The Fires of Adversity in Latin America

In a world that is toying with neo-fascist tendencies, Latin America’s painful experience with fascist military governments and North American corporate capitalism should be a red flag.

From 1954 to 2005, Latin America underwent social, economic, and environmental upheaval brought about by neoliberalism’s preference for North American corporate control of Latin American sovereignty. Latin American dictatorships spelled out stable platforms for North American corporations by deregulation and privatization of public wealth. They also increased corporate profits. This book presents nine different articles on the fires of adversity that the Latin American public endured at the hands of North American corporations: the military coups the corporates scripted, the death squads that Operation Condor sanctioned, and the massive pollution of the Amazon by North American extraction of oil and minerals. These corporations bought political influence and decision-making.

The unfettered growth of corporate interests worked counter to the interests and well-being of the Latin American public. By 2005, the Latin American nations soundly rejected the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). Their experience of the reign of corporate money on the Latin American society was not only a form of neocolonialism, but it also provoked unsustainable social upheaval, inequality, and toxic pollution by corporate dumping.