted many intellectual defenders, academics,
pundits, and ideologues, who in the end serve to mystify the real inner workings of the emerging order and the social and political interests embedded therein.
These intellectuals have become central cogs in the system of global capitalist domination. Maybe they want a global capitalism with a more “human face,” but in
the end they not only help to legitimize this system but also provide technical solutions in response to the problems and contradictions of the system. How can any
academic actually follow what the U.S. does around the world in the name of “democracy promotion” and not acknowledge the blatant farce? These are harsh
words, but we must ask, what is the role and responsibility of intellectuals in the face of the global crisis, the crisis of civilizational proportions we face in 2005.
the U.S. “democracy promotion” strategy in Venezuela ? This is a fullblown operation , a massive foreign-policy operation to undermine the Venezuelan revolution, to overthrow the
government of Hugo Chávez, and to reinstall the elite back in power in Venezuela. Within the elite, this operation
seeks to cultivate a particular trans-national group or faction so that once Venezuela’s internal political system is once again an elite political system, the
transnationally-oriented elites will proceed to more deeply and systematically integrate Venezuela into global capitalism. This
Based on your experiences in Nicaragua, how serious is
is a massive operation underway. And it is important to emphasize that anywhere where U.S. foreign policy is operating—and that is a large part of the world—
“democracy promotion” operations are going to be part of a larger foreign policy strategy. So it’s not a question of whether—and this was a whole new thing for
Nicaragua and the Ukraine and so forth—it’s not a question of whether “democracy promotion” is not being undertaken because there are paramilitary operations.
Rather, they’re
all part of a larger foreign policy strategy, which is employing all instruments available to
achieve U.S. ends. “Democracy promotion” will continue unhindered and if the chance and the opportunity arises for paramilitary actions against
Venezuela, the opportunity will be taken. And if the opportunity arises and the circumstances permit for Venezuela to be isolated by international organizations
such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations, and so forth, then the U.S. will go ahead and promote that type of diplomatic aggression.
And if the opportunity arises to cut Venezuela off from international financing and the international financial institutions that will be undertaken. The U.S. state is
going to assess all the different instruments it has and look at what are the international circumstances that allow them to be deployed or not deployed in any given
moment. And they’re all going to be undertaken in synchronization and conjunction with one another: the
internal “democracy promotion”
operations, the funding of internal opposition groups, the electoral intervention and trying to build up
counter-hegemonic anti-Chávez forces in civil society. All of that is going to be done in conjunction with whatever can be done with paramilitary groups
from Colombia, and in conjunction with denunciations made to the international press and U.S. press conferences by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
others. That will all be done in careful synchronization with things going on on the ground in Venezuela, in synchronization with what’s going at the UN, and so
forth. So just to summarize once again, there is no doubt whatsoever: all
of the information indicates that there are massive
covert and overt, systematic, military, economic, political, and ideological operations against Venezuela
to completely defeat the revolution and put the elite back in power. All of the telltale signs are there. While I would never
rule out an invasion by U.S. forces or attempted assassinations of Chávez, I think it is more important to see this strategy against Venezuela as a campaign of
attrition against the popular classes in Venezuela, to create a situation where sooner or later the poor majority “gives up” and simply decides that there is no point
in continuing to resist the U.S. campaign, to continue to reject the return of the elite, to continue to struggle. Key
to this strategy of attrition will be, first,
to exacerbate economic hardships, difficulties, and deprivation for ordinary people , and second, to adroitly exploit
mistakes made by the Bolivarian revolution, weaknesses internal to the revolutionary process.
Impacts
1NC
1NC Disposability
Imperialist rhetoric of “development” and “modernity” justifies the worst forms of
disposability – human lives are rendered expendable in the unending drive for
commodity production
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
What happened has much to do with the increasing complicity of Christianity (and Christian knowledge) with the force of
developing capitalism and its consequences in the cultural industry: map making, book publishing and circulation, the authority of the
printed book, etc. Without that partnership, the outcome of capitalism and the world in which we are living in today, with the Americas, would
have certainly been different. History is an institution that legitimizes
the telling of stories of happenings simultaneously
silencing other stories, as well as stories of the silence of histories.18 How did Christianity and capitalism come together in America?
Indeed, Christianity and capital came together before, more clearly toward the middle of the fifteenth century. But America propelled
capital into capitalism. How come? Again, the massive appropriation of land, massive exploitation of labor, and
massive slave trade came together with a common goal (to produce the commodities of a global market,
from gold to tobacco and sugar) and a dramatic consequence (the expendability – dispensability – of
human lives in the pursuit of commodity production and capital accumulation). Capital turned into capitalism
when the radical changes in land appropriation, labor exploitation, and massive commodity production
were conceived in the rhetoric of modernity as an advancement of humanity (in the eighteenth century, Adam
Smith would be the first in theorizing political economy starting from the Atlantic commercial circuits). The consequences of the
conversion of capital into capitalism were the devaluation of human lives and and the naturalization of human
expendability. That is the beginning of a type of racism that is still well and alive today (as evidenced in the
treatment of immigrants in Europe and the US, as well as the expendability of people’s lives in Iraq).
1NC Development
Economic development perpetuates the commodification of the environment and
North-South divide making violence inevitable
Howard, Hume, and Oslender 07 (*David Howard – PhD in Latin America Studies from the University of Oxford; he is a lecturer in
Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford, **Mo Hume – PhD in Latin American studies from the University of Liverpool; she
is a professor of Development and Latin American Politics (Department of Politics) at the University of Glasgow, and ***Ulrich Oslender – PhD
in Hispanic Studies from the University of Glasgow; former research fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Department of Geography,
November 2007, “Violence, fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25548278.pdf)
//MD
Others, however, have criticised 'Mrs Brundtland's disenchanted cosmos' and the fact that sustainable
development is still based
on the capitalisation of nature, expressed through global views on nature and environment by those who
rule, instead of through local respect for surrounding landscapes (Visvanathan 1991). And Sachs (1992) argues in his widely
read Development Dictionary that notions of ecology are merely reduced to higher efficiency, while a development
framework is still accepted as the norm. Visvanathan (1991: 384) calls for an 'explosion of imaginations' as a
form of resistance to this dominant economism and essentially violent development framework: a call echoed
by Peet and Watts (1996: 263-8) in their edited collection on 'liberation ecologies', which envisages 'environmental imaginaries' as
primary sites of contestation, which are then articulated by social movements that contest normative
visions and the 'imperialism of the imaginary'. In many ways, the very notion of development has been
radically called into question, as the concept has been linked to neo-colonial intentions of the Global North
to intervene in and keep control of the countries in the Global South. For Escobar (1995: 159), dominant
development discourse portrays the so-called 'third world' as a space devoid of knowledge, a 'chronic
pathological condition', so that the Western scientist ‘like a good doctor, has the moral obligation to intervene in
order to cure the diseased (social) body'. This intervention is always a violent one: one that ruptures the
cultural fabric, penetrates the colonised body, and inserts a homogeneous developmental reasoning,
often extirpating resistant cultural difference. To break this cycle of violent developmentalism, Escobar (1995) calls for an
era of 'post-development' as a necessary step for national projects of decolonisation and for the
affirmation of truly emancipatory political projects of self-affirmation.
2NC
2NC Development
Neoliberalism perpetuates inequality, ecological destruction, and turns the economy
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and
Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin America at a Crossroads,"
Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
The crisis of the neo-liberal model. Neo-liberalism in Latin America started with the brutal military regimes in Chile and
Argentina of the 1970s; by the early 1990s it had encompassed all of the countries of the region (except Cuba). The global dimension of this
hegemony began with Thatcherism in England and the Regan-Bush years, when neo-liberalism expanded to most corners of the world. The first
decades of this period represented the apogee of financial capitalism, flexible accumulation, free-market ideology, the
fall of the Berlin wall, the rise of the network society, and the so-called new world order. While this picture was complicated in the 1990s, neoliberal globalization still held sway. Landmarks such
as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the creation of the
World Trade Organization, Davos, Plan Puebla and Plan Colombia were indications of the changing but persistent implantation
of this model of capitalist globalization. Signs of resistance appeared almost from the start. Indigenous politics so
crucial in the Latin America progressive scene today took off in the 1980s; in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro) was an attempt to introduce an alternative imaginary to the
rampant mercantilism then prevalent. From the food riots in various Latin American capitals in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the
anti-GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) demonstrations in India in the early 1990s, and the Zapatista uprising
since 1994 to the large-scale demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, Barcelona, Que´bec, Genoa and the like, the idea of a single,
inevitable global order under the aegis of a capitalist modernity has been variously challenged. Beginning with the
first Gulf War but particularly after September 11, 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, there was a renewed attempt
on the part of the US elite to defend its military and economic hegemony, affecting world regions in particular ways.
Known as ‘market reforms’ in Latin America, neo-liberalism entailed a series of structural reforms intended to
reduce the role of the state in the economy, assign a larger role to markets, and create macro-economic stability;
among the most important measures were liberalization of trade and capital flows, privatization of state assets,
deregulation and free markets, and labor reforms; some analysts believe that they have brought about a measure of success (e.g.
greater dynamism of some export sectors, increased direct foreign investment, gains in competitiveness in some sectors, control of inflation,
and the introduction of social policies such as those of decentralization, gender equality and multiculturalism). Yet even the
same
analysts recognize the high costs of these alleged gains in terms of the growth of unemployment and
informality, the weakening of the links between international trade and national production, greater structural unevenness among
sectors of the economy (structural dualism), tremendous ecological impact (including the expansion of monocrops such
as soy, oil palm, eucalyptus and sugar cane as agro-fuels), a sharp increase in inequality in most countries and an increase in
poverty levels in many of them. By the middle of the current decade, one of the most knowledgeable Latin American
economists could say, ‘there is possibly not a single country in the region where the levels of inequality were
lower [then] than three decades ago; on the contrary, there are many countries in which inequality has increased’ (Ocampo 2004, p.
74). Infamous SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs) and shock therapies brought with them a level of callousness and brutality by the ruling
regimes that reached staggering proportions.
Economic development creates a global periphery, causing widespread displacement
and violence
Howard, Hume, and Oslender 07 (*David Howard – PhD in Latin America Studies from the University of Oxford; he is a lecturer in
Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford, **Mo Hume – PhD in Latin American studies from the University of Liverpool; she
is a professor of Development and Latin American Politics (Department of Politics) at the University of Glasgow, and ***Ulrich Oslender – PhD
in Hispanic Studies from the University of Glasgow; former research fellow at the University of Glasgow in the Department of Geography,
November 2007, “Violence, fear, and development in Latin America: a critical overview”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25548278.pdf)
//MD
Most recently, a
powerful critique of development has (re-)emerged which links global processes of capital
accumulation to the violent uprooting and displacement of millions of rural populations throughout the
world. David Howard's contribution to this issue highlights the overt and more subtle relationships between state violence and everyday
discrimination against Haitian-origin migrants and settlers in the Dominican Republic. Various theoretical approaches - ranging from Marxism to
post-structuralism and post-colonialism - have argued that contemporary trends
towards the displacement and de-territorialisation
part of a wider strategy of globalisation and a global economy of expropriation. For
Harvey (2003:137-82), for example, the contemporary moment of 'new imperialism' is characterised by new cycles of
primitive accumulation, what he refers to as 'accumulation by dispossession'. Drawing on Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, he convincingly
shows how the organic relation between expanded reproduction and violent processes of dispossession has
shaped the historical geography of capitalism. According to Harvey (p. 148), one strategy for capital to overcome, or at least
of local populations form
temporarily to ameliorate the constant crisis of over accumulation (a condition where capital surplus lies idle with no profitable outlets in
sight), is to seize hold of common assets and turn them into profitable use: The
escalating depletion of the global
environmental commons (land, air, water) ... the corporatization and privatization of hitherto public assets ... the
reversion of common property rights won through years of hard class struggle to the private domain ... indicate a new wave
of 'enclosing the commons'... [these are] policies of dispossession pursued in the name of neo-liberal orthodoxy. And
this 'neo-liberal orthodoxy' is, of course, global capitalist development. This point has been similarly argued by the critical collective
Retort, based in the San Francisco Bay Area (2005). They observe a new global round of primitive accumulation and enclosure as capital is
on the move again, this time in the form of what they refer to as 'military neo-liberalism'. To them, a process of
'endless enclosure' has been at the very heart of capitalist modernity (Retort 2005:193). Although it is rather unlikely
that they had the Colombian Pacific coast in mind (as analysed by Oslender in his contribution), it is with chilling accuracy that their description
of the global processes of enclosure and attack on the commons describes the current de-territorialisation trends in this region: The great
work of the past half-millennium was the cutting off of the world's natural and human resources from common
use. Land, water, the fruits of the forest, the spaces of custom and communal negotiation, the mineral substrate, the life of rivers and oceans,
the very airwaves - capitalism has depended, and still depends, on more and more of these shared properties being shared
no longer, whatever the violence or absurdity involved in converting the stuff of humanity into this or that item for sale. (Retort
2005:193-4) Also drawing on Marx and his analysis of processes of primitive accumulation, Hardt and Negri (2000: 326) argue in their influential
book Empire that 'traditional
cultures and social organizations are destroyed in capital's tireless march
through the world to create the networks and pathways of a single cultural and economic system of
production and circulation'. This is clearly outlined in Dina Khorasanee's contribution to this issue, in which she assesses the struggles
of the piquetero movement in Argentina through the experiences of a community organisation aiming to create a 'new sociability' that might
survive in parallel to the dominant capitalist system. For Hardt and Negri, de-territorialisation
lies at the core of the imperial
apparatus. And 'development' is the mantra of this violent system. One effect is the massive forced displacement of
local populations worldwide, as the result of socio-economic and cultural processes towards the
consolidation of a global capitalist modernity (Escobar 2003). These are only some of the multiple violences that are inherent
in the notion of 'development'. Marxist analysis may have fallen out of fashion, but the cruel awakening to the violent everyday realities for
millions of people throughout the world prompts a renewed engagement with some of Marx's key insights. It is too easy to forget in the midst
of all the mindless talk of the 'war on terror' that much of the
political and economic violence that we observe today is
perpetrated in the name of the seemingly progressive idea of 'development'. Yet, as we began by saying, there is nothing
innocent about 'development'. Quite the contrary. Development and violence are structurally intertwined. Or, as Oslender
puts it in his contribution, there is always 'violence in development'.
Market liberalization causes mass inequality, destroys value to life, and perpetuates North-South
violence
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
Among the stated goals of the FTAA is the liberalization of trade to generate economic growth and improve the quality of life. Nothing
is
said about equity in distribution. All the goals emphasize growth and increases (like the increase of the levels of trade in
good and services). Nothing is said about the fact that the “increase”
means capital accumulation, not the improvement
of quality of life for the totality of the population. The agreement states that one of its goals is to enhance competition
among its parties. Yet, again, nothing is said about the fact that the goal of competition is capital accumulation
for the strongest, since actors in the economic games are ruled by the principle of individuality and disregard (or
exploit to personal gain) the community of people. The goals also purport to eliminate barriers among the parties. But those parties do
not begin with equal conditions; so the elimination of barriers favors the centers of industrial and technological
production and financial accumulation. No mention is made of the fact that the elimination of “barriers” in economic trades is
parallel to the enforcement of the “frontiers” to keep immigrants from entering from the South. Each goal
only tells half of the story. Either those who are in the position of formulating and implementing global designs are
blind, and truly believe their own rhetoric of development as the improvement of people around the world, or they
are using that rhetoric to cover a lie. Whoever pays attention to the history of the world in the past thirty or so years
will understand the implications of each of these goals and know that they imply the increasing marginalization of the
majority of the world’s population, and the decrease in their quality of life and decent living conditions.
Economic development seeks to mine Latin America for resources – perpetuating colonialism
Galeano 71 (Eduardo Galeano – Uruguayan novelist; former editor at Marcha and Epoca,
1971, “OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE 0F A
CONTINENT
”, http://www.e-reading-lib.com/bookreader.php/149187/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf) //MD
The division of labor among nations is that some
specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known
today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance
Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries
passed, and Latin America perfected its role. We are no longer in the era of marvels when face surpassed fable and imagination was shamed by
the trophies of conquest— the lodes of gold, the mountains of silver. But our
region still works as a menial. It continues to
exist at the service of others' needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit
and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming
them than Latin America does from producing them. The taxes collected by the buyers are much higher
than the prices received by the sellers; and after all, as Alliance for Progress coordinator Covey T. Oliver said in July 1968, to
speak of fair prices is a "medieval" concept, for we are in the era of free trade.
Economic imperialism necessitates violent appropriation of cultural difference
Galeano 71 (Eduardo Galeano – Uruguayan novelist; former editor at Marcha and Epoca,
1971, “OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE 0F A
CONTINENT
”, http://www.e-readinglib.com/bookreader.php/149187/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf) //MD
For those who see history as a competition, Latin America's backwardness and poverty are merely the result of its failure. We lost; others won.
But the winners happen to have won thanks to our losing: the
history of Latin America's underdevelopment is, as someone
integral part of the history of world capitalism's development. Our defeat was always implicit in
the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others—
the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into
has said, an
poison. Potosi, Zacatecas, and Ouro Preto became desolate warrens of deep, empty tunnels from which the precious metals had been taken;
ruin was the fate of Chile's nitrate pampas and of Amazonia's rubber forests. Northeast Brazil's sugar and Argentina's quebracho belts, and
communities around oil-rich Lake Maracaibo, have become painfully aware of the mortality of wealth which nature
bestows and imperialism
appropriates. The rain that irrigates the centers of imperialist power drowns the vast
suburbs of the system. In the same way, and symmetrically, the well-being of our dominating classes— dominating
inwardly, dominated from outside— is the curse of our multitudes condemned to exist as beasts of
burden.
Economic development necessitates inequality and degrades sovereignty
Galeano 71 (Eduardo Galeano – Uruguayan novelist; former editor at Marcha and Epoca,
1971, “OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: FIVE CENTURIES OF THE PILLAGE 0F A
CONTINENT
”, http://www.e-reading-lib.com/bookreader.php/149187/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf) //MD
The gap widens. Around the middle of the last century the world's rich countries enjoyed a 50 percent higher living
standard than the poor countries. Development develops inequality : in April 1969 Richard Nixon told the
Organization of American States (OAS) that by the end of the twentieth century the United States' per capita
income would be fifteen times higher than Latin America's. The strength of the imperialist system as a
whole rests on the necessary inequality of its pares, and this inequality assumes ever more dramatic dimensions. The
oppressor countries get steadily richer in absolute terms— and much more so in relative terms— through the dynamic of
growing disparity. The capitalist "head office" can allow itself the luxury of creating and believing its own myths
of opulence, but the poor countries on the capitalist periphery know that myths cannot be eaten. The
United States citizen's average income is seven times that of a Latin American and grows ten times faster.
And averages are deceptive in view of the abyss that yawns between the many poor and the rich few south of the Rio Grande. According to the
United Nations, the amount shared by 6 million Latin Americans at the top of the social pyramid is the same as the amount shared by 140
million at the bottom. There are 60 million campesinos whose fortune amounts to $.25 a day. At the other extreme, the pimps of misery
accumulate $5 billion in their private Swiss or U.S. bank accounts. Adding insult 10 injury, they squander in sterile ostentation and luxury, and in
unproductive investments constituting no less than half the total investment, the capital that Latin America could devote to the replacement,
extension, and generation of job-creating means of production. Harnessed as they have always been to the constellation of imperialist
power, our ruling classes have no interest whatsoever in determining whether patriotism might not prove
more profitable than treason, and whether begging is really the only formula for international policies.
Sovereignty is mortgaged because "there's no other way." The oligarchies' cynical alibis confuse the impotence of a
social class with the presumed empty destinies of their countries.
2NC Dualism
The idea of human progress perpetuates environmental dualism and racism
Quijano 2000 (Anibal Quijano – Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, 2000, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin
America”, http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf) //MD
Parallel to the historical relations between capital and precapital, a similar set of ideas was elaborated around the spatial relations between
Europe and non-Europe. As I have already mentioned, the
foundational myth of the Eurocentric version of modernity is
the idea of the state of nature as the point of departure for the civilized course of history whose
culmination is European or Western civilization. From this myth originated the specifically Eurocentric evolutionist
perspective of linear and unidirectional movement and changes in human history. Interestingly enough, this myth was
associated with the racial and spatial classification of the world’s population. This association produced the paradoxical
amalgam of evolution and dualism, a vision that becomes meaningful only as an expression of the exacerbated
ethnocentrism of the recently constituted Europe; by its central and dominant place in global, colonial/modern capitalism; by the new
validity of the mystified ideas of humanity and progress, dear products of the Enlightenment; and by the validity of the
idea of race as the basic criterion for a universal social classification of the world’s population.
