Since their founding by Spain and Portugal the history of Latin American states has been a history of imperialism. Today Russia, China, and the European Union (E.U.) all fight over the abundant natural resources of the region, challenging the traditional dominance of the U.S. ruling class. The opportunist native bosses in Latin America have begun to re-orient their economies and populations to reflect this struggle, choosing their favored imperialist master.
Latin America serves as a major source of raw materials for the imperialist powers. Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia are all major exporters of oil, with Mexico being the second largest source of U.S. oil. The recent find of fresh oil reserves in Colombia’s Cusiana fields guarantees a continued imperialist presence in the region. Large mining operations, like the copper mines in Chile, are vital to U.S., Chinese, and Russian manufacturing.
The Southern Common Market, MERCOSUR, plays an important role in regulating South American trade for the benefit of the imperialist powers. Since its inception in 1991 it has been successful in fixing resource prices so low that producing states cannot even maintain themselves.
The U.S. dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) uses oppressive conditional loans to regulate Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, as the local bosses struggle for autonomy and profits. To escape the U.S. imperialists, Venezuela makes oil deals with Chinese and Russian bosses. As a result, Ecuador and close ally Venezuela are the only Latin American countries that participate in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a longtime thorn in the U.S. bosses’ side.
In many parts of Latin America, capitalist profits revolve around the growing drug trade. Although U.S. bosses have frequently touted their “war on drugs,” they have orchestrated and encouraged drug trafficking and the armed gangs which run the trade. The U.S. built and funded the Contras in Nicaragua and paramilitary groups in Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador that form the vital drug pipeline between Colombia and the U.S. These fascist gangs were created in the 1980s to brutalize workers and discourage communist organizing, all the while funded by the largest market of narcotics users in the world, the U.S. After the leftists were killed, the drugs kept flowing.
The imperialist powers do not fight over Latin America because it is poor. Latin America is rich; only the people are poor. More than 500 million live in extreme poverty, while 36 local billionaires (and more imperialist bosses) reap increasing profits from their labor.
Both local capitalists and imperialists have no interest in addressing the deteriorating situation of workers in Latin America. As the extraction of wealth from Latin America becomes more frenzied the people become more impoverished. For example, in garment factories owned by Korean, French and Spanish capitalists in Bolivia, children work 16 hours a day under sweatshop conditions. Whenever workers in Latin America fight back against such oppression, the U.S. and its corporate interests have funded police and military repression to bring workers back in line.
In recent years, leaders have emerged in Latin America who have tried to win workers with claims of “socialism” and false promises to free their countries from the yoke of U.S. imperialism. Some prominent examples include Chavez in Venezuela, Lula Da Silva in Brazil and Correa in Ecuador. These leaders wrest control of their countries from the U.S. by making deals with other imperialist powers like China and Russia. Merely changing the face of their master they are repositioning their workers to be exploited by a different side of the growing inter-imperialist dogfight.
Host to nine U.S. military bases, Colombia remains firmly under the control of the U.S. bosses. In addition to its wealth of natural resources Colombia is a vital strategic interest to the U.S. since it is geographically positioned to easily control the rest of the region. The government, hopelessly tied to the drug trade, is known for brutalizing workers and destroying unions by murdering organizers.
The Colombian government also serves as America’s pit-bull in the region, using its military to intervene in other parts of Latin America. In 2008 Colombia almost sparked a war with Venezuela and Ecuador when Colombian and U.S. troops crossed into Ecuador to assassinate Raul Reyes, leader of the FARC guerillas.
Despite these horrific conditions bred by imperialism, workers continue to fight back. On May 1st millions of workers all over Latin America marched against capitalism. In some of the marches, the slogan of down with capitalism and long live communism was heard. In Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba and Honduras, the workers remembered the martyrs of Chicago and called for a fight against the imperialists punitive system of control.
PLP was present in many of these marches raising the communist flag, declaring that we have a world to win. Workers have broken barriers by joining the Party of the working class, as they see people suffering the same injustices from Mexico to Afghanistan to Brazil. On May Day they raised the only flag of the international working class, the communist flag, and called for revolution. Only one Party, the PLP, is capable of destroying capitalism and the deadly imperialism it breeds!