Transnational Perspectives on Latin America: The Entwined Histories of a Multi-State Region

329 Pages·2021·3.715 MB·English

by  Luis Roniger

Transnational Perspectives on 
Latin America

Transnational
Perspectives on 
Latin America
The Entwined Histories of a Multi-s tate Region
LUIS RONIGER
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Roniger, Luis, 1949– author.
Title: Transnational perspectives on Latin America : the entwined histories
of a multi-state region / Luis Roniger.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027751 (print) | LCCN 2021027752 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197605318 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197605332 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197605325 | ISBN 9780197605349
Subjects: LCSH: Latin America—Politics and government—21st century. |
Latin America—Foreign relations. | Transnationalism.
Classification: LCC F1410 .R634 2022 (print) | LCC F1410 (ebook) |
DDC 980.04—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027751
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027752
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197605318.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
  Introduction 1
1. Latin America as a Multistate Region 5
2. Latin American Modernities: Global, Transnational, Uneven,
Open- Ended 23
3. The Interface of Nation-S tate Building and Transnationalism 45
4. The Politics of Exclusion: Exile and Its Transnational Impacts 75
5. International Wars and Conspiracy Theories 101
with Leonardo Senkman
6. The Cold War and Its Transnational Imprint in the Americas 133
7. Democratizing Societies Confront Their Past: The Interface of
Domestic and Transnational Factors 159
8. The Crystallization and Erosion of Transnational Solidarity: 
Chavismo and the Nuestramerican Rhetoric and Practice 181
with Daniel F. Wajner
9. Diasporas, Transnational Ties, and Ethnic-R eligious
Minorities: Jewish and Muslim Latin Americans 205
10. Transnational Challenges and Twenty-F irst- Century Dilemmas 225
  Epilogue 257
Notes 261
Index 317

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank many individuals and institutions that helped me bring
this book together. I am indebted to the colleagues of the research group and
international conference on Contesting Liberal Democracy held at the Institute
of Advanced Studies of Jerusalem; the participants in the seminars at the
Department of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University;
participants in the conferences of the Consortium on Political Exile; the Latin
American Studies Association; the International Political Science Association;
the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies; the workshop on trans-
nationalism at American University; and the research group on migration and
exile at CLACSO. The fruitful discussions in these venues have been important
in the formulation of several chapters. I am grateful to Leonardo Senkman and
Daniel F. Wajner for their approval of including here part of our joint work as
chapters 5 and 8. Special thanks are due to Henry Parkhurst for his outstanding
research and editorial assistance starting in January 2020, and to Omri Elmaleh
for his advice on Muslim Latin Americans.
Some of the essays in this book incorporate and expand on work published
in articles and chapters elsewhere. The core of chapter 2 derives from an ar-
ticle published in the journal Protosociology, an International Journal of
Interdisciplinary Research (Frankfurt), directed by Gerhard Preyer, 26 (2009): 71–
100. Part of c hapter 5 on the Chaco War relies on an article published in the
Journal of Politics in Latin America (Sage, CC- BY- NC license), 11 (2019): 1– 20,
and the section on the War of the Pacific relies on analysis first developed in the
book América Latina tras bambalinas (Latin American Research Commons,
2019). Parts of chapter 7 derive from an analysis first developed in the Journal
of Latin American Studies (Cambridge University Press), 43 (2011): 693– 724.
Chapter 8 was published originally as an article in Latin American Research
Review (LASA), 54 (2019):  458–4 75. Chapter  9 incorporates Venezuelan
materials first published in the ACTA Paper “Antisemitism: Real or Imagined?
Chávez, Iran, Israel and the Jews” (Vidal Sassoon International Center for the
Study of Antisemitism, Jerusalem) in July 2009. I am grateful to these journals
and publishers for their permission to use these materials. The texts are set
here in new form as part of a systematic project highlighting aspects of Latin
American development in a framework broader than that of individual nation-
states, developing analyses on the entwined histories of this multistate region.
Abbreviations
ALADI Latin American Integration Association
ALBA Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America
ALBA- TCP Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-P eople’s Trade Treaty
ALCA Free Trade Area of the Americas
APRA American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
CAIS Central American Integration System
CALC Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean
CAN Andean Community of Nations
CAOI Andean Coordination of Indigenous Organizations
CARICOM Caribbean Community
CELAC Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
COICA Coordinating Body for Indigenous Organizations of the Amazonian Basin
CONAIE Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador
CONIVE Consejo Nacional Indio de Venezuela
CSN South American Community of Nations
FMLN Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (El Salvador)
FSLN Sandinista Front Army of Liberation (Nicaragua)
FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas
IAC Ibero- American Community
IACHR Inter- American Commission on Human Rights
IGO intergovernmental organization
IIRSA Initiative for South American Regional Integration
OAS Organization of American States
ONECA Network of Central American Black Organizations
PEMEX Petróleos Mexicanos (Mexico’s Oil Company)
RAPIM Meeting of Indigenous Authorities of MERCOSUR
SAIIC South American and Mesoamerican Indian Rights Center
SOA School of the Americas
TBA Triborder Area (South America)
TIFA Framework Agreement for Trade and Investment
UNASUR Union of South American Nations
Introduction
The chapters in this book explore the historical development of Latin American
societies in terms of the twin processes of nation-s tate building and transnational
connections. Latin America is a multistate and polyglot region with a diversity of
races, ethnicities, and cultures, at the same time that the region shares historical
legacies, institutional frameworks, and political and socioeconomic challenges.
At various historical junctures, important social, intellectual, and political forces
led political and cultural strategies of mutual recognition in the region.
Crystallizing as the “farthest West” in global expansion, the shared charac-
teristics and inner diversity of Latin America made it a setting for comparative-
historical analysis, starting with Iberian transatlantic colonialism and its forced
intercivilizational encounters. This perspective has enabled enlightening ana-
lyses of geopolitical processes encompassing multiple countries and affecting
the political, social, and cultural experience of these societies in the Western
Hemisphere. I claim that, in addition to approaching this multistate region with
a comparative lens, one should also address it from a transnational perspective.
Only then can analysis fully account for the articulation of local and national dy-
namics with international and global dynamics. Before describing in detail how
this perspective informs the chapters of the book, let me briefly explain how my
own interest in these issues developed over the span of four decades of academic
research and publication.
As a comparative political scientist, I started working with comparative-
historical sociologist Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt and began my own work on cli-
entelism, producing systematic studies of these relations and networks. Those
studies highlighted how the regulation of power and the construction of trust
and legitimation had different articulations in societies across the globe, giving
rise to diverse modes of control of access to human and material resources, some
of which were mediated while others were more open to universal principles. At
that stage, while paying full attention to the comparative analysis of patron-c lient
relations and clientelism, I did not address transnational processes.1
In parallel to that research, I participated in several interdisciplinary efforts
with historians, sociologists, political scientists, and cultural analysts to ana-
lyze Latin American development as part of multiple modernities. As the region
crystallized out of various expansionist and imperialist projects in addition to
intercivilizational encounters, it was “born” global and remained part of wider
Transnational Perspectives on Latin America. Luis Roniger, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197605318.003.0001