Hexbear’s latest struggle session is in: should Latin America be considered western or not? I decided to write up some thoughts about it.
The discussion on comrade’s @autismdragon 's post centered around a comrade from Palestine living in Honduras (or born in Honduras with Palestinian ascent) and others from neighboring countries claiming that Honduras (and other neighboring countries) is a western country, as it is populated by christian protestants, speaks a romance language, and has been subject to continuous economical, cultural, and imperialist influence by the United States. Others have pointed out that western should be understood in its most exclusive sense as pertaining only to western europe & the USA, and that racist white people in such countries would never consider a latin american person to be western and therefore it must be true they are not western.
I think this argument fails to capture the way the concept of “western” has been utilized in Latin American countries to further the position of certain groups. So while I do agree that there are fundamental differences between Latin America and Europe or the US (the basis on which I believe they should be understood to be described below), adopting the most radical exclusionary concept of westerness does not allow us to understand the totality of social relations in Latin America, which are very much infused with notions of westerness and white supremacy.
To make an analogy with phenomena within “western in the strict sense” places, it is known that US WASPs did not consider italians or poles or sometimes even germans to be white. Or we can imagine an italian who moves to Sweden and is not reeeealy considered white, over there. Does that mean only the most exclusionary concept of whiteness is true?
Or, rather, should one look into it as a fundamentally relational concept with changing significates? That same italian from the example above can move into Africa or South America and be very much considered white: Brazil for example welcomed several italian migrants during the 19th/20th century as part of a state policy of whitening society. A polish descendant in the US, some generations removed, might very well be considered a white westerner. And our european comrades such as @egon would not BELIEVE what passes for white on, say, northeastern Brazil.
The fact is that such concepts of western institutions and thought, and whiteness, are woven into societies born out of colonization and used even by the mestizo descendants of the colonizers of yesterday. I’m perfectly aware that several argentinian people who consider themselves very white would not be considered white by a racist northern european (or even a mildly progressive one). That does not change the fact that their white and european heritage has a material effect on their social relations within argentinian society.
The fact is also that whiteness and westerness exist insofar as certain parts of latin american society hold the power of defining non-whiteness within their own societies (by e.g. murdering a black or indigenous person). This might be the alchemy of racism in Latin America: nobody is white yet it is clear and defined who is black.
I think disregarding such mechanisms as delusions of a comprador elite, as has been proposed by one of our comrades in the thread, does not allow us to capture the issue in its totality. It also leaves out that although latin american countries generally do not have a nationalistic bourgeoisie as combative as, say, Osama Bin Laden or some russian capitalists, it is also not completely devoid of a certain degree of autonomy and interests that clash with those of imperial/external capital. An internal bourgeoisie, if we go by Poulantzian concepts.
I also think that telling our latin american comrades to shed the concept of westerness because a northern european would not consider a latin american western, while having interesting rethorical effect and shock value, is not as necessary as some comrades in the thread made it out to be. Rather, an european who reminds our latin american comrades that they are very much not western and “to be honest we don’t even consider the czechians western” is merely exercising once again the power to define who is or isn’t [ingroup] that is characteristic of whiteness and westerness. Again, possible rethorical effect but to me it does not seem to further our comprehension of material reality, merely recreating its mechanisms with inverted signifiers.
What would then be a more interesting way of looking into it?
I’m by no means an expert but I also wanted to end this effort post with a more propositional tone. So here is what I think to be more useful to us in a marxist forum.
It is true that Latin America has several cultural ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. romance languages, christianism); that it has institutional ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. a lot of state building in Brazil happened when the Portuguese king was in exile following defeat to Napoleon, to the point where some liberal scholars will consider ours a Portuguese-state-in-exile); and that it might as well share some customs (e.g. santa claus dresses in heavy red clothes while christmas is in summer goddamnit) or ideologies (with a seemingly unending propensity to import the latest fads in european economic science). On the other hand, a proper marxist understanding should stress that material conditions are central to the social phenomena observed. A shared cultural heritage (which exists and accounts for comrade’s @CatrachoPalestino considering Honduras western) does not supersede the class relations of indigenous displacement and genocide, black slavery, superexploitation, and having part of our surplus value directed to the central capitalist countries. It is those relations that should be seen as the defining features of our material reality rather that a cultural heritage - which does not exclude looking into how such cultural heritage might be utilized to very material effects.
Final notes: musical notes
I will not translate two song’s lyrics as of right now but I feel two songs are thematically relevant to our discussion which I will leave linked below because I like them. Mapping them out within western or non western musical traditions will be left as an exercise to the reader.
Some good responses in this thread, I think the point about “the west” being a synonym for “the imperial core” is good, and honduras is definitely not in the imperial core.
However I think another point is that “the west” doesn’t apply to even Spain, I mean not really. There is of course the racial component that someone touched on, where Italians, southern Europeans, are not considered white, but also in the development of our modern political landscape we’re not so concerned with Spain but more France and Britain, or maybe a triangle of western Germany, France and Britain. I believe Spain was in decline by like the 1600s? And so the main developments of modern liberal capitalism are occurring in France and Britain, and I think “the west” partly refers to these developments - this system perfected in the locus of France and Britain, and other important countries in that triangle, like Germany (esp western), and the Netherlands. Spain is peripheral, and is only “the west” because it’s not in the east. Spain, Portugal, Italy, all have important contributions to the development of capitalism (I think, I’m not super well-read on the history of capitalism), but really our modern political and economic landscape owes its existence to France and Britain. The US, as the successor of that system that they birthed, is similarly “the west.”
Of course there’s also a racial component to it - if Japan had picked this system up where Britain fell, would we still be referring to “the west?” Probably not - I mean geographically that makes no sense, I’m pretty sure Japan is closest to Britain going east from Britain - but also I think the US is trying to express some continuity with Protestant Northern Europe and portray themselves as the extension of such a cultural and ethnic tradition in America. But maybe there would be another term thought up because I do think an important part of “the west” is to refer not just to western Europe geographically or a racial/ethnic/religious continuity with mother Europe, but a certain political economic system that saw its triumph in France and Britain, and now the torch has been passed and it sees its highest development in the US.
just a thought
