Canadian capital and secondary imperialism in Latin America

Abstract

The last several years have witnessed a renewal of critical scholarship which understands Canada as a secondary imperialist power. While conceptualizations of Canada as a dependency of the United States have lost intellectual ground in the Canadian political economy literature, the rejection of the notion that Canada is imperialist has more recently drawn on the transnationalization thesis found in, inter alia, Robinson and Sklair. This article refutes these central premises. It argues, first, that Canadian capital can be measured as "Canadian". In turn, because there is a Canadian capitalist class we need to theorize its relationship with the Canadian state. Second, this Canadian capitalist class pursues its interests abroad, with the support of the Canadian state, as a secondary imperialist power within the hierarchical world system. Third, expansion of identifiably Canadian capital abroad is exemplified in Canadian investment trends in mining and finance in Latin America in recent decades.

Mining, Colonial Legacies, and Neoliberalism: A Political Ecology of Health Knowledge Minerıa, legados coloniales y neoliberalismo: una ecologıa polıtica del conocimiento en salud

“… 38 , 39 Numerous such stories across the global South suggest that large-scale mining in resource-rich countries overwhelmingly accomplishes wealth creation for Northern corporate interests and their allies, representing an extension of colonial power relations and resource flows, with recent Chinese investments displaying similar tendencies. 32 , 37 , 40 The neocolonial character of resource-led development is particularly well described by global South scholars and communities: how mineral and metal supply chains tend to concentrate high-value processing and manufacturing, and the overwhelming share of profits, in the global North; how “transfer pricing” and other illicit financial flows allow corporations to evade taxation and transfer wealth North-ward; how large-scale mining takes Southern countries’ energy and water resources and leaves behind environmental contamination; how resistance to mining is frequently criminalized and violently repressed; and how global South sovereignty is curtailed via conditional loans and manipulation by global North interests seeking to ensure unfettered access to resources. 4 , 29 , 41 , 42 …”

Dis-origined Materials: The Role and Invisibilization of Extraction in Technoscience

“…International and national law have been used to support violent efforts by corporations to operate mines in South America, often against the will of local communities (e.g. Gordon and Webber 2018;Moore and Perez-Rocha 2019;Cervantes and Zalik 2018). Resource-intensive practices in Canada like wealthy settler lifestyles and militarist research are enabled by these extractive practices.…”

The Politics of Disaster Risk Governance and Neo-Extractivism in Latin America

“…It is worth mentioning some case studies among the largest investments in Latin America, whose activities account for a systematic disaster risk creation by accelerating environmental change, creating new hazards and exposure settings, and thus making the populations more vulnerable: Canadian megamining scattered throughout Peru, Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras has resulted in severe territorial conflicts due to the consequences of ecological predation and human rights violations by this 'imperialist' investor (Gordon & Webber, 2019). Oil extraction in Ecuador has shown its destructive power, transforming indigenous territory into a kind of 'rainforest Chernobyl' (Cepek, 2012, p. 395).…”