The Impact of European Colonialism and Neocolonialism

History of “Citizenship” in Latin America: The Impact of European Colonialism and Neocolonialism On “American” Identities Allison Brown HIST 4494: The U.S. in Latin America Dr. Hampton May 11, 2022 QUOTE FROM SOMETHING Since Iberian Peninsula Europeans began to organize and construct colonies and state organizations in American territory, their particular notions of institutions were imposed on New World societies, with the tensions of citizenship being complex and at the forefront of political decisions.Concepts of Latin American citizenship maintained important degrees of similarity with the way in which Western European citizenship was deployed, because Latin American territorial states, and their conceptions of citizenship, were ultimately by-products of European institutions. Since these institutions were superposed on populations in Latin America, similar developments and conversations of citizenship occurred between not only the Latin American countries, but also the integration of the political and commercial world of the times. Both colonial and independent actions in Latin America would produce disagreements and tension as institutions and notions of citizenship were created. Three key issues occurred which contributed to tensions in Latin America with definitions of citizenship who would in turn attempt to differentiate national experiences in Latin America (and in relation to notions of citizenship in the United States) The constitutive tensions of modern Latin American citizenship were reflections of the European way of processing the issues of membership and inequality; and they were reflected in peculiar syntheses between the political-organizational moments that the European imperial centers were going through, as well as the ways in which colonial structures processed the incorporation of the new territories and populations. With this European dynamic in the Americas, racial hierarchies took shape 1 The elite shared the city with the “creole” sub-elite (often mestizos and mulattoes legally recognized by their “white” fathers) who functioned as a medium-high stratum dependent on favours from the upper elite. This sub-elite tended to expand with the arrival of other European immigrants without lineage, resources, or specific trades. It grew in size, asymmetrically associating with the European elite, and strategically claiming less social differentiation (relative to Europeans) and more social differentiation (relative to non “white” Americans). Eventually, subsequent generations of these sub-elites will determine the models of citizenship of independent Iberian-American states. From the point of view of citizenship, this element was key to later American history. Although no one, in theory, could escape the networks of personal dependence or slavery, as colonies made their economic structures more complex and regained demographic momentum, a growing number of mestizos (children of Whites and Indians) and mulattos (children of Whites and Africans) escaped from these networks to play subordinate economic roles of greater autonomy in the cities, progressively resembling urban salaried workers. This “lower middle stratum” strategically collaborated with the Creole sub-elite, as an economic and military workforce, in the creation of the new states. Another key element will have future institutional effects. In America, the social division of labour, unlike the Old World, admitted a certain flexibility. A sort of parallel world with its rules, governed essentially by monetary capacity, through influence peddling and perks, subtly eroded and gradually transformed hierarchies. This informal regulation of citizenship converted key socially relevant positions into “staples” susceptible of purchase, sale, and even inheritance; from the blood, to the distribution of land and Indians; from the positions in the public administration (and the economic benefits that they produced), to 2 authorizations to legal (and illegal) trade. The “caste” society (the popular use of the word casta was significant), was becoming flexible, like its European parallels, by the “corrosion” of coin, even if it was based on substantive, intense and resilient inequalities MODERN CITIZENSHIP The present citizenships, in Latin America, arose from the political processes of autonomy and / or independence that gave rise to the current states and / or their predecessors. They developed in two distinct phases. In both, the inclusive and equalizing effects of republican systems contrasted with the resilience of ancient inequalities, and the shortage of open routes for a less asymmetrical social integration. But, while in the first phase the contrast was nothing short of extreme; in the second, there actually was an effective (if not linear) inclusion process, as well as a questioning (not necessarily successful) of the most important patterns of inequality. Movements for independence across the Americas would usher in a new era of defining citizenship. The models of citizenship that derived from these new arrangements reflected these patterns and tensions (SÁBATO, 1999). Politics, in the first place, was strongly restricted to local notables, even in the regions where the independence coalitions had been broader (Gran Colombia and Río de la Plata). Along with the expected political exclusion of European whites, the new states presented themselves as the institutional heirs of indigenous tribute, while treating the emancipation of slaves with caution and ambiguity. Although the social structure suffered the 3 rearrangements inherent to a long dramatic war (with the exception of Brazil, Central America and the Caribbean), there were no radical transformations. The new institutionality made the castes disappear in the law, while in practice it created politically oligarchic and socially segmented republics, according to cleavages of relative continuity with the past. After the independences, behind the countless rebellions and small wars between regions, cities, and “parties” (small groups of notables with their clientele), for the appropriation of the few opportunities left by the fleeting state devices and the limited postcolonial economies, the new citizenships had an extremely partial and restrictive character, setting or resetting the bases of the “resilient exclusion” characteristic of Latin American territorial states (ANSALDI and GIORDANO, 2012a). The most important transformative impulse will come only in the second half of the 19th century, when