Dualism divides the world based on prior understandings of identity – the soft realities
become associated with the feminine, perpetuating endless violence
Nhanenge 07 (Jytte Nhanenge – MA in Philosophy at the University of South Africa,
2007, “Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the Concerns of Women, Poor People, and
Nature into Development,” published by University Press, available online) //MD
Feminist critics stress that science
is determined by political, economic and social conditions according to a
patriarchal order, which is dualised, hierarchical and dominant. Dualism has sharply divided reality into
two different categories. Accordingly, we separate the public from the private, masculine from
feminine, culture from nature, mind from body, rational from emotional, quantity from quality and
power from love. Such divisions have made a rift between all forms of feminine and
masculine issues inside ourselves and in society. Dualised thinking consequently affects people's
sense of own identity and of the world in which they live, whether they are men or women.
This order of reality is also hierarchical. The first mentioned of the dualised pairs are all-masculine
and considered the highest priority, "the best" or "the right" one. Thus, male is placed above
female, mind above body, culture above nature, reason above emotions etc. In this way male, mind,
culture and reason exercise hierarchical control and domination over female, body, nature and
emotions. Thus Western experience of reality, meaning structure, language use and definition of
identity are framed in relations of dualism, hierarchy, domination and control; all based on male-female
opposition. These principles are deeply inscribed in the modern patterns of thinking, but they are
made "normal" or "natural" and therefore seen as being neutral. (Keller 1985: 7; Braidotti et al 1994: 3031).
The impact is ecological destruction and nuclear holocaust
Nhanenge 07 (Jytte Nhanenge – MA in Philosophy at the University of South Africa,
2007, “Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the Concerns of Women, Poor People, and
Nature into Development,” published by University Press, available online) //MD
Technology can be used to dominate societies or to enhance them. Thus both science and technology could
have developed in a different direction. But due to patriarchal values infiltrated in science the type of
technology developed is meant to dominate, oppress, exploit and kill. One reason is that patriarchal
societies identify masculinity with conquest. Thus any technical innovation will continue to be a tool for
more effective oppression and exploitation. The highest priority seems to be given to technology that
destroys life. Modern societies are dominated by masculine institutions and patriarchal ideologies. Their
technologies prevailed in Auschwitz, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and
in many other parts of the world. Patriarchal power has brought us acid rain, global warming, military
states, poverty and countless cases of suffering. We have seen men whose power has caused them to lose all sense of reality,
decency and imagination, and we must fear such power. The ultimate result of unchecked patriarchy will be ecological
catastrophe and nuclear holocaust. Such actions are denial of wisdom. It is working against natural harmony and
destroying the basis of existence. But as long as ordinary people leave questions of technology to the
"experts" we will continue the forward stampede. As long as economics focus on technology and both are the focus of
politics, we can leave none of them to experts. Ordinary people are often more capable of taking a wider and more
humanistic view than these experts. (Kelly 1990: 112-114; Eisler 1990: 3233; Schumacher 1993: 20, 126, 128, 130).
2NC Environment
Neolib wrecks the environment in Latin America
Zimmerer 09 (Karl S. Zimmerer – Environmental scientist and professor of Geography at
Penn State, 2009, “Chapter 9 Nature under Neoliberalism and Beyond: CommunityBased Resource Management, Environmental Conservation, and Farmer-and-Food
Movements in Bolivia, 1985-Present”, page 157 of “Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin
America?”) //MD
Neoliberal trade and economic policies have incurred environmental consequences that are negative across
much of Latin America and the Caribbean. Environmental destructions attributed to specific policies range
from widespread deforestation, overfishing, soil and water degradation, damage due to mineral and energy
resource extraction and processing; industrial waste and toxin contamination; and urban environment problems
such as a worsening air and water pollution (Hindery 2004; Liverman and Vilas 2006; Moog Rodrigues 2003; Speth 2003). If not
dismissed outright, these environmental problems are often regarded as economic “externalities” that can be
treated or regulated through the further privatization of resources and property. Increasingly, privatization approaches have been
associated with market valuation policies – such as eco-certification and market-based conservation rewarding “ecological services” (Perreault
and Martin 2005).
2NC Otherization
Eurocentric history objectifies the Other – Latin America is the historical origin of
American “modernity”
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
From the sixteenth-century Spanish missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas to G. W. F. Hegel in the nineteenth century, and from Karl Marx to the
twentieth-century British historian A. J. Toynbee, all we can read (or see in maps) about the place of the Americas in the world order is
historically located from a European perspective that passes as universal. Certainly, every one of these authors acknowledged that there was a
world, and people, outside Europe. Indeed, both
people and continents outside of Europe were overly present as
“objects,” but they were absent as subjects and, in a way, out of history. They were, in other words, subjects whose
perspectives did not count. Eric Wolf’s famous book title, People without History, became a metaphor to describe this epistemic
power differential. By “people without history,” Wolf did not mean that there were people in the world who did not have memories and
records of their past, which would be an absolutely absurd claim. He meant that, according to the regional concept of
history as defined in the Western world from ancient Greece to twentieth-century France, every society that did not
have alphabetic writing or wrote in a language other than the six imperial languages of modern Europe did
not have History. In this view, History is a privilege of European modernity and in order to have History you have to let
yourself be colonized, which means allowing yourself, willingly or not, to be subsumed by a perspective of history,
life, knowledge, economy, subjectivity, family, religion, etc. that is modeled on the history of modern Europe, and
that has now been adopted, with little difference, as the official model of the US. Perspectives from coloniality, however, emerge out of the
conditions of the
“colonial wound,” the feeling of inferiority imposed on human beings who do not fit the
predetermined model in Euro-American narratives. To excavate coloniality, then, one must always include and
analyze the project of modernity, although the reverse is not true, because coloniality points to the absences that the narrative of
modernity produces. Thus, I choose to describe the modern world order that has emerged in the five hundred years since the “discovery of
America” as the modern/colonial world, to indicate that coloniality
is constitutive of modernity and cannot exist
without it. Indeed, the “idea” of Latin America cannot be dealt with in isolation without producing turmoil in the
world system. It cannot be separated from the “ideas” of Europe and of the US as America that dominate even today. The “Americas”
are the consequence of early European commercial expansion and the motor of capitalism, as we know it today. The
“discovery” of America and the genocide of Indians and African slaves are the very foundation of “modernity,” more so
than the French or Industrial Revolutions. Better yet, they constitute the darker and hidden face of modernity, “coloniality.” Thus, to excavate
the “idea of Latin America” is, really, to understand how the West was born and how the modern world order was founded.
The impact is the colonization of being – individuals are excluded from Western
history and rendered silent
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
“Discovery”
and “invention” are not just different interpretations of the same event; they belong to two different
paradigms. The line that distinguishes the two paradigms is the line of the shift in the geo-politics of knowledge;
changing the terms and not only the content of the conversation. The first presupposes the triumphant European and
imperial perspective on world history, an achievement that was described as “modernity,” while the second reflects the critical
perspective of those who have been placed behind, who are expected to follow the ascending progress of a
history to which they have the feeling of not belonging. Colonization of being is nothing else than producing the idea that
certain people do not belong to history – that they are non-beings. Thus, lurking beneath the European story of
discovery are the histories, experiences, and silenced conceptual narratives of those who were disqualified as
human beings, as historical actors, and as capable of thinking and understanding. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the
“wretched of the earth” (as Frantz Fanon labeled colonized beings) were Indians and African slaves. That is why missionaries and men
of letters appointed themselves to write the histories they thought Incas and Aztecs did not have, and to write
the grammar of Kechua/Kichua and Nahuatl with Latin as the model. Africans were simply left out of the picture of conversion and taken as
pure labor force.
2NC Racism
Racism is rooted in the notion of the “barbaric” Other – colonialist logic excludes
populations from the Western historical narrative
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
To be more specific about the
formation of race as part of the idea of “America” and of “Latin” America, let’s look at one
of the foundational moments of the racial classification of the world. Confronted with previously unknown
groups of people, the colonizing Christians in the Indias Occidentales (or simply the Indias) began determining individuals
on the basis of their relation to theological principles of knowledge, which were taken as superior to any
other system around the world. Las Casas offered, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, a classification of “barbarians”
which was, of course, a racial classification, although not based on skin color. It was racial because it ranked human beings in a topdown scale assuming the ideals of Western Christians as the criteria and measuring stick for the ranking.
Racialization does not simply say, “you are Black or Indian, therefore your are inferior.” Rather, it says, “you
are not like me, therefore you are inferior,” which in the Christian scale of humanity meant Indians in America and Blacks in Africa were
inferior. Las Casas made a key contribution to the racialized imaginary of the modern/colonial world when he defined, at
the end of his Apologética Historia Sumaria (c.1552), four kinds of “barbarians.” Using Aristotle as a basis and point of departure, Las Casas
proposed the following categories in order to have a clear sense of how a nation or part of it could be properly considered “barbarous.”11 The
first of the four kinds of “barbarians” could
be identified when a human group showed signs of strange or ferocious
behavior and could be proven to have a degenerate sense of justice, reason, manners, and/or human generosity (benignidad). The term
“barbarous” could thus be applied to a person or a people who acted on the basis of opinions that were not clear or that were
attained in a quick, not altogether rational manner, or who showed tumultuous and unreasonable behavior. In the same vein, Las
Casas believed that some peoples, once rational rules and generosity were forgotten, would fall into ferocious behavior and forget the
generous and cordial manners (blandura y mansedumbre) that should characterize all civilized human social behavior. They would “become in
some way ferocious, hard, rough, and cruel because barbarous means a strangeness and exorbitance or novelty that does not accord with
human nature and common sense” (II, p. 6). The second meaning of “barbarous” or “barbarian”
is narrower: all those
people who lacked a “literal locution that responds to their language in the same way that our locution
responds to the Latin language” are “barbarous” (II, p. 68). What Las Casas implied, then, was that “the Latin language” is
the ultimate condition for the true warranty of any statement. On the basis of such principles, Spaniards would be able
to assert, for instance, that the Indigenous people of the New World “lacked” the proper words to name God, an entity that was properly and
truly named in and through the Latin language. By extension, Arabic and Hebrew would also be languages that “lacked literal locution.”
Similarly Las Casas considered “barbarous” all those people who lacked the practice and study of “letters,” of poetry,
rhetoric, logic, history, and every aspect of knowledge called “literature” in the broadest sense of the word, meaning anything written in
alphabetic writing; that is, every “writing with letters” of the Latin alphabet. Las Casas nuanced his characterization by saying that it
should
be clear that a person or people could be sabio y pulido (“sage and sophisticated”), not ferocious or cruel, and still be
considered “barbarous” because they lack “literal locution.” The third kind of barbarians were those who lacked
basic forms of governmentality. This third type was closely related, then, to the first with its requirement for rational
forms of thought and organization. The third kind, though, specifically lack the law and the state, and live in what Thomas Hobbes or John
Locke would later theorize as the state of nature. The fourth criterion for “barbarians” captured all those who were rational
and had a structure of law but were considered infidels and pagans because they “lack true religion and
Christian faith,” even when they are “sage and prudent philosophers and politicians” (II, p. 645).
Colonialist epistemology forwards a linear historical narrative based on a
transcendental ego – this justifies racism and exploitation
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
After he defined the four kinds of barbarians, Las Casas came up with an unannounced fifth one that he called barbarie contraria. While the
four types of barbarism responded to specific criteria, barbarie contraria (“enemy
barbarism”) could refer to anyone. Barbarie
all those who (like today’s “terrorists”) actively worked to undermine Christianity. It was called
“enemy barbarism” because of the “barbarians’” hatred of the Christian faith. It would apply to all those infidels who resisted and
refused to accept the Gospel. They resisted evangelical preaching, Las Casas concluded, “out of the pure hatred they have toward our faith
and to the name of Christ; and they not only refuse to receive and to hear the Christian faith but they mainly impugn and
persecute it; and if they could – just to elevate and expand their own sect – they would destroy it” (II, p. 64). Las Casas did not clarify who
contraria identified
“they” were, beyond examples taken from Thomas Aquinas. Las Casas wrote, “Barbarous are all those who are outside the (Christian) Roman
Empire; all those, that is to say, who are beyond the Universal Church, since beyond the Universal Church there is no Empire” (II, p. 648). The
genealogy is here established in retrospect. The empire is defined as coterminous with the universal church,
while barbarie contraria encompasses every act against the church or against the empire. Thus barbarie contraria
subsumes the imperial and colonial differences, insofar as both non-Christian empires, Indians and Black Africans, are
“barbarous.” Throughout the centuries and throughout the making of the modern colonial world, “negative
barbarism” has been redefined and expanded to refer to those who fight against the West and its ideals:
democracy, freedom, and modernity. But Las Casas’s major goal in introducing these criteria was to be able to decide
what kind of barbarians the Indians of the New World were, because he had already demonstrated their
rationality. The Indians, particularly those of the Aztec and Inca Empires, were “rational.”1 They governed themselves and
were “sage and sophisticated.” They were not “negative barbarians” either, since they did not know about the church of Christ until the Spanish
arrived to the New World. Thus, he positioned them in the banal fourth type, those lacking Christianity, and in the second type, those lacking
“literal locution.” The first “barbarians” of the modern/colonial world, then, were certainly not “Latin.” Aymara and Kichua/Kechua histories
were, of course, different from the stories that could be told in Latin. But little by little, after 1500, the only and true story was written in Latin
and in European imperial languages. All other stories were buried and denied “authenticity,” the authenticity that European stories were
endowed with. The “conquest
and colonization of America” was, among other things, a conquest and colonization of
existing knowledges that, of course, were coded in languages of “non-literal locution.” Indian languages became obsolete
in epistemic terms. The epistemic domains and practices of Indians and Afros were subsumed into the universal history
conceived from the perspective and experiences of Western Christians, later secularized by Hegel at the
inception of the imperial dominance of England and France. You may be wondering at this point what all of this has to do with the “idea” of
America and of Latin America. Let’s try to move in that direction. The
“idea” of America was indeed a European invention that took
away the naming of the continent from people that had inhabited the land for many centuries before Columbus
“discovered” it. This phenomenon has been described as “deculturation,” as “dispossession” (both material and spiritual), and more
recently as “colonization of knowledge” and “colonization of beings.” When the first and second generation of Creoles of
European descent in what are today the two Americas, Latin and Anglo, came into power, the Creoles appropriated the
name of the continent for themselves, labeling themselves “Americans” or “Americanos.” Indians and Blacks were definitively put
out of the game. Today, the continental Indigenous movements, from the Antarctic to the Arctic pole, are claiming “Abya-Yala” as the name of
the continent they inhabit (see chapter ).14 This means that “Latin”
America is the name of the continent inhabited by
people of European descent. This may be difficult to understand, because of the success of the logic of coloniality in
making it seem that “Latin” America is at once a subcontinent and the idea in the consciousness of
everybody who dwells in the territory thus named. There is no claim yet, as far as I know, being made generally by AfroAmericans (that is, in North and South America and the Caribbean) as to how they will locate themselves in relation to a subcontinental name
that was invented by Europeans and appropriated by Latin and Anglo Creoles. In
Ecuador and Colombia, though, the term la
gran co-marca – the idea of a large, shared (co-, as in co-operation), marked territory with a common root – is being used by AfroAndeans. The moral is that the “idea” of Latin America is, ontologically, the “idea” in the consciousness of the
Creoles and Mestizos/as identified with European descent and histories. It may have been assumed at some point in
the past by Indians and people of Afro descent that they too inhabited “Latin” America – but this is no longer the case (see chapter ). “Latin”
America is not their dwelling place, although their daily life grew, changed, and unfolded over a mass of land identified as Latin America. The
mass of land could be renamed any time, but the consciousness of being “Latin” American cannot be changed or renamed that easily. The first
is a question of naming that requires consensus in international law. The second is a question of consciousness that requires self-examination
by the people who identify themselves (or are identified) as “Latin” Americans.
Racism is rooted in geographical portrayals of the colonial power differential
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
Be that as it may, Mercator labeled
the two landmasses as North and South America (pars Sept(entrionalis) and pars
separated the Americas from the other three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe),
following the already existing idea of the Old and the New Worlds. America, because of the colonial
differential effect, has always been conceived as a continent that did not coexist with the other three but came into being late in the
history of the planet. For that reason it was called the “New World” and, by the eighteenth century, Buffon and Hegel really saw its
nature and culture as “young.” History – that is, official and canonical narratives of a chronological successions of events
and their location in space – placed a similar gulf between the history of Europe and that of its colonies, as if
they were independent entities always “trailing behind” the triumphal march of European, supposedly universal, history. St
Augustine, writing in the early fifth century, contributed significantly to continental racialization. Although the term “race” in today’s
sense is from the eighteenth century, the idea of superiority imbedded in the Christian classification of people by continent was
already implicit in the T-in-O map. The geographical distribution of Noah’s three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth), one in each continent,
Merid(ionalis) respectively) and
speaks to the ways in which Japheth was considered in relation to Shem and Ham. There should be no surprise, therefore, in the fact that
seventeenth-century world maps have Europe in the upper left, Asia in the upper right, and Africa and
America at the bottom (usually represented by naked or semi-naked women). If that is not racialization of people and
continental divisions, I do not understand what racism is. Before Augustine such a link had not been clearly established.
In other words, there were obviously no natural connections whatsoever between Asia and Shem, Africa and Ham, and Europe and Japheth, as
Isidore would have it in his T-in-O map. In The City of God, Augustine (book XVI) wanted to ask whether the holy city could be traced in “a
continuous line from the flood or was so interrupted by intervening periods of irreligion that there are times when not one man emerges as
worshipper of the one true God” (book XVI, 1, 649). Thus, Augustine speculates:
2NC Root Cause
Critique comes first – colonialism is the root cause of modern violence
Quijano 2000 (Anibal Quijano – Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, 2000, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin
America”, http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf) //MD
The central question that interests us here is the following: What is really new with respect to modernity? And by
this I mean not only what develops and redefines experiences, tendencies, and processes of other worlds, but,
also, what was produced in the present model of global power’s own history. Enrique Dussel (1995) has
proposed the category “transmodernity” as an alternative to the Eurocentric pretension that Europe is the
original producer of modernity. According to this proposal, the constitution of the individual differentiated ego is what
began with American colonization and is the mark of modernity, but it has a place not only in Europe but
also in the entire world that American settlement configured. Dussel hits the mark in refusing one of the favorite myths
of Eurocentrism. But it is not certain that the individual, differentiated ego is a phenomenon belonging exclusively to the period initiated with
America. There is, of course, an umbilical relation between the historical processes that were generated and that began with America and the
changes in subjectivity or, better said, the intersubjectivity of all the peoples that were integrated into the new model of global power. And
those changes brought the constitution of a new intersubjectivity, not only individually, but collectively as well. This
is, therefore, a new
phenomenon that entered in history with America and in that sense is part of modernity. But whatever they might
have been, those changes were not constituted from the individual (nor from the collective) subjectivity of a preexisting world. Or, to use an old
image, those changes are born not like Pallas Athena from the head of Zeus, but are rather the subjective or intersubjective expression of what
the peoples of the world are doing at that moment change and that they affect not only Europe but the entire globe. This is not a change in a
known world that merely altered some of its traits. It
is a change in the world as such. This is, without doubt, the founding
element of the new subjectivity: the perception of historical change. It is this element that unleashed the process of
the constitution of a new perspective about time and about history. The perception of change brings about a new idea of the future, since it is
the only territory of time where the changes can occur. The future is an open temporal territory. Time
can be new, and so not
merely the extension of the past. And in this way history can be perceived now not only as something that
happens, something natural or produced by divine decisions or mysteries as destiny, but also as something that
can be produced by the action of people, by their calculations, their intention, their decisions, and
therefore as something that can be designed, and consequently, can have meaning (Quijano 1988a).
