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Monthly Archives: January 2021

Violence, Capital Accumulation, and Resistance in Contemporary Latin America

Jan. 2021 Issue Editors: Steve Ellner This issue examines how contemporary capital accumulation in Latin America is driven by legal and illegal actors. That violence both derives from and kindles direct, structural, and cultural violence. Those forms of violence in turn spark various forms of resistance. Articles deal with a wide range of topics, including the dispossession of ranchers and Mapuches in Argentina caused by natural gas and oil extraction; the expansion of criminal organizations dedicated to extortion rackets and other criminal activities in Medellín; popular uprisings against criminal organizations dedicated to kidnappings, extortions, and illegal logging in the states of Guerrero and Michoacán; the overlap between legal and illegal energy markets in northeastern Mexico and their functioning under violent hybrid governance schemes; the existence of a form of “mafia capitalism” in the tri-border area of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil; the differences between disappearances during the Cold War era and the neoliberal era in Mexico; the creation of the Fuerza Civil, a semi-private, highly militarized police force operating in the state of Nuevo León; the disappearance of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers college and the social movement it sparked; the links between violence, capitalism, and the US opioids crisis; the [...]

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COVID-19 in El Paso: A Spectacle of Injustice

By Amy Reed-Sandoval The French philosopher Michel Foucault famously described the nature of a “spectacle” in Discipline and Punish, in which he explored 18th century public executions in France. The purpose of spectacle, he argued, is “to bring into play…the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.” Such “Foucauldian spectacles” are about inequality and, above all else, power. Despite the various forces striving to invisibilize COVID-19 as much as possible, COVID-19 has become, I argue, a Foucauldian spectacle in the U.S.-Mexico border city of El Paso, Texas, which is now being described as the COVID-19 epicenter in the United States. We need to study this heart-breaking spectacle in order to learn vital lessons from it. First, let’s establish what’s being seen: devastating images of ten mobile morgues set up outside the El Paso medical examiner’s office, and circulated photos of prisoners carrying corpses into those very refrigerated trailers. El Paso’s grand convention center was converted into a makeshift medical center, while overrun hospitals have set up “heated isolation tents” to serve even more of the gravely ill. Some patients are being airlifted out of El Paso, to hospitals in other [...]

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COVID-19 in El Paso: A Spectacle of Injustice

COVID-19 in El Paso: A Spectacle of Injustice By Amy Reed-Sandoval The French philosopher Michel Foucault famously described the nature of a “spectacle” in Discipline and Punish, in which he explored 18th century public executions in France. The purpose of spectacle, he argued, is “to bring into play…the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.” Such “Foucauldian spectacles” are about inequality and, above all else, power. Despite the various forces striving to invisibilize COVID-19 as much as possible, COVID-19 has become, I argue, a Foucauldian spectacle in the U.S.-Mexico border city of El Paso, Texas, which is now being described as the COVID-19 epicenter in the United States. We need to study this heart-breaking spectacle in order to learn vital lessons from it. First, let’s establish what’s being seen: devastating images of ten mobile morgues set up outside the El Paso medical examiner’s office, and circulated photos of prisoners carrying corpses into those very refrigerated trailers. El Paso’s grand convention center was converted into a makeshift medical center, while overrun hospitals have set up “heated isolation tents” to serve even more of the gravely ill. Some patients are being airlifted out [...]

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Latin American Perspectives, founded in 1974, is a theoretical and scholarly journal for discussion and debate on the political economy of capitalism, imperialism, and socialism in the Americas. Most issues focus on a single problem, nation, or region, providing an in-depth look from participants and scholars throughout the Americas.

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