the new political-territorial units enter (voluntarily or not) the phase of global economic change at the origins of the present “long conjuncture” (ARRIGHI, 1999). For the region, the expansive phase of global trade generated growing markets for old and new raw materials, as well as attractive destinations for capital in search of opportunities for multiplication. Old centres were reinserted in new profitable circuits, while many marginal areas acquired centrality. Precarious state bureaucracies had access to progressively global credit, and multiplied their functions. The new influx produced novel social transformations again, such as the wave of immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and East Asia, which reconfigured the urban and rural wage-earning sectors. The new value of lands, finally, produced geopolitical clashes that ended up consolidating the borders of contemporary Latin American states. The phase witnessed the recycling of old asymmetries and the production of new ones. The fate of the Latin American elites depended on new centres of power, in a “neocolonial” order in which the greater relative political independence was combined with new forms of 4 financial and commercial heteronomy. Meanwhile, the change dealt final blows to a good part of the social dynamics of post-independence. In a few decades the postcolonial world gave way to a world more similar to the present than to the past. But if change softened old cleavages and generated new ones, it did not dramatically alter a social and political matrix of extreme inequality. States, in spite of their new capable bureaucracies, remained under the control, and the permanent dispute, of small elites with predatory habits. Behind the frequent conflicts between “liberal” and “conservative” cliques, Latin American polyarchies remained lukewarm republican, with tenuous and selective application of principles of freedom or equality. Latin American historiography characterized them as oligarchical regimes (ANSALDI and GIORDANO, 2012a). This exclusive modernization, however, was both the point of arrival of postcolonial transformations and the point of departure for the tensions of modern citizenship. It is not difficult to see this in the new popular sectors demands of participation; in the peasant movements resistance to proletarianization; in the subaltern elites’ claims to political power; or in the fractions of the elites that demanded cultural changes. The “solutions” to these tensions of citizenship tended to resemble notably throughout the region. The new states produced models of political participation broader than those of the Old Regime, although not less selective and exclusive. The socio-economic fluidity, on the other hand, was undoubtedly greater than that of the caste society; even if it generated, with few exceptions, very limited opportunities for upward social mobility. The “exclusive” model certainly admitted important variations in intensity, which depended on the types of socioeconomic segmentation and restrictions on access to the oligarchic state apparatus. It was socially more segmented in the regions where the indigenous and African population played an important role in the functioning of the export economies. It 5 was politically more exclusive where the elites needed a more direct control of the state apparatus to guarantee economic profitability and social order. These differentiations occurred, often, within the countries, as in the cases of Mexico (between the centre, north and south), Brazil (between the northeast and the south), or Argentina (between the northwest and the Pampas region). From the point of view of political tensions, these were very limited polyarchies. The political regimes were formally open to electoral competition, organized by constitutions guaranteeing checks and balances, and counted for the most part with universal male suffrage. Governments and public bureaucracies, however, were colonized by small elites; the elections were organized in such a way as to limit uncertainty as much as possible; and the balance of powers was a facade for inter-factional pacts. Patronage and corruption inherited from the colonial institutions were continued in co-optation mechanisms that, in a limited way, contributed to legitimize the political system. But the republics were essentially plutocratic affairs. From the point of view of social tensions, the offers of equality continued to be essentially restricted, configuring strongly asymmetric models of material citizenship. The republics had individualist and egalitarian liberal laws. But traditionalist gender and ethnic relations, and economic opportunities monopolized by minority groups, coexisted with popular sectors very precariously linked to the monetary economy, both rural and urban, and often subject to actual servitude and slavery. Economic New Waves of Citizenship 6 The present of Latin America is, in the sense of the periodization proposed here, a recharged continuation of the inclusive phase of citizenship. “Inclusion”, a politically strong word in the region, became an explicit goal of governance. We have suggested to call this “inclusionism” (ANDRENACCI, 2012). One way of approaching the phase is to place its origins in the era of democratic transitions (O’DONNELL, SCHMITTER and WHITEHEAD, 1986), through which most of the region reencountered its republican institutions. In some cases, this implied the fall of explicitly authoritarian governments, be they military dictatorships or civil governments of state parties. In other cases, it involved processes of change in façade democracies, which in practice hid a plutocratic or oligarchic control of political arrangements (CAVAROZZI, 1991). When these new regimes were consolidated, they initiated a process of legal, economic and social reforms that, in most of the countries, implied a more determined expansion of citizenship than in the past. Many of the causes of this “long present” were, once again, exogenous. Two key changes determined an environmental change in the operating conditions for the states of the region. Local economies, along with the rest of the world’s, underwent crises and transformations of development models since the end of the 1970s (THORP, 1998). And the contexts of global politics dramatically changed with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and the consequent change in US priorities for Latin American policy (DOMÍNGUEZ, 1998). The end of the Cold War unexpectedly opened the way to a depolarization and a substantial reduction of violence in political relations. The regional hegemon relaxed its direct control of national political situations, abandoned its systematic blockade, direct or indirect, to progressive political experiences, and withdrew support from authoritarian arrangements that had been its strategic allies. Latin 7 American states began to channel conflicts through their own institutionality, starting a remarkable round of polyarchical consolidation. But economic change, on the other hand, produced a paradox. Developmentalist processes had not been able to conjure the intensity of external dependence or the internal imbalances of Latin American capitalist economies. Although not in a linear manner, the crises of the 1980s implied strong sequelae of recession, unemployment and multiplication of poverty in most countries of the region (MARQUESPEREIRA, 1993). Unexpectedly, this facilitated the delegitimization of dominant arrangements, many of them sustaining authoritarian rule, thus easing the way for political change. For a time, in the late 1980s and most of the 1990s, governments that emerged from the collapse of dictatorships or the implosions of limited democratic arrangements faced economic change with authoritarian styles that limited the effective scope of democratization, and with instruments of neoclassical economic policy that exacerbated the negative social effects of the crises. The label “neoliberalism” is often used for these processes. More precisely, the political arrangements of the transition gave rise to delegative democracies that produced low intensity citizenship (O’DONNELL, 1993, 1994). Delegative democracies were polyarchies of a peculiar kind, in which participation rules were limited by the hegemonic position of an oversized and plebiscitary executive power, based on a restrictive governing coalition. Their economic and social policy options failed (with the controversial exception of Chile) to address the problems of extremely unequal and highly segmented societies and territories, to the point of making the material aspect of the economy illusory (or hypocritical) relative to the expectations brought about by democratization. The low intensity of citizenship -the scarce or segmented effective access of citizens to the state through political participation, the law, access to economic 8 opportunities and social infrastructureaggravated the asymmetries of delegative democracy, making it difficult to sustain the citizen legitimacy of many newly re-founded or expanded republics. But in a second stage, since the late 1990s or the beginning of the XXI century, factors re-combined in a virtuous way. More representative arrangements, and generally less limited democracies, began to address, in a more favourable economic context and with greater state autonomy, the problem of effective citizen inclusion. With some ups and downs and partial or temporary exceptions, the process became surprisingly homogenous. It even became in many ways independent of the ideological sign of governing coalitions, even if progressive nationalist governments were naturally prone to more aggressively “inclusionist” public policy choices (ARNSON, JARA and ESCOBAR, 2009). Although the political system did not lose its delegative ways, it did become more open, stable and participatory. In the same way, the deployment of more inclusive economic and social policies that the region managed to launch in the favourable macroeconomic context of the first decade of the 21st century, allowed states to attack more decidedly the historical social segmentations of the region. Access to basic public services, social protection and monetary resources through the growth of employment and public spending contributed to a significant reduction in poverty and at least a part of material inequalities. Meanwhile, legal transformations allowed to deepen these processes, attacking some of the most important bases of ethnic, gender and sexual inequalities. Latin American segmentation, socle of the idea of “exclusion”, suffered important questioning, and was the object of some of the most substantial empirical interventions in the history of the region. 9 Moreover, towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century, a new change in global economic environments brought havoc to the underlying factors of this positive transformation, revealing some of its limitations and contradictions. The 2010s mercilessly brought back to the table all of the old ghosts: the fragility of economic development, the precariousness of state capacities, and thus the volatility of socioeconomic inclusion. The new crises also strained the limits of polyarchies, with at least Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, Paraguay and Brazil sailing again on institutionally opaque waters. Is it a new critical juncture, capable of freezing or neutralizing the inclusive transformations of the first part of the 21st century? It is too early to answer this question. Conclusion The dynamics of a broadening citizenship, which we have proposed to redefine as inclusion, desegmentation and reduction of inequalities, are not what T. H. Marshall described for the United Kingdom, and other observers keenly generalized for Western Europe or North America. Neither is unreasonable to make comparisons. In this region it seems to have been the expansion (gradual or explosive) of political participation that opened the roads of a more egalitarian civil law and the improvement of material conditions for the majorities. Yet at the same time, as in other regions, political conflict weakens development processes and aggravates the heteronomy of state capacities, compromising the linearity of citizen expansion. If this perspective is 10 adequate, the keys to a positive continuity in the expansion of Latin American citizenship, like that of the last two decades, are in its political system. Specifically, in how elites and government coalitions maintain the question of citizenship at the centre of public policy agendas, legitimizing polyarchies with inclusive processes as effective as possible. Works Cited Sam Erman, “Meanings of Citizenship in the U.S. Empire: Puerto Rico, Isabel Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court, 1898-1905,” The Journal of American Ethnic History 27, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 5-33. Michel Gobat, “The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of AntiImperialism, Democracy, and Race,” The American Historical Review 118, no. 5 (December 2013): 1345-1375. 11