2NC Turns Economy
Economic engagement perpetuates colonialist inequality and turns the case
Francis 5 (David R., Master's Degree from Georgetown University, "The new imperialism," http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p17s01cogn.html slim_)
When the United States took over the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1899, British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem in praise
of imperialism. Each stanza began: "Take up the White Man's burden." After World War II, colonialism became a nasty word. The Philippines and just about every other colony - won political independence. But today Kipling's call to spread, as he saw it, civilization to remote parts of
the world could be rephrased "Take up the Western Man's burden." The industrial
nations are once again asking how much
they should help poor countries establish good government and greater prosperity. University of Rochester
economist Stanley Engerman calls it a "new, good imperialism." Good imperialism - if it exists - deals more with economics
than the political control of the past. Academic economists have been revisiting colonialism to see if they can
find clues as to what encourages or discourages progress in poor nations. Trade unions want to impose "fair labor
standards" on developing countries. Most industrial nations rely on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and
other development institutions to provide technical, economic, and governance advice to poor countries.
Foreign aid often becomes a tool to impose Western ideas on struggling nations. To some - especially those in the developing world - this
new imperialism can look a lot like the old colonialism, except that permanent occupation is no longer the means of
control. Iraq is seen as Exhibit A of the new imperialism. President Bush ordered the invasion of the country, claiming a need
to remove weapons of mass destruction. When no WMDs were found, the proclaimed purpose evolved into removing
a dictatorship and establishing a democracy. Some Europeans and those in the Middle East remain skeptical, suspecting the US
of wanting to ensure control of Iraqi oil. But in the US, the generally accepted thesis is that the US does have a "burden" to help. Americans
want to be involved in spreading democracy and encouraging free enterprise. How much of a burden they're
willing to bear is another question. In Iraq, the "help" became a war with more than 1,500 US military deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars
in costs. By now, most Americans would be reluctant to attempt to force democracy and capitalism on, say, Syria, Burma, and Iran. It's not even
clear that the eventual Iraqi government will be pro-Western. For example, whether it accepts permanent American military bases on its soil
remains to be seen. America's other grand experiment in new imperialism - Afghanistan - does seem willing to allow permanent US bases,
despite suspicions of US imperialism, because the government faces threats from warlords. Still, some economists see value in armed
intervention. One is Gary Hufbauer, of the Institute for International Economics in Washington, who wonders if the United Nations or
Washington could bring some stability to the Congo, Angola, and a long list of other desperate countries through takeovers. Any military
invasions would be modest, since the armed opposition would probably be weak, unorganized, and poorly armed compared with the
insurgents in Iraq. With more peaceful conditions, these nations with their rich mineral resources could make greater economic progress, he
says. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations stepped into the turmoil in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. But there was
insufficient follow-up to make a long-term difference, Mr. Hufbauer says. "My guess is that the
West is unable to do things even
for those countries in which it might make a positive change." One exception could be Bosnia, where, after NATO ended
the civil war, a "high representative" of the Western powers still exercises major influence if not control over the government. Some recent
academic research offers hints at what could work to stimulate democracy and economic development.
One goal should be to avoid extreme income inequality. Those former European colonies with legacies of big divides
between the rich and poor tended not to invest as much in schools and other infrastructure that lift
development, note Professor Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, an economist at the University of California at Los Angeles. That pattern of
inequality was reflected in the proportion of people who could vote in what were far from perfect democracies.
In 1850 in the US and 1867 in Canada, 12.9 percent of the population had the vote, the scholars point out. That sounds low, but it was enough
that their governments tended to look after the educational and other needs of their people. In that same era, by contrast, only 1.6 percent of
Chileans and 0.1 percent of Mexicans could vote. None could vote in most other Latin American nations. So it
was easier to institute
dictatorships. Poor governance is a key reason Latin American economies have lagged far behind the
US or Canada . While democracy tends to go together with prosperity, it's difficult to prove that prosperity breeds
democracy, notes an unpublished paper by Daron Acemoglu, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and three other economists.
Outsiders can help poor nations, Professor Acemoglu says. But it remains up to each nation to develop the political
institutions necessary for a vital economy.
Alt
1NC
The alt is to decolonize the 1AC --- reject US intervention in Latin America to interrupt the imperial
underpinnings of the 1AC
Taylor 12 - Lecturer in Latin American Studies BA University of London, Queen Mary MPhil University of Glasgow PhD University of Manchester, (Lucy,
“Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America,” International Studies Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, 11 SEP 2012, 14, 386–400, Wiley Online
Library)//A-Berg
The aim of this paper is to think differently about International Relations (IR) by thinking differently about the
Americas. I write this piece as a Latin Americanist, and as such, I bring a particular geographical and disciplinary perspective
to the question of power in the region, drawing on the ‘‘coloniality of power’’ perspective developed by Latin American academics. This
perspective has an explicit political agenda which seeks to ‘‘place knowledge at the service of decolonization’’ as the
Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronı ´l suggested (2005: 148). In this way, I join a struggle against gross inequalities of power,
wealth, justice, and knowledge regimes on the global (and the local) stage by reflecting on IR from an
intellectual place to the south and at the periphery of conventional thinking. More explicitly, I draw together insights
from critical IR and coloniality theorizing in order to consider how thinking about the USA from Latin America might not only open
decolonial perspectives on the country but also suggest decolonial strategies for IR. My aim is not to criticize US
intervention in Latin America––many have spoken eloquently against its government’s imperialistic foreign policies––but to propose a different, perhaps
complementary, strategy which aims to disturb US global hegemony from the inside out by questioning the
idea of ‘‘America’’ as a unified, unproblematic, and settled settler society. It is precisely because the USA and the
worldview that it promotes are central to IR that this contributes to a decolonial IR. Two important caveats are in order before I begin. Firstly, this article focuses
particularly on indigenous experiences and it does not explore the equally important dynamics of injustice, racism, and inequality that emerge from the AfricanAmerican experience. There are two key reasons for this. Most obviously, it would be impossible for me to do justice to both experiences in the confines of one
journal article; I find myself already generalizing about indigenous societies which are extraordinarily varied. In addition, coloniality⁄modernity theorists focus
particularly on indigenous struggles and philosophies, making this the more obvious topic for discussion. For these reasons, I have decided to focus on Native
American dynamics in the coloniality of power. Secondly, as a white European, I can make no claim to write from a colonized position myself. However, as a Latin
Americanist, I hope to contribute insights which are anchored in intellectual activity outside the IR core––both academically and geographically––and in
particular to reflect
on the decolonial possibilities that Latin America presents for IR, given its relationship to
the United States. Decolonial Strategies and Insights from IR What might it mean to decolonize IR? One of the most
important things that we can do, according to decolonial IR scholar Branwen Gruffydd Jones, is to question the deep political,
ontological, and historical foundations of the discipline, asking how it came to be configured as it is and what sort of politics and social world
it produces as a consequence (2006: 7–9). Many critical and postcolonial IR scholars have taken up this challenge, writing from and about
different geopolitical and intellectual places. My purpose here is to join that conversation by drawing the ‘‘coloniality of power’’
scholarship into the discussion (along with, for example, Rojas (2007) who focuses on the question of development). This body of work is highly relevant not only
because it dovetails with existing critical IR but also because it refers explicitly to experiences and power relations in the Americas. Thus, coloniality
scholarship makes a double contribution because it opens a way to think differently about the USA,
locating its critique at the heartland of international relationships and International Relations.
2NC Solvency
Alternative solves – recognizing the subjectivity of imperialist historiography allows
for the emergence of decolonial knowledge production
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
Confronting Abu-Lughod’s narrative with the perceptions that emerged in and from the colonial history of the Americas will help us understand
the co-existence and the conflict of interpretations not only within one paradigm but across paradigmatic frameworks of thought and across
the epistemic colonial difference. We will see later that this general philosophical problem has serious implications for
power relations and, more specifically, for one particular kind of power relations, the “coloniality of power” (i.e., imperial
appropriation of land, exploitation of labor, and control of finance; control of authority; control of gender and
sexuality; and control of knowledge and subjectivity). “Discovery” is the dominant, imperial version of what happened (the
version that became “reality,” the ontological dimension of history that blends what happened with the
interpretation of what happened), while “invention” opens the window of possibility for decolonizing
knowledge. That is, if “discovery” is an imperial interpretation, “invention” is not just a different interpretation but a
move to decolonize imperial knowledge. Which one is the true one is a moot question. The point is not which
of the two interpretations better “represents the event” but, rather, what the power differential in the
domain of knowledge is. And what we have here are two interpretations, one offering the imperial vision of the
event, and the other the decolonial vision. Both co-exist in different paradigms: the imperial paradigm imposes and maintains
the dominant view (which all students learn from elementary to high school and which is disseminated in popular culture
and the media). The decolonial paradigm struggles to bring into intervening existence an-other interpretation that brings
forward, on the one hand, a silenced view of the event and, on the other, shows the limits of imperial ideology disguised as the true
(and total) interpretation of the events. The idea of America that complemented the idea of “discovery” came into being at the
intersection of Christian cosmology, the emerging capitalist economy, and the decolonial responses of
Indigenous populations in Anáhuac and Tawantinsuyu, who tried first to expel the invaders and later to find strategies of survival
mixed with rejection of the invaders and preservation of their own language, beliefs, and ways of social and family life. The initial tensions
between the diversity of Spaniards and Portuguese and the diversity of Indians was complicated later on by the arrival of African slaves and, still
later, by the emergence of the Creole consciousness by the mid-seventeenth century. That sixteenth-century intersection was also marked by
the fact that, then and there, Christianity gained ground over Moors and Jews and became “the” religion of the capitalist world, which
turned into liberalism in the eighteenth century and neo-liberalism (that is, political conservativism) in the second half of the
twentieth and the first part of the twenty-first centuries. The complicity between the US and the state of Israel since its inception cannot be
detached from the long history of the modern/ colonial world, which includes the expulsion of the Jews from Spain at the very moment in
which Spain was becoming the imperial foundation of the modern/colonial and capitalist word, as well as the changing faces of the
America, from the fourth continent in Christian cosmology to the
idea of
exceptionality of America-as-US to save the world from
the axis of evil.
Alt solves – Latin America is a unique site for opposition to neoliberalism
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and
Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin America at a Crossroads,"
Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
Latin America is the only region in the world where some counter-hegemonic processes of importance
might be taking place at the level of the State at present. Some argue that these processes might lead to a reinvention of socialism; for others, what is at stake is the dismantling of the neo-liberal policies of the past three
decades
or the formation of a
bloc. Others point at the potential for un nuevo comienzo (a new beginning) which
might bring about a reinvention of democracy and development or, more radically still, the end of the
predominance of liberal society of the past 200 years founded on private property and representative
democracy. Socialismo del siglo XXI, plurinationality, interculturality, direct and substantive democracy, revolucion
ciudadana, endogenous development centered on the buen vivir of the people, territorial and cultural autonomy, and
decolonial projects towards post-liberal societies are some of the concepts that seek to name the ongoing transformations.
The Peruvian sociologist Anı´bal Quijano perhaps put it best: ‘It is a time of luchas (struggles) and of options. Latin America was the
original space of the emergence of modern/colonial capitalism; it marked its founding moment. Today it is, at last,
the very center of world resistance against this pattern of power and of the production of alternatives to
it’ (2008, p. 3). Despite the contradictory and diverse forms it has taken in the present decade, the so-called ‘turn to the Left’ in Latin America
suggests that the urge for a re-orientation of the course followed over the past three to four decades is strongly
felt by many governments. This is most clear in the cases of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador; to a greater or lesser extent,
Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador; and in the cases of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, which make up what some
observers have called the ‘pragmatic reformers.’ Why is this happening in Latin America more clearly than in any other world
region at present is a question I cannot tackle fully here, but it is related to the fact that Latin America was the region that most
earnestly embraced neo-liberal reforms, where the model was applied most thoroughly, and where the results are
most ambiguous at best. It was on the basis of the early Latin American experiences that the Washington Consensus was crafted. The fact
the end the ‘the long neo-liberal night,’ as the period is known in progressive circles in the region
South American (and anti-American)
that many of the reforms of the most recent years are referred to as ‘anti-neoliberal’ seems particularly apposite. Whether these countries are
entering a post-neoliberal let alone, post-liberal social order remains a matter of debate.
2NC UQ
Leftist reforms now – participatory democracies and anti-American sentiment
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and
Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin America at a Crossroads,"
Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
In the post-Washington Consensus climate, Left
ideas have moved from a defensive to a proactive stance; alternatives to
pro-market reforms have brought about ‘the constitution of a new discursive center of reference for politics ... the left
is now the center’ (Arditti 2008, p. 71).3 Considering the three cases most clearly associated with the ‘turn to the Left’ (Venezuela, Bolivia, and
Ecuador), one can identify some features in common. All
three regimes offer radical proposals to transform State and
society, including: (a) a deepening of democracy towards substantive, integral, participatory democracy; (b) an antineoliberal political and economic project; (c) pluri-cultural and pluri-national states in the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador; and (d) to a lesser
extent, development models that involve an ecological dimension. A main vehicle for the refounding of the
State and society has been the Constituent Assemblies. Also in common are: significant popular mobilization, the heightening of
social conflicts, the strengthening of the State, and the abandonment of traditional political parties (partidocracia), including old Left parties.
Last but not least, an
anti-US and anti-imperialist stance and a decided will to play a progressive role in the international scene,
both within South America (through the creation of a set of new regional blocs and institutions, from UNASUR, the
Banco del Sur, and ALBA4 to a proposed common currency) and globally, as in the case of the Israeli attacks on Palestinian territories in January
2008.
Framework
2NC Coloniality/Epistemology 1st
Knowledge is power – the 1AC reinforces colonialism, rejection is key to developing
new ways of thinking
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
This is, precisely, what the theological politics of knowledge was all about. The very idea
of “modernity” cannot be separated
from this shift, made possible by the simultaneous triumph of Christianity over the other religions of the Book, the emergence of a new
continent, the navigation as well as physical and conceptual appropriation of the globe, and the subsuming of all
other forms of knowledge. Wynter’s thesis is based, on the one hand, on the recognition of how that transformation
of the modern/colonial geography of knowledge in the sixteenth century sustained the imperial constitution of Europe and its
relentless colonial expansion; and on the other hand, it also arises from the decolonial shift that is taking place in our
time. The linear history of Europe itself (i.e., from Renaissance modernity to Enlightenment modernity, and from that to postmodernity) –
that is, the paradigm of newness – is being displaced by the emergence of the paradigm of co-existence. Changing the geography of
knowledge requires an understanding of how knowledge and subjectivity are intertwined with
modernity/coloniality. The imperial and colonial differential of languages shapes the modes in which
knowledge is produced and circulated. As such, knowledge and subjectivity are two sides of the same
coin.
Political theory and political economy, for example, were thought out and written down by men who did not have a conflict between
the language they spoke and the civilization carried in that language. Not just
knowledge is carried in language. Social
order, organization, and ranking values are as well. Political theory, political economy, ethics, and knowledge we
call “scientific” are all determined in the conceptual fabric of a given language. There is a continuum, so to speak, between
the English language and experience and Adam Smith’s political economy in The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, or
between the French subjectivity of Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, and his mapping of the human spirit in his
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. For an Afro-Caribbean, then, the
perspective from which the
wealth of nations, moral sentiments, or the progress of the human spirit can be articulated will be from
the experiences of the colonial wound rather than from the sensibility of imperial victories. As I have been
insisting throughout our discussion, these are not merely different perspectives within the same paradigm. They are perspectives
from two radically different paradigms, intertwined and articulated by the colonial matrix of power;
articulated also in the unfolding of heterogeneous structural histories of language and knowledge. The paradigm of the damnés is
formed by the diversity of heterogeneous structural histories of those who have lived in the condition of having to deal with imperial languages
and the weight of the imperial civilization that those languages carry; that is,
the paradigm of all those who have to deal with
the colonial wound in all its manifestations. Focusing on knowledges and subjectivities in the sphere of language takes us beyond the
question of bi- or pluri-lingualism or multiculturalism. It is more, much more. Language, epistemic, and subjective borders
are the foundations of new ways of thinking, of an-other thinking, an-other logic, an-other language, as I have
elaborated elsewhere.7 Confronting Fanon’s predicament of colonial language and subjectivity amounts to provincializing the totalizing effect
of “Latin” and “Anglo” (and the consequent power differential between both) in America, as one way to understand the shift introduced by
rewriting the “discovery” from the history of African slavery and of the problem of the “Negro and language,” as Fanon puts it. It
is the
opening of an epistemology of the borders built on the colonial difference, on the subjectivity of the
colonial wound. It is taking us from the paradigm of newness to the decolonial paradigm of co-existence.
Our fw is key – coloniality shapes practice
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
To understand the intricate web in which differences are transformed into values, and the colonial matrix of power naturalized and disguised
under the triumphal project of modernity, let’s look more closely at the rhetoric of modernity and its darker side. Sociologist Immanuel
Wallerstein has suggested that the “modern world system” did not have its own imaginary (i.e., a series of ideas giving it conceptual coherence)
until after the French Revolution. He describes that imaginary as relying on the emergent configuration of three competing, and at the same
time complementary, ideologies: conservatism, liberalism, and socialism. Looking from the empire to the colonies, or from the march of
modernity toward the rest of the word, the three ideologies seem adequate.32 Looking from the colonies to the empire, or at the invasive
march of modernity into the rest of the world, it is clear that the full story cannot be rendered within these three Enlightened European
ideologies alone. There
is one important ideology missing that is crucial for an understanding of the “idea” of
Latin America and that dates back to the sixteenth century: colonialism . The display of the four ideologies of the modern/colonial
world together makes visible the rift between the former three and the latter, which is important to an understanding of how they function in
the geo-politics (modernity/coloniality) of knowledge, rather than simply in the internal history of Western political theory and its underlying
epistemology. From
the internal history of Western political theory and epistemology, colonialism is a mere derivative, an
unpleasant process that leads to a better world. Colonialism is, precisely, what remained hidden and unnamed, covered
by the three acceptable ideologies and the visible face of the empire, which itself hid the colonies and made them marginal in time
and space. Colonialism as the fourth ideology is a vital distinction to make if we are to comprehend European
imperialism since the sixteenth century and US imperialism after World War II. Colonialism (and I am referring here to the particular forms
that emerged in the modern/colonial world and not, for instance, in previous Roman or Inca “colonies”) refers to the result of imperial actions
that have capitalism as the principle and foundation of “modes of social life and organization.” That is, imperialism/colonialism
are
one and the same, like modernity/coloniality, insofar as they are linked with mercantilism, free trade, and the
industrial economy. Imperialism/colonialism characterizes specific moments in history (like the Spanish, the British, or the Russian
imperial/colonial empires), while modernity/coloniality points toward a set of principles and beliefs in which certain
imperial/colonial empires are framed.33 Colonialism is the historically concrete complement of imperialism in its diverse geohistorical manifestations, just as coloniality is the logical complement of modernity in its general principles. Colonialism as ideology is
implemented by coloniality as the logic of domination.
Their framework argument assumes a detached and neutral epistemology --- this view is profoundly
Eurocentric and privileges only western forms of thinking --- instead prefer our epistemic
disobedience.
Mignolo 9 – William H. Wannamaker Professor of Romance Studies and Literature at Duke University and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the
Humanities, (Walter D., Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom, Theory Culture Society, 2009 26: 159 – 182, SAGE)//A-Berg
Once upon a time scholars
assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the
known and untouched by the geo-political configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are
racially configured. From a detached and neutral point of observation (that Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez
(2007) describes as the hubris of the zero point), the knowing subject maps the world and its problems, classifies people and
projects into what is good for them. Today that assumption is no longer tenable, although there are still many believers. At stake is indeed
the question of racism and epistemology (Chukwudi Eze, 1997; Mignolo, forthcoming). And once upon a time scholars assumed that if you
‘come’ from Latin America you have to ‘talk about’ Latin America; that in such a case you have to be a token of your culture. Such expectation will not arise if the
author ‘comes’ from Germany, France, England or the US. In such cases it is not assumed that you have to be talking about your culture but can function as a
theoretically minded person. As we know: the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have
science. The
need for political and epistemic delinking here comes to the fore, as well as decolonializing and decolonial knowledges,
necessary steps for imagining and building democratic, just, and non-imperial/colonial societies. Geo-politics of
knowledge goes hand in hand with geo-politics of knowing. Who and when, why and where is knowledge generated (rather than produced, like cars or cell phones)?
