Contextualizing Hegemonies: Theoretical Framework

Figure 5. My visual interpretation of the previous quote from ‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent’ by Eduardo Galeano.


A straightforward connection between the assembly of the hegemonic models of power and the racist classification of global capitalism is reflected in all former colonial territories and their colonizers. As Eduardo Galeano states in his work ‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent’, Latin America’s underdevelopment history is an essential part of the development of world capitalism––meaning that the poverty of this cluster of colonized countries has always led to the prosperity of the West— in other words, our wealth has generated our poverty (2).



The travel that Spain’s catholic rulers financed and would unintentionally take Christopher Columbus to America, was intended to fulfil the desire for direct access to an abundance of resources (12). Europe was not looking for America, but it was looking for abundance, which it found. Even before colonization took over the Americas, we were doomed to exploitation. Capitalism in Europe started around the same time as the transatlantic colonial crossings–Spain and Portugal started stablishing colonies c. 1500 (Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia). It started as a system to widen colonialism and exploit the resources that were taken away from the Americas through slavery and pillaging of natural resources (Pater, 31-32).



The evidence of the use of western economic growth as an excuse for divesting and striping resources, politics, and indigenous life and culture from a globally less powerful country, can be clearly seen in Guatemala. Despite the independence of Guatemala in 1823, the country was far from stopping being an exploited colony. In this region, a white ‘elite’ built by oligarchs of Spanish, British, Scandinavian, and German origins ruled most of the land for centuries post-colonialism (Chapman, 54). This historical fact is still evident in the current distribution of wealth inside and outside of the country. Namely, 8 out of 10 people in rural municipalities in Guatemala live in poverty–where most of the indigenous peoples inhabit (Justo).



Western privilege and oppression did not limit themselves to originate from Europe–soon the United States of America joined the list of uncertainties for Central America. Among many precedents, one stands out as a clear example of hegemonic hierarchies:



Banana Republic (Henry, 132) is a term that described lands that were invaded and exploited by UFCO (United Fruit Company)–Guatemala was one of them. Founded in 1899, the American company maintained market dominance of Latin American territories through the control and hoarding of land which blocked indigenous people from their right to that same land. UFCO claimed ownership by inserting themselves into the Guatemalan political system (Chapman, 124). According to Schlesinger and Kinzer, UFCO infiltration got them absolute power over the telephone, telegram, the Atlantic harbour, and the monopoly of banana exportation (12). After many years of human and resource exploitation by the UFCO, Jacobo Árbenz was elected president in 1951 (Sabino 127). During his government, he decided to stand up against the monopoly and give back part of the land to the indigenous people of Guatemala. This act was used as an excuse to make the privately-owned company work with the US government to overthrow what they labelled a “communist threat” and start a rebellion (Pater 227). This led to decades of internal conflict and thousands of lives lost over the refusal of further monopolization and expansion of a US company.



Figure 6. United Fruit Company. “United Fruit Company (Chiquita)”. Antique stock certificate from the United Fruit Company dating back to the 1960's. Ghosts Of Wall Street, https://ghostsofwallstreet.com/products/united-fruit-company-chiquita
Figure 7. Chiquita. Easy Thanksgiving Pie with Chiquita Banana. 2020. Chiquita. https://www.chiquita.com/recipes/cake-desserts/easy-thanksgiving-pie-with-chiquita-banana/

Today, we can identify the UFCO as Chiquita–in the form of a sexualized smiling Latina woman with a fruit basket on her head (Pater, 224). Chiquita was allowed by global capitalism to use visual communication to persist and continue to market bananas as a wonderful breakfast food while covering their violent political coups (Pater, 228). Its rebranding and public relations have allowed it to continue as a contemporary healthy snack in a neoliberal economy (see fig. 7).


Guatemala, like many other cities in Central America, has been objected to processes part of a hegemonic and transnational agenda of neoliberalism and polyarchy (Robinson, 89). The imposition of a transnational agenda signalizes a transition to global capitalism­–which promotes a global culture of hyper-individualism, competition, and consumerism (Robinson, 93). Neoliberalism is a system that was put in place by economical elites around the world as a response to the threat of socialist alternatives, it proliferated throughout the world from the mid-1970’s onwards (Harvey, 9-15); naturally, it has redistributive effects and increases social inequality as a persistent feature. The neoliberal structure implementation in Latin America has resulted in an upward distribution of wealth shifted outwardly from the domestic to the global economy, thus resulting in a growth of inequalities under globalization (Robinson, 91).


The macro-structural nature of global capitalism has left indigenous cultural issues away from any belief in inclusion and representation. There are no grounds in capitalism for personal consideration, in other words, it is the negation of particularity (Rosales, 23). Under the capitalist neoliberal order in Guatemala, indigenous peoples are structurally restricted to act and are blamed for it. As a result, very few indigenous peoples are given the chance to question their position within an oppressive system that actively restrains them from any type of progress. They are confined to the role, assigned to them by colonialism and capitalism, of peasant workers for the globalization lords. A few individuals manage to overcome a devastating number of obstacles and are praised for escaping poverty–these cases are used as an excuse to perpetuate unequal privilege-based wealth distribution. Admittedly, in capitalism money means production, production means value, value means achievement and, achievement means self-worth. Moreover, “people who fail in the neoliberal achievement-society see themselves as responsible for their lot and feel shame instead of questioning society or the system.” (Han, 21). Hence, not only are indigenous people still suffering the social and representative consequences of colonialism but also are being crushed by the development of global capitalism and neoliberalism, among other factors.





