Brazilian agribusiness鈥檚 fervour for Soybean cultivation has manifested itself domestically as much, if not more so, than externally, with deforestation accelerating as plantations abound with similar velocity in both the Brazilian Amazon and the Paraguayan Chaco. The domestic intensification of Soybean cultivation can, in large part, be attributed to growing demand from China, the world鈥檚 primary soybean consumer (Song et al, 2009). China is the largest market for both Paraguayan and Brazilian soy, with both nations essentially relying on continued Chinese imports to balance their trade deficits (Giraudo, 2020). Accordingly, the impact of Chinese demand on Brazilian agriculture, and on other resource sectors across the region (Ganchev, 2020; Oviedo, 2015), replicates many of the dynamics previously mentioned with regards to Brazilian 鈥楽ubimperialism鈥� in Paraguay.

As soybeans are typically exported with minimal processing, and monocrop agriculture generates comparatively little employment (Giraudo, 2020), few of the benefits of the soybean supply-chain are appropriated within Brazil. Meanwhile, cheap Brazilian soybeans indirectly support the Chinese labour system by lowering the price of staple foods, especially pork, allowing Chinese manufacturers to keep wages low, thereby maintaining the competitiveness of Chinese exports (Wise & Veltmeyer, 2018). With Chinese demand likely to remain high, it seems inconceivable that either the Brazilian or the Paraguayan economies will wean themselves off of soy and will instead remain conditioned by, and dependent on, the whims of the Chinese industrial system

Furthermore, this integration of soybeans into the Chinese industrial economy exacerbates the existing China-Brazil trade imbalance. 98.4% of Chinese exports to Brazil are manufactures, whilst the majority of Brazilian exports to China are primary-resources, with soybeans representing the single most valuable export-commodity (Jenkins, 2012). Low-price Brazilian commodities thereby fuel an industrial system which exports value-added goods back to Brazil, creating a trade-deficit which entrenches the nation鈥檚 dependence on the industrialised core, reproducing the fundamental dynamics observed by dependency theorists in the mid-twentieth century (Frank; 1966; Prebisch, 1962).

Frank (1966) described South American nations as 鈥榮atellites鈥� of western industry given their primary economic function as sites of resource extraction for industrial demand. For Frank (1966), 鈥榮atellization鈥� is not merely a status, but an ongoing process in which the economic primacy afforded to resource-extraction in peripheral economies effects the stagnation of domestic industrial-development, further entrenching dependence on the industrial core (Alschuler, 1976). From 1999-2009, as Chinese demand for soy exploded, Brazil鈥檚 exports of primary goods grew by 525% whilst the production of manufactured goods slowed, increasing the relative imbalance between the two sectors (Cooney, 2016). The growing dependence of the Brazilian economy on the export of raw materials, among which soy is a key factor, has left the country ever more vulnerable to fluctuations in international demand, whilst its underdeveloped manufacturing sector has been further weakened by the increased flow of capital into extractivist enterprises (Prebisch, 1962). Accordingly, Giraudo (2020: 60) claims that Brazilian trade with China 鈥渞eproduces core-periphery dynamics identified by dependency theory scholars鈥�. It is clear then that this relation has fundamentally eroded Brazil鈥檚 autonomy, given that the largest national economy in Latin America is now significantly 鈥榗onditioned鈥� by Chinese demand, at least with regards to agriculture and other extractive industries.

This dependence has ossified further as a result of Chinese investment in infrastructural developments which facilitate agricultural extractivism, such as highways into the Amazon which open up novel agricultural frontiers and new port facilities which expedite the export of soybeans (Mckay et al, 2016). Whilst Chinese infrastructural loans often feature below-market interest rates and flexible repayment schedules, their apparent benignity belies the manner in which they materially entrench extractivist economies and thereby constrain Brazil鈥檚 鈥渃apacity to autonomously determine its development path鈥� (Giraudo, 2020: 61). A highway into the Amazon, for instance, locks in extractivist agriculture as the region鈥檚 principal growth sector by creating a literal avenue for capital accumulation which, given consistent Chinese demand for Brazilian soybeans, provides much more secure and lucrative returns on investment than financing of Brazil鈥檚 underdeveloped industrial sector. The construction of an extractivist infrastructural network marks, therefore, not merely the latest step in the continuous capitalist colonization of underexploited peripheries which has characterised Latin America since the late 15^th century, but the material entrenchment of this dynamic, that is, the striation of the national space for the purpose of capital accumulation. Given the reality of Brazilian dependence, a highway into the Amazon becomes an outlet for the dispersion of Chinese, and additionally European and North American, imperial power, allowing for the reshaping and disassembling of Brazilian ecology in accordance with the demands of global industry. Chinese-funded infrastructure in Brazil, in so far as it facilitates extractive economies, can be understood as the material inscription of extractivism into the Brazilian landscape, forging chains of dependency that the nation is unlikely to break. From a global perspective, we may therefore view Brazilian national autonomy as illusory given that the shape of the Brazilian economy is ultimately determined by the demands of Chinese industry, among others, rather than the autonomous direction of the Brazilian state.