Asking these questions means to shift the attention from the enunciated to the enunciation. And by so doing, turning Descartes’s dictum inside out: rather than
assuming that thinking comes before being, one assumes instead that it is a racially marked body in a geo-historical marked space that feels the urge or get the call
to speak, to articulate, in whatever semiotic system, the urge that makes of living organisms ‘human’ beings. By setting the scenario in terms of geo- and bodypolitics I am starting and departing from already familiar notions of ‘situated knowledges’. Sure, all
knowledges are situated and every
knowledge is constructed. But that is just the beginning. The question is: who, when, why is constructing
knowledges (Mignolo, 1999, 2005 [1995])? Why did eurocentered epistemology conceal its own geo-historical and bio-graphical
locations and succeed in creating the idea of universal knowledge as if the knowing subjects were also
universal? This illusion is pervasive today in the social sciences, the humanities, the natural sciences and the professional schools.
Epistemic disobedience means to delink from the illusion of the zero point epistemology. The shift I am indicating is the anchor
(constructed of course, located of course, not just anchored by nature or by God) of the argument that follows. It is the beginning of any epistemic decolonial delinking with all its historical, political and ethical consequences. Why? Because geo-historical and bio-graphic loci of enunciation have been located by and through
the making and transformation of the colonial matrix of power: a
racial system of social classification that invented Occidentalism (e.g. Indias
Occidentales), that created the conditions for Orientalism; distinguished the South of Europe from its center (Hegel)
and, on that long history, remapped the world as first, second and third during the Cold War. Places of nonthought (of myth,
non-western religions, folklore, underdevelopment involving regions and people) today have been waking up from the long process of westernization.
The anthropos inhabiting non-European places discovered that s/he had been invented, as anthropos, by a locus of
enunciations self-defined as humanitas. Now, there are currently two kinds or directions advanced by the former anthropos who are no longer claiming
recognition by or inclusion in the humanitas, but engaging in epistemic disobedience and de-linking from the magic of the
Western idea of modernity, ideals of humanity and promises of economic growth and financial prosperity (Wall
Street dixit). One direction unfolds within the globalization of a type of economy that in both liberal and Marxist vocabulary is defined as ‘capitalism’. One of the
strongest advocates of this is the Singaporean scholar, intellectual and politician Kishore Mahbubani, to which I will return later. One of his earlier book titles carries
the unmistakable and irreverent message: Can Asians Think?: Understanding the Divide between East and West (2001). Following Mahbubani’s own terminology,
this direction could be identified as de-westernization. De-westernization means, within a capitalist economy, that the rules of the game and the shots are no longer
called by Western players and institutions. The seventh Doha round is a signal example of de-westernizing options. The second direction is being advanced by what I
describe as the decolonial option. The decolonial option is the singular connector of a diversity of decolonials. The decolonial paths have one thing in common: the
colonial wound, the fact that regions and people around the world have been classified as underdeveloped economically and mentally. Racism not only affects
people but also regions or, better yet, the conjunction of natural resources needed by humanitas in places inhabited by anthropos. De
colonial options
have one aspect in common with de-westernizing arguments: the definitive rejection of ‘being told’ from the epistemic
privileges of the zero point what ‘we’ are, what our ranking is in relation to the ideal of humanitas and what
we have to do to be recognized as such. However, decolonial and de-westernizing options diverge in one crucial and in disputable point: while
the latter do not question the ‘civilization of death’ hidden under the rhetoric of modernization and prosperity, of the improvement of modern institutions (e.g.
liberal democracy and an economy propelled by the principle of growth and prosperity), decolonial options start from the principle that the regeneration of life shall
prevail over primacy of the production and reproduction of goods at the cost of life (life in general and of humanitas and anthropos alike!). I illustrate this direction,
below, commenting on Partha Chatterjee’s re-orienting ‘eurocentered modernity’ toward the future in which ‘our modernity’ (in India, in Central Asia and the
Caucasus, in South America, briefly, in all regions of the world upon which eurocentered modernity was either imposed or ‘adopted’ by local actors assimilating to
local histories inventing and enacting global designs) becomes the statement of interconnected dispersal in which decolonial futures are being played out. Last but
not least, my argument doesn’t claim originality (‘originality’ is one of the basic expectations of modern control of subjectivity) but aims to make a contribution to
growing processes of decoloniality around the world. My humble claim is that geo- and body-politics
of knowledge has been hidden from
the self-serving interests of Western epistemology and that a task of decolonial thinking is the unveiling
of epistemic silences of Western epistemology and affirming the epistemic rights of the racially
devalued, and decolonial options to allow the silences to build arguments to confront those who take
‘originality’ as the ultimate criterion for the final judgment.1
Colonialist power relations perpetuate Eurocentric epistemology
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and Professor of
Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin America," 2005, slim_ **gendered
language not endorsed)
As a matter of fact, the geo-politics
of knowledge emerged already in the sixteenth century as a decolonial attitude
(countering the implicit “Roman attitude” that Rémi Brague attributes to the history of Europe; see chapter 2) when men of wisdom and
officers of the state, in and from Anáhuac and Tawantinsuyu, needed to deal with the question of how to accommodate
their system of knowledge, accumulated information, and organization of memory to a system that was alien to their lived
experience and collective shared past. They needed to think in a double framework that revealed a differential in power
relations. One of the frameworks was introduced by Europeans who spoke vernacular imperial languages and
grounded their thoughts in Greek and Latin. Europeans, in general, did not have to incorporate Indigenous languages and
frameworks of knowledge into their own. For Indigenous people (and for Africans transported to the New World), the situation was
different. They had no choice but to incorporate European languages and frameworks of knowledge into their
own. One of the unavoidable consequences of modern/colonial expansionism is that the conditions for border
thinking were created, and the theo-politics of knowledge (in sixteenth-century Tawantinsuyu and Anáhuac) and the ego-politics of
knowledge (in nineteenth-century British India and French and British Africa) were thereby decentered. Thus, the events that led to the
idea of “America” led, simultaneously, to the appearance of a new type of thinking and understanding that could
not be suppressed by theology (or later on by egology) – border thinking. The only way possible was to control it by
suppressing the materiality of its manifestations (e.g., not publishing Indigenous writings), demonizing it, or making
impossible any kind of diffusion. However, thoughts and ways of thinking survive with bodies; they are part of life. Border thinking is exploding
now in the Andes under the name of inter-culturalidad and all over the world as well, including the parts of Europe that are becoming the
dwelling place of African, Asian, South American, and Caribbean migrants. Border thinking,
which was the historically
unavoidable condition for Indigenous people, surfaced in its own way among African slaves and Creoles of African descent, as
well as among Creoles of Spanish and Portuguese descent. The name here is less important than the phenomenon I am trying to describe,
which is
a new way of thinking prompted by modern imperial expansion and the necessary colonial matrix
of power that modern expansionism implies.
Their framework argument is a form of imperialist violence
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
The “critical consciousness” emerging from the consciousness of being Mestiza works toward a double decolonization, both of knowledge and
of being. It is a decolonization of knowledge because the
philosophical foundation of modernity was built on the
knowing subject that was constructed from the prototype of White, heterosexual, and European men.
There is nothing wrong in principle with that epistemology, since you cannot be what you are not. But
when you assume, for example, as a contemporary politician does, that whatever is good for you is good for Texas, whatever is good for
Texas is good for the US, and whatever is good for the US is good for the world, then you have excluded the knowledges and
experiences of all those who are not like you. The “Mestiza critical consciousness” shows the limits of the hegemonic concept
of knowledge. It is a decolonization of being because, precisely, the imperial assumption of the validity of only one
concept of knowledge, with its Eurocentricness, provides the justification for assuming the inferiority of all
other knowing subjects who are not White, heterosexual, male, and European (or of European descent). The “Mestiza critical
consciousness” opens many doors that have been discreetly left closed.
Knowledge shapes the world – rejecting the modern paradigm is key
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
Next to the military and economic power that rules the world, today, Anzaldúa’s manifesto may seem idealistic
and evoke the response of “oh, well this is nice but ...” Civil and political society is definitely limited by the web of transnational corporations,
military secrecy, and G8 highly confidential negotiations. However, the
transformation of the geography of knowledge
happens at the level of decolonization of being and of knowledge, through which other possible worlds
can be construed beyond the dominant systems. There is no way out for the damnés (who, under neoliberalism, are increasing and including White Europeans and White US citizens who are also losing their privileges and moving toward the
expendable part of society) through
the paradigms in place. They must engage in paradigms of co-existence, in
practice and in thought. What is left to civil and political society is such massive manifestations (multitudes of them, perhaps) as we
saw in the loud outcry against the war in Iraq. But, more than the multitude of protests, what we have been witnessing is the
emergence of previously invisible social actors with a myriad of concrete political projects and new
ethical paradigms. The multitude only dissents within the paradigm of modernity. It is from the damnés, from the colonial
wound, that the radical change is taking place, because it leaves the paradigm of modernity and
newness for another one. That is what comes after “Latin” America. What is left to those who cannot live in this world is the
active decolonization of knowledge and of being – the production and valorization of knowledge that
does not underhandedly legitimate what Anzaldúa calls the “dominant culture,” which always need to devalue
the humanity of all those who do not conform to its values in order to maintain its position. The
Zapatistas’ theoretical revolution, Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean and Andean intellectuals, as well as Latinos/as in the US are building
toward a future, toward an ideal of society not controlled by totalizing Western principles of knowledge
and sovereignty of being. And there are more places where those working from the geo-politics and body politics of knowledge are
generating alternatives to the modern/colonial world. The idea of “Latin” America is being superseded by the
emergence of new social actors claiming their epistemic rights and the trust that “an-other world is
possible,” beyond the one that has been naturalized under the control and management of the G8.45
Colonialism maintains itself by distorting knowledge – epistemology comes first
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
Second, in that forward movement of modernity, colonialism
works to cover up its own ideological trail by erasing
and displacing that which differs from the ideal or opposes the march of modernity. Thus, modernity can be
defined and conceived, in terms of “reason, progress, political democracy, science, commodity production, new conceptions of time
and space and rapid changes,”34 without acknowledging the erasure of both what preceded a given moment within the
logic of modernity (that is, the colonization of time – Middle Ages, early modern period, modern period, postmodern period, etc.) and what
differed from a given moment outside the logic of modernity. Fanon in the 1960s said it very clearly in a way that is still valid
today for the new form of neo-liberal colonialism: colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and
the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all
form and content. By a kind of perverse logic, it
turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and
destroys it.35
Our framework is that we should approach the resolution from a Latin American perspective --- this is
key to epistemic diversity.
Taylor 12 - Lecturer in Latin American Studies BA University of London, Queen Mary MPhil University of Glasgow PhD University of Manchester, (Lucy,
“Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America,” International Studies Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, 11 SEP 2012, 14, 386–400, Wiley Online
Library)//A-Berg
A key strategy for IR has been to reconsider the history of ideas about the international, and the work of Inayatullah and Blaney
(2004) is particularly relevant here. The authors chart the invention of modern understandings of ‘‘the international’’ in European thinking during the so-called long
sixteenth century (a period that began in 1492 with the ‘‘discovery’’ of the Americas). They show how ideas such as sovereignty and just war––keystones in the
edifice of IR––are grounded in an understanding of the world which writes such ideas as universal without acknowledging that they emerged from a particular social
milieu. They argue that the intellectual discovery of the Americas played a key role in formulating understandings of Christian and European civilization by providing
a foil of ‘‘barbarism’’ against which emerging Western regimes of knowledge or episteme was being framed (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004: 47–91). In particular, the
notion of European superiority was caught up with the Peace of Westphalia, which allowed the birth of the modern nation-state to be heralded as a social advance
and confirmed the nation-state as a ‘‘natural’’ and desirable social model, which underpinned the emerging IR imaginary (Kayaoglu 2007). Inayatullah and Blaney
demonstrate the centrality of colonialism in the Americas to ideas about the international by focusing on intellectual movements and social experience in Europe. In
contrast,
Latin American scholarship on the coloniality of power aims to understand these intellectual
movements from the perspective of the Americas––and particularly the colonized peoples. The original article
which inspired the coloniality perspective––‘‘Americanity as a Concept’’–– emerged in 1992 from deliberations on dependency theory and brought together two
‘‘Americans’’ intent on thinking about their continent––Peruvian Anı ´bal Quijano and US scholar Immanuel Wallerstein. The article states their conclusion––and the
bedrock of this approach––in the opening paragraph: ‘‘The modern world-system was born in the long sixteenth century. The Americas as a geosocial construct
were born in the long sixteenth century. The creation of this geosocial entity, the Americas, was the constitutive act of the modern world system. The Americas
were not incorporated into an already existing capitalist world economy. There could not have been a capitalist world economy without the Americas’’ (1992: 549).
While their emphasis at this stage was on the interconnectedness of modernity and capitalism, their focus on the pivotal role of the Americas as the central locale
and key idea that generated modernity paved the way for Quijano to develop the notion of coloniality in his seminal article ‘‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and
Latin America’’ (2000, English language version). From his location in the Andes, Quijano revealed the presence of coloniality which operates
in
parallel to modernity as its ‘‘darker side’’ of domination, violence, and exploitation. It focuses on the
suppression of indigenous and African ways of knowing and of acting in the world. While coloniality’s
impact was palpable for the colonized, who endured everyday experiences of oppression, disdain, and
indoctrination, the colonizers saw only the dynamics of backwardness and progress, framed by a developing concept of modernity. For Quijano, it is this
reciprocal interconnection of coloniality⁄modernity, generated by the encounter of Europeans, Africans, and Native peoples in the Americas, that formed the
contemporary world order with its ‘‘natural’’ geopolitical hierarchies. Coloniality is not an adjective, then; it does not describe a state of colonialism, but rather
embodies it, in the same way that ‘‘modernity’’ embodies the modern social world (Mignolo 2005: 6). Importantly, the coloniality of power perspective understands
colonial domination to be not only one of physical control and exploitation but also an epistemological domination. That is, the different Native and
African approaches to understanding the world, the way in which they recorded and transmitted
knowledge about the world, and their various assumptions about what it means to be a human, were
also subject to domination. In Mignolo’s work in the Darker Side of the Renaissance (2003), he charts the disjuncture of the Mexica and Nahuatl
civilizations with the Spanish, Catholic settler culture, showing how assumptions about the proper way to write and speak knowledge generated socioracial
hierarchies of civilization⁄barbarism. This provides a distinctive understanding of the roots of racism, arguing that the phenotyical element of racism (skin color, hair
type, face shapes) acts as a visual tag which is anchored in far deeper assumptions about the inferiority of non-Western ways of knowing—and therefore living
(2005: 15–22). One of the key protagonists in this debate was Bartolome´ de las Casas, who devised a highly influential classification of barbarism which used the
yardstick of European society to measure civilization⁄barbarism (Mignolo 2005: 18–20). His first class of barbarians were peoples who lived according to the law of
force and violence, instead of reasoned justice. The second focused on the use of written language as a way to communicate ideas; unsurprisingly, he identified
Latin (the language of the Catholic faith and the dominant linguistic root of Spanish) as the pinnacle of civilized communication. The third category of people
considered to be barbarians were those whose societies (apparently) lacked organization and rules and who lived without a state or government, while the fourth
characteristic of barbarism was ignorance of the true Catholic faith. These categories of barbarism are configured not around bodily characteristics but how people’s
societies were organized and, therefore, their worldviews, priorities, assumptions, and understandings of what was acceptable or important (CastroGomez 2002;
Mendieta 2008). Barbarism was defined epistemologically rather than biologically, then, and colonialism acted to order the world by claiming and enacting levels of
civilization––as well, of course, as being an avaricious exercise in the pursuit of riches and opportunities. A further key assumption of coloniality thinking (which
echoes postcolonial scholarship) is that colonial relationships continue to condition social relations in the Americas. While conventional accounts of colonialism
mark the Independence movements of the 1810s as a moments of settler autonomy, scholars like Quijano write from places where not only is racialized injustice,
exclusion and disdain an obvious fact of life, but where indigenous cosmologies and practices are vivid, visible, and everyday (Walsh 2002). In this way, coloniality
scholarship demonstrates the reproduction of encounters in which Occidental ways of thinking, understanding, and acting are deemed superior while indigenous
cosmovisiones or worldviews are considered primitive––or folkloric, at best (Mignolo 2006). Viewed thus from an indigenous vantage point, moments such as
Theorizing from
indigenous experience reveals, then, a radical disjuncture of experiences and interpretations of history. This is
political independence or globalization are understood not as new epochs but adaptations on a trajectory of continuity (Mendieta 2008).
not merely a disagreement of view, though, because the interchange is significantly unequal––it occurs between a colonizing regime of knowledge and colonized
experience. This creates what Quijano calls a ‘‘colonial wound,’’ a gaping unhealed fissure in the social realm. Modernity endlessly attempts to
close this fissure through material and epistemological practices which assault the indigenous world (Quijano 2000: 540–42). However, the colonial wound is not
only a site of agony but also a dissonant position from
which critical voices are raised which contest Occidental logics. Such
voices make visible a ‘‘colonial difference,’’ which constitutes the prime site of resistance and decolonial struggle (Mignolo
2000, 49–64). For coloniality scholarship, exposing this colonial difference and asserting the profound discontent that it expresses are the key to decolonial
strategies. The first step is therefore to engage in ‘‘epistemic disobedience,’’ as Walter Mignolo puts it; this means ‘‘to delink from
the illusion of the zero point epistemology’’ (2009: 160) or to deliberately reject the idea that there is one (universal) way of
knowing and being in the world––and to seek out radically different worldviews or cosmovisiones. This impulse
chimes with the work of critical IR scholars such as Agathangelou and Ling (2009) who critique the particularity of thinking in what they call the ‘‘House of IR.’’ For
them, diversity
within IR as a discipline is limited to a series of labeled strands (realism, pluralism, the English School etc.,) which promote pluralism
This disciplines the way in which students and academics think and
generates a narrow imaginary of what the international is and how it might be (2009: 48–67). They argue for the need
within the confines of universalizing assumptions.
to radically and critically expand the realm of what might be considered to theorize the global and promote ‘‘worldism’’ which sees ‘‘world politics as a site of
multiple worlds’’ (2009: 85). Beginning from the principle that a
range of radically diverse regimes of knowledge exist, they argue
that ‘‘difference’’ does not preclude the making of connections, which they call ‘‘syncretic engagements.’’ These connections ‘‘consolidate the
entwinements of multiple
worlds into concrete strategies for change’’ (2009: 86), that is, ‘‘trans-subjectivities’’ are created, which
forming a bridge of common experience, priority, or affinity. It is from this position of trans-subjectivity
that linked political actions can begin, actions that can be global in nature (2009: 85–6). This embrace of
radical diversity is vital to the creation of a decolonial IR because it proposes to take seriously ‘‘other’’
worldviews and recognizes the dynamic, hybridizing nature of human engagement. Moreover, their work offers an
span differences by
intellectual opening to approaches such as coloniality⁄modernity; joined by a common desire to rethink the global through ‘‘epistemic disobedience’’ or
‘‘worldism,’’ these different intellectual trajectories might themselves make academic ‘‘syncretic engagements,’’ and use these as a foundation for rethinking IR.
This connection has very particular implications for that most ‘‘American’’ of disciplines, IR. Theorizing
the coloniality of power from a
Latin American perspective, then, adds a significant and distinctive contribution to the increasingly plural realm of
experiences and philosophies associated with the presence of postcolonial voices in IR. It contributes more than
diversity, though, because in offering a distinctive perspective on and from the Americas it opens an avenue to begin rethinking the USA . This perspective
invites us to start our thinking from the long sixteenth century, to foreground the colonial encounter between Europeans,
Native Peoples, and Afro-descendants and to understand the making of ‘‘the USA’’ as an epistemological
project in which the politics of knowledge played a central role. This perspective reveals the US to be a place shaped not only
by the progress of modernity but also the oppressions of coloniality, a move which, as we will see later, has significant implications for IR.
