La Segunda Implosión de Centroamérica

Abstract

Some three decades after the wars of revolution and counterinsurgency came to an end in Central America, the region is once again on the brink of implosion. The Isthmus has been gripped by renewed mass struggle and state repression, the cracking of fragile political systems, unprecedented corruption, drug violence, and the displacement and forced migration of millions of workers and peasants. The backdrop to this second implosion of Central America, reflecting the spiraling crisis of global capitalism itself, is the exhaustion of a new round of capitalist development in recent years to the drumbeat of globalization that took place in the wake of the 1980s upheavals. The transnational model of accumulation involved the introduction of new economic activities that integrated the region into transnational production and service chains, part of the capitalist globalization that has involved a vast expansion of mining operations, agribusiness, tourism, energy extraction and infrastructure mega-projects throughout Latin America to feed a voracious global economy and swell transnational corporate coffers. But the resumption of growth since the 1990s has been dependent on three factors that are now reaching their limits: a sharp rise in the inflow of transnational corporate investment, a steady increase in external debt, and remittances from Central Americans living abroad. Globalization and neo-liberalism has wreaked havoc on the working and popular classes, leaving them ill-equipped to survive the coming global economic downturn and local stagnation.