Latin America: Imperialism and Resistance
Part 1 Two centuries of Neocolonialism
Part 2 The challenge to Imperialism
Communist Party of Britain
(£3 per pamphlet)

FROM 1492 onward, the Americas have been a centre of appalling exploitation but also of fierce resistance, with waves of colonisation by the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English. Even the Scots and Danes tried to gain footholds there.

The Spanish empire’s dream of finding El Dorado — the Man of Gold — drove centuries of looting of American mineral wealth, the destruction of ancient civilisations and indigenous cultures and the creation of a trans-Atlantic slave trade which abducted millions of Africans to work in mines and plantations.

Such intense exploitation inevitably provoked resistance from national independence struggles, peasant revolts, trade union battles, left governments, guerilla warfare and, ultimately, socialist revolution. Latin America has shown the whole spectrum of class and democratic struggles.

These two new Communist Party of Britain pamphlets offer a concise historical background of the region as well as an in-depth analysis of the current state of political life in Latin America.

Packed with statistics as well as insight, this project is one of the most impressive publications the CPB has produced in recent years and is the result of intensive research and extensive knowledge, a blend of the party’s Marxist outlook and internationalist perspectives.

Although centred on Latin America, for reasons of space and coherence, the main countries covered are South American, including the former British colony of Guyana. The experiences of Central America and Mexico are certainly worthy of a further pamphlet.

For anyone labouring under the delusion that British imperialism is simply a historical memory, the pamphlet points out that, on the contrary: “Britain is Latin America’s second biggest neocolonial investor. Its mining and petroleum companies have major stakes across the subcontinent — as do British banks and financial services companies.”

This clearly puts particular demands on Britain’s labour movement to act in concert with progressive and revolutionary forces in the sub-continent against common corporate enemies. There’s also a useful reminder of Britain’s contemporary colonial possessions — in this case, the Falklands/Malvinas Islands.

Aside from members of the party’s own international commission, the pamphlet draws on some other expert insights. Sean Edwards of the Communist Party of Ireland opens the first pamphlet with a very thorough introduction to South American colonial history, while the second pamphlet usefully translates key documents from communists in two key theatres of struggle — Brazil and Venezuela — with the latter the work of the Communist Party of Venezuela’s Carolus Wimmer.

In the late 1990s, a mix of national movements, some reformist others avowedly revolutionary, achieved a series of election victories dubbed the “Pink Tide.” Characterised by a common opposition to neoliberalism, these movements were neither ideologically homogeneous nor clear on the strategic alternatives.

Nonetheless, their elections provoked opposition from both their traditional oligarchies at home and the US, resulting in actual military coups, as in Venezuela, or “judicial” ones, such as those in Brazil and Argentina. All of these were combined with economic and diplomatic pressures and threats from the US.

The pamphlet argues that one of the critical weaknesses of the Pink Tide was its unbalanced focus on the redistribution of wealth while leaving the means of producing it in the hands of foreign and domestic monopolies.

In this context, the chapter by Venezuelan communist Manuel Sutherland is particularly helpful in demarcating the general trend of “progressive” strategies from specifically socialist and Marxist ones.

A second weakness has been the inability and, in some cases, unwillingness of the leaderships to confront deeply rooted political structures. Only in Venezuela and Bolivia have there been partial attempts to transform aspects of state power.

Paul Dobson’s chapter on the psychological warfare directed against the left, illustrated not only by data on corporate media ownership but also by concrete illustrations of fake news campaigns, is a must read.

A final international contribution comes from Everton Brito Lima of the Communist Party of Brazil, which offers an excellent overview of the tactical challenges faced in practice by left governments.

One insight he offers is that too many left governments simply continued their dependence on raw material exports such as oil which were vulnerable to rapid fluctuation in commodity prices. This failed to stimulate national development strategies that would diversify their economies to allow greater flexibility and room for manoeuvre.

Electoral opportunism and the failure to move ahead at times of a temporarily favourable balance of forces meant that at key moments momentum was lost and opportunities squandered.

These pamphlets are fact-packed and full of thought-provoking insights. Solidarity activists and those interested in the region’s geopolitics won’t find a better read this year.

Both pamphlets are available from communist-party.org.uk.