Questioning the framing of the 1AC is key to deconstruct colonialism
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
It was to colonialism as ideology and practice and to the underlying logic of coloniality that the first wave of
decolonization in the Americas responded. All the “revolutions” of this wave were in the paradigm of co-existence rather than in the
paradigm of newness (as I explained in the preface). US independence (called the American Revolution) in 1776, the rebellions in what was
then part of Peru (now in Bolivia) led by Tomas Katari and Túpac Amaru (1780–1), the Haitian Revolution in 1804, and the first set of Hispano
and Luso American independences between 1810 and 1830 were all responses to “colonialism,” as the imperial ideology projected toward the
colonies. Decolonization at this point, as well as in the second wave post-World War II, meant political
and, in a less clear way,
economic decolonization – but not epistemic. The theological and secular frames of mind in which political
theory and political economy had been historically grounded were never questioned. This is precisely the crucial
difference between older forms of decolonization and the struggles since Césaire and Fanon and more explicitly since the 1990s. Now
decolonization of knowledge and subjectivity, through the imagination of alternatives to capitalism and
alternatives to the modern state and its reliance on military power, and through the creation of new ideologies other
than the four mentioned, is taking place. Yet all the “successful” movements of decolonization in the Americas were in the hands of Creoles of
Spanish, Portuguese, English, and African descent, and it was not on their horizon to imagine ways of thinking beyond what the European
tradition offered them.
Colonialism should have been the key ideology targeted by decolonial projects.
However, in the first wave of so-called decolonization, colonialism as ideology was not dismantled, as the goal was to gain ostensible
independence from the empire. There was a change of hands as Creoles became the state and economic elite, but the logic of coloniality
remained in place.
Epistemology comes first – decolonizing knowledge is key to activism
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
Today, some thirty years after its instantiation, neo-liberalism not only faces the opposition to the FTAA that is coming from different
sectors of the population in different countries, but also confronts
a new logic, a new way of reasoning, and a delinking
from the basic premises upon which the IMF or the World Bank or the White House built their rhetoric. The
“new logic” is coming from at least two different directions – the state and the grassroots. Suppose, for example, that the “Latin” American
states of the Atlantic (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay) turn away from the IMF and, instead, begin to negotiate with China, whose
international projects are not in line with the IMF’s agenda of increasing the foreign debts of countries receiving their “help.” The
new
logic is also coming from the vocal reasoning and activism of those who are not supposed to have reason. Changes in the “idea
of Latin” America are now being enacted by and in political society – that is, by the active sector of society that does not have access to the
state or the markets (and that is constantly repressed and marginalized by them). It
does have, however, the power to disrupt the
set of beliefs in which modern science, philosophy, political economic and political theory, ethics, and aesthetics
are “founded,” as if those principles of belief were “natural” to the world. That potential, the epistemic
potential, 2 is being actively pursued by sectors of the population who think from principles other than those of Aristotle,
Plato, or the Bible and, for that reason, have been dismissed, racialized (translated as “inferior”), and colonized (subjected to
a set of the values of the superior beings that were intended to improve the inferior values of people not quite human, like Indians, Blacks,
women, homosexuals, etc.). The
most radical struggles in the twenty-first century will take place on the battlefield of
knowledge and reasoning. The difference between socialist/communist movements during the Cold War and
the Indigenous movements of today is that the latter are no longer thinking and operating within the logic
of the system; they are attempting to change its logic and not just its content. The marginalization of Fidel Castro
and the defeat of Salvador Allende are only two examples of how the global designs of an expanding capitalism operate against any possibility
that might inhibit its expansion, even those alternative possibilities, like socialism or communism (which just change the content of the system,
not the system itself), that come from within modernity itself. The
various movements today (in their enormous complexity) are
introducing a fracture in the rhetoric through which democracy, freedom, and development have been
marketed and justified by those in power, even though democracy is sold through the violent imposition of autocracy. Let’s turn now toward
the transformations of knowledge and subjectivity occurring across the Americas, and suspend for a while the narrative of the appropriation of
Amazonian and Pacific lands, exploitation of labor, militarization, and other strategies deployed for the control of authority being enacted by
the US and the European Union. Beyond the spheres of the inter-state system and the transnational financial flows,
the struggle for
life is becoming a struggle for knowledge and the liberation (or decolonization) of subjectivities that had
been controlled by the state and the market (and, of course, the church). Certain social movements are calling into
serious question the epistemology of colonial difference that sustains the uneven distribution of power.
While liberation theology, as it was articulated from the perspective of dissenting “Latin” theologians, contributed to raising consciousness in
the twentieth century, critical consciousness and liberation (decolonization) today will come from the actors that have been left out of the
Eurocentric idea of “Latinidad.” Delinking from that concept and building an “after-(Latin)” America is one of the steps being taken by Indians,
Afros, women of color, gays, and lesbians. Leadership
is coming from the energy of each locality and from the
history of the colonization of knowledge and of being. Leadership can no longer come only from Eurocentric projects of
liberation, whether they are within the theology of liberation or socialist Marxism. “Truth” must be elsewhere.
2NC Discourse 1st
Discourse analysis should come first --- latin America specific
Kenworthy 95, Professor of Politics at Whitman Collegem (Eldon, “America/Américas:
Myth in the Making of U. S. Policy Toward Latin America,” January 1, 1995,
GoogleBook)//A-Berg
How does the United States talk about Latin America and what does it say? This book argues that official
U.S. discourse not only reveals
assumptions traceable to the earliest days of the republic but reproduces those assumptions today when
they have become a poor guide to reality. Old images and ideas comprise a myth of U.S. hemispheric relations that has acquired
paradigmatic status, a myth I call America/Américas after its central confusion over identity. Who or what is American? Who speaks for America as a hemisphere? Is
there an America? This is not a work of history, although it draws on history. Here the focus is on official language, with the goal of explaining how a myth,
premodern in origin, is perpetuated today. As an entry we begin with that most vexing of questions: Does
has passed and Washington no longer sees Latin America through the prism of big power rivalry, is
discourse matter? Now that the Cold War
there any need to analyze past
language? The “New Era Breaking” Thesis Current writing on U.S.—Latin American relations assumes that, with the passing of the Cold War, Washington shed
its penchant for interven ing coercively in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. In this view the December 1989 invasion of Panama was an aberration, a
last hurrah. “We are entering a new era of U.S.—I.atin American relations,” writes a trio of scholars; the “strategic denial” central to the Monroe Doctrine “is almost
totally irrelevant.”2 Peter Hakim, president of the influential Inter-American Dialogue, claims that “what
has clearly changed is the discourse
of relations,” with Washington now “showing greater respect for the countries of the region,”3 a view echoed by Augusto Varas, for whom “a new
paradigm” of “partnership” emerged “almost automatically” in the late 1980s in response to “world changes, and the suboptimal character of policies based on
coercive paradigms.”4 What has happened, one wonders, to the other elements encoded in the Monroe Doctrine? In that 1823 address President James Monroe
not only warned European monarchs to stay away but expressed confidence that “our southern brethren, if left to themselves,” would choose a political system
much like that of the United States. At the time, Latin American leader Simón Bolívar was urging his countrymen to adopt constitutional monarchies and some Latin
American nations were in fact ruled by monarchs, including Brazil and, for a time, Mexico.5 So Monroe’s prediction was normative, not descriptive. From its
inception the Monroe Doctrine contained “hidden positives,” includ ing the notion “ that
the United States shall be . . . the sole
directing power in both North and South America.” Perhaps it was from Jefferson’s dream of “an American system” as different from
Europe in its domestic dynamics as in its foreign policies that this “positive” strand in U.S. thinking about Latin America arose,’ or perhaps it
can be traced back to the Puritans two centuries earlier. By “positive” I refer to the belief that Latin America’s development
would mirror the United States’ and that united this hemisphere would become the world’s most
advanced. The negative “strategic denial,” in contrast, merely places the hemisphere off limits to any foreign power that Washington, D.C., views as a threat.
How often have U.S. presidents from Theodore Roosevelt and Wood.. row Wilson to Ronald Reagan, George Rush, and Bill Clinton used coercion (invasion,
destabilization, and economic boycotts) to ensure that Latin Americans select the right regimes, “right” being defined variously hut not ‚ust as an ally in
international alignments? Thc 1989 invasion of Panama was justified as promoting democracy, with only the vaguest references made to protecting the canal and
no allusions to foreign powers. Official U.S. discourse on Panama echoed statements Woodrow Wilson had made well before World War I. With no
extrahemispheric power threatening Latin America Wilson considered it a “duty” to impart “order and self-control” to the Latin states.’ hic positive strand in the
legacy is no less associated with intervention than the negative. The case that this hook examines in detail, that of Reagan’s policy toward Nicaragua in the 1980s, is
more typical than Panama of that history in that “positive” and “negative” elements are conjoined. Such interaction is apparent in the original myth, which Chapter
2 spells our. The case study reveals, however, not just that admixture but the way in which newer themes arc grafted onto the root stock of older legacies, including
the “positive” heritage of the Monroe Doctrine.
The 1AC’s understanding of latin America replicates a cultural narrative of the US that privileges the
US above all else- discourse analysis should come first
Kenworthy 95, Professor of Politics at Whitman Collegem (Eldon, “America/Américas:
Myth in the Making of U. S. Policy Toward Latin America,” January 1, 1995,
GoogleBook)//A-Berg
There is more to international relations than rhetoric and myths. Yet power
and language are so intertwined that separating them is
more an artifact of how we think than an accurate representation of political life. Power is present “in
the way discussions are structured, agendas set, concepts selected, arguments developed”; thus power shapes
dis course. But “power is not silent”; it expresses itself through language (including symbols of all kinds) and is shaped by that ongoing process» Listening to the
official language sampled above, for instance, a Native American would recognize how language
constructs a history that serves a
specific set of power relations in the present. A different set of power relations would require a different
reading of history. And so with Latin America: the “new paradigm,” which Varas and others rightly desire, requires a new
reading of the history of U.S. relations with Latin America on the part of U.S. leaders—not a reworking of who did
what when, but a reconception of that history’s meaning. Since the existing discourse was formed out of
language used to create a national identity, such a fresh reading requires a degree of separation, a capacity for seeing Latin
countries as other, as different. That unfortunately runs counter to the impulse most U.S. leaders have to stress
unity and consensus. No less than Bush, Clinton speaks of “an unprecedented convergence of ideas” between hemispheric leaders fostering a hemi
spherewide “community.” To sense the limits built into the inherited discourse, try reading the official language quoted above as if for the first time. “Here in the
Americas we are building something unprecedented in human history.” “We can show the rest of the world.” “It is time this organization put itself on the right side
of history.” How useful is it to think in terms of a regional enclave, especially an exemplary one carrying the torch for History, in an era when money, narcotics,
atmospheric carbon dioxide, CNN, AIDS, and MTV circle the globe 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; when “globalism” has become a cliché in business circles; and
when the harm done by national elites claiming to be History’s agent is too obvious to need documentation? A “new world” separate from and superior to the
European Union? Does that make sense when several European nations have higher per capita incomes and less poverty, preventable disease, and violent crime
than the United States, not to mention Latin America?24 Just where does Japan, whose per capita GNP is higher than that of the United States, fit into this old/new
world dichotomy?23 On a multidimensional scale measuring quality of life the United States now ranks sixth in the world, while the highest Latin American country
is thirtieth, behind some twenty “old world” nations.2’ Adam Przeworski’s study of advanced industrial nations over two decades explains the European edge: “The
welfare of the average adult, the average worker, and the average manufacturing employee was higher in social democratic countries.”2’ While in recent years
many of these high!scoring nations have trimmed their social budgets, they have not abandoned a model that is distinct from that of the United States.
Divorced from its inter-American context and set against the contemporary world, Washington’s
rhetoric seems as useful a guide to reality as the rules of croquet. Yet embedded within that language
are presumptions that are far from innocent: that one national elite, largely AngloSaxon in origin, can
speak for the interests of half a billion Latin peoples living at varying levels of economic development
and in a multitude of cultural contexts; that Latin America should be more closely linked to the United States
than to Europe or Asia; that global no less than regional well-being is furthered when Latin countries adopt
neoliberal economic policies. The success of several East Asian NlCs—the “newly industrialized country” status to which many Latin American
nations aspire—suggests a different economic strategy.2’ If we assume a commitment to democracy that is as strong as the commitment to economic growth, East
Asian experience—and also Washington’s advice—may be less relevant. Przcworski recognizes that “all countries cannot simultaneously have a positive balance of
payments. The race to modernize will inevitably have its winners and losers. . . who will not be nationstates but regions, sectors, industries, and particular social
groups.” Thc stripped-down national governments of the world’s south, however, no longer can “compensate losers and manage social tensions generally.” As a
consequence “democracy suffers.”’ Washington’s
projection of its experience and preferences onto societies
dissimilarly situated in the world conjuncture might be overlooked were it not for the vanguard role
embedded in official language: the presumption not just to advise but to “make happen,” translated into action
as recently as 1989. Comparing the United States invasion of Panama to the last times U.S. troops openly warred on Latin American nations, the trend actually is
one of increasing unilateralism. In the past Washington found some regional organization to endorse its intervention, as when the OAS sanctioncd the 1965 invasion
of the Dominican Republic. In the 1983 invasion of Grenada the United States had to settle for the smaller Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. Invading
Panama in 1989, the White House went it alone, castigating the OAS for its noninterventionist scruples while using vanguard rhetoric reminiscent of Leninism,
democracy having “acquired the force of historical necessity.” What is it that permits a U.S. administration (in this case Bush’s) to commit itself to a world order
based on international norms backed by multilateral actions sanctioned by international organizations—the basis for repelling Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait—and at the
same time to undercut that commitment when dealing with a region that has established multilateral organizations and a clear body of international law? What
leads U.S. leaders to fudge the ends-means nexus when addressing “their” region while cautioning other governments to observe it in theirs? Regarding Eastern
Europe, for example, the Rush administration argued that “democratic means are the only way to achieve democratic ends,” that “intimidation, illegality, and
violence are not the handmaidens of democracy.”° At least one part of that “something” consists of as sumptions
that linger in official
thinking about Latin America—linger because they early acquired a paradigmatic status through
association with the U.S. national project. As later chapters show, the U.S. discourse on Latin America
both contains and cloaks those U.S.-centric assumptions.
The impact is cultural homogenization---the colonial erasure of difference between the self and the
others
Kenworthy 95, Professor of Politics at Whitman Collegem (Eldon, “America/Américas:
Myth in the Making of U. S. Policy Toward Latin America,” January 1, 1995,
GoogleBook)//A-Berg
While the America/Americas myth broadened the American identity to include Latins, agent and author remained in Washington, D.C. The sentences have changed
in some respects but not in others. What for devout colonists was a means (freedom to carry forth the mission commended to their conscience) has become
transformed into an end: the freedom to be free. The residue of teleology mean-, however, that whatever the chosen people desire requires no further justification
Manifest Destiny took the project west while “freedom” and “develop ment” carried it south. Facilitating this movement has been its lack of clear territorial
boundaries. The
myth survives to this day, however, not simply out of habit but because it continues to resolve problems
Washington has with its hemispheric neighbors. Founding myths are reproduced because they provide
not optimal solutions but familiar ones. There are objective differences between societies and cultures in the Western Hemisphere, not the
least being the unrivaled power and wealth of the United States. Aware of those differences, most Latin leaders are desirous of good relations with the region’s
largest market, banker, and military power. Not surprisingly thc solution they offer to the common quest for order assumes a legal-institutional form. Examine the
history of inter.American conferences and you will see a recurring dance in which Latin leaders try to commit Washington to binding rules interpreted by collective
entities (even granting the United States more of a vote than others), while U.S.
leaders intone the Americas myth and say, “Trust
us, we’re family.” As a world power the United States has wanted to be backed by its region but not to
be bound by decisions collectively made by that region. Thus for Washington unity through language has
been preferable to unity through procedures: it is easier to reinterpret promises than to fudge rules. Monroe’s
proscription of monarchy in the Western Hemisphere evolved into a ban on homegrown Marxism within L.atin America, even when voted into power. That is how
flexible discourse can be. But not any discourse will do. At the close of the twentieth century and toward a region that shares a Western European genealogy, the
United States cannot employ the control through otherness that Edward Said perceived in Orientalism, the West’s
construction of Asia and the Middle East.72 While U.S. leaders initially used “otherness” in constructing Latin America they
soon found the contradictions too glaring and the resistance too strong Washington took the Americas
myth in a different direction, emphasizing sameness rather than difference, inclusion rather than
distance While Tzvetafl Todorov reminds us that this solution also has a long history, it is better suited than “otherness” for U.S.—Latin American relations of
the mid to late twentieth century. control through conflation—through presumed identity—has serious
shortcomings which subsequent chapters explore. “Otherness reduced to sameness is how Roland Barthes described “bourgeois
myth” in Europe. Its flip side he accurately portrayed as difference constructed as criminality—the betrayal theme noted above. Others become our “analogues
who have gone astray,”” as in Reagan’s characterization of the Sandmistas a “betrayers” of their own revolution. Otherness reduced to sameness, when the
otherness is real, is what Todorov calls “the
prejudice of equality, which he defines as “identifying the other purely and simply
with one own ‘ego ideal.’ “That same conflation William Connolly describes as “universalism subjugat[ing] the particularity
of the other to its own particular code with universalist pretensions.”75 . . ,
2NC Debate Key
Debate is key – individual forums must resist coloniality
Quijano 2000 (Anibal Quijano – Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, 2000, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin
America”, http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/wan/wanquijano.pdf) //MD
In fact, as experience and as idea, the new social practices
involved in the model of global, capitalist power, the concentration
new market for capital associated with the new perspective on time and on history, and the
centrality of the question of historical change in that perspective require on one hand the desacralization of
hierarchies and authorities, both in the material dimension of social relations and in its intersubjectivity, and on the other hand the
desacralization, change, or dismantlement of the corresponding structures and institutions. The new
individuation of subjectivity only acquires its meaning in this context, because from it stems the necessity for
an individual inner forum in order to think, doubt, and choose. In short, the individual liberty against
fixed social ascriptions and, consequently, the necessity for social equality among individuals.
of capital and wages, the
2NC Experts Bad
The prioritization of “expert knowledge” is a colonizing tool that commodifies individuals
perpetuating violence
Mignolo 05 (Walter D. Mignolo –professor of Literature at Duke, 2005, “The Idea of Latin
America”, https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1371668124435.pdf) //MD
However, from the
perspective of many who are being looked at and spoken at (not to), things look a little bit
different. The CIA’s report cites many experts on Latin America but not one person in Latin America who is critical of the neo-liberal invasion
to the South. For instance, the articles published by Alai-Amlatina, written in Spanish in the independent news media, do not “exist” for a world
in which what exists is written in English. That
is part of the “reality” of the “idea” of Latin America. The story is never
fully told because “developments” projected from above are apparently sufficient to pave the way toward the
future. “Expertise” and the experience of being trained as an “expert” overrule the “living experience” and
the “needs” of communities that might subsume technology to their ways of life, and not transform those ways of life to accord with
capitalist requirements, using technology as a new colonizing tool. The blindness of the CIA’s experts, and their reluctance to
work with people instead of strolling over expecting everyone to act according to their script, have led a myriad of social movements to
respond – a blatant example of the double-sided double-density of modernity/coloniality. It is increasingly difficult for the CIA and other
institutions controlling and managing knowledge and information to silence them. The
key issue here is the emergence of a new
kind of knowledge that responds to the needs of the damnés (the wretched of the earth, in the expression of Frantz
Fanon). They are the subjects who are formed by today’s colonial wound, the dominant conception of life
in which a growing sector of humanity become commodities (like slaves in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) or,
in the worst possible conditions, expendable lives. The pain, humiliation, and anger of the continuous reproduction of the
colonial wound generate radical political projects, new types of knowledge, and social movements.
