Resistiendo al imperio. Autonomía, autonomismo y movimiento sociales latinoamericanos

Abstract

Focusing on contemporary autonomous social movements in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia, this article attempts to evaluate critically the concepts of empire, imperialism, and resistance to better understand the challenges facing social and political forces that organize opposition and propose alternatives to U.S. neo-imperialism and global capitalism in Latin America. After a discussion of the core concepts of autonomy and social movement examines the controversial concepts of “empire”, “multitude”, “biopolitics” and “commons” in Negri and Hardt and Negri and Coco and the counterarguments in support of the concepts related to imperialism, working class, frontism, socialism and national sovereignty of its critics like Boron, Katz and Callinicos. The article then considers the various forms of autonomous resistance in Latin America, both against the neo-liberal “Washington Consensus” and against the neoliberalism of the “progressive” countries of the Mercosur. A debate on whether the national state in Latin America still has a role in resistance against the expansion plans of the “empire”, a question that cannot be avoided in a continent where “left nationalism” remains the main leftist ideology, despite the Zapatistas in Mexico, the independent left of the piqueteros in Argentina, the movement of landless peasants in Brazil, and autonomous indigenous movements throughout the continent.