The struggle for the nationalization of natural resources

Latin American anti-imperialist movements

      In previous commentaries, I drew upon the classic work of Eduardo Galeano to describe the exploitation of natural resources in Latin American and the Caribbean (see “The Open Veins of Latin America, Part One: The forced exportation of gold, silver, sugar, coffee, and rubber,” June 8, 2021; and “The Open Veins of Latin America, Part Two: The forced exportation of coffee, bananas, petroleum, and minerals,” June 11, 2021).  I today return to Galeano to describe the efforts of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean to control their natural resources, which for the most part took the form of a struggle for the nationalization of foreign companies.

     During the twentieth century, the transnational petroleum companies exploited the petroleum of Latin America in an abusive form that did not recognize the right of Latin American governments to control their natural resources and to utilize them for the long-range economic and cultural development of the nation. The oil companie…