Ecological Dependence

The previous discussion conjures an image of a hierarchical chain of dependence which runs from China to Brazil and on to Paraguay, with autonomy diminishing and dependency intensifying as one descends its interlocking links. When examining these relations between states it is analytically unhelpful, however, to neglect the manner in which dependence functions within states. As Frank (1971: 34) explains, dependency 鈥渞uns through the entire world capitalist system in a chain-like fashion from its uppermost metropolitan world centre, through each of the various national, regional, local and enterprise centres鈥�. As this quote suggests, at its core, dependency is not defined by international relations, but by the flows of commodities and resources which exist both within and beyond the nation-state. In this regard we should not necessarily understand the interrelation between Paraguay, Brazil, and China as a hierarchy of dependency, but as the aggregate of multiple and overlapping ties of dependence which cumulatively interweave the productivity of Paraguayan soils with the output of Chinese manufacturing. It is precisely this integration of extractive industries into global supply chains which, Arboleda (2020: 15) claims, 鈥測ields a new territoriality of extraction whose immanent content cannot be fully elucidated by the loci classici of state-centric concepts of political economy鈥�. This is to say that the structure and function of the mine or the plantation, and their integration in international industrial supply chains, are incomprehensible from a purely national viewpoint, given that these structures prove subversive to the nation state on both a material and analytical level.

The proliferation of soy plantations across the Latin American landscape provides an example of this dynamic. In the Paraguayan context, Soy has been described as 鈥渟imultaneously a product and engine of the neoliberalization of nature鈥� (Correia, 2019: 319) given the manner in which soybean monoculture enacts a capitalist reterritorialization of Paraguayan ecology by entirely reengineering the nation鈥檚 resources to service the demands of capital. The ongoing transformation of the Paraguayan Chaco into cropland, for instance, represents the conversion of an organic, complex, and uncommodifiable environment into one which is dominated by neat rows of soybeans, genetically modified to grow in a rational and easily commodifiable fashion, in other words, the striation of a non-capitalist environment for the purposes of capital accumulation (Altieri & Pengue, 2005; Deleuze & Guattari, 2005). In the case of soy this ecological reterritorialization assumes even a cellular dimension, given the transgenic nature of soybeans genetically modified to better suit market requirements and the rhythms and techniques of industrialized agriculture (Cooney, 2016). Hence from the cellular organization of its crops to the distribution of its arable land, Paraguay and its ecology have been fundamentally remade in accordance with the designs of global industrial capital.

In this sense, land which is colonized by soy is no longer Paraguayan, Brazilian, or even Chinese, but rather belongs to 鈥渁 single, unified 鈥橲oybean Republic鈥欌�� governed by the demands of extractive capital rather than states (Turzi, 2011: 59). As 鈥楴ature-Exporting Societies鈥� (Coronil, 1997), forever dependent on resource rents to finance basic state functions, states such as Paraguay are thereby dissolved as sovereign units into an undefined reservoir of natural resource wealth from whence the global industrial system draws required inputs. Hence the ecological reality of peripheral regions is more so dictated by the direction of, say, Chinese manufacturing than it is the prerogative of national governments. To repurpose dos Santos鈥� (1970) definition of dependence, given the centrality of resource extraction in contemporary South American economies, we might well say that 鈥榙ependence is a situation in which the ecology of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of an economy to which the former is subjected鈥�. Hence dependence can be tracked through the creep of soy plantations into untouched ecologies, reasserting 鈥渢echnological mastery over nature鈥� (Tilley, 2020: 70) and the subjugation of South American ecology to the industrialised core (Alimonda, 2020).

If we accept such a definition of dependence as an economic conditioning of ecology, then its impacts are observable even within China, the supposed head of our hierarchical chain, where the state is currently endeavouring to massively boost soybean production in Heilongjiang Province (Wang, 2022), creating an effective chain of dependency between this peripheral rural province and the coastal cities where the beans will be processed and consumed. The degree to which Heilongjiang鈥檚 ecologies will be transformed, its smallholders dispossessed, and its economy adjusted toward an agricultural export model will ultimately be dictated less by any local authority than by the requirements of the greater Chinese industrial system, based primarily in the country鈥檚 coastal metropolises. Seeing as similar relations can be observed within Brazil or Paraguay, there is no apparent reason why our analysis should privilege relations of dependence between nations over those that exist within national units. To merely examine the relation of dependency between Shenzhen and Amazonas without analysing that which exists between Amazonas and Sao Paulo, or even Sao Paulo and the Paraguayan Chaco, is to obscure the interlock of sub and transnational ties of ecological dependence which are ignored in nation-state centric analyses.

