Barbara Hogenboom

Depoliticized and Repoliticized Minerals in Latin America

Control over mineral wealth has become a highly politicized issue in Latin America, and the region-wide leftwards political shift of the 2000s has profoundly changed mineral policies. After the neoliberal development model of free markets, the state has recently taken a center stage position again, at least with regard to oil, gas, and metallic minerals. This article studies the nature and implications of the shift from neoliberal to post-neoliberal mineral policies in Latin America, using a political economy angle. It analyzes the policies and politics of neoliberal regimes in the 1980s and 1990s, the subsequent booming markets and rising Chinese influences, and the new mineral policies of some Leftist governments. Finally, it discusses political conflicts related to these new policies.

Environmental governance in Latin America

The multiple purposes of nature - livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists - have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a recourse-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales. Environmental governance in Latin America studies the nature and background of contemporary environmental governance in the region as well as the possibilities for more sustainability and socio-environmental justice. In eleven chapters by an international team of experts, important contemporary political changes in environmental governance are discussed, and new initiatives are analyzed.

Latin America and China Under Global Neoliberalism

While China and Latin America simultaneously implemented neoliberal policies as part of a profound economic restructuring process, there are important differences in the results of their policies and economic performance. This article discusses the different development paths of Latin America and China, including their starting points, economic policies and political processes. Chinas expansion and Latin Americas liberalization have brought the two in much closer contact. Several Latin American countries are now important providers of commodities (for example, minerals, energy and soy) that China needs to keep up with the rising levels of production and consumption. As a result China is also starting to invest in these products. Some other Latin American countries have lost rather than gained from the rise of China, especially the countries that sought economic integration in the world market through the growth of maquiladoras (assembly factories for export to the United States). However, their attempts to slow down Chinas entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) did not succeed.The article discusses the causes, effects and prospects of these different experiences with Chinas global expansion.

Developing Regions Facing China in a Neoliberalized World

The rapid expansion of China is one of the key economic and political issues at the start of the twenty-first century. Chinas importance in South-South trade (and competition) as well as in South-South investment has already brought about many changes for developing regions, and they are likely to be extrapolated in the years to come. The growing economic position of the biggest developing country in the world implies much greater political power, affecting all other countries as well as international relations and global politics. For Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe, the effects are likely to be far reaching. This article first looks into the global expansion of China, providing an overview of some striking economic figures. It also reviews the economic development of China, explaining how its communist party has used neoliberal measures to cause an economic transformation. It then analyzes how this transformation has affected Chinas role in Asia and Chinas policies towards the ‘Global South’. Finally, contemporary South-South relations in the context of globalized markets are discussed.

Debating alternative development at the mining frontier : Buen Vivir and the Conflict around El Mirador Mine in Ecuador

In Ecuador, the recent introduction of mineral mining led to a conflictive debate on mining and development, particularly the concept of Buen Vivir (good living). This article examines the discourses on the mining–development nexus articulated in the conflict around the first large-scale mine of Ecuador, El Mirador. The findings indicate that although the conflict concerns tangible territorial transformations, it is also a struggle over meanings. In this struggle, Buen Vivir has become subject to strategic framing processes and eventually turned into an empty signifier. The case of El Mirador illustrates the challenges of advancing Buen Vivir from concept to practice in the context of a search for a post-neoliberal development framework.

Introduction: Environment and Society in Contemporary Latin America

Societal change in Latin America is intimately related to nature and natural resources. In this resource-rich region, nature–society relations provide both opportunities and challenges in achieving more fair, equitable and sustainable development. Nearly half of the world’s tropical forests are found in the region, next to several other natural biomes, which together carry a wealth of biodiversity. It holds one-third of the world’s freshwater reserves and one-quarter of the potential arable land. And despite five centuries of extractive activities to serve global markets, the region still holds large volumes of important mineral reserves, including oil, gas, iron, copper and gold (Bovarnick, Alpizar and Schnell, 2010). On the other hand, this “biodiversity superpower” has seen a fast rate of biodiversity loss, increasing ecosystem degradation and one-third of the world’s carbon emissions, mostly a result of the expansion of extractive activities and land-use change (UNEP, 2012). Together, these economic and ecological developments affect a large number of different social groups in all Latin American countries, primarily in rural areas but also in cities. Next to mobilizations and conflicts that attract national and international attention, there are numerous local socioenvironmental tensions that lead to longstanding economic problems and social injustice.

