American Imperialism the Subversion Latin Americas Sovereignty - Research Paper Example

American imperialism the subversion Latin America’s sovereignty Summary According to Edward, imperialism is the practice, the hypothesis and the attitudes of a leading metropolitan centre governing a distant territory. Sovereignty is the right to govern a territorially bound state. There are three types of sovereignty: international sovereignty, domestic sovereignty and the de jure versus de facto sovereignty. According to Agnew, regimes of effectual sovereignty are on the grounds of distinctive composition of central state authority and the level of political territoriality. He further tells more about the types of the regimes- imperialist and globalist regimes. Imperialist regime is where the central state authority is weak together with the open state territoriality while the global regime is where the central state authority is strong together with the open state territoriality. American imperialism tools include- political power, economic power, military power and cultural diffusion. Example of the economic power via Galeano is where he credits Machado’s dictatorship in 1924 to the economic domination that the USA had over Cuba. In 1920 prices of sugar in Cuba had dropped from 22cents per pound to as low as 4cents. Sugar producers were bankrupt with sugar prices fluctuating based on the prices in the America market. America gave Cuba $50 million with the first American ambassador- General Crowder. America also gave Cuba fair trade concessions on a condition that in turn America gets to export their products into the country. The United States gains in trading with Cuba, yet still trades with other states. Nevertheless, Cuba is economically forced to trade mostly with the United States. In short, America imperialism is the compulsion exerted by USA via economic, cultural, military or political power that conquers other countries’ sovereignty into acting in manners they would have not acted otherwise. It is a situation where a country forgoes its own interests at the expense of serving the American interests. 2. Introduction The cruise of this paper is to talk about the American imperialism more particularly touching on the tool of political power in Bolivia enhanced by international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. Discussion The international power of the USA in the 20th century has grounds on its political strength. In 1900, when the united states of American did not have much of an army, it was promising got viewed as power forthcoming great power. By 1920, the United States had displaced the United Kingdom during the First World War making them, the supreme financial power (Janssens, p82). By the World War 2, it was the only financial power with most of the states devastated from the war. In the last couple, Bolivian generations have seen American’s intervention in Bolivia- normally under the auspices of help- develop civil unrest, poverty and violence. Much of the current socio-political violence in this country is actually an outcome of the American imperialism. Through firms like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund United states corporations like Bechtel have been attempting to squeeze money for Bolivia that is the South America’s poorest state by strong-arming the penniless, defenseless and landless Bolivians. In 1996, for instance, the world bank- heavily leveraged by the united states- pressured the third world country of Bolivia to have the water resources privatized. This gave the transnational corporations priority water at the expense of the local consumption. The privatization contract went to a great tans-national USA-founded corporation. Where water used to be free resource from the earth, cochabambinos paid close $20 a month, close to half of the average of the monthly wages of Bolivians (Galeano, p 384). More currently, the united states of American imposed war on drugs on the Bolivians- trying to diminish stateside consumption of cocaine by having the coca fields in Bolivia militarized. Coca farmers have faced jail terms, torture and even ripped off their livelihoods but with no acknowledgeable results on cocaine availability on the American streets. In spite of having published study to this effect, the United States government refuses to acknowledge the futility of their attempts in eradicating a cultural and traditional icon like the coca leaf. What follows is a fast recount of indirect and direct American imperialism in Bolivia. With such overwhelming proof of pompous American initiatives leading to the suffering of a foreign population, how can America expect to keep their head high on the international stage? Can they be anything more than ashamed? Well, yes. They can be apologetic they can be productive. 2.1 Cochabamba’s water war In 1996, WB (World Bank) made a threat to the Bolivians withhold $600 million US dollars in debt relief if the Bolivian government defied the privatization of the water in the Cochabamba, a city with close to a half a million by 1999. The United States, the largest shareholder, is therefore, one of the most influential members of the world bank – a fact that came into limelight or justified in 2007 when Paul Wolfowitz, the world bank president, got exposed for violating the ethical rules of the bank yet got endorsed by the administration of George bush (Galeano, p 384). The government gave in to World Bank’s pressure in 1999 issuing the contract of water privatization to Aguas Del Tunari, a contributory of the American Bechtel Corporation. Warren Bechtel founded the Bechtel Corporation, in 1898 to develop railroads employing Chinese prison laborers. It is the globe’s largest construction firm with close to 20,000 projects on almost every continent in the mining, air and rail transportation, oil, aerospace industries and defense. Currently, the company holds re-construction contracts in, making billion US dollars where years of US bombing led to the destruction of the infrastructure (Galeano, 385). The long-term serving CEO Stephen Batchel once quoted, that they are more of making money than making things. When he sent Agua Del Tunari to Bolivia, they had reached an arrangement of a 40-year contract with assured yearly profits of 16%. Around the same period in 1999, there was a development of an act of Water Law 2029, providing the water supply to transnational agricultural and mining companies instead of the citizens of Bolivian or the cochabambinos residents. As the water supply to the public in Cochabamba prior to 1999 served close to 60% of the total population, Aguas Del Tunari also enjoyed control of private water source- well built and financed by the small societies without any help from the Bolivian government (Galeano, 385). With lack of indoor plumbing or limited access to public water, the cochabambinos used to receive water bills as high $20 a month- 1000% increase- for water resources they previously operated and owned cheaply and privately. Even those whose key water source was rainwater in barrels and gutter got water bills. There was a water war in Cochabamba that raged for the next five years. The United States involvement in this issue is hardly scant. 