First Published: The Call, Vol. 7, No. 14, April 10, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
For more than 100 years, Latin America has been considered the “backyard” of U.S. imperialism.
But in the past decade, this legacy left over from the Monroe Doctrine has begun to crumble. For the first time, U.S. imperialism is facing a serious contender in its colonial domination in the region–the USSR.
Facing the revolutionary movement of the masses on one side, the U.S. is being pushed out the front gate, while the Soviet Union with its “socialist” trappings is trying to sneak through the back door.
Whereas in Africa social-imperialism is using direct armed intervention, in its bid for control in Latin America, the USSR is pursuing more “covert” methods of penetration.
This can be seen especially in the Plata River Basin, which includes, totally or partially, the countries of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia. The Soviet Union has its eyes on the region for both military and economic reasons. <5>BASE IN S. ATLANTIC
First of all, in the event of a war to redivide the world, the USSR seeks to establish another base of operations in the South Atlantic. With some 12 bases in Antarctica, bases in Cuba in the Caribbean, and in Angola on the eastern shore, another base in the Plata River Basin countries of South America would set the stage for complete Soviet control of the South Atlantic. This would enable the USSR to cut off this potential supply route for raw materials to the U.S. and Europe in wartime. It would also mean control of key waterways at the tip of South America, such as the Strait of Magellan and the Drake Passage.
Possible bases that the Soviets may be contemplating are the Plata River estuary in Uruguay, which is large and deep enough to hold fleets and submarines of war; or the Santos superport in Brazil, now under construction. This port is connected by railroad to five countries.
Second, the area holds a fat booty for the imperialist wolves. The Plata River Basin is fifth in the world in hydroelectric potential; its subsidiaries run straight from the heart of the continent, where the region’s richest natural resources are found.
El Muntun, Bolivia, for example, contains the world’s largest deposits of iron ore and other raw materials, which are used for steel production and are key to gearing up for war. El Muntun is the focus of superpower contention in the area.
What’s more, the Plata River Basin is a highly productive grainery, second only to the great plains of the U.S. The new czars are particularly interested in this because their “guns, not butter” economic policies have led to severe food shortages in the Soviet Union.
And finally, the Plata River Basin contains many large cities–Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Asuncion, La Paz–which offer extensive industry and an unlimited source of cheap labor.
These, then, are the stakes; and the fight is a fight to the death.
<5>SUPERPOWERS CONTENDAt present, the U.S. is still dominant in Latin America economically, politically and militarily. But with the rise of the third world struggle against U.S. hegemony, the U.S. has lost ground and finds itself on the defensive. The Soviet Union is now doing its utmost to step into the shoes of its rival.
The first steps are to make the Plata River Basin countries dependent on the USSR for loans, technology, spare parts and “expertise,” thus sucking them into the Soviet sphere of influence. Key to this maneuver is winning the comprador bourgeoisie to the side of social-imperialism.
These efforts have paid off. Of all developed countries, the USSR has stepped up its trade with Latin America the fastest. Not counting Cuba, three Plata River Basin countries– Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia–are first, second and fifth in terms of Latin American trade with the USSR.
<5>USSR-ARGENTINE TRADEArgentina is in first place in Latin America with respect to importing Russian-made machinery and equipment. Following a 1973 Soviet diplomatic offensive in Argentina, a Russo-Argentine Economic Agreement was drawn up, stipulating: 1) the sale of 90,000 tons of meat to the USSR over the next three years; 2) sale to the USSR of 1 and a half million hectoliters of wine; 3) a Soviet loan of $600 million for the purchase of Russian-made hydroelectric equipment. It also included an airlines exchange and numerous “cultural” agreements.
This economic pact, recently ratified by the Videla dictatorship, is likely to turn Argentina into one of the main customers for Soviet machinery in the world. In the year 1975-76, the USSR did even more business with the Argentine bourgeoisie than the U.S. did. The financial sector of the Argentine comprador bourgeoisie has systematically strengthened Soviet penetration into the key areas of production–such as meat, steel, aluminum, paper, communications, sugar and leather.
To the north of Argentina, the Soviet Union has sunk $59 million into the Salto Grande, the largest of 14 dams which will form a hydroelectric network on the Uruguay and Parana Rivers. In fact, the USSR is the main supplier of energy equipment in the Salto Grande dam, located in Uruguay.
The hydroelectric project, mainly financed by the World Bank, will provide electrical energy for all Basin and southern cone countries. The estimated final cost of the project runs into the billions.
Right now, the Soviets have the contracts to build four dams, including the Salto Grande, and are bidding heavily for the contracts on three more.
In order to “stabilize” the economic climate for their investments and destabilize it for their Yankee rivals, the Soviets have made use of their fifth column within all third world countries –the revisionist “communist” parties. Key in this strategy is Cuba, now so firmly in its clutches that the USSR is building a nuclear submarine base at Cienfuegos on the island, according to the March 27 issue of the British Daily Telegraph.
Cuba is the Trojan horse of revisionism in Latin America. There, agents are trained to faithfully carry out the dictates of Soviet policy on the continent, taught to infiltrate, spy on, divert or destroy revolutionary and popular movements which could threaten Soviet control. In 1975, Fidel Castro called together a meeting of all revisionist Latin American parties in Havana, Cuba, to consolidate policy and assert Cuban “leadership” of the revisionist movement.
<5>URUGUAYAN REVISIONISTSSoviet penetration through their fifth column is often very strong at the mass level. In Uruguay, for example, at the beginning of this decade, the revisionist party had some 44,000 members. It controlled the CNT, the only trade union federation, to which the majority of the workers belonged. The revisionists also had great influence in the armed forces, a result of genuine communist organizing there decades ago under the direction of the Communist International.
But the revisionist fifth column and their colonialist masters in the USSR will surely come up against the resistance of the third world countries, including in the Plata River Basin of Latin America.
Already third world economic fronts like the Latin American Economic System (SELA) and numerous raw material blocs in Latin America have challenged the rule of both superpowers on the continent. A recent example of this resistance was the fight, successfully waged, for a 200-mile maritime economic zone to protect fish and other resources off the coast.
Internally, Marxist-Leninist organizations throughout Latin America are exposing the danger of the Soviet Union and, at the same time, waging sharp struggle against the older imperialist enemy. “To win independence,” states the Revolutionary Communist Party of Uruguay, “means in our case to struggle against Yankee imperialism and to keep out Soviet imperialism. It means preventing a change of masters, as has happened so many times in the past.”
Increasingly hostile to U.S. imperialism, the Plata River Basin countries will surely resist imperialism with a “socialist” disguise as well.