Economic Concentration and Conglomerates in Mexico

Mexico’s economic groups are currently the most powerful of Latin America. Various indices show that Mexican conglomerates are very successful, and Cemex is the only company from the region in the top 25 MNCs from developing countries. Large Mexican companies have grown extensively with the expanded export opportunities created by NAFTA, turning Mexico’s economy into the largest in Latin America. But are Mexican conglomerates expected to survive new waves of international acquisitions and mergers, or will their expansion soon turn out to be only an intermediary step in Mexico’s economic integration of the early 21st century? The article analyzes the rise of Mexican economic groups and conglomerates, and the relations between this economic elite and the political elite since neoliberal restructuring, discussing the policies and effects of privatization, liberalization and economic integration. Special attention is paid to the attitude of corporate giants and the state towards the financial sector, especially since the peso crisis in 1994/5. Finally, the article analyzes some effects of economic concentration in large local and foreign conglomerates on the Mexican economy and employment.

Latin America and the Rise of China: Possibilities and Obstacles for Development

At first glance, China’s expansion is a very positive development for Latin America and the Caribbean, as trade figures show steep rises. Several countries greatly benefit from China’s enormous demand for energy, minerals, and other primary commodities. Yet to other countries the “China effect” is mainly trade competition in local and global markets. With respect to foreign investment the effects of China’s expansion are diverse, too, involving competition for MNC investment, but also new Chinese joint ventures, especially in the exploitation of Latin America’s natural resources. However, the contrast between China’s rise and Latin America’s low and volatile growth figures leads to the question of what Latin America can learn from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In particular, this contrast stresses the crucial role of the state in developing countries to maintain or broaden their economies’ position in global markets. Also for Latin America the issue of the Chinese miracle is about ‘the future “spaces” open for the development of industrial exports in a liberalized world in which the PRC is preempting many markets for products that developing countries can export’ (Lall and Weiss 2004:23).

Conglomerates and Economic Groups in Neoliberal Latin America

After lengthy debates about the nature of neoliberal restructuring in Latin America, and now that neoliberalism has become fully globalized, it is evident that the privatization of public enterprises together with policies of economic deregulation gave way to an enormous expansion of financial and industrial corporate groups. What took place was a process of economic concentration of unprecedented scale in the Latin American history of regional capitalism. Simultaneously, neoliberal policies put an end to the development concept that supposed that industrialization and economic groups were to have their basis within the nation-state. Parallel to sweeping deregulation and the selling of public companies to the private sector, large companies started denationalizing and regionalizing their investments. Economic concentration in Latin America’s private sector in most cases started under military rule or under authoritarian neoliberal regimes that associated populism and import substitution industrialization (ISI) with the communist peril. This political context changed radically in the 1980s, when Latin American regimes started to democratize, in some cases from the crisis of violent military dictatorships, such as in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. Interestingly, in this context of democratization and of processes of regionalization of the Latin American economy, economic concentration increasingly became politically legitimized. The debates on development with equity (CEPAL, 1990) and open regionalism (CEPAL, 1994) referred to the need for a reconciliation between a concentration of economic power and the emerging democratic political regimes. In addition, these debates referred to the need to form Latin American economic blocks that would not inhibit economic association of countries with other regional blocks. The debates provided a local theoretical basis to the inevitable liberalization of Latin American markets. Moreover, they resulted in the domination of a strategy combining three formal types of economic integration: agreements for sub-regional integration (e.g. MERCOSUR, the Common Central American Market, the Cartagena Accord, and the Caribbean Community); bilateral accords for trade liberalization; and agreements liberalizing trade between groups of countries. The new models of economic integration of Latin America assume regional economic blocks of

Latin American Experiences with Open Regionalism: Introduction

Open regionalism is the new dominant strategy for the economic integration of Latin American countries. This neoliberal approach to insertion into the world economy by means of regionalization constitutes a clear shift away from the Keynesian concept of economic integration through import-substitution industrialization (ISI). Instead of focusing on national industrialization, the efforts are now directed at industrialization on a regional scale. Open regionalism is the attempt to link the economic interdependency of Latin American countries to liberalization and deregulation. This policy grants a fundamental role to market mechanisms in the assignation of resources in the production process. At the same time, open regionalism is directed at regulating and controlling the integration of Latin American in the globalization process and improving the regions international competitiveness.