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.
this is just cope
It’s not on them, they lose nothing from it, because they own all the wealth and all the capital
It’s like me walking into a KKK meeting with your mindset and what happens? I’d just get lynched, but hey, their loss that’s on them (not really)
The better question is why are so many Latin Americans, as well as a certain class of obfuscating-or-completely-ignorant actual Westerners (On this forum it’s mostly the latter, on reddit and other areas it’ll be the former) obsessed with the idea of Latin America being considered Western? It’s because 1) honestly speaking, a ton of Latinos are self-hating/love the “ego boost” from being considered part of a powerful class and 2) actual white westerners love virtue signalling their support to Latinos because the fake camaraderie costs them nothing, and they would love to have Latin America turn into an antipodal version of Korea/Japan/Saudi Arabia covered with US/French/British military bases and funneling even more resources into the ACTUAL West.
My point is that just because someone in the imperial core doesn’t think someone from Latin America is Western doesn’t change the fact that many of them are (excluding people who have kept to indigenous traditions, and say for instance some non-European immigrants). My point is simply that they’re wrong. It’s their error.
And by your logic Angola, Kenya, the Philippines, huge swathes of India etc are also Western. Pretty much the whole world uses Western technology, speaks some degree of English, wears Blue Jeans, and listens to the Backstreet Boys or whomever.
The only reason people bring up Latinos being western, is because the definition of Western is inherently racial, everyone knows this intuitively including every single person debating it–that’s why they even brought it up in the first place.
And Latinos are obviously only partially European racially, and they don’t look similar enough to pass in Northern Europe which is where the imperial core is. So when people say “the western world” they are almost never thinking about Latin America, unless they themselves are Latin American and want to feel included under this exclusive label.
So since Western is just a racial dogwhistle, AKA a polite way of saying “White” that doesn’t sound as racist to the POCs ears, and since Latinos are basically only half white (from a darker than average white country like Spain), that means that Latinos are not Western in any way that matters. Are they west–ish? Sure.
I don’t know what kind of preposterous definition of “Western” you’re hoping to catch me on, but I’m not interested in playing it. Just because a country was once a colony of the UK is not by itself a sufficient reason to call its indigenous population Western.
Isn’t that literally what you just did lol
If you say so. You’re right though, that this is all a fool’s errand anyway, because most people both within the imperial core and the periphery are creating their competing definitions of “Western” for the purposes of differentiating the in group from the out group.
Finally.
The only addendum I’d make is that Latin America doesn’t benefit from including itself in this ingroup. As long as the (actual) West controls all the wealth and resources, vicarious ethnic identification with them only gives them more power, and gives Latinos a false sense of safety about their intrusive institutions, like the plan to eventually dot Latin America with their military bases (there are currently very few of these) and in a worst case scenario literal recolonization of Latin America
https://i.postimg.cc/1zSqXxFr/Screenshot-2023-12-21-at-01-28-27-Western-world-Wikipedia.png
Oh I agree. I still insist that a hot dog is objectively a taco, though.