Steve Ellner, ed., Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective (London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021), 296 pp. $ 94.00
The turn of the 21st century was marked by the rise of the so-called Pink Tide governments in much of Latin America. The widespread social opposition against the patent failures of previous neoliberal governments paved the way for broad political coalitions unified under charismatic leaders – from Chávez’s Venezuela to Morales’s Bolivia, and from Lula’s Brazil to Correa’s Ecuador – promoting ambitious social policies funded by the high world prices for oil, gas, minerals, soya, and other primary export goods. This commodity boom swelled the coffers of one progressive government after another, allowing them to lift millions out of poverty and advance bold integration policies to counter the influence of the US in the region. For almost two decades, this phenomenon galvanized left-wing supporters across the globe around the (mis)fortunes of progressive political projects in Latin America.
Significantly, the peak of the Pink Tide governments coincided with a vigorous mobilization of the concept of ‘neo-extractivism’ against these progressive administrations. Heirs of Eduardo Galeano’s classic The Open Veins of Latin America, neo-extractivist critics include the prominent voices of Eduardo Gudynas, Alberto Acosta, and Maristella Svampa. This new levy of Latin American writers criticized not just the centuries-old forms of extractivism documented by Galeano in the region, but the specific neo-extractivist orientation taken by Pink Tide governments: the justification of their continued dependence on the exploitation of natural resources as the only way to expand democracy and progressive policies.
In more recent years, as the resource bonanza declined in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the political reverses of Pink Tide governments across the region have left them even more exposed to this line of criticism. These developments have intensified arguments around neo-extractivist strategies in Latin America and the ability of progressive governments to effectively transform them.
Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective is part of a growing stream of scholarship tackling this crucial issue. In dialogue with critics of neo-extractivism, this edited volume aims to provide a balance-sheet of the neo-extrativist strategies of development in Latin America in recent decades. Throughout the book, Ellner and his contributors forcefully argue that state-directed policies enacted by progressive governments regarding the environment, social welfare, and indigenous rights, substantially differ from those implemented by conservative ones. The central message is straightforward: contrary to what neo-extractivist writers often claim, the Pink Tide and other international capital-centered alternatives to extractive development are not equivalents.
Latin American Extractivism includes eleven chapters structured into three main parts: a wide approach to Latin American extractivism within global capitalism (Part One); the performance of Pink Tide governments across a varied range of policy domains (Part Two); and the comparable record of conservative governments (Part Three). As editor, Ellner argues that both the predominance of financial capital and the ascent of China in the global economy have redefined the nature of dependency for Latin American economies. Under these new conditions, Ellner concedes to neo-extractivist critics that the resource nationalism inspiring Pink Tide governments failed to diversify and reduce the hold of financial capital on their economies even if they improved the lot of the poor. Compared to conservative governments, Ellner defends the role progressive administrations played when dealing with environmental movements and indigenous communities’ resistance to neo-extractivist policies.
Latin American Extractivism, however, falls short of a sustained discussion of the key notion of extractivism. Ellner confines himself to emphasizing that the defining trait of Pink Tide governments’ development strategy is their resource nationalism: their orientation to expropriate extractivist sectors to maximize the gains derived from them. Yet, beyond these remarks, the concept of extractivism remains surprisingly under-defined: at its most basic, the term indicates the excessive weight of largely unprocessed commodity exports in a given economy. Used more generally, as neo-extractivist critics often do, extractivism tends to blur together contrasting times, societies, and development strategies. Ellner recognizes this problem but does not fully provide the conceptual distinctions needed to assess the different approaches.