The question of dependency, therefore, is not merely one of how industrial nations relate to extractivist economies, but of which ecologies are inducted into techno-capital鈥檚 standing reserve鈥� (Heidegger, 1954). Dependency advances not from to country by country, but with the progressive transformation of the Earth鈥檚 surface (and its subsurface) into a standing reserve of potential value (Tilley, 2020), as national borders are subsumed into the frontiers of the 鈥楶lanetary Mine/Plantation鈥� (Arboleda, 2020). In this context 鈥渢here is a growing tendency for States to act as facilitators of global capital鈥� (Neiman & Blanco, 2020: 541), abetting its march into hitherto undercapitalised environments, thereby signalling an existential surrender of state autonomy to the whims of capital.

Dependence may not, therefore, necessarily cohere to national borders, a fact that contemporary analyses should acknowledge, rather dependence is produced organically through the myriad connections between nodes of autonomy (industrial or metropolitan centres) and capitalist frontiers which exist both within and between nation-states. This understanding highlights both a decline in state-sovereignty and the ineffectiveness of state-centred analytic methods. The use of the nation-state as an analytic unit obscures the internal tensions inherent to any capitalist economy (Cueva, 2007). As Ebenau (2015: 108) explains 鈥渢here is no such thing as a genuine 鈥榥ational interest鈥�, but rather a conflictual relationship between classes, to which the state apparatuses are constitutively connected鈥�. This class-centred critique is well-suited to an industry in which smallholders are systematically dispossessed for the material benefit of agribusiness executives who are nevertheless often unified under the same nationality. Yet Ebanau鈥檚 (2015) logic may also be repurposed for the ecological critique offered above to suggest that an exploitative extractivist relationship between rural-peripheral and industrialised-metropolitan regions within the same polity renders the nation-state methodologically inappropriate as an analytical-unit for those interested in dependence in the contemporary global economy.

To conclude

It is imprudent and imprecise, therefore, for a researcher to question whether a certain nation is dependent on another, or to what extent it is able to wield national autonomy, without examining the interrelations of autonomy and dependence which exist within national units whilst charting their coherence to an extractivist regime of ecological reterritorialization. Whilst the dependency of different nations may be compared on a relative basis, as this blog does with Paraguay, Brazil, and China, such an analysis can only result in a hierarchical ranking of nations from most dependent to most autonomous. In this framework, it is arguable that South American states may achieve limited autonomy through 鈥楽ubimperialist鈥� expansion, but this autonomy is directly proportional to dependency elsewhere in the region, as with Brazil and Paraguay. Meanwhile the fact that South American economies as a whole are conditioned by the demands of foreign capital compromises national autonomy by producing an overarching economic dependence, as is the case between Brazil and China. Such analysis is not without merit, as it demonstrates how governments and national bourgeoisies function as loci of autonomy within a broader network of dependence. However, the precise contours of the dependency network are impossible to outline through a state-centred methodological approach alone given the myriad dependent relations which exist between and within nation states. Instead, I claim, an ecological accounting of the demands that industrial capital places on the natural world provides a more accurate depiction of the exact function of dependency which, at its core, is conditional on the extraction of primary resources. That is to say that one might achieve a better understanding of dependence in South America by tracking the expansion of the 鈥済reen ocean of soybeans鈥� (Turzi, 2011: 66) across its landscape than by calculating the exact proportions of the China-Brazil trade deficit, as the former is a direct manifestation of dependency鈥檚 ecological underpinning, that is the capitalist reterritorialization of the natural world. In other words, the fundamental dependent relationship is that which subordinates nature to the accumulation of capital through the proliferation of extractivist structures, of which plantations serve as a quintessential example.

Bibliography

Alimonda, H. (2020). The Coloniality of Nature: An Approach to Latin American Political Ecology 2. Alternautas鈥揤ol. 6鈥揑ssue 1鈥揓uly 2019, 102.

Alschuler, L. R. (1976). Satellization and Stagnation in Latin America. International Studies Quarterly, 20(1), 39-82.

Altieri, M. A. & Pengue, W. A. (2005). Roundup Ready Soybean in Latin America: A Machine of Hunger, Deforestation and Socio-Ecological Devastation. RAP-AL Uruguay. . net/~rapaluy1/transgenicos/Prensa/Roundupready.html

Cooney, P. (2016) 鈥楻eprimarization: Implications for the Environment and Development in Latin America: The Cases of Argentina and Brazil鈥�. Review of Radical Political Economics, 48:4, 553-61.