Figure 8. Anonymous. “Core-Periphery Model.”. Nanopdf,January 16 2018, https://nanopdf.com/download/core-periphery-model_pdf#.


The structures of power that colonialism built for centuries have caused an array of complicated and intersectional issues worldwide, most significantly inside the lands that were invaded by colonial powers. Correspondingly, postcolonialism displays how the range of tools for oppression–provided by the colonial era–is extensive and persists to be exploited by those who continue to benefit from their use. Equally important, postcolonialism acknowledges that the end of colonialism as a political relationship did not end colonialism as a social relationship (Anastácio 2). From the perspective of the academic world, Professor Duncan Ivison suggests that postcolonialism should not be confused with the claim that the current state of the world is devoid of colonialism, in fact, new forms of domination, subordination and global empire arise with time (Postcolonialism).



To understand the groundwork of decolonisation efforts in contemporary circumstances, one needs to acknowledge that information technologies and systems have amplified the aftermath of colonialism through time. Peter Hulme has written his interpretation regarding the emancipation from colonized systems in the book Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate arguing that “Nothing in the word ‘postcolonial’ implies an achieved divorce from colonialism; rather, it implies the process of breaking free from colonialist ways of thinking’’ (386). In other words, Ivison and Hulme argue that postcolonialism naturally acknowledges that the need to emancipate from the contemporary dogmatic notions funded by colonialism is an evolving process.


As new technologies emerge and colonialism takes on new forms, we must turn our heads to one of the most powerful manmade networks on Earth. In a similar fashion to globalization and transnationalism, the internet brought its very own imposing language to the world. Undoubtedly, the internet has revolutionized communications at a global level. However, the leverage and benefits have been in favour of western countries and their private companies (Radu 79). Increasingly important, is the position of the United States, not only in the formulation of the internet as a network but also as a pioneer of digital colonization. Henceforth, it is significant to question how the internet governance model serves as a platform for the US to influence other nations.



It is worth noticing that the initial form of the internet was funded by the US Defence Department Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) and deployed with the help of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and various academic funds in Europe–it became commercially usable by the beginning of the 1990’s. Moreover, the world-wide-web was conceived in Switzerland by an English national. Thereafter, when faced with the consultation of a multilateral approach to internet governance, the US government imposed a national entity-based regulation (Radu 80). In the following years, it was proven that there are evident imbalances between who has more control over technology, more exactly the internet, and who has been assigned a passive position as a consumer with little to no autonomy. The imbalances of internet governance exist in the Global North; however, it is hardly comparable to the telecommunications inequality the periphery of the world experiences (Anástacio 5).



“Imperialism can be defined as the policy of extending a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and policy authority over other nations. The current Internet governance model fits well into this definition (…)” (Radu 86). Paradoxically, the internet has provided a bigger space for minorities, but it has reinforced inequalities and western worldviews. This paradox is a clear example of digital colonialism. Digital colonialism intends to mark the relationship between who or who is not relevant in the global society inside and outside of cyberspace (Anástacio 6). This machinery is exercised through centralized ownership and control over the digital ecosystem, which instead of conquering land, colonizes digital technology. Like geographical colonialism, digital colonialism allows western powers, more significantly the US, to plant infrastructure in the Global South that is engineered for their own needs, enabling cultural, economic, and capitalist domination (Kwet “Digital Colonialism: US Empire and the New Imperialism in the Global South.” 4-7). Despite the potential use as a tool that reduces barriers and promotes development, the internet has become one of the most powerful tools for neo-colonialism.



Digital infrastructure is dictated by three core pillars: software, hardware, and network connectivity. More significantly, software has a key influence on the behaviour, policies, and freedoms of people with access to digital technology. Overall, the Cyber West exerts digital domination by the means of centralization tools, which gives it control over communications–by way of code. Mechanisms like copyright, which protects the monopoly of content production in the name of intellectual property rights, further alienate the Global South from true digital representation (Kwet “Digital Colonialism: US Empire and the New Imperialism in the Global South.” 8-12).



From a postcolonial perspective on cyberspace, we must criticize the western rational culture that reproduces the colonial relationship between giver and receiver (Anástacio, 3). The internet is based on a giver-receiver model in which the receiver pays. Analogous to this, is how the international connections dynamic benefits by penalizing Global South countries for accessing more content than the one they produce. Consequently, the Global South will receive less information than the Global North simply because the North has more money to spend. Moreover, the internet works in favour of a neoliberal agenda by allowing certain aspects of the internet to be governed by the private sector in which less developed countries hardly get fair acknowledgement (Radu, 85).



Through global capitalism criticism, we must recognize how influential is neoliberal communication. According to Byung-Chul Han, the careful administration of bodies and management of lives through neoliberalism facilitates disciplinary power–which is a type of normative power that subjects a set of rules, commandments, and prohibitions and eradicates anomalies (42). Disciplinary power extends to disciplinary technology which subsequently reaches the mental sphere outside of the physical realm (42), transporting the norms encouraged by the digital realm to the physical dimension. This technology augments the influence of hyper-individualism, one of neoliberalism’s key features–which ultimately isolates us from our communal surroundings and instead locks us up in a private sphere sculpted by the western eye. Concurrently, the freedom offered by the internet and the digital world has become an exploitative neoliberal device that converts our behaviour into numbers, and those numbers into strategies for profit (21-25).