2NC LA Key
Latin America is the product of Occidentalist knowledge production – this reinforces
the West as the epistemological locus of geopolitics, categorizing, describing, and
ordering the rest of the world
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
The “idea” of America came into being deeply rooted in the “idea” of Occidentalism. After all, “Indias Occidentales”
was the name attributed by the Spaniards to their newly possessed lands. America, as a name, co-existed for three centuries with “Indias
Occidentales” before that name fell into desuetude after the Creoles gained independence from Spain. O’Gorman’s thesis on the “invention of
America” and “the universalism of Western culture” revealed not only that the
idea of discovery is an imperial interpretation
as the extreme West is rooted in Christian cosmology, in which the destiny of Japheth, the
son located in the West, was to expand. “Occidentalism” was one of the consequences of the colonial revolution
and the condition that made possible, three centuries later, the invention of “Orientalism” in the imperial expansion of Britain
and France into Asia and Africa. “Occidentalism,” as O’Gorman’s thesis on the “universalism of Western culture” suggests, has two
interrelated dimensions: First, it served to locate the geohistorical space of Western culture. But, less obviously, it also
fixed the privileged locus of enunciation. It is from the West that the rest of the world is described,
conceptualized, and ranked: that is, modernity is the self-description of Europe’s role in history rather than an
ontological historical process. Without a locus of enunciation self-conceived as Occidental, the Oriental could not have
been thought out.25 Hegel’s philosophy of history is a striking example in which the West is both a geo-historical
location and the center of enunciation. History moves from East to West. In that move, the very idea of Western civilization
became the point of reference for the rest of the world, and the goal as well. How was it that the “West” came to
occupy the “center” in terms of political theory, political economy, philosophy, arts, and literature? And when? Up to
but also that America
the fifteenth century, Western Christendom (or Europe in Greek mythology) was literally the “West” – but “West” of what? Of Jerusalem, of
course, as it was the center of the Christian world. Athens and Rome were construed as the part of the “West” that offered the
foundation of knowledge, social organization, and the consolidation of the church and the state under Emperor Constantine,
three centuries ad. Thus, “Western Europe” did not begin to occupy the “center” until the emergence of the
“Indias Occidentales” (later called America and, even later, Latin and Anglo America) in the Christian European consciousness. The very
idea of a West (Occidentalism) and the ideology of Western expansion since 1500 also began with the identification and invention of
America. From that moment on, the Indias Occidentales defined the confines of the West and, as its periphery, were part of the West
nonetheless. Those confines were traced from a locus of observation that placed itself at the center of the world being observed, described,
and classified. This
allowed Western Europe to become the center of economic and political organization, a model of social life,
an exemplar of human achievement, and, above all, the point of observation and classification of the rest of the world.
Thus the idea of “West” as “center” became dominant in European political theory, political economy, philosophy,
arts, and literature, in the process by which Europe was conquering the world and classifying the world being conquered. The hubris of the
zero-point became the legitimate and naturalized point of observation in cartography (as in Ortelius’ map) and in theology. The sixteenth is the
century in which the eye of God is in complicity with empirical observations provided by navigations around the globe. Theology provided the
authority of the locus of observation and cartography the truth of the world being observed.26 “Occidentalism,” more than a field or
domain of study like “Orientalism” in the hands and pens of French and British intellectuals since the late eighteenth century, is itself the
perspective from which the Orient can be conceived. For how could “Orientalism” become a geo-political
concept without the presupposition of an “Occident” which was not only its counterpart, but also the very
condition for the existence of “Orientalism”? Furthermore, “Occidentalism” was both a geo-political concept and
the foundation of knowledge from which all categories of thought emerged and all classifications of the rest of the
world were determined. “Orientalism” did not have this privilege. Western people have disciplines and Eastern people have
cultures to be studied by Western disciplines. The West was, and still is, the only geo-historical location that is both part of the classification of
the world and the only perspective that has the privilege of possessing dominant categories of thoughts from which and where the rest of the
world can be described, classified, understood, and “improved.”2 The enchanting power of Occidentalism resides in its privileged geo-historical
location, a privilege that was
self-attributed by the growing hegemonic belief in its own racial, religious,
philosophic, and scientific superiority. One of the most devastating consequences of such a system of belief is that the world
seems to be what European (and later US) categories of thought allow you to say it is. The rest is simply wrong and
any attempt to think otherwise opens one up to harassment, demonizing, and, eventually, elimination. The
idea of America (and subsequently of Latin and Anglo America) is a product and a consequence of this Occidentalist
ideology of Western expansion and civilization. The Occidental is, primarily, the place of hegemonic epistemology rather than a geographical
sector on the map. Samuel Huntington demonstrated as much when he placed Australia in the First World and in the West while leaving Latin
America out.28 For, after all, “(Latin)
America” is not an “entity” that can be observed and experienced, but an “idea”
that arises in the conflicts of interpretation across the colonial difference. The “differences” between Latin America and
Europe and the US are not just “cultural”; they are, well and truly, “colonial differences.” That is, the links between industrial,
developed, and imperial countries, on the one hand, and could-be-industrial, underdeveloped, and emerging
countries, on the other, are the colonial difference in the sphere where knowledge and subjectivity, gender and
sexuality, labor, exploitation of natural resources, and finance, and authority are established. The notion of cultural differences overlooks
the relation of power while the concept of colonial difference is based, precisely, on imperial/colonial power differentials.
2NC Policy Bad
Policy focus mystifies colonialism and turns debate into regurgitating imperialistic scholarship
Robinson and Gindin 05 - Jonah Gindin is a Canadian journalist living and working in Caracas, Venezuela, William I Robinson is professor of sociology
at the University of California, Santa Barbara, “The Battle for Global Civil Society,” June 13th 2005,
http://web.archive.org/web/20130314033424/http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1186)//A-Berg
**The website this was originally posted on was taken down, but DHeidt managed to find it in the web archive.
intellectuals – who are never free-floating, always attached to the projects of dominant or of subordinate groups—they have a false
consciousness. Perhaps Gramsci was giving the benefit of the doubt to these intellectuals. There are many respectable and wellintentioned academics from the “First World” who unfortunately trumpet the new modalities of U.S.
intervention conducted as “democracy promotion,” and others who deceive themselves , intentionally or otherwise,
into believing they can participate intellectually – or directly – in U.S. political intervention in order to
somehow steer it into a wholesome or acceptable foreign policy. We should recall that intellectual labor is never neutral or
divorced from competing and antagonistic social interests. To state this in overly harsh terms, some—perhaps many—academics who defend U.S.
“democracy promotion” are organic intellectuals of the transnational elite. Some are outright opportunists who know
But
before whom they need to prostrate themselves in order to secure funding and status in the halls of global power. They are intellectual mercenaries. Others, as I’ve
said, are well intentioned. But there
is almost always an arrogance of power and privilege that many first world
intellectuals bring to their “study” of the global South; there is an academic colonial mentality at work.
Let’s face it: so-called “democracy promotion” has become a veritable academic industry that has numerous organic, ideological, and funding links with the U.S.
intervention apparatus. Let us recall that projects of domination always have their organic intellectuals .
The prevailing global order has
attracted many intellectual defenders, academics, pundits, and ideologues , who in the end serve to mystify
the real inner workings of the emerging order and the social and political interests embedded therein.
These intellectuals have become central cogs in the system of global capitalist domination . Maybe they want
a global capitalism with a more “human face,” but in the end they not only help to legitimize this system but also provide
technical solutions in response to the problems and contradictions of the system. How can any academic actually
follow what the U.S. does around the world in the name of “democracy promotion” and not acknowledge the blatant farce? These are harsh words, but we
must ask, what is the role and responsibility of intellectuals in the face of the global crisis, the crisis of
civilizational proportions we face in 2005.
2NC ROB
The role of the scholar should be to analyze the cultural biases that underlie the affirmative’s
advantage descriptions.
Fein 03, former professor of history at Yale University, professor at Columbia
University's departments of Latin American & Caribbean Studies and History, (Seth,
“Culture across Borders in the Americas,” History Compass 1, 2003, NA 025, 1–6)//ABerg
The ‘new’ international and transnational histories of the Americas revisit, more often unconsciously than consciously, elements of the
empirical project Herbert Eugene Bolton articulated in the first decades of the last century. 1 Contemporary
work is, however, neoits method as more interactive than comparative and that it redeploys the concept of
borderlands by approaching all international history, whether located within or without a region of international contiguity, as
taking place within ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly
asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination’. ‘Contact zones’, as literature scholar Mary Louise Pratt has
dubbed them, pervade recent histories about U.S. cultural interactions in the postcolonial Americas. 2 Within these,
historians explore the history of the United States outside the United States by crossing methodological as well as
national borders. 3 In doing so, such scholarship addresses conceptual concerns that historian-anthropologist William
Roseberry outlined in his non-essentialist approach to the sociocultural study of power within the Americas: ‘Our more automatic and
unreflective ways of thinking about the conjunction of local and global historical processes are
inadequate. We commonly refer to “internal” and “external” factors as if they could be easily distinguished and identified.’ The scholar
of Latin American culture instead ‘should have something to say about Americanization.…He or she should be
able to reject the homogenizing stereotype without retreating into the equally stereotypic comfort of
the distinctiveness of his or her “own people”. To think carefully about Americanization, then, is to
explore our ideas about history, culture, power, America, and the Americas.’ 4 It is to work within the ‘hybrid
cultures’ anthropologist Néstor García Canclini influentially describes. 5 It is to recognize how historians increasingly
substitute modalities of adaptation and appropriation for absolutist notions of either cultural
imperialism or cultural nationalism as theoretical lenses through which to focus empirical study. The
Boltonian, in that it defines
‘creative deployments of cultural forms’ that Louis A. Pérez observes in his reading of Cuban consumption of U.S. commodities, the impact of
imperial intervention on intercultural constructions of U.S. and Haitian subjectivities Mary Renda examines, the comparative sociopolitical
interactions of U.S. corporate production in different American countries that Thomas F. O’Brien’s analyses, have not brought – the
unsubstantiated fears of some diplomatic historians notwithstanding – the abandonment of states or, more generally, politics as subjects of
international historical study. 6 To the contrary, approaches
such as these consider processes beyond the articulation
of diplomacy and policy – to assess limit as well as extent, absence in addition to presence, response
from within as much as imposition from without, intended and unintended impacts – in analyzing power
across a range of sites, inside and outside of official architecture, within the Americas. More than a common
theoretical movement, this work shares a commitment to pose questions and conduct research about the U.S.
presence in the Americas based upon specialization in the history of other American nations as well as
that of the United States. Postcolonial studies – based in African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European histories – has influenced research
about the United States in the Americas as well as about how U.S. domestic identities have depended upon imaginings of
other nations. 7 Scholarly dialogue has begun to flow both ways, to produce comparative histories and
historiographies that de-essentialize not only historical study of the Western Hemisphere but also U.S.
power globally. 8 Theoretically evocative, interdisciplinary historical work (often produced by ‘non-historians’) has influenced new
approaches to the inter-American past by rejecting conflations of cultural relations with cultural diplomacy. Paul Gilroy’s pioneering study of
the formation of racial and national subjectivities in the Atlantic-bounded African diaspora, for example, marks a key crossroads where history
meets cultural studies to analyze transnational power. 9 Gender relations emerge in recent international histories not as a discrete empirical
field but, responding to Joan Wallach Scott’s foundational challenge, simply and powerfully as a ‘useful category of historical analysis’, across
empirical fields. Gendered work has helped to clarify discourse (as distinct from its ideological and rhetorical by-products) as international and
transnational power, governed by determinative (if constantly changing) rules of grammar, rather than merely a derivative of ‘other’
(economic, diplomatic, military, inter alia ) forces. 10 The work of anthropologist Arturo Escobar, for instance, demonstrates, through
Foucauldian analysis, how
transnational regimes of knowledge (in this case, ‘development’ within the ‘third world’ during the
Cold War) are key forms of international power. 11 My own work suggests that film commerce and culture within and between
the United States and Mexico reproduced the broader field of international and transnational relations between the two nations, c.1930–
c.1960. And the movie screen, like any site of discursive
dissemination, did not simply reflect international and
transnational forces and processes; it created them. Mexican cinema during its so-called Golden Age – when it challenged
Hollywood hegemony throughout the Western Hemisphere – emerged through collaboration and convergence, competition, but not
confrontation, with the U.S. industry and U.S. foreign policy. It was a national but not (as conventionally credited) nationalist film industry; it
emulated Hollywood even as it competed with it. It projected different genres, different stars, different narratives than did Hollywood, but it
did not challenge the U.S. industry’s audio-visual grammar, economic organization, or discursive logic. (For example, its gendering of U.S.Mexican relations simply inverted, rather than subverted, Hollywood’s conflation of masculine sexual conquest with national power.) On-screen
practice, then, reciprocated behind-the-screen forces, beyond the sound stage and movie theater; from the Great Depression through the Cold
War, official Mexico’s pseudo-nationalism (especially its pervasive anti-American rhetoric) served its shared interests with U.S. foreign policy.
The story of Mexican film, however, is different in front of the screen, in the audience. There, popular identities, even nationalisms (and
regionalisms) formed through the transnational experience of Mexican cinema as lived by Mexican and other Latin American (and Latina/o)
moviegoers throughout the Americas (including the United States). It was a counterweight to Hollywood, which was always popular but never
inherently hegemonic. 12 In 1928, Bolton promoted the ‘History of the Americas’ course he gave at the University of California for national
adoption. The book-length syllabus he published stressed its connection to contemporary U.S. diplomacy: ‘The increasing importance of interAmerican relations makes imperative a better understanding by each of the history and culture of all’. 13 By 1935, when a new edition of
Bolton’s detailed course outline appeared, it was clear how his work provided crucial intellectual material for the Good Neighbor Policy initiated
during the Great Depression. As Mark T. Berger’s work demonstrates, the
structure of U.S. scholarship about the Americas
has always had a discernible relationship to U.S. foreign policy there. 14 It therefore should not be surprising that
there is now, in the so-called post-Cold War era, discursive synergy between the academy’s sanction of cultural
and transnational approaches to the history of inter-American relations and U. S. foreign policy’s
promulgation of neoliberalism as hemispheric panacea; as official discourse de-emphasizes the state in
favor of the market, scholarly discourse subordinates diplomacy to culture. While sharing no ideological agenda,
contemporary historiography and foreign policy together reprise ‘the Western Hemisphere idea’ that historian Arthur Whitaker essayed half a
century ago, as the Cold War gripped Latin America. 15 And as post-Cold-War, inter-American
relations reinvents Cold War
of U.S. hegemony, through essentialist mappings of the Americas as
region, new cultural work about U.S.-Latin American relations reconfigures (and sometimes fuses) two scholarly
legacies of Cold-War U. S. foreign policy: Latin American and American studies. 16 To note these links, is to note nothing more
than the importance of the study of the production of knowledge as central to the study of power in the Americas (and elsewhere). The
cultural turn in international and transnational history has not abdicated the study of power but has
intensified the scholar’s need to problematize and define what power and culture are and what are the
relationships between the exogenous and endogenous histories of the United States. To conclude, all
politics is cultural, and all culture is political.
(and pre-Cold war) naturalizations
Answers
AT: Aff Epist = Good
The fact that your authors are inderdisciplinary doesn’t get you out of our epistemology arguments
Mignolo 9 – William H. Wannamaker Professor of Romance Studies and Literature at
Duke University and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities,
(Walter D., Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,
Theory Culture Society, 2009 26: 159 – 182, SAGE)//A-Berg
The introduction of geo-historical and bio-graphical configurations in processes of knowing and understanding allows for a radical re-framing
(e.g. decolonization) of the original formal apparatus of enunciation.2I have supported in the past those who maintain that it
is not
enough to change the content of the conversation, that it is of the essence to change the terms of the
conversation. Changing the terms of the conversation implies going beyond disciplinary or
interdisciplinary controversies and the conflict of interpretations. As far as controversies and interpretations
remain within the same rules of the game (terms of the conversation), the control of knowledge is not called
into question. And in order to call into question the modern/colonial foundation of the control of
knowledge, it is necessary to focus on the knower rather than on the known. It means to go to the very assumptions
that sustain locus enunciations.
AT: Perm
Rejecting the state is necessary to develop alternatives to neoliberal imperialism
Goldfrank 09 (Benjamin Goldfrank – PhD in political science from UC Berkeley;
Bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies from Harvard; professor of diplomacy at
the University of New Mexico, 2009 “Chapter 3 Neoliberalism and the Left: National
Challenges, Local Responses, and Global Alternatives”, page 44 of “Beyond
Neoliberalism in Latin America?”) //MD
The implication of Colburn’s Fukuyama redux argument that the age of political struggle over ideas has ended – that the left is headed to
extinction – finds partial reinforcement from an unlikely source. James Petras (1999), who has long announced that Latin America’s left is
“staging a major comeback” (13), agrees with Colburn that the major
left parties are insignificant, having moved to the
center and given up their fight for the poor. For Petras, radical peasant movements represent a new and more
important wave of left struggle. These rural-based movements find inspiration not only in Marxism but also in
claims based on ethnicity, gender, and ecology. Most importantly, new peasant movements engage in direction actions
– protests, land invasions, and the like –rather than electoral politics. Becoming immersed in elections and parliaments is precisely
the sin of most left parties , which thereby lost touch with the daily battles of the popular classes. Alternatives
to neoliberal capitalist democracy will thus most likely emerge from the countryside, as peasant movements
construct alliances with urban unions. In Petras’s view, this wave represents the best hope for the left in an era of
aggressive empire building by the United States.
Can’t sever --- their knowledge claims implicate their whole 1AC
Mignolo 9 – William H. Wannamaker Professor of Romance Studies and Literature at
Duke University and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities,
(Walter D., Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,
Theory Culture Society, 2009 26: 159 – 182, SAGE)//A-Berg
In what follows I revisit the formal apparatus of enunciation from the perspective of geo- and bio-graphic politics of knowledge. My revisiting is
epistemic rather than linguistic, although focusing on the enunciation is unavoidable if we aim at changing the terms
and not only the content of the conversation. The basic assumption is that the knower is always
implicated , geo- and body-politically, in the known, although modern epistemology (e.g. the hubris of the zero point)
managed to conceal both and created the figure of the detached observer, a neutral seeker of truth and objectivity who at the
same time controls the disciplinary rules and puts himself or herself in a privileged position to evaluate and dictate.
Alt is a prior question – deconstruction of coloniality is a prerequisite to productive
dialogue
Mignolo 5 (Walter D., Ph.D. in Philosophy from the École des Hautes Études, Paris and
Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University, "The Idea of Latin
America," 2005, slim_)
Yet these macro-narratives elide the fact that in
Indigenous cosmology, nature and humanity do not necessarily
oppose each other, and “civilization” is nothing more than a European self-description of its role in history. For
the Indigenous, oppositions can co-exist without negation. “The Andean world is supported by complementary dualisms,” writes
intellectual Kichua activist Ariruma Kowii from Otavalo, Ecuador.5 This simple logical difference is crucial to performing a
decolonial shift in knowledge and understanding (e.g., looking at the world from the perspective of Kichua and not from that
of Greek and Latin, although with the “imperial” presence of European principles of knowledge since the Renaissance). Such a shift is
fundamental in changing the perception of the world and society as we know them through the categories of
knowledge of modern/imperial European languages rooted in Greek and Latin. Kowii dismantles the above oppositions in
the very title of his article “Barbarie, civilizaciones e interculturalidad” (“Barbarians, civilizations and ‘interculturalidad’ [‘interculturality’]”).6
Today, then, the category of “barbarie” is being questioned by an Indigenous intellectual, whom Sarmiento would have considered a barbarian
Indian. Next, “civilizaciones” (in Kowii’s title) is plural, which affirms the historical civilization of Indians that was disqualified by the singular
model of the European civilizing mission. The
terms of the conversation, and not just the content without questioning the terms,
are redressed in a civilizational dialogue that opens the monologue of civilization and the silence of barbarism.
Once the terms are reconceived as dialogical instead of based on a logic of contradictory terms
(civilization vs. barbarism), barbarism is put on hold and relocated: the civilization that Creoles and Europeans had in mind
has been genocidal and, therefore, barbarian. If X and non-X co-exist, the question becomes how different civilizational structures can put
barbarism aside. That is precisely the work of intercultural struggles and dialogues, which we will discuss further in chapter 3. There is one
proviso: at this point in time, the colonial
difference must be kept in view, because Creoles in the Americas of
European descent (either Latin or Anglo), as well as Creoles of European descent around the world, may still see civilization
and barbarism as ontological categories, and therefore they may have trouble accepting Indian (or Islamic, for that matter)
civilizational processes and histories when entering into dialogue. There are no civilizations outside of Europe or, if there are, like
those of Islam, China or Japan (to follow Huntington’s classification: see chapter 1), they remain in the past and have had to be
brought into the present of Western civilization. That is the colonial difference that should be kept in mind. The future can no
longer be thought of as the “defense of Western civilization,” constantly waiting for the barbarians. As barbarians
are ubiquitous (they could be in the plains or in the mountains as well as in global cities), so are the civilized. There is no safe place
to defend and, even worse, believing that there is a safe place that must be defended is (and has been) the direct
road to killing. Dialogue, properly speaking, cannot take place until there are no more places to be defended and the
power differential, consequently, can be redressed. Dialogue today is a utopia, as we are witnessing in Iraq, and it should be
reconceived as utopistic: a double movement composed of a critical take on the past in order to imagine and construct future possible worlds.