Coronil, F. (1997). The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. University of Chicago Press.

Correia, J. E. (2019) Soy States: Resource Politics, Violent Environments and Soybean Territorialization in Paraguay, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46:2, 316-336, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2017.1384726

Cueva, A. (2007). El an谩lisis posmarxista del Estado Latinoamericano. Cuadernos del Pensamiento cr铆tico latinoamericano, (2).

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Dos Santos, T. (1970). The Structure of Dependence. The American Economic Review, 60(2), 231-236.

Frank, A. G. (1971) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. London: Penguin

Frank, A. G. (1966). The Development of Underdevelopment. New York.

Ganchev, I. (2020). China Pushed the Pink Tide and the Pink Tide Pulled China: Intertwining Economic Interests and Ideology in Ecuador and Bolivia (2005鈥�2014). World Affairs, 183(4), 359-388.

Heidegger, M. (1954). The Question Concerning Technology. Technology and values: Essential Readings, 99, 3-35.

M. McKay, B., Alonso-Fradejas, A., Brent, Z. W., Sauer, S., & Xu, Y. (2016). China and Latin America: Towards a New Consensus of Resource Control?. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 1(5), 592-611.

Neiman, M. and M. Blanco (2020) 鈥楤eyond the Pampas: Global Capital and Uneven Development in Argentine Soybean Expansion鈥�. Journal of Agrarian Change, 20:4, 538-61.

Oviedo, E. D. (2015). Argentina and China: An Analysis of the Actors in the Soybean Trade and the Migratory Flow. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 20(3), 243-266.

Prebisch, R. (1962). The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems. Economic Bulletin for Latin America.

Song, B., Marchant, M. A., Reed, M. R., & Xu, S. (2009). Competitive Analysis and Market Power of China鈥檚 Soybean Import Market. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 12(1030-2016-82749), 21-42.

Turzi, M. (2011). The Soybean Republic. Yale J. International Affairs., 6, 59-68.

Wang, O. (2022). China鈥檚 Top Soy Region Vows More Output as Food Security Worries Take Root. Retrieved 21 May 2022, from

George Shepherd is a politics PhD student at the University of York currently researching lithium extraction in Latin America in an attempt to understand the ecological implications of a 鈥榞reen鈥� energy transition predicated on intensified resource extraction in the periphery. He tweets at .

Photo: .

Though its influence may have waned in recent decades, dependency theory remains an indispensable prism through which to regard the bifurcated, or polarized, development of national economies within the capitalist world-system. This framework, in which the persistence of uneven development is attributable to the interrelation between the industrialised core and the underdeveloped periphery, admits both the geographic and historical scope to adequately tackle the hard problems of political economy and to accurately trace the chains of dependency which inhibit peripheral economies. Through two blog posts, I wish to explore how dependency theory can help us understand various ecologies of dependence in Latin America, including Brazilian agribusiness in Paraguayan soy (this blog post) and the role Chinese industrial demand plays in constraining Brazilian subimperial autonomy in soy cultivation (in the second blog post). In this post, the colonization of Paraguayan soy cultivation by Brazilian agribusiness is used to demonstrate that Sub-imperialist powers can achieve relative autonomy within the periphery by making dependent weaker states in their vicinity.

From dependent nations to peripheral ecologies

A fundamental concern of dependency theory is the extent to which peripheral states are masters of their own economic destiny, or how concretely they are able to wield autonomy within the global capitalist system. Dos Santos (1970: 231) has provided perhaps the most commonly cited definition of dependence within the dependency theory cannon, describing the situation as one 鈥渋n which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subjected鈥� (Dos Santos, 1970: 231). In short, one could somewhat accurately characterize dependency theory as a framework of relative autonomy, with the capacity for economic self-determination among peripheral economies actively curtailed by their subordinate relation to those of the industrialised core. Importantly, autonomy, in this understanding, is not merely relative but conditional, with the autonomy of core economies the direct product of peripheral dependency. In this understanding, the uneven development of core and peripheral nations can be attributed, in part, to the making dependent of the latter by the former, and the resultant loss of autonomy among the latter cohort.

Yet, as revealing as this framework is of the hierarchical ordering of national economies, by emphasizing the contrast between the national economies of the core and periphery, the nation-state centred analysis of some traditional dependency theorists (Prebisch,1962; Dos Santos, 1970; Cardoso & Faletto, 2021) potentially obscures the oppositional modalities which propagate on a national and subnational level. In other words, the relative interplