Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The American Empire Project, 31 Jul 2006
This is a superb addition to the American Empire Project series.Grandin's latest book is,in my view, a veritable tour de force in demonstrating how Latin America has been the proving ground for all we now see unfolding before our eyes in the US' quest for global hegemony.
I thought I knew a bit about Latin American history,but I now know an awful lot more.This book filled me with anger and dread-and left me close to tears at the same time!Thoroughly recommended!
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nursery for the Neo-Cons, 22 Feb 2009
Empires Workshop stands a good head and shoulders above most works of this nature I have recently read. Grandin writes fluently about the relationship between the United States and Latin America over the last hundred years or so, identifying the continuities as well as the innovations. The only innovation that comes across as being halfway sensible is FDR good neighbour policy. The rest of the presidents would seem to require some sort of International ASBO to keep them in check.
The interesting part of the book covers the evolution of the Radical Religious Right in American foreign policy and the free reign it in particular was able to excercise in Central America during the 1980's under the Regan Presidency. Central America is where such Bush II luminaries as John Negroponte, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and an assortment of other lunatics including Col. Oliver North cut their teeth. The devastation and death that resulted from their policies was astonishing when one takes into account the population size of those countries. Central America under the nascent neo-cons was a hell on earth.
The thesis, which the author backs up with an immense amount of information and erudition, is that Central America was a sort of "workshop" where the neo-cons developed the ideas and put into practice the policies that were used to such bloody effect in Iraq over the last 6 years. For instance Grandin notes John Negropontes role in Central America and the continuities betwen what happened there and what went on during and after his short stay in Iraq. He also notes American involvement in Death Squads in Iraq, an issue I have wondered about for some time and which formed such a central part of U.S. policies in Central America during the 1980's.
The book also covers Latin America as well, including the Pinochet regime with particular regard the the Friedman/Hayek school of thoughts influence on it. There is something particularly nauseating about reading of Hayek (he of Road to Serfdom fame) praising Pinochets vicious authoritarian regime - by their friends we shall know them.
Thoroughly reccomended, this is this best book of this type I have read in quite some time.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant study of empire, 12 Jun 2009
Greg Grandin teaches Latin American history at New York University. In this brilliant and important book, he studies Latin America and the USA's impact on it. As Hugo Chavez said, "What is happening today in Latin America? To answer this question, read Empire's workshop."
Thatcher lied that Reagan ended the Cold War `without firing a shot', but the shots were fired in Latin America and elsewhere, to defeat the Soviet Union. Reagan backed terrorists in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and in Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Libya, Yemen, and Cuba. Reagan imposed capitalism by dirty wars, coups and death squads.
Thatcher and Reagan imposed cripplingly high interest rates, to cut welfare, education, health and industry, attack trade unions, and wreck pay agreements, job security and pensions.
The same high interest rates forced Europe's governments to reply in kind, notably wrecking France's social democratic path. These rates also destroyed development programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The City of London and Wall Street lent these countries petrodollars, which went to pay ever-higher interest on earlier debts, not to invest in industry and services.
In Latin America, income per head had risen by 73% between 1947 and 1973, when its countries were using development strategies. But under laissez-faire capitalism, from 1980 to 1998, there was a boom for Latin America's privateers and a slump for its workers. Median income per head did not rise at all. In 1970, 11% were destitute; in 1996, 33% (165 million people); by 2005, 221 million people were in poverty.
To develop, countries need land reform, planned industrialisation and decent services for all. For this, they need to have national independence and sovereignty, control over their own resources, and labour needs to control capital, not vice versa. As Grandin sums up, "democracy, social and economic justice, and political liberalization have never been achieved through an embrace of empire but rather through resistance to its command."
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