The decolonial
shift is of the essence if we would stop seeing “modernity” as a goal rather than seeing it
as a European construction of history in Europe’s own interests. Dialogue can only take place once
“modernity” is decolonized and dispossessed of its mythical march toward the future. I am not defending “despotism” of
any kind, Oriental or Occidental. I am just saying that “dialogue” can only take place when the “monologue” of one civilization (Western) is no
longer enforced.
AT: Plan Solves
Latin American neoliberalism is failing now
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and
Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin America at a Crossroads,"
Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
The crisis of the neo-liberal model. Neo-liberalism
in Latin America started with the brutal military regimes in Chile
and Argentina of the 1970s; by the early 1990s it had encompassed all of the countries of the region (except Cuba). The global
dimension of this hegemony began with Thatcherism in England and the Regan-Bush years, when neo-liberalism
expanded to most corners of the world. The first decades of this period represented the apogee of financial capitalism, flexible
accumulation, free-market ideology, the fall of the Berlin wall, the rise of the network society, and the so-called new
world order. While this picture was complicated in the 1990s, neo-liberal globalization still held sway. Landmarks such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the creation of the World Trade Organization, Davos, Plan Puebla and Plan
Colombia were indications of the changing but persistent implantation of this model of capitalist globalization. Signs of
resistance appeared almost from the start. Indigenous politics so crucial in the Latin America progressive scene today
took off in the 1980s; in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro) was an attempt to introduce an alternative imaginary to the rampant mercantilism then prevalent. From
the food riots in various Latin American capitals in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the anti-GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade) demonstrations in India in the early 1990s, and the Zapatista uprising since 1994 to the large-scale
demonstrations in Seattle, Prague, Barcelona, Que´bec, Genoa and the like, the idea of a single, inevitable global order
under the aegis of a capitalist modernity has been variously challenged. Beginning with the first Gulf War but particularly after
September 11, 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, there was a renewed attempt on the part of the US elite to defend its military and
economic hegemony, affecting world regions in particular ways. Known
as ‘market reforms’ in Latin America, neo-liberalism
entailed a series of structural reforms intended to reduce the role of the state in the economy, assign a
larger role to markets, and create macro-economic stability; among the most important measures were
liberalization of trade and capital flows, privatization of state assets, deregulation and free markets, and
labor reforms; some analysts believe that they have brought about a measure of success (e.g. greater dynamism of
some export sectors, increased direct foreign investment, gains in competitiveness in some sectors, control of inflation, and the
introduction of social policies such as those of decentralization, gender equality and multiculturalism). Yet even the same analysts
recognize the high costs of these alleged gains in terms of the growth of unemployment and informality, the
weakening of the links between international trade and national production, greater structural unevenness
among sectors of the economy (structural dualism), tremendous ecological impact (including the expansion of
monocrops such as soy, oil palm, eucalyptus and sugar cane as agro-fuels), a sharp increase in inequality in
most countries and an increase in poverty levels in many of them. By the middle of the current decade, one of the most knowledgeable
Latin American economists could say, ‘there is possibly not a single country in the region where the levels of inequality
were lower [then] than three decades ago; on the contrary, there are many countries in which inequality has
increased’ (Ocampo 2004, p. 74). Infamous SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs) and shock therapies brought with them a level of
callousness and brutality by the ruling regimes that reached staggering proportions.5
AFF
China Bad
The alternative is Chinese imperialism
Horner and Leiken 6
(Charles, graduate of University of Pennsylvania and former Adjunct Professor in Georgetown University School of
Foreign Service, and Robert, Ph.D. in Politics from Oxford University, Senior Fellow at Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies
and Brookings Institution, "Is the Chinese Model Gaining Economic and Political Influence in Latin America?", 8/10/06,
www.hudson.org/files/documents/ChineseModelNov21.pdf slim_)
And the corollary to this, I suppose, is that the only non-white people in the world who really matter, say, in running the international economy
are either Japanese or Chinese. Or maybe they’re Korean, but let’s just say for the sake of this argument the Chinese now. It used to be the
Japanese had a certain purchase in their model. So the
Chinese have a certain thing going for themselves. They’re not
European, they’re not American, they’re not white. They have another advantage in the fact that they call their
system socialism and that they call their ruling party communist. And this, as Jaime suggests, with respect to their actual
conduct, you see, allows them to say or allows them to claim, allows them to think that what they do – that their economic
expansion in the world is somehow different in kind from the Western economic expansion of the 19th and
20th century, and that China’s multinational banks and corporations, who are very active in Latin America is
something different, and so on, even as, analytically speaking, Hobson or Lenin would recognize China as a kind of
economic imperialist power. It imports primary products; it’s a creditor; it exports finished goods; it exploits its own and
other countries’ cheap labor, is what it does do; it invests in and wants to control critical infrastructure like ports, airports, highways,
telecommunications; and it uses its political influence – that is to say corrupts local political systems to protect its economic
interests. But there may – for all of this now, I think we’re already beginning to see the signs of the certain self-limiting aspect of it. As Chair
Mao himself once wrote, you see, “Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance.” And we can’t be surprised therefore that there
are resentments already building in Brazil about the terms of trade, or in Mexico about the fact that China is a
competitor for the American market. And countries which export primary products are not happy to see
the Chinese drifting vaguely into the group of importers, trying to use their own strong position in the market – I think the
technical term for this is monopsonist – position to somehow bargain with exporters for price constraints. And therefore it does
seem that the countries are on the receiving end of this sort of thing, wherever they are, tend to seek balance. In this case the so-called
stronger parties are China and the United States, and presumably it is in the space between them that one finds ones own opportunities as
countries in this situation always have ever since 1945.
That kills democracy and leads to protectionism and arms races
Horner and Leiken 6
(Charles, graduate of University of Pennsylvania and former Adjunct Professor in Georgetown University School of
Foreign Service, and Robert, Ph.D. in Politics from Oxford University, Senior Fellow at Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies
and Brookings Institution, "Is the Chinese Model Gaining Economic and Political Influence in Latin America?", 8/10/06,
www.hudson.org/files/documents/ChineseModelNov21.pdf slim_)
But in any case, so Latin America welcomes the chance to kind of reduce its dependence on us. But there
are several rather negative
impacts or even potential impacts of China’s involvement in Latin America for Latin America. First of all, right now, although
Latin America has benefited tremendously by China’s huge imports from the region, 2006 may turn out to be the first year where the terms
of trade switch because China’s exports, manufactured exports, to Latin America have been increasing very,
very rapidly. I thought I had the numbers here but I don’t. But anyway, this year may be the year where Latin America sells more to Latin
America than it imports. This clearly is changing. Argentina is a key example where the imports of Chinese goods
into Argentina have been growing very, very rapidly compared to the exports to China. The other way in which the
involvement in China will work against Latin America, and maybe already has, is that China managed – when it was promising all these
great trade benefits and agreements – managed to get Argentina, Chile and Brazil to grant it a – to label it a – give it market
economy status, which meant that anti-dumping legislation under the WTO rules would be – the impact of them would
be substantially diminished. They couldn’t bring – Latin American countries couldn’t bring those kinds of charges. So as a result, this
gave China much more access to their markets in terms of exports of Chinese manufactured goods. Even
the United States and Europe didn’t give China the market economy status, and Brazil, Argentina and Chile did. And I think Ecuador recently
joined in. So this is going to hurt Latin America because it’s
going to tip the scales much more in favor of China, which
doesn’t exactly abide by all the free trade kinds of rules. It’s highly protectionist ; also, it steals a lot of
intellectual property and the like. The other problem with the relationship is that because of the commodities boom, et
cetera, Latin America – the chances of Latin America enacting the kinds of economic reforms that are necessary in order
to make the Latin American economies more globally competitive are now reduced , with the exception of Chile –
everything is always with the exception of Chile. But with the exception of Chile, which is setting aside some of the revenues from the
commodities boom for times when the commodities boom is not with us, most of Latin America is just spending the money, taking it in but not
thinking ahead, not planning, not using it to make Latin America more economically competitive globally. So these are chickens hat are going to
come home to roost. The other negative for Latin America is that obviously
Chinese relationships with countries like
Venezuela, Bolivia, et cetera, works to undermine democracy in the region and strengthens countries that are
not exactly pro-democratic or anti-military or whatever. And, of course, I’m someone who grew up – went to graduate school during the
days of dependency theory, where the Latin American scholars were claiming that – coming from the left – that the
relationship with U.S. and multinational corporations, et cetera, was bad for Latin America. The terms of trade were bad; that
Latin America was being reinforced as a producer of commodities, whereas the United States was selling manufacturers to Latin America. Well,
guess what? I mean, that’s China and Latin America now. I mean, you could make the argument that the economic relationship
with China is reinforcing Latin America’s traditional role as a commodities producer, and is favoring Chinese efforts to sell manufacturers, which
supposedly have, in general, better terms of trade. Finally the issue of, is it good or bad for the United States, China’s relationship with Latin
America? I mean, some of this is already obvious, that it helps the United States’ interests in the region to the extent that China helps Latin
America grow and stabilize. China is not interested in having a chaotic, unstable Latin America for reasons of its own, and that of course is good
for the United States, too. But on the other hand, if you look at the pillars – I mean, a lot of people say that the United States has no policy
toward Latin America so there is no way we can even identify what the pillars of the policy are, but I do think we do have a policy toward Latin
America. Whether or not it’s the right one or whether or not we’re doing enough is another issue. But support for
democracy and
human rights, the Chinese involvement is not supportive of that . Support for market economies – China is in a sense
kind of neutral. Some of them are being supported; some of them are not.
Arms race – it’s helping in terms of supporting
countries like Venezuela, et cetera. In terms of support for the Latin American left – we don’t care about the Latin American left in
general as long as they’re democratic. Well, the Chinese behavior is also consolidating the – or helping to consolidate the notgood Latin American left.
Chinese imperialism kills the economy
Horner and Leiken 6
(Charles, graduate of University of Pennsylvania and former Adjunct Professor in Georgetown University School of
Foreign Service, and Robert, Ph.D. in Politics from Oxford University, Senior Fellow at Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies
and Brookings Institution, "Is the Chinese Model Gaining Economic and Political Influence in Latin America?", 8/10/06,
www.hudson.org/files/documents/ChineseModelNov21.pdf slim_)
It reminds me of that famous – was it Al Capone quote? – which I’m sure I’ll mangle, but someone asked him why he robbed banks and he said,
well, that’s where the money is. In a sense, why is China
interested in Latin America primarily starting out? That’s where the
commodities are. But anyway, in terms of the actual context, I mean, China has been growing about 9.5 percent for the last decade or
two, actually two decades, and so obviously to sustain this rate of growth for a population the size of China they need
commodities and food. And if you look at the situation today – it was interesting when Charles mentioned that – at a certain point
China accounted for – what was it? – 30 percent of the GNP, you said. Today I think it’s only about 4 or 5 percent of the world GNP. But today –
well, I have it here: China, 4.4 percent of the world’s GNP, but it consumes, as of today, 7.4 percent of the world’s oil, 31 percent of the world’s
coal, 30 percent of the world’s iron, 27 percent of world steel and 40 percent of cement. So clearly China is on a tear economically and needs
these kinds of inputs into its economy to continue growth and its economic development effort. But of course its economic development effort
isn’t only about economic development; it’s also about political stability. There is an argument to be made that – I don’t know what percentage
of economic growth China needs to sustain annually, but if it has been growing at 9.5 percent, obviously to suddenly go down to 2 percent or 3
percent will not keep China stable. It’s hard to predict in that kind of political system what the consequences of a drastic or even a gradual
slowing of economic growth would be, but I think that we could all speculate, and it’s not going to be very great, very good. So there is that
issue too, the political stability issue. And so both of these things – the desire to modernize the economy and become a great economic power,
and also to maintain political stability – are really behind China’s growth – China’s search for commodities and food. The other motivating
factor is that China
does not like living in a unipolar world, or at least in a world where there is only one superpower. And
although we think of China as a big country, basically it’s still developing, and it actually shouldn’t be so surprising to think that China
feels itself vulnerable in this kind of situation. And we get all excited when we see China is moving into the
Western hemisphere, but we’re all over Asia. I mean, it’s not exactly as if China has control over the whole Asia-Pacific region.
It doesn’t. It would like to increase its power and control there obviously. So this sense of Chinese vulnerability and the idea that the United
States wants to stay the only superpower – it got this idea because the
United States government, in a paper or two, said that that’s
strategy should be, to maintain our superpower – our only superpower status. And also China looks
around and sees that the United States is willing to intervene, both diplomatically and even militarily, when it
doesn’t like certain governments because of its politics or human rights behavior or whatever. And although we
exactly what our
can say we’re never going to invade China – I mean, we have enough trouble with Iraq; we’re certainly not going to invade China – it’s not clear
that China sees it that way – I mean that U.S.
behavior in the world undermines or feeds China’s sense of vulnerability.
a result of these things, China’s strategy has been to both – how can I put it? – avoid its dependence on any
particular area of the world or any particular countries, both economically and politically: economically diversified sources for what it
And so as
needs to feed its economy, diplomatically work in multilateral institutions to try and create strategic alliances throughout the world, diversify
both its strategic and its trade partners, et cetera. And one of the things that it does to
do this – and this is part of what disturbs the United
States, and I’ll talk about it later – is that it has been – you know, it looks for a particular niche if it could. And one niche that’s
just up there for grabs are countries, which for a variety of reasons, don’t have particularly good relations with the United
States and/or Europe. And so either because of political instability in those areas, which make them less
desirable to foreign investors, or because foreign investors, private investors, or China has an advantage against private investors
because they can afford, through their state economic and financial institutions, to lend money at below market rates and
they themselves are subsidizing various things that they do, and also they can operate
in countries where legal restrictions
involving human rights abuses , et cetera, keep the United States and Europe out. And so it should come as no surprise that
these countries are particularly receptive to any kinds of Chinese overtures, and China obviously sees that it has a comparative advantage in
those kinds of countries.
Democracy Good
Democracy promotion and foreign aid are key to sustainability
Bitar 11 (Sergio, Director of the Inter-American Dialogue, "Latin America and the United States: Looking Towards 2020," September 2011,
www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/LAtheUS2020.pdf slim_)
Which policies and international agreements could be most fruitful in helping countries both specialize in high-tech
natural resource production while at the same time diversify into more sophisticated sectors? Education and
infrastructure are two priority areas for development—and Latin America can avail itself of foreign
assistance in both. In education, some countries need to guarantee K-12 coverage, and all of them need to improve quality. These are
domestic tasks, but foreign support can help narrow the gap in areas such as graduate studies and technological
research. President Obama’s proposal to increase the number of US graduate students in Latin America to 100,000—and also increase the
number of Latin Americans studying in the United States by the same number—can play a key role in launching ambitious initiatives of
cooperation. Infrastructure is the second major challenge. It is estimated that Latin
America will need US$1 trillion for
infrastructure improvements in the coming decade. In addition to fiscal resources, better infrastructure will
require growing support from the IADB, CAF, and other international financial institutions , along with
private contributions through concessions or international businesses. China could become an even more relevant actor in the region should it
decide to complement its search for commodities and food with investments in infrastructure and other industries. Energy is another critical
area. The
United States will need to secure supplier arrangements with Latin American oil producers, while
Latin America will need markets, along with investment and innovation in biofuels and renewable energy,
especially solar. On renewal energy and environmental questions, it would be fruitful to pursue technology transfers and joint research
initiatives. The intense relationship with Asia will increase the importance of the South Pacific and will demand better infrastructure and
services. The Trans-Pacific partnership should provide Latin American APEC members with new opportunities for coordination with the rest of
the region and the United States. Though each country’s path will be different, there are shared
priorities. These include:
education , science and technology, infrastructure , productivity, specialization, social inclusion, equal opportunity,
strengthening of democratic institutions , and citizen participation. Education and infrastructure will provide the
human and physical capital. Better services and new technologies will help increase productivity. And an emphasis on renewable
energy will increase exports in more environmentally friendly ways. The strongest performers will be those that make
a big bet on changing production structures to achieve the green economy of the future and that forge Korean-style public-private
partnerships. The task ahead is complex. Neither good macroeconomic policies nor growth alone are sufficient. Absent greater equality,
protection, and social inclusion, success will remain elusive. Sustainable
growth is not possible in countries marked by
inequalities in income and power and that lack national unity and self-confidence. Greater social mobility, an emphasis on merit, and equal
opportunity are preconditions for tackling ambitious challenges and avoiding the middle-income trap. This task will demand tax reforms that
generate resources to provide public goods that will increase national well-being and productivity, which go hand-in-hand. In the new stage of
Latin America’s development, strengthening institutions and broadening citizen participation are other prerequisites for success. Although our
democracies are marked by periodic elections, it
is now crucial to expand citizen participation, enlarge the role of
civil society, and guarantee transparency in government. In some South American nations, democratically elected
executives bent on staying in power have attempted to subordinate independent institutions. In Central America and Mexico, organized crime
undermines the governments and the democratic system. This scourge is draining national energies; defeating it is a collective task.
Installing a democracy and living in peace is considerably harder than implementing sound economic
policy. And without democratic institutions, economic policy is not sustainable . Active involvement in global
governance should also be a priority for Latin American countries, especially medium-sized and smaller ones. In a multipolar world, it makes
sense for Latin America to support multilateralism and participate more actively in global governance. In
the coming years, Latin America should seek a larger presence in the G-20, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and
the United Nations. Unlike larger countries, each of the small and medium-sized countries will not be able on their own to influence the
international issues that concern them. Joint action to reform multilateral agencies is, therefore, crucial to the defense of their
national interests. Each country will have to reinforce its strategic thinking and look at the medium term to identify the vital reforms that
improve the well-being of its citizens.
Democracy strengthening is key to environmental protection, stability, and disaster preparedness
Bitar 11 (Sergio, Director of the Inter-American Dialogue, "Latin America and the United States: Looking Towards 2020," September 2011,
www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/LAtheUS2020.pdf slim_)
Democracy Strengthening a) In Central America, collaboration could bolster the fight against organized crime,
improve citizen security, and strengthen democratic institutions. The United States has proposed a Central
America Citizen Security Partnership. High levels of drug consumption and arms sales to countries south of the border
give the United States a special responsibility in this regard. Mexico and Colombia can also make an important contribution, while
South America can cooperate in security, crime investigation, police training, and other initiatives. b) South American nations should get more
involved in providing assistance to Haiti. c) The
region should also offer support to help facilitate a transition to
democracy in Cuba. Despite the steps taken by the Obama administration regarding visits and remittances, the ineffective US embargo
continues with no end in sight. For Latin Americans, it will be important to have conditions in place for a peaceful transition when Cuban
leadership changes. It is helpful to encourage some processes underway in Cuba, such as the release of political prisoners, improved freedom of
expression, and economic reforms, which could pave the way for a democratic opening. Energy and Climate Change Although President Obama
has spoken about an Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas, its content, priorities, goals, and resources remain unclear. a) There are
opportunities for collaboration in developing renewable energy sources, especially solar, and assisting with nuclear
plant safety and ethanol, cleaner coal, and natural gas research. b) Partnership with the United States could also help Latin
America reduce CO2 emissions, protect tropical and temperate forests, and safeguard glaciers and
water resources. Latin America abounds in natural resources and must take measures to protect them. c) Climate change and
increasing concentration of the population will intensify the impact of natural disasters. Emergency
preparedness requires effective institutions, first responder training, equipment acquisition, public education, and
improved land use and construction standards. Latin American countries can take the initiative in these areas.
