Ruptured Frontiers: The Transformation of the US-Latin American System

Abstract

The United States is intent on consolidating a new order in the Western Hemisphere, an order that is embodied in the emergence of the North American Free Trade Association and the Enterprise for the Americas. George Bush made the Enterprise and free trade the cornerstone of US-Latin American policy when he toured Venezuela, Brazil and other countries in South America in December 1990, calling for an end to trade barriers and the free movement of capital from Alaska to the Straits of Magellan. This new order marks a shift in the terms of economic exploitation and intervention by the United States. Under the banner of neo-liberalism and free trade, US governmental and corporate leaders, in conjunction with other hemispheric elites, are not only intensifying their exploitation of the continent's human and material resources, but are spreading immiseration and poverty more widely than ever. Indeed, this condition now severely affects the societies of the north as well as those of the south.