Exports and Exploitation: Week 7 Reading

The export industry has been the driving force of Latin American "prosperity" since the middle of the 19th century, prosperity here meaning the international sale of natural resources such that those elites involved in trade reap a windfall profit. Modern-day conflicts between different groups that previously lived in separate spheres are driven by the expanding frontiers of industry and state power. The drive to impose order on the less controllable hinterland communities was meant to bolster state power for the sake of effective centralized rule, but also to demonstrate a change from the chaotic, violent days of the revolutions, when the international community ignored Latin America as a trade destination. Eventually, this imposition of order created the kind of tariff income that allowed the state to build up its infrastructure immensely. However, even these public works projects become a tool of the industrial nation-state's disruption of communities that reject the state, as evidenced by the clashes between Amazonian tribes in the state of Para in Brazil and state worker crews over the potential construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam.

The innovation of photography also lent itself to the nation-state project, as it purports to show reality while in fact it distorts reality to reflect the intention of the photographer or whoever might publish the prints. This was especially prevalent when the early styles of photography were meant to be images that documented "types" of people according to essentialist principles of race and class. Photographing scenes of slavery and describing it as a diminishing phenomenon and capturing the images of indigenous people dressed in European style both serve to advance the idea of ever-advancing progress as a result of industrialization and nation-state expansion. This is reminiscent of Foucalt's "knowledge is power" theory, which states that any knowledge, however idealistically sought, that helps advance the material dispossession of colonized spaces, is a tool that ultimately aids the colonizer.

I find myself frustrated with Dawson's refusal to engage with some of the valid critiques of this period's imbalanced trade policies and how the material gains from these export trades cemented the inequities they created through spectacle and intimidation. He rejects criticism surrounding Milton Friedman without even bothering to elaborate upon how Friedman's theories would be forcibly incorporated into the economic policies of Argentina, Chile and other nations via U.S.-backed military coups in the late 20th century, which I consider a valuable insight into ways that external pressures affect Latin America's sustained dependence on exports.