Volume 17, Number 2, 1986 Les Amériques latines dans le système mondial 1954-1984 Guest-edited by Jacques Zylberberg

EN:

This paper deals with the internal dynamics of the Latin American States. Having identified the demographic changes - urbanization, rejuvenating process, widespread education — the author introduces the social changes which have caused the spreading to the masses, to social segmentation and individualization. This is followed by a study of the ideologies which relate the social orientations of the individuals or segmented groups with the overall representations which value authoritarianism, populism, nationalism and state socialism. The analysis of authoritarian ideologies, of social individualism, and of the fragmentized political rivalries validates the internal hypothesis according to which the state actors of Latin America operate with considerable autonomy on the international scène as compared to the other actors.

EN:

If the crisis of the state has been a common trait in Latin America, its manifestations have not been the same throughout the continent. This article examines two general and apparently contraditory trends : the trend toward authoritarian capitalism resulting from the crisis of hegemony in South America and the trend towards popularly-based insurgency resulting from a crisis of domination in most of Central America. The author bases his general interpretation of these trends on the analysis of the historical and structural relationships between four factors identified as responsible for the drastic change in the role of the state, from "national development" to "national security" : the crisis in the model of accumulation, the growing polarization of political alliance, the transnationalization of the civil society and the state, and the interplay between relative autonomy of the state and transnationalization. He finds that the combination of transnational integration of the Latin American elites into one U.S.-centered project with hegemonic pretensions, and a growing marginalization and alienation on the part of the bulk of the internal constituencies has brought about an acute crisis of both legitimation and domination. As violence becomes the most common political currency -with repression and plain state terrorism evolving into a distinct style of politics - and the prospects towards redemocratization being very fragile, the author concludes that revolutionary struggles may be the only possibility for an indigenous redefinition of development, national self-determination and democracy.

EN:

Our aim in this article is to identify the major transnational actors and to describe how they have influenced Latin American politics and development from the 1950s to the present. Transnational actors are defined as those collective actors (here non-governmental) whose membership and activities are transnational. Specifically ex-amined are the multinationals, the Catholic Church, international labor confederations, and guerrilla movements. The historical context within which we study these actors has two periods : early import substitution (1954-65) and late import substitution and export substitution (1965 to present). In each period the state pursue s a development strategy with the support of particular class alliances. For each period we describe how the transnational actors contribute to the successes and failures of these strategies. The causal relations are also reciprocal, for the actors evolve and adapt to the changing developmental context. For example, the multinationals shift from raw material extraction to manufacturing while the Church shifts from conservatism to the theology of liberation. The general trends in the activities of transnational actors over the post war period are interpreted with respect to the twin polarities of the development process : opression - liberation, integration - autonomy.

EN:

This article is about the international relations of Latin America between 1950-1980. No systematic account of such history is attempted here. Rather attention is paid above all to the main thrust of such history. In this study it is argued that most dominated countries have very little capacity to affect the general and most fundamental structures of the World System. These countries tend to be mere object of history. There foreign policies to a very large extent contribute to the reproduction of the World System. Indeed it is one of the functions they must assume as far as the development of the system is concerned. But given the fact that underdeveloped countries are also subject of history, they do not submit passively to such a general law of social system. Their foreign policies are sometimes designed to modify the International Division of Labor "or their place within it" and with it the distribution of power without however drastically changing or upsetting the inner logic of the World System. It is within such an approach that one must study the international role of dominated countries in general and of the Latin American states in particular.

EN:

This paper introduces two studies on the geopolitics and the conflicts in Latin America. The first part comprises a survey of the conflicts - most of which non-violent - which divide Latin America and oppose its states on an ideological basis, on a finality which would lead to hegemony, on territorial claims, or for reasons due to the impact of migration.

The second part deals with the split between the Latin states and the new Anglophone states of the Caribbean, a split which has been bred by the differences in histories, institutions, and political representations, a split which has become apparent in the stands taken, namely in the Falkland crisis and in the border disputes between Venezuela and Guyana, and between Belize and Guatemala.