Development Good
Development good – alleviates poverty and inequality
Worstall 12
(Tim, Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, "So What is this Neoliberal Globalisation Free Trade Thing About Anyway?", 3/1/12,
www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/01/so-what-is-this-neoliberal-globalisation-free-trade-thing-about-anyway/ slim_)
It’s easy enough to find people with opinions, strong opinions, on what this neoliberal globalisation and free trade thing is all about. Sadly,
you’ll find most of those strong
opinions are that it’s about grinding the noses of the poor into the dust, breaking the unions,
stiffing the working classes and in general feeding as much money as is humanly possible up to the 1%. You might find a few
references to Wall St v. Main St, shipping all the good jobs off to China and even, among the more perceptive, the idea that it’s all about
creating a global economy rather than a series of national ones. All would agree though that it’s something that started in the late 70s, was
driven along by both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, has included the lowering of trade barriers, a lifting of regulations and in general a
move to a more free market stance on how the economy should be managed and regulated. The what we agree on: the result we obviously
don’t. For here is the point, the purpose, the aim and the outcome of this very neoliberal
revolution. That’s what it was all about. We
wanted to make the poor rich. The data released by the World Bank’s Development Research Group show
that 22% of the developing world’s population – or 1.29 billion people – lived on $1.25 or less a day in 2008,
down from 43% in 1990 and 52% in 1981 (see top chart above). Nothing Machiavellian about it, nothing to do with trying to make the
rich richer, nothing at all to do with shafting the working class. Quite the opposite in fact. The aim and intention was to reduce
poverty around the world and as you can see it has rather worked. These last 30 years of the neoliberal globalisation
thing have seen the largest reduction in human poverty ever. More people have moved from the
destitution that was man’s long lasting lot to a better life of three squares a day and a roof over their heads than in any other
time period in our species’ history. It’s difficult to get over quite how large these figures are: we’re talking about more people than
the entire population of Europe, or of North America, leaving absolute poverty in fewer years than I have been alive. In fact, not far off half the
years I have been alive. This
is a simply astonishing development. Think back to the year 2000 when the UN put forward the
Millennium Development Goals. One of them was a halving of absolute poverty by the year 2015. We were told
that this could only be achieved by huge effort, by a substantial movement of resources from the rich world to the poor. That huge effort hasn’t
happened but the target has already been met, years early. Purely through that very neoliberal globalisation.
Nothing particularly odd or strange about the process either: allow people economic freedom, allow them to trade with whom they will and
wealth just gets created all on its ownsome. I like it when a plan comes together, don’t you? We wanted to aid the poor in getting rich. We have
done, by trading with them. A useful conclusion would be that if we want to continue the process of making the poor rich we should expand
economic freedom and trade more with them.
Empirics
Empirics first – discourse focus is epistemologically flawed and paralyzes action
Rodwell 5 (Jonathan, Ph.D. student at Manchester Metropolitan University, "Trendy But Empty: A Response to Richard Jackson,"
www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue15/rodwell1.htm slim_)
The reason it there
is no attempt to explore the complexity of causation is that this would clearly automatically
undermine the concentration on discourse. Moreover it would require the admittance of identifiable
evidence about the real world to be able to say anything about it! For if something historical changed the meaning of a
word, or if something about society gave the word a different meaning and impact, then it would be an identifiable
‘something’. Moreover if the word is tied to and altered by an historical event or social impact, would it not be a case of assessing the effect of
original event itself as well as the language? The larger problem is that without
clear causal links between materially
identifiable events and factors any assessment within the argument actually becomes nonsensical. Mirroring the early
inability to criticise, if we have no traditional causational discussion how can we know what is happening? For example, Jackson details
how the rhetoric of anti-terrorism and fear is obfuscating the real problems. It is proposed that the real world killers are not
terrorism, but disease or illegal drugs or environmental issues. The problem is how do we know this? It seems we know this because
there is evidence that illustrates as much – Jackson himself quoting to Dr David King who argued global warming is a greater that than
terrorism. The only problem of course is
that discourse analysis has established (as argued by Jackson) that King’s
argument would just be self-contained discourse designed to naturalise another arguments for his own
reasons. Ultimately it would be no more valid than the argument that excessive consumption of Sugar Puffs is the real global threat. It is
worth repeating that I don’t personally believe global terrorism is the world’s primary threat, nor do I believe that Sugar Puffs are a global killer.
But without the ability to identify real facts about the world we can simply say anything, or we can say nothing.
This is clearly ridiculous and many post-structuralists can see this. Their argument is that there “are empirically more persuasive
explanations.”[xi] The phrase ‘empirically
persuasive’ is however the final undermining of post-structural discourse analysis. It is a
seemingly fairly obvious reintroduction of traditional methodology and causal links. It implies things that can be
seen to be right regardless of perspective or discourse. It again goes without saying that logically in this case if such an
assessment is possible then undeniable material factors about the word are real and are knowable outside of any cultural definition.
Language or culture then does not wholy constitute reality. How do we know in the end that the world not
threatened by the onslaught of an oppressive and dangerous breakfast cereal? Because empirically persuasive evidence
tells us this is the case. The question must then be asked, is our
Imperialism Good
Imperialism prevents war – interdependence, institution-building, and democracy
promotion
Ikenberry 4 (G. John Ikenberry, Prof. of Geopolitics, “Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order” Foreign Affairs, March/April
2004)
Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson's liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson's military empire. But ultimately,
the notion of empire is misleading -- and misses the distinctive aspects of the global political order that has
developed around U.S. power. The United States has pursued imperial policies, especially toward weak countries in the periphery.
But U.S. relations with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when "neo" or "liberal" modifies the term. The
advanced democracies operate within a "security community" in which the use or threat of force is
unthinkable. Their economies are deeply interwoven. Together, they form a political order built on bargains,
diffuse reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental institutions and ad hoc working relationships. This is not
empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that has no name or historical antecedent. To be sure, the
neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted their own imperial vision: an era of global rule organized around the
bold unilateral exercise of military power, gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to
spread freedom and democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to appreciate the role of
cooperation and rules in the exercise and preservation of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its
legitimacy as the preeminent global power and severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the
neoconservatives are silent on the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And as Ferguson notes, the
American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a global empire. Thus, there are limits on
American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era. Ultimately, the empire debate misses the most important
international development of recent years: the long peace among great powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of
great-power war. Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so too does the
unique way in which the United States has gone about the business of building an international order. The United States' success
stems from the creation and extension of international institutions that have limited and legitimated U.S. power.
Liberalization Good
US-led reforms are key – solves economic and social distortions
Mesa-Lago 2 (Carmelo, PhD in Labor Economics and Social Security from Cornell University, "Models of Development, Social Policy and
Reform in Latin America," unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/7E4B8522A609EC67C1256C7C0039C99D/$file/mesalong.pdf slim_)
Costa Rica. One of the best representatives of the mixed model, which combined a market economy with a
considerable state role , and achieved a fair balance between social and economic goals with good results in both (1953-1981). But
the debt crisis of the 1980s and the exhaustion of that model (excessive state intervention and fiscal imbalances) led to structural adjustment
reforms in that decade and in the 1990s, albeit so far successful in maintaining the most important social gains (see also Mesa-Lago 2000a). The
first two
models were extremes: Chile overemphasized the market and economic goals while drastically
reducing state functions and social goals, while Cuba did exactly the opposite; Costa Rica managed to fairly
balance goals and means . But adjustments have been occurring in the three countries: toward social goals and more state
regulatory powers in Chile since the 1990s; toward economic goals and a timid move to the market in Cuba since the 1990s (still with
overwhelming state ownership and control); and toward economic goals and the market in Costa Rica since the 1980s. Finally the
three
diverse economic models have been implemented by different political systems: a military dictatorship in Chile
(followed by multiparty democracy), one-party authoritarian socialism in Cuba, and a multiparty democracy in Costa
Rica (Mesa-Lago 2000d). The three countries selected are also important examples in Latin America of a relatively early emphasis on social
policies, thus ratifying Pierson's observation that "late starters (in industrialization) tended to develop welfare institutions earlier in their own
individual development and under more comprehensive terms of coverage" (cited in Mkandawire 2000: 11). Chile and Cuba were two of five
regional "pioneers" in the development of social insurance (respectively in the 1920s and 1930s), while Costa Rica's program started later (in
1943 but this country was less developed that the other two) and yet it was expanded in 1960-1970s and reached the level of the other two
counterparts. By the 1980s, the three countries had basically accomplished universal coverage of their populations although with diverse
schemes (Mesa-Lago 1998). The three countries were selected for a
UNRISD comparative study that analyzed the unique
experience of seven countries that achieved levels of social performance considerably higher than their per capita income (Ghai
2000). The socioeconomic performance of the three models is summarized in the next section. Socioeconomic Performance of the Three
Models Twenty
indicators of development were selected to measure the socioeconomic performance of the three countries
and historical statistical series elaborated for 1960-1993 (in Chile the relevant period started in 1973). About half of the indicators dealt
with economic variables, both internal and external: GDP growth, GDP per capita, investment, inflation, fiscal
balance, composition of GDP by economic sector, export concentration/ diversification, import composition, trade partner
concentration/diversification, trade balance per capita, and foreign debt per capita. The other half of the indicators dealt with social
variables: real wages, composition of the labour force by sector, open unemployment, illiteracy,
educational enrolment at three levels, infant mortality, rates of contagious diseases, life expectancy,
and housing. Five important social indicators had to be discarded in the final evaluation because of two reasons: lack of data from Cuba
(income distribution, poverty incidence) or significant differences in the way those indicators were calculated (womenís participation in the
labour force, access to water and sewerage/sanitation, social security coverage). Two
indicators: (1) absolute, measuring
types of ranking were used in each of the
the starting and ending years in the period, for instance, the infant mortality rate in 1960
(or 1973 for Chile) and 1993; and (2) relative improvement, the change in one indicator through time, for instance, the
reduction in infant mortality between 1960/73 and 1993. The indicators were merged in each of the two clusters (economic and social), and the
two clusters then combined into an index of economic and social development (using various weights). The
results of these comparisons in
as follows: Chile ranked best (first) in economic indicators but worse (third) on
social indicators; Costa Rica ranked best in social indicators and second in the economic indicators. Cuba ranked
the absolute rankings among the three countries were
second in social indicators (in the 1990s, but first in the 1980s) and worst in economic indicators.1 In the relative improvement indicators,
Costa Rica managed to close the gap with Cuba, despite a worse stand at the starting point, for instance, in
1960 life expectancy was 61.6 years in Costa Rica and 64.0 in Cuba but in 1995-2000 they were 76.5 and 76.0 respectively. Finally, a comparison
was done with international rankings that include the three countries, with similar results. For instance, the
Human Development
Index (H.I.) ranked the three countries in 1993 (among 174 countries in the world and 20 in Latin America) as follows: Costa Rica
31 and 1, Chile 33 and 3, and Cuba 79 and 10 (UNDP 1996). The balanced approach to development in Costa Rica,
therefore, led to a fair performance in economic indicators and to the best results in social indicators.
Conversely, the extreme approaches of the other two countries resulted
in good performance in one set but
sacrificing the other. In Chile there were strong economic growth, lower inflation and a reduction in the fiscal deficit, but social
consequences were adverse: poverty incidence worsened, real wages shrank, educational enrolment at secondary and tertiary levels declined,
social security coverage decreased, unemployment jumped to a historical record, and morbidity rates rose. 2 At the end of the 1980s Cuba
was leading the region in most social indicators (housing was a notorious exception), but the cost of social programs was
very high and adverse economic distortions occurred, for instance, open unemployment was kept low but at the cost of
significant overstaffing and very low labour productivity, and egalitarianism probably led to the least income inequality in the region but
generated perverse incentives for labour absenteeism.
Latin American globalization is key to investor confidence and productivity
Price 11 (John, Graduate in Commerce from Queen's University in Canada, has taught international business at Universidad de las Americas
in Mexico City, “Globalization Is Here to Stay: Why Latin America Must Accept Its Globalized Destiny and Ready Itself to Compete," 8/19/11,
https://umshare.miami.edu/web/wda/hemisphericpolicy/Task_Force_Papers/Price-GlobalizationTFPaper.pdf slim_)
Latin America’s Achilles heel of political
risk and flighty investor confidence has obliged Latin savers to park almost
$2.5 trillion outside of the region4. Though this tide of money has slowed in recent years, it continues to haunt economies like those of
Venezuela, Bolivia and most of those in Central America. When local savers become antsy, as Peruvians were after the presidential victory of
Ollanta Humala in 2011, there is a small army of private bankers, located in Miami, ready to move the monies of these Latin Americans offshore in a matter of hours. As a result, Latin
America’s banking system is chronically under-capitalized.
Governments and companies turn to international bond markets to raise funds, ostensibly at cheaper rates than they
can source at home. Only Chile, with three decades of pension-fund growth, can begin to claim financial independence. Everyone else must
convince international bond markets of their worthiness. It
has become a rite of passage for newly-elected presidentsto
make a pilgrimage to Washington, New York, London and, increasingly, Chinese financial markets, to present their
country in a competitive light, making bold promises to the investment and development bank communities about proven policies
that they plan to preserve and/or reforms they plan to implement. Those promises, covered widely by the press at home and abroad, become a
policy straitjacket that tends to restrain any populist instincts that these new presidents developed during their election campaigns. Even Hugo
Chávez, who was first elected president of Venezuela when crude prices per barrel barely reached double digits, made the rounds as presidentelect, wooing investors with promises of an open investment climate. His tune changed radically as oil prices climbed and he developed an
economic model that could be sustained (for a while) without imported capital and technology. Latin
America’s greatest
competitive weakness is its lack of legal protections and transparency needed to support innovation. Latin
Americans may be creative and entrepreneurial, but the region is the worst performer in the world when it comes to bringing innovation to
market. Latin America, home to 9% of the world’s population and 8% of its gross domestic product (GDP), produces only 0.3% of the world’s
patents.5 Among Latin American universities, government and the private sector, only 6,000 patents per year are registered. In comparison,
there are at least five U.S. universities producing that volume each year, individually. Furthermore, Latin
American patent
production relies too much on government-funded labs and universities to make them. As a result, they are less
commercial in nature than patent production coming out of markets like South Korea or the United States where large companies lead
research and development (R&D) investment. Latin America’s economies, therefore, rely on imported technology and
products to make them work. Import substitution is a non-starter and only leads to a dramatic drop in
productivity. Mexico’s national monopolistic oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex,) facing declining yields from its older oil
fields, has for years been desperate to develop the deep water reserves sitting off its Caribbean shore before deep water
American oil rigs outside the 200km limit figure out how to poach them. Despite strong political opposition, the Calderón
administration was obliged to reform its highly nationalistic energy laws in order to invite third-party service companies
into the energy sector. Additional reforms may be required to save Pemex from financial ruin as its output declines.
Latin American governments must learn that taxing imported technology makes about as much sense as Japan’staxing imported energy.
Perm
Perm solves – Latin America is a unique site for convergence of political and critical projects
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin
America at a Crossroads," Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
This specificity also has
to do with the multiplicity of long-term histories and trajectories that underlie the
cultural and political projects at play. It can plausibly be argued that the region could be moving at the very least
beyond the idea of a single, universal modernity and towards a more plural set of modernities. Whether it is also
moving beyond the dominance of one set of modernities (Euro-modernities), or not, remains to be seen. Although moving to a postliberal society does not seem to be the project of the progressive governments, some social movements could be seen as
pointing in this direction. A third layer to which attention needs to be paid is, of course, the reactions by, and projects
from, the right. State, social movements, and the right appear as three inter-related but distinct spheres of
cultural-political intervention. Said differently, this paper seeks to understand the current conjuncture, in the sense of ‘a
description of a social formation as fractured and conflictual, along multiple axes, planes and scales, constantly in
search of temporary balances or structural stabilities through a variety of practices and processes of struggle and
negotiation’(Grossberg 2006, p. 4). Latin America can be fruitfully seen as a crossroads: a regional formation where critical
theories arising from many trajectories (from Marxist political economy and post-structuralism to ‘decolonial
thought’), a multiplicity of histories and futures, and very diverse cultural and political projects all find a convergence
space. As we shall see, the current conjuncture can be said to be defined by two processes: the crisis of the neo-liberal model of the past
three decades; and the crisis of the project of bringing about modernity in the continent since the Conquest.
Perm solves (or floating pik solves) – the hybrid structure of postliberalism allows for
the convergence of ideology
Escobar 10 (Arturo, Ph.D. in Development Policy and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and
Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, "Latin America at a Crossroads,"
Cultural Studies, 24: 1, pp. 1-65, 12 January 2010, slim_)
Second, I understand the post before capitalist, liberal, and statist in a very specific manner. For Arditti and Lineras, post-liberalism
means a state of affairs characterized by hybrid practices, as a result of a partial displacement of the
dominant forms of Western liberalism and the acknowledgment of other social and political forms, such as
those of peasant and indigenous groups. I mean something similar but a bit more. My understanding of the post is poststructuralist. It has been
said of the
notion of post-development (Escobar 1995) that it pointed at a pristine future where development would no longer
exist. Nothing of the sort was intended with the notion, which intuited the possibility of visualizing an era where
development ceased to be the central organizing principle of social life and which, even more, visualized such a
displacement as already happening in the present. The same with post-liberalism, as a space/ time when social
life is no longer seen as so thoroughly determined by the constructs of economy, individual, instrumental
rationality, private property, and so forth as characteristic of liberalism modernity. It is not a state to be arrived at in the future but
something that is always under construction. ‘Postcapitalist’ similarly means looking at the economy as made up of a
diversity of capitalist, alternative capitalist, and non-capitalist practices; it signals a state of affairs when
capitalism is no longer the hegemonic form of economy (as in the capitalocentric frameworks of most political economies),
where the domain of ‘the economy’ is not fully and ‘naturally’ occupied by capitalism but by an array of economies solidarity, cooperative,
social, communal, even criminal economies that cannot be reduced to capitalism (Gibson-Graham 2006). In other words, the
‘post’
signals the notions that the economy is not essentially or naturally capitalist, societies are not naturally
liberal, and the state is not the only way of instituting social power as we have imagined it to be. The post,
succinctly, means a decentering of capitalism in the definition of the economy, of liberalism in the definition of society
and the polity, and
of state forms of power as the defining matrix of social organization. This does not mean
state forms cease to exist; it means that their discursive and social centrality have
been displaced somewhat, so that the range of existing social experiences that are considered valid and
credible alternatives to what exist is significantly enlarged (Santos 2007a). Taken together, postliberalism, postcapitalism, and post-statist forms point at alternatives to the dominant forms of Euro-centered modernity what might be
called alternatives to modernity, or transmodernity (Dussel 2000). Operating in the cracks of modernity/coloniality, this expression
gives content to the World Social Forum slogan,another world(s) is (are) possible(Escobar 2004). That this notion is not solely a
conceit of researchers but that it can be gleaned at least from the discourses and practices of some social
movements and intellectuals close to those movements will be shown in the rest of this paper.
that capitalism, liberalism, and
Sustainable/Inevitable
Globalization is inevitable and sustainable – key to economic stability
Price 11 (John, Graduate in Commerce from Queen's University in Canada, has taught international business at Universidad de las Americas
in Mexico City, “Globalization Is Here to Stay: Why Latin America Must Accept Its Globalized Destiny and Ready Itself to Compete," 8/19/11,
https://umshare.miami.edu/web/wda/hemisphericpolicy/Task_Force_Papers/Price-GlobalizationTFPaper.pdf slim_)
There exists a
sizeable industry of academics, pundits, policy makers and journalists that debates the virtues and risks of
globalization in Latin America, as if the region has a choice in the matter. It does not. Latin America is the most
globalized region in the world and it became that way out of economic survival. And as globalized as Latin America’s trade
and investment flows are today, the region would stand to gain from an even deeper embrace of open borders.
Only competitive pressure will rekindle the spirit of reform that has sadly gone dormant in Latin America in today’s benign
economic conditions of high commodity prices and cheap capital. Little Choice but to Globalize Both Latin America’s competitive
strengths and weaknesses oblige it to open itself to trade and investment with other countries, particularly the
industrialized world, including China. South America’s greatest strength is its abundant natural resources. As
the head of agricultural promotion at PromPeru (Peru’s export promotion agency) once remarked, when asked why the country’s yields were
so impressive, “God is almighty and benevolent, and also happens to be Peruvian.” The same retort could be repeated across the continent.
South America is home
to 20% of the world’s proven oil reserves1 (including the newly discovered Tupí and Jupiter oil fields
global mining investment and 25%3 of the world’s arable land. The obvious
markets for Latin America’s natural abundance, however, are far away: northern China, Japan, South Korea,
Eastern USA and Western Europe. To explore, extract and ship the region’s commodities to distant markets,
Latin America needs access to cheap capital and the latest technology, that is, open capital markets and international
strategic investors. To attract strategic investors to the mining and energy sectors, where it can take over 10 years to recapture initial
investments, nations must build and maintain a sound business climate. When they fail to do so (e.g., Venezuelan
and Mexican oil industries currently; Colombian mining industry during the 1990s), productivity and wealth creation drop.
off the Atlantic coast of Brazil), 26%2 of