2.2 IMF involvement Unfortunately, for Bolivia, America not only has influence over the World Bank (WB), but in the international Monetary Fund (IMF) as well. The United States holds more clouts-approximately 17%- with the IMF than any other state in the world. Although the IMF greatly affect the globe’s most impoverished states or the third world countries- such as Bolivia- it is has always have a European president, leaving the affected by its provisions powerless to have them changed. The Argentinean banking system crash that turned one of the globe’s richest nations into the status of one of the poorest overnight can easily be traced back to IMF. A Bolivian governmental study reported in 2003 that the quality of life for the Bolivians worsened than in 1992. In this period, the national budget deficit appreciated from about 3.0 to 8.5 percent of the state income (Galeano, p 384). The level of unemployment snowballed as wages plummeted; the number of the citizens without electricity also had rose from 2 million to 3million between 1998 and 2002. The state was at the state of disrepair, vulnerable and desperate. It was high time the IMF chipped in. In a naïve attempt to rectify the national budget deficit, the IMF forced the Bolivian government to appreciate its income tax- an approach that trigged the Bolivians to a bloody civil war. In order to get an essentially necessary loan from the IMF, the Bolivian government consented to reduce the deficit from 8.7 % to 5.5% per the instructions of the IMF and 12.5% income tax raise was introduced against the lowest earning portion of the state. At the same time nevertheless, the governmental salaries increased- and when the state police got no such rise, they protested in the streets. When the police force took it to the streets, they did it in solidarity; the command to strike came from the higher protocols (Foster, p28). This led to the government to call upon the Bolivian military to intervene to this effect. The army employed higher caliber weapons; tear gas, transporting guns, and ammunition in ambulances. They were literally out to kill the Bolivian police officers. Surprisingly, the IMF officials left Bolivia when the violence had began, and immediately to their defense denied having influence over the provisions resulting to the chaos, per apparent business policy. 2.3 Coca The coca plant or leaf is a Latin American plant employed to staunch hunger, appreciate oxygen flow in the brain at diverse level of altitude especially the high ones, treat stomach upsets and curb fatigue during long working days in Bolivia. The plant is composed of close to 1 % employable cocaine derivative. Chemically the plant is far from cocaine that is not feasible to abuse coca leaf from his natural settings. Varieties of the plant thrive well in Latin American countries, however much of it is found in Bolivia Columbia and Peru. To stem the tide of cocaine to United States, the American’s war on drugs militarized the coca producing areas in South American with Bolivia being no exception. Some Bolivian departments like the Yungas and the Chapare areas are intensely populated with coca farms. The ‘war on drugs’ is not just a name for the Americans it is literally a raging war burning crops and killing the farmers (Brownell, p 46) . Unfortunately, the cocaleros – coca farmers-in no way take after the dangerous drug cartels involved in the trafficking and production of cocaine. The illicit drug production that happens in Bolivia happens in secret- usually on abandoned lands- far away from the coca fields. Cocaine and coca comprise of two dependent industries: coca farmers get no gains from cocaine or cocaine paste production. In 1998, the then United States president Bill Clinton forced Bolivian president Hugo Banzer to put up a program an armed force precisely designed to the end of coca cultivation. While certain coca farmers may have entitled to compensation for their destroyed livelihoods when it all started, over the course of many bloody years of appreciating neglect for human rights, these opportunities for compensation vanished. Majority of the soldiers who took part in these brutal termination campaigns- this should be noted, chewed coca in their excursions to limit fear and fight fatigue- went through training in the USA at for Benning, Georgia . Here close to 155 Bolivian soldiers annually, between 1967 and 1979, got instructions in jungle warfare, counterinsurgency and torturous interrogation approaches. Today, coca plants are cheaply and abundantly available in Bolivia. The United States, however, refuses to recognize the futility of their eradication attempts, despite having done and published a study more or less hypothesizing that coca is to cocaine (Smith, p 42) . 3.0 Conclusion What can we do apart from burying our heads in the sand? Let us not forget that now there are score of Americans abroad, toiling to help the vulnerable people. Currently, Peace Corps alone have close to 8000 volunteers working 77 states, close to 90% of which have an undergraduate degree. This is America trying to right some wrongs: its imperialism has caused some countries their economy and it is just to make things right. Works Cited Brownell, Susan. The 1904 anthropology days and Olympic games sport, race, and American imperialism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Print. Foster, John Bellamy. "The New Age of Imperialism." Monthly Review 1 July 2003: 5. Print. Galeano, Eduardo H.. Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. 25th anniversary ed. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997. Print. Janssens, Ruud. Of mice and men American imperialism and American studies. Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA, 2004. Print. Smith, Geoffrey S.. "The United States and Imperialism.(Book Review)." Canadian Journal of History 1 Apr. 2003: 8. Print. Read More