This article is adapted and expanded from a section of my forthcoming book, In Defense of Imperialism. The book examines imperialism not as a historical relic of colonial conquest, but as a changing structure of global capitalism that operates through military power, financial dependency, technological domination, unequal trade relations, and ideological hegemony.

Latin America provides one of the clearest examples of how this structure operates. Its history shows that imperial domination is produced neither solely through external intervention nor independently of domestic class relations. It emerges through the interaction of global capitalist structures, domestic ruling classes, state institutions, and popular struggles. Imperialism is therefore best understood as a relationship of power in which external domination and internal class interests are mutually reinforced—and in which both are contested from below.

Latin America: The Laboratory of Modern Imperialism

Latin America has been one of the central laboratories of modern imperialism. From European colonial conquest to contemporary forms of financial and technological dependency, the region has experienced systematic extraction of land, labor, and natural resources.

The incorporation of Latin America into the capitalist world economy created a pattern that survived formal independence: economies organized around primary commodity exports, dependence on external markets, concentration of wealth among domestic elites, and unequal integration into global capitalism.

From a Marxist perspective, this history reflects the logic of accumulation through dispossession. Capitalist expansion has repeatedly depended not only on industrial production and market exchange, but also on the seizure of land, privatization of collective resources, displacement of communities, and transformation of nature and labor into sources of accumulation.

However, imperial domination cannot be reduced to economic extraction alone. Modern imperialism also requires the production of consent. It operates through what Antonio Gramsci described as hegemony: the ability of dominant groups to present their interests as universal and inevitable.

The neoliberal transformation of Latin America was therefore not simply an economic program. It was also a cultural and ideological project. Privatization, deregulation, and market supremacy were promoted not only through financial institutions but through universities, media networks, think tanks, and intellectual elites that constructed the idea that “there is no alternative.”

The Chilean neoliberal experiment after 1973 demonstrates this process. The influence of the Chicago School was not limited to economic policy; it contributed to a broader restructuring of society by redefining the relationship between citizens, markets, and the state, while reducing democratic control over economic life.

The Monroe Doctrine and the Architecture of Regional Power

The history of US domination in Latin America is often traced to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Although presented as opposition to European colonial intervention, it gradually became the ideological foundation for Washington’s claim to regional supremacy.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the United States used economic pressure, military intervention, diplomatic influence, and covert operations to defend its strategic interests in the hemisphere.

Yet a serious analysis of imperialism must go beyond a simple opposition between external domination and internal innocence. Foreign intervention has historically depended on alliances with domestic elites whose interests were threatened by popular movements and redistributive reforms.

The overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954 illustrates this interaction. The CIA-backed operation was closely connected to the interests of the United Fruit Company, which opposed agrarian reform. However, the coup also relied on Guatemala’s landowning elites and military sectors that viewed social reform as a threat to their class position.

The same pattern appeared in Chile in 1973. The overthrow of Salvador Allende was not merely a foreign intervention organized by Washington. It was also a class counteroffensive by sections of the Chilean bourgeoisie, business groups, landowners, and military elites against a government seeking to expand public ownership and strengthen popular participation.

The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that followed became a laboratory for neoliberal restructuring. Privatization, deregulation, financial liberalization, and attacks on labor organizations were not only economic reforms; they were mechanisms for reorganizing class power.

The lesson is broader than either the conventional nationalist or purely externalist interpretation of imperialism. Imperial power does not simply replace domestic ruling classes. It often works through them, incorporating their interests into a wider structure of global accumulation.

Debt: A Mechanism of Dependency and Class Discipline

By the 1980s, financial mechanisms increasingly complemented direct intervention. The Latin American debt crisis transformed institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank into central actors in restructuring national economies.

Structural adjustment programs demanded privatization, trade liberalization, reduction of public spending, and withdrawal of state intervention. Presented as technical solutions, these policies reshaped social relations in favor of financial capital.

Public assets were transferred to private ownership, labor protections weakened, and social achievements of previous decades were dismantled. Debt became not only an economic obligation but a mechanism of political discipline, limiting the choices available to governments and societies.

Domestic politicians, economists, and business elites also participated actively in neoliberal restructuring because it served their own class interests. This interaction between external financial power and domestic class interests is essential to understanding how dependency is reproduced.

At the same time, these policies generated resistance. Workers, students, indigenous communities, and social movements challenged the privatization of public goods and the dismantling of social protections.

Latin American history thus demonstrates that imperial power can impose powerful constraints without eliminating political agency. The reproduction of dependency continually generates conflicts over who controls resources, institutions, and the direction of economic development.

The Pink Tide: Between Resistance, Redistribution, and Structural Limits

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Latin America experienced a wave of governments often described as the “Pink Tide.” Leaders such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and progressive administrations in Argentina and elsewhere challenged the neoliberal consensus that had dominated the region since the 1980s.

These governments expanded social programs, increased state participation in strategic sectors, strengthened regional cooperation, and sought greater autonomy from Washington’s influence. For millions of people, especially among the poor and historically marginalized communities, these experiences represented a significant break from decades of austerity and exclusion.

However, a critical analysis must recognize both the achievements and limitations of these projects.

Many Pink Tide governments remained dependent on extractive economic models inherited from previous periods. Venezuela continued to rely heavily on oil exports; Bolivia depended on natural gas and mineral resources; Brazil remained a major exporter of agricultural commodities and raw materials. Redistribution increased, but the deeper structures of dependency were not fundamentally transformed.

Yet these limitations cannot be understood without considering the broader international context. These governments operated within a global capitalist system dominated by unequal relations of trade, finance, and technology. They also faced political pressure, financial restrictions, and in some cases direct sanctions from the United States.

The Venezuelan crisis, for example, cannot be explained only through domestic economic failures or the decline of oil prices. The impact of US sanctions and financial isolation played a significant role in deepening economic difficulties. At the same time, internal problems, including excessive dependence on oil revenues, corruption, and weaknesses in productive transformation, contributed to the crisis.

A serious left analysis must therefore avoid two opposite errors: ignoring imperial pressure and treating progressive governments as incapable of internal mistakes. The central issue is the interaction between structural constraints and political agency: governments can redistribute resources and challenge existing power relations, but they remain constrained by the global structures of accumulation in which they operate.

Beyond Governmental Change: The Role of Popular Movements

One of the most important lessons of Latin American history is that social transformation does not come only from governments. States can open political opportunities, but lasting change depends on the organization and power of society from below.

Throughout the region, workers’ movements, indigenous communities, feminist organizations, and environmental struggles have repeatedly challenged both imperial domination and domestic elites.

The Bolivian uprising against the privatization of water in Cochabamba in 2000 demonstrated that popular mobilization could defeat policies supported by international financial institutions and multinational corporations. The struggle was not only against a specific privatization agreement; it was a broader defense of collective rights against the expansion of market logic into essential resources.

In Argentina, labor unions, neighborhood assemblies, and social movements have played a central role in resisting austerity policies and challenging the neoliberal agenda represented by Javier Milei’s government. These struggles show that even in periods of conservative advance, society retains the capacity to create political alternatives.

Environmental movements across Brazil and other countries have also challenged extractive development models. Indigenous communities defending forests, rivers, and territories have raised a fundamental question: development for whom, and at what social and ecological cost?

These movements reveal a crucial dimension of anti-imperialist struggle. Resistance is not only about defending national sovereignty against foreign powers; it is also about transforming the domestic social relations through which global forms of domination are reproduced.

Imperialism in a Multipolar World

The emergence of China, the expansion of BRICS, and the growing involvement of other global powers have transformed Latin America’s position in the world system. The region is no longer operating within the same unchallenged US-centered order that characterized much of the twentieth century.

This shift creates new opportunities but also new contradictions.

Chinese investment in infrastructure, energy, mining, and agriculture has provided Latin American countries with alternatives to traditional Western financial institutions. It has increased bargaining space for some governments and reduced exclusive dependence on Washington.

However, a critical perspective must also examine whether these new relations transform dependency or reproduce it in another form. In many cases, Chinese demand continues to be centered on commodities such as soy, copper, lithium, and oil. If Latin America remains primarily an exporter of raw materials, replacing one external market with another will not overcome structural dependency.

Multipolarity therefore should not be confused with emancipation. The decline of US unilateral dominance changes the conditions under which imperial power operates, but it does not abolish the underlying structures of unequal accumulation. New geopolitical alternatives can expand the room for maneuver available to peripheral and semi-peripheral states, but they can also reproduce asymmetric relations of trade, investment, and resource extraction.

The task for progressive forces is therefore not to replace one dominant power with another, but to use geopolitical contradictions to expand democratic control over resources, production, and economic decision-making.

A Strategy for Transformation: Linking Structure and Agency

The experience of Latin America suggests that overcoming imperial dependency requires a combination of structural transformation and popular organization.

Economic sovereignty cannot be achieved without industrial diversification, regional cooperation, technological development, and democratic control over strategic resources. But these changes cannot be produced only from above by state institutions. They require active participation from workers, indigenous communities, social movements, and democratic organizations.

A transformative strategy would include:

• building regional economic cooperation beyond dependence on a single external power;
• developing productive capacities rather than remaining dependent on commodity exports;
• creating democratic forms of resource management involving local communities;
• strengthening labor rights and popular participation in economic decisions;
• combining ecological transformation with social justice.

The central question is therefore not simply whether states can resist imperial pressure. It is whether social forces can acquire sufficient democratic power to transform both the external structures of dependency and the domestic class relations through which those structures are reproduced.

Conclusion: Imperialism and the Possibility of Historical Change

The history of Latin America demonstrates that imperialism is neither simply an external force nor an autonomous structure operating above society. It is a relationship of power produced through the interaction of unequal global economic relations, political institutions, domestic class interests, ideological hegemony, and popular resistance.

This distinction matters. If imperialism is understood only as external domination, domestic ruling classes disappear from the analysis and national sovereignty becomes the primary measure of emancipation. If it is understood only as an impersonal global structure, the agency of states, classes, and social movements disappears. Neither approach is sufficient.

Imperialism is reproduced precisely through the articulation of these levels. Global capital operates through markets, financial institutions, technologies, and geopolitical power, but its effects are mediated by states and domestic class coalitions. At the same time, the contradictions generated by this system create spaces for collective resistance and political transformation.

The history of Latin America is therefore not only a history of intervention, coups, and dependency. It is also a history of rebellion, resistance, and collective political imagination.

Overcoming imperialism requires more than changing governments or negotiating better terms within the existing order. It requires transforming the relations through which global accumulation and domestic class power are reproduced, while building democratic forms of social power capable of reshaping both.

The future of Latin America will not be determined solely by Washington, Beijing, financial institutions, or multinational corporations. It will also depend on whether workers, indigenous communities, social movements, and democratic forces can turn political resistance into durable social power.

Imperialism adapts to changing conditions, and so does resistance. The central historical question is therefore not whether structures of domination will disappear on their own, but whether the social forces confronting them can transform the relations that reproduce them. The dialectic between domination and emancipation remains open.

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