Empire and Dissent: The United States and Latin America (review)

Right out of the box, this work is not your typical, eclectic assortment of articles. It sets out with a more ambitious agenda. As the title implies, the book deals with the “multi-dimensional” aspects of empire (directed, though not exclusively, by the United States). As used here, Empire (spelled with a capital “E”) ventures beyond the self-centered imperialism employed by individual polities and instead, deals with the exercise of power—politically, economically, and culturally—operating on a transnational scale. The application of this power, the book argues, has generated and influenced the form that “dissent” takes within Latin America both by state actors and those working outside traditional channels. These themes of hegemony and resistance provide the underlying foundation for the selections.

Edited by independent journalist and political economist Fred Rosen, the book contains nine articles written by an impressive array of scholars including, to its credit, some from Latin America as well as Britain. The topics covered are broad in conception and scope, covering a wide area and long time span (nothing Latin Americanists cannot handle). Structurally, the book is divided into two sections with four articles dealing with the historical presence of Empire in the Americas and the remaining five centered on present-day case studies. In his introduction, Rosen does an excellent job in providing the reader not only with a summary, but also a practical conceptual framework as well.

The articles open with Alan Knight’s sweeping analysis on the forms, functions, and goals of U.S. imperialism and Latin American resistance over the last two centuries. Gregory Evans Dowd follows with an essay on eighteenth-century Native Americans and how conflicting perceptions over sovereignty gave rise to an ambiguous imperial status. By studying slavery in the Caribbean, John Richard Old-field sheds light on Britain’s imperial rise as well as the impact of abolition on its self-identity. Rounding out the first section, Carlos Marichal takes a detailed look at the role of the United States and international lending agencies in Latin America’s “politics of debt.”

In part two, Neil Harvey explores the inventive tactics used by Mexico’s Zapatista movement to confront neoliberalism. Picking up this theme, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui analyzes how the legal coca market in Bolivia has fashioned a self-affirming, anti-hegemonic indigenous identity. Whereas Jeffrey W. Rubin considers how the Lula regime in Brazil has adopted the “politics of the possible” to deal with transnational pressures and Daniel A. Cieza reveals how Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner succeeded in sidestepping these same international financial constraints. Last but not least, Steve Ellner tackles anti-neoliberal Venezuela and the oftentimes conflicting voices of dissent contained within chavismo. As a bonus, the book contains a handy timeline and list of key individuals, institutions, and events (courtesy of Alan Knight); however, I fear that some non-specialists may still find the articles a bit challenging.

Keep in mind, this is not a criticism on the quality or significance of the contributions; all easily stand on their own merits. While each of the articles has taken an innovative approach, like most edited works, the thematic unity occasionally comes undone. Granted, this may simply be a consequence of the slippery nature of empire and dissent itself, though one gets the feeling that the mechanisms at work are not always as clearly articulated or defined as they might be. Nor is it always obvious where traditional imperialism ends and global Empire begins. On a final point, the book’s subtitle is somewhat misleading since the role played by the United States appears front stage only now and again. Nevertheless, it remains an important contribution that speaks to our global times. Though published before the current international financial meltdown, one cannot but notice the predictive relevance in many of the articles. In one prescient example, Carlos Marichal remarks how radical change may only come through a...