GEOG 3515

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GEOG 3515

• The Geography of South America

Class 12 Politics and Geography in the
Republican Era
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Political Geography

• Political geography refers to the interplay of
  politics and related factors such as
  socio-cultural attributes, across space.
• In South America, as previously discussed,
  important phenomena have included the colonial
  histories, demographic trends, ethnic variations,
  and differential concentrations of economic
  power, for example, between rural and urban
  elites.
• A wide-ranging set of topics, for the purpose of
  this class, we will try and narrow it down by
  picking some key themes for a little more
  elaboration, particularly the struggle between
  conservatism and liberalism (frequently manifest
  as capitalinos v. regionales or rural
  latifundista v. urban intellectual), between
  oligarchies and the masses, and between criollo
  and indigena.
• Woven into this is the complex history of the
  major global political struggle of the 20th
  century that between the forces of capitalism
  and communism.

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Conservatives and Liberals

• Our textbook has characterized the prevailing
  characteristic of many South American political
  environments
• Conservatives favored status quo, preferred
  oligarchic power (supporting caudillos), resisted
  land reform, favored strong national governments,
  defended close links between church and state
  (for example, in providing education), and
  promoted rule from the capital city.
• Liberals sought change, promoted democratic
  reform, proposed land reform and break up of
  latifundios, favored federalism and devolution of
  authority to states/regions, wanted separation of
  church and state, and (later) favored
  nationalization of major industries (especially
  foreign owned).

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Conservatives and liberals

• Conservatives were usually based in the capital
  city although frequently were owners of vast
  tracts of land in the rural provinces managed by
  caretakers.
• Their family members dominated the military
  officer ranks and the catholic church hierarchy.
• Their absentee status made them relatively blind
  to the plight of the rural peasants and their
  privileged status largely insulated them from the
  squalor and poverty of the urban poor.
• Contrastingly, liberals were often
  foreign-educated upper classes, disillusioned,
  principled clergy (frequently Jesuits), and the
  more marginal middle-classes neglected and/or
  exploited by the oligarchs and based out in the
  under-developed regional centers.
• The general success of the conservatives was a
  factor in promoting primatism of cities in South
  America.

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The Capitalinos

• Historically, the urban framework of South
  America became dominated by a few large cities,
  frequently the largest being the capital in which
  most of the important functions and economic
  wealth creation was located.
• The dominance of a single large city over all the
  others in a region is known as primatism.
• This was a common characteristic of the South
  American region in the colonial era.
• It is estimated that the regional capitals in the
  1600s contained more than half of the Spanish
  populations.
• It is still the case that the economic elites
  allocate the majority of financial resources to
  the traditional urban centers where they reside,
  exacerbating a push and pull phenomenon that has
  encouraged mass rural-urban migration from
  neglected regions that continues unabated.

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Oligarchs and Peasants

• Economic power has become very stratified and
  increasingly geographically polarized in South
  America.
• Oligarchies predominate, with a high degree of
  wealth concentrated among a relatively small
  number of families.
• Caudillo politics and a history of corruption,
  nepotism and political patronage and largesse
  have accentuated the concentration of wealth into
  the hands of the minority.
• South American gini coefficients (measures of
  wealth distribution) are very skewed and high
  compared to most industrialized nations, even the
  highly skewed USA.
• Peasant classes in many former Spanish colonies
  are frequently the indigenous peoples both the
  rural farmers working subsistence plots and as
  export-farm laborers, and the former peasants
  turned urban poor living in shanty towns.
• Economic inequality frequently takes on an ethnic
  character with wealth being dominated by the
  Europeans and light-skinned mestizos - in the
  Guianas it is often the Asians that dominate.

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Recap on Equality Measures
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Mega-Political Geography South America and the
United States

• The United States has been a powerful force on
  the political geography of the region throughout
  the 19th and the 20th centuries.
• Directly in Central America and the Caribbean,
  and more indirectly in South America, the United
  States has played a key role in supporting
  particular political trends and in suppressing
  others.
• The 1823 Monroe Declaration, made at the time of
  the drive for colonial independence, stated that
  the USA would not tolerate European military
  involvement in the neighboring nations of the
  Western Hemisphere.
• This has led to repeated military invasions and
  occupations of selected Latin American and
  Caribbean nations and covert efforts to thwart
  left-wing rebel groups and socialist governments
  in South America.

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US National Security

• US national security interests have been widely
  interpreted by American Presidents to encompass
  political (strategic), economic and social
  dimensions.
• US governments have defended US democratic ideals
  by the backing of right-wing governments against
  left-wing rebels.
• US governments have defended US economic
  interests in Latin America by thwarting
  nationalization efforts aimed at US corporations
  (from the banana companies of Honduras to the
  mining and banking interests in Chile).
• US governments have pursued US social objectives
  by interfering in domestic policies and land use
  (for example, by dealing with the issue of
  illegal drug problems at home by pursuing source
  eradication policies in South America).
• US domestic agendas are promulgated in South
  America using combinations of force, diplomacy,
  economic incentives and disincentives, and covert
  operations (e.g. CIA operations, School of the
  Americas, etc.).

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Socialism in South America

• Varying forms of socialism have manifest
  themselves in South America over the last 100
  years.
• Political parties/leaders a number of nations
  have had leftist political reform parties that
  gained power and instigated nationalization
  programs and land-reform (the degree of
  radicalism distinguishes the liberal from the
  socialist) e.g. parties of Betancourt (1940s) and
  Chavez (1990s) of Venezuela, MNR movement of
  Victor Paz Estnessoro of Bolivia (1950s), Marxist
  party of Salvador Allende of Chile (1970s).
• Labor movements leftist trade unions have
  played a major role in politics, especially in
  Argentina (flourished under Perón) and Brazil
  (union leader Lula da Silva is now President)
  currently opposing globalization and US
  exploitation.
• Marxist/Leninist/Maoist revolutionaries e.g.
  Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia/FARC
  (discredited as more of a paramilitary,
  drug-financed terrorist group) and the Sendero
  Luminoso and Tupac Amaru movements of Peru.