Still, Latin American Extractivism reveals stimulating empirical findings and reflections. Against a backdrop of an expanding financial capitalism and the rise in the influence of China in the region, a central theme of the book concerns the efforts of Pink Tide governments to achieve structural economic change. Two chapters focusing on the Bolivian case shed important light on Evo Morales’s difficulties in gaining greater control over extractive industries and making full use of the revenue they produced: while Alfredo Macías Vásquez and Jorge García-Arías uncover the lingering constraints of ‘financialization’, María Paz and Juan Ramírez-Cendrero show how ‘direct investment policy’ has increased the dependency of financial capital on Bolivia’s hydrocarbons industry. Significantly, this situation has not been reversed by the greater involvement of China in Latin America. As Emma Miriam Yin-Hang To shows, Venezuela’s burgeoning Chinese ties – particularly in the petroleum industry – enlarged its economic capabilities, but in other ways retained its status as a dependent nation.
Another strength of this book lies in its comparative framework on extractivist policies and outcomes. One of the best examples of this is the essay written by Anthony Bebbington, Benjamin Fash and John Rogan. These authors offer a comparative approach to mining governance in progressive El Salvador versus conservative Honduras, which led to legislation banning mining in the former and a pro-extractivist regime in the latter. To explain this contrast, the authors convincingly highlight the crucial importance of different ‘political ecologies’ – including a vast array of actors such as local elites, state officials, the Catholic Church, and social movements – to understand the divergent outcomes in both Central American nations.
The volume also stands out for bringing to the forefront less well-known facets and struggles related to extractivism in Latin America. In this respect, three contributions are noteworthy. Amalia Leguizamón studies the gendered contours of soybean extractivism in Argentina, underlining the persistent contradictions of Cristina Fernández’s administration in this respect. Zaraí Toledo Orozco delivers a much-needed account of the ‘extractivism of the poor’ on artisanal gold mining in right-wing administrations in Colombia and Perú versus the Pink Tide government in Bolivia. Last, but not least, Castriela Esther Hernández highlights both the resistance and significance of black women’s struggles against extractivism in Colombia under staunch conservative rule.
Latin American Extractivism thus provides a rich and detailed panorama of the role of extractivist development policies during a time of retreat for the Pink Tide governments in Latin America. This kaleidoscopic picture improves our understanding of Pink Tide variants of developmentalism versus those of conservative governments; it reveals the peculiarities of ‘progressive’, in contrast to ‘regressive’, forms of extractivism in the region. The book persuasively shows that, against what neo-extractivist writers all too often suggest, Pink Tide governments and other international capital-centered alternatives to extractive development are not the same and should not be viewed as such. For cogently substantiating this case, this work deserves praise.
However, Latin American Extractivism leaves unanswered some important issues for the Left. Firstly, although its comparative span is wide-ranging, the book contains surprising omissions: the Brazilian, Uruguayan, and Chilean cases. Brazil, the largest and one of the most diversified economies in the region, was led by an iconic political figure – Lula – among Pink Tide governments before experiencing a dramatic shift to a reactionary administration. Uruguay, where modesty of size has never implied paucity of interest, remains the most equal South American nation and a less extractivist-dependent economy. Chile, pioneering both a democratic path to socialism and neoliberal restructuration worldwide, has maintained a persistent extractivist economy under Third Way administrations and rising social and environmental opposition in recent decades. Greater attention to these emblematic countries in the region would have strengthened this volume.
Secondly, and beyond the debate over policy disparities between Pink Tide versus conservative governments, the contention over resources also raises deeper questions about the goals of progressive politics and the issue of popular sovereignty. Challenging questions concern not just who exerts control over natural resources, but also – and crucially – who rules over them and according to what principles: those espoused by resource nationalists or those advocated by anti-extractivists. If the former manufacture policies on behalf of a ‘nationwide people’, the latter often make claims of ‘local sovereignty’ tied to specific social movements or indigenous communities. This pivotal but largely unresolved issue is broached in Ellner’s Introduction, yet it demands far greater consideration for both the present and future prospects for the Left in the region and elsewhere.
Malik Fercovic Cerda
Visiting Fellow, Sociology Department
London School of Economics
London, United Kingdon
M.Fercovic-Cerda@lse.ac.uk
