Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Róbinson Rojas
PART I.- THEORIES FOR DEVELOPMENT
See R. Rojas, "Latin America: Blockages to Development. The role of U.S. imperialism", 1984
S. Allende, Address to the U.N. General Assembly, 1972
From above:
4) Can LDCs by their own actions determine how much and what they
trade?
g) the gains from trade that accrue to any country benefit the
nationals of that country (the theory excludes the possibility
of transnational corporations being the main producers for
export in export-led economies)
Apart from the possibility that the above assumptions are either
extremely naive or extremely dishonest, some simple statistics
prove that none of the predictions of the theory is correct.
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TABLE 1
1960 1990
Chile 30% 62 35
Brazil 7% 21 33
South Korea 29% 15 47
Papua New Guinea 36% 21 12
Nigeria 31% 12 8
Turkey 19% 27 32
Sri Lanka 30% 21 17
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source: GATT
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1965 100
1970 114
1975 205
1980 327
1985 314
1990 455
1994 486
Commodity price indexes
Metals Cash
and Crops Food Oil
Minerals
Metals Cash
and Crops Food Oil
Minerals
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* United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom
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M. Todaro, "Economic Development in the third world", Longman,1990
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BACK
In Latin America, the power of United States as the imperial master was
unchangelled until today, while in Africa there were some weak
encroachments by Soviet Union and People's Republic of China, but the
main control of the area was in the hands of Britain and France,
supporting United States in the cold war. In Asia, the situation was
more complex, with India being disputed among Soviet Union and the
United States until the latter's victory in the 1970s, open war in
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and South Korea, etc.
United States, particularly, was utilizing the concept of "political
freedom" as equivalent to "capitalist system", and supporting the most
brutal dictatorships in the name of preserving "democracy" against
totalitarian socialism. Latin America, Asia and Africa witnessed in the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s the creation of dictatorships by the successive
U.S. government as shields againts popular insurrections from Iran to
Chile. See BOX 3
By and large, African, Asian and Latin American societies (except very
few exceptions, Cuba and North Korea) were exposed to the more powerful
capitalist nations grafting their mode of production on them:
the imposition of capitalist relations of production, by force
and overwhelming economic power, creating sources of expanding
production and surplus value of continuous benefit to the leading
capitalist nations. See BOX 2
- with the above perspective, Lenin stated that the thrust was to
divide the world among monopoly interest groups, the rivalry
extends to a struggle over markets in the leading capitalist
nations as well as in the less advanced capitalist and colonial
countries. The rivalry is intensified because of the uneven
development of different capitalist nations...thus, wars among
capitalist nations...
BOX1____________________________________________________
modern concept of imperialism, as thought by post-Marx
theorists:
Thus:
______________________________________________________________
BOX2__________________________________________________________
"I helped make Mexico and specially Tampico safe for American
oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in...
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make
Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903".
(Major General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps., quoted in
"Latin American Politics and Development", J. Wiarda and H. T.
Kline (eds.), Westview Press, 1990)
______________________________________________________________
END OF BOX 2__________________________________BACK__________
_____________________________________________________________
BOX3_________________________________________________________
1962 -USA
over 60,000 officers from all over Latin America during the next
1962 -Argentina
coups that lasts until 1984, when the Falklands/Malvinas defeat ends the
1963 -Ecuador
later, the US Marines invade the country with the support of six Latin
1964 -Brazil
$2.9 billion in 1964 to $103 billion in 1984. Almost 5,000 opponents are
1965 -Bolivia
starting the 'long night' that, with a brief interval in 1970-71, lasts
1968 -Peru
character.
1973 -Chile
The military, supported by the CIA and Pentagon, overthrows President Salvador
Allende, who two years earlier had denounced the financial exploitation
With the coup in Uruguay, the cycle is completed. All of the Southern
On neo colonialism:
The Penguin Dictionary of Politics gives the following definition and analysis of neo-
colonialism:
"The enormous economic and political influence that rich northern hemisphere countries
often have over Third World nations is often bitterly resented in the latter. Neo-colonialism is
the argument that the conditions of poor countries are often no better, and their people no
freer, than when they were actually governed by the European colonial powers in the period
up to the mid-20th century. There are several elements in this theory, all of them involving the
impact of strong economies on less developed ones, but outright attempts at political control
are also often suspected.
There are three main forms of trade between a major northern hemisphere industrial
economy and a Third World country. The more important is, probably, where the Third World
country is a primary producer, either of agricultural products or (natural) resources from
extractive industry. It is argued that price levels for such products are largely dictated by the
rich countries, the producers being effectively powerless unless they can organise into a
semi-cartel, as with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). A second
form is where a Third World country is a provider of cheap labour for the production of
components in consumer goods assembled elsewhere. Often the poorer countries lack the
expertise or capital (investment) to benefit from the marketing of finished products, but they
can produce the labour for factories owned and built by companies based in richer countries.
Thirdly there is the role of the Third World in providing mass markets for products
experiencing market saturation or interruption in richer countries, often in cases where the
consumer protection standards that would be imposed in the manufacturing country cannot
realistically be imposed by a Third World (country) government.
The reason why it seems appropriate to add the prefix neo to colonialism is that especially in
the first and third cases, these were precisely the motives for the 19 th century colonial
(expansion). If the same economic aim can be achieved without the expense of governing
and garrisoning a country, so much better. The suspicion of those who see First World/Third
World relations as essentially colonial are intensified when it comes to the question of direct
interference in the politics of the weaker countries. For whatever reasons, and however
justified, there is no doubt that powerful nations, and especially the USA, have intervened
repeatedly, overtly and covertly, particularly to oppose revolutionary movements (mainly
nationalists) and to prop up right-wing regimes. Even if the governments of the rich countries
are not motivated by a need to protect their corporations operating in the Third World, the
effect is often just that.
Other aspects can be seen as part of neo-colonialism but, whether they refer to the terms on
which development aid is provided, to the role of banks in funding development or to the
impact of tariff arrangements like GATT ( now WTO), in all cases the weaker economies are
totally dependent on decisions made elsewhere."
The demise of the brief Allende experiment in 1970-73 came as the cumulative result of
many factors -external and internal. The academic debate as to whether the external or the
internal factors weighed more heavely is endless. This is not the place to repeat it. A brief
description of the Chilean economy will suffice to suggest the probable effect on Chile of
U.S. economic actions and the possible interactions between economic and political factors
in causing Allende's downfall.
(From "Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities", United States Senate,
December 18, 1975.
On Imperialism
"Imperialism is the policy or goal of extending the power and rule of a government beyond
the boundaries of its original state, and taking into one political unit other nations or lands.
There can be some variations whether the states that make up the empire retain some degree
of independence and identity, or are all swallowed entirely into the administrative and
political institutions of the original imperial state. Nor it is necessary that an empire has any
specific form of central government, though there must be one central and ultimately
overwhelming force otherwise it is more likely to be an alliance or league or loose
federation"..."The motives for creating an empire vary greatly, but imperialism in itself
should not be confused with colonialism, which is a specific form and motive for holding
political control beyond national boundaries". (D. Robertson, "The Penguin
Dictionary of Politics", Penguin Books, 1985)
They adopted
peaceful agitation
political violence
nationalism
revolution, or
guerrilla warfare
Rostow thought of his theory as a dinamic one "that deals not only
with economic factors but also with social decisions and policies
of governments".
a) since the United States is MODERN AND ADVANCED and the Third
World is TRADITIONAL AND BACKWARD, the latter should take the
former as its model, and, of course, ask for guidance and
advice from the people leading the model.
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