Fernando Alcoforado*
Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America is one of the great classic works of Latin American literature. It is a necessary reading for those who need to understand the history of Latin America. As veias abertas da América Latina (The Open Veins of Latin America) was first published in 1970. Galeano takes stock of Latin America’s 500-year history depicting its internationally dominated agricultural and mining economy with the aim of generating profits for the dominant power, social poverty as a result of an exclusionary economic system that privileges a minority, the oppression of authoritarian governments against the majorities that produced genocide and social chaos, the exploitation of labor and the very poor survival conditions for the vast majority of its population. In Galeano’s work, it is shown that Latin America has been and is a major player in the enrichment of a few nations, and the price it pays for it is its chronic underdevelopment, its eternal social crises, and its colony status. The wealth of the powers is the poverty of Latin America, says Galeano [GALEANO, Eduardo. As veias abertas da América Latina (The Open Veins of Latin America). Montevideo: L&PM, 2010).
Galeano’s book shows how the Spanish and Portuguese arrived in Latin America in the fifteenth century and took advantage of the riches that the continent possessed. The Spaniards, set from the Mexican highlands to the Andes, found gold and silver. The Portuguese, occupying the Atlantic Ocean coast, built a colonial empire based on sugar cane until they found the gold. Although in different areas, the focus of exploitation was the same: forced labor, physical aggression, enrichment, colonial oppression. The Spaniards used two armies of available labor: the Aztec Indians in Mexico and the Incas in Peru. These civilizations portray, for the author, the character of colonial rule: socially and militarily evolved, they were destroyed and forced into the mines. Already the Portuguese, after trying to exploit the Indians in the sugar mills and were unsuccessful, became the largest black trafficker in the world. Coming from Africa, blacks were forcibly taken to become slaves and engines of sugar production in Brazilian lands.
In describing the evolution of these colonial wealth-producing centers in Latin America, Galeano showed that it was not enjoyed by either Spain or Portugal because it was intended to repay the debts these countries had with the power that would rob them of economic dominance in the Latin American continent : England. Galeano brings colonial exploitation to the present moment and speaks of the decay of Latin America. The liberation wars of the Latin American peoples against the Spanish empire lasted more than two decades – from 1810 to 1830 – with popular uprisings and a liberation war in which true popular armies were created. A struggle that encompassed all of Latin America dominated by Spain. The main protagonists were the army of Simón Bolívar, which liberated Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, and that of San Martín, which consolidated the independence of Argentina and liberated Chile and Peru. Bolivar soon ended freeing Bolivia, with which consolidated the total defeat of the Spanish imperialism. These liberating armies met in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil. At this point, Bolivar defended the idea of a Great United Latin America, but there was no agreement, a fact that led to the fragmentation of Spanish America in several countries.
In turn, Brazil’s independence from Portugal followed a different course. During the colonial period, there were several revolts in Brazil seeking its separation from Portugal, such as the 1789 Inconfidência Mineira and the Conjuration of Bahia in 1798. With the return of D. João VI to Portugal in 1821 his son, D. Pedro I, replaces him as Emperor of Brazil and decides, on September 7, 1822, to proclaim Brazil’s Independence from Portugal with the primary objective of maintaining Brazil’s territorial unity and avoiding fractionation in various countries such as occurred in the Spanish colonies. D. Pedro I maintained the unity of the territory of Brazil, pleasing the interests of the groups that dominated the colony. The deplorable fact about Brazil’s Independence lies in the fact that it did not lead to the abolition of slavery that would benefit the country’s main social segment, the enslaved Africans.
The main deplorable fact of the Independence of Brazil is that it did not result from the struggle of the Brazilian people, but from the will of Emperor D. Pedro I. Independence from Brazil differed from the experience of other countries of the Americas because it did not have the characteristics of a typical national-liberatory revolutionary process. Revolutionary nativism, under the influence of the ideals of liberalism and the great revolutions of the late eighteenth century, gave ground in Brazil to the logic of change while preserving the privileges that still prevail today. Brazil’s independence was therefore an “independence without revolution” because there were no changes in the nation’s economic base. The State born of Brazil’s Independence maintains the execrable landholding and intensifies the no less execrable slavery, making it the support of its restoration of the economic structures inherited from the Colony.
We must not forget that in Haiti, the poorest country in Latin America, the first black revolution took place in 1791, which led to its independence from France at the time of the French Revolution. This was a true popular revolution that was soon crushed. With the conquest of independence from Spain and Portugal, the Latin American countries did not achieve regional integration or solve all democratic tasks. The issue of land reform has not been resolved except for some countries and regions such as Mexico with the revolution in the early twentieth century, Bolivia with the revolution of the 1950s, and Peru with the agrarian reform of the 1960s. Even with independence from Spain and Portugal, the whole history of Latin America has been characterized by the struggle against imperialism because the social and national liberation tasks have not been resolved. The struggle against imperialism first presented itself against the Spanish, Portuguese and French colonizers. Next, against the imperialism of England and the United States. The only country that achieved a definitive break with US imperialism and carried out land reform was Cuba in 1959.
After World War II, some Latin American countries tried to break free from the yoke of imperialism, especially of the United States. In an attempt to maintain its domination, the US government sponsored 49 coups d’état from 1945 to the point that led to the overthrow of governments in several Latin American countries that opposed its interests. Bolivia is the country with the highest number of coups d´état and riots in Latin America. It was in this country where the great political, economic and social contradictions of the Latin American continent came together in a more concentrated way, first sacked by the Spanish, Portuguese and French imperialisms and then by the British and North American imperialisms. The only major national liberation revolution that took place on our continent was the Cuban in 1959. Unlike Bolivia, the Cuban revolution triumphed, defeated US imperialism, and expropriated the main means of production in private hands. Cuba was a small republic of the United States, famous for its casinos and tourist spot of the American bourgeoisie, with mills in the countryside as the main industry in the hands of imperialism. The July 26 movement led by Fidel Castro was a movement of the democratic middle class of cities and bourgeois sectors that overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista, linked to the United States bourgeoisie.
From the 1960s onwards, nationalist movements were increasingly domesticated and subjected to coups d’état or co-optation by hegemonic imperialism, the American. This happened with the great political movements that had emerged such as laborist in Brazil, Peronism in Argentina, PRI in Mexico, PARA in Peru. Much contributed to this was the end of socialism as an ideology, which was defeated in the world after the end of the Soviet Union and the eastern European socialist system in 1989, as well as the process of globalization from 1990 that caused the countries of Latin America were increasingly subordinated to the dictates of international capitalism. One fact is evident: the transformation of the Latin American countries to the condition of independent and developed is quite difficult to accomplish due to the harmful action imposed by the great capitalist powers on these countries, specially US. The post-World War II thesis that it would be possible for all the peripheral and semi-peripheral nations of capitalism to reach the high-level stage of development enjoyed by the central capitalist countries, especially the United States, has not been realized.
From the second half of the twentieth century, there were several attempts to promote economic and social development in various countries of the world that failed be those in the milestones of capitalism with national developmentalism started, for example, in Brazil, by the Getúlio Vargas governments and those with the implantation of socialism in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Since the 1990s, Latin American countries have further deepened their dependence on the great capitalist powers and international capital with the imposition of the neoliberal economic model that threatens them to suffer the consequences of the crises of the global economy that tend to get worse with the evolution of time. Latin America’s veins are still open with its member countries presenting as a result of international economic spoliation negative economic growth, external imbalances, deindustrialization, denationalization of state-owned enterprises, stagnation of productivity, widespread corporate failure, high domestic debt, high concentration of wealth and income, mass unemployment and extreme poverty.
It can be said that peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries such as those in Latin America will only promote their development if they fight against their external (economic and technological) dependence on central capitalist countries. Achieving the economic and technological break with the central capitalist countries does not mean autarchic development, but rather to promote the internal development of the country with selective foreign economic opening as have made Japan, South Korea and China in the 1970s , 1980 and 1990, respectively. The breaking of dependence means active state participation in the planning of the national economy aiming at the development of the productive forces of the country and the internal market, domestic production aiming at the substitution of imported and export products, the development of own technology and the formation of savings in the amount necessary not to depend on external capital for investment. This strategy would propitiate the expansion of the national economy by generating enough business and jobs to meet the needs of the country, as well as mitigating the impact of the crises that occur in the world economy.
Regrettably, Brazil adopts a subordinate position with the Bolsonaro government in relation to the United States and international capital, further deepening the neoliberal, antisocial and antinational economic policy adopted by the Brazilian governments since 1990 and decided to surrender the Alcântara Base to the United States, the denationalization of Embraer through its sale to Boeing, the auctions for the sale of the onerous assignment of Petrobras for Presal benefiting foreign capital, and the privatization of Petrobras’ oil and gas refining, distribution and transportation sectors, demonstrating the character his government’s surrender who is in the service of the god Market, Wall Street, and the Washington Consensus. In addition, it does not adopt concrete measures that contribute to overcoming the serious economic and social problems of the country that has been economically stagnant for 5 years and has 41 million unemployed and underemployed people. 2019 was a tragic year for Brazil with the Bolsonaro government that continues the deplorable subaltern trajectory of the country in relation to great powers throughout its history. The veins of Latin America are still open, also in Brazil.
To free the countries of Latin America from the secular tyranny imposed by the great imperialist powers and globalized neoliberal capitalism, there is no other way than the struggle in the parliament and civil society of every patriot within each country against the political forces that support this domination and the continental articulation of all forces fighting for the independence of each country and of the region in the fight against the common enemy. If none of us Latin Americans is unwilling to die for independence, we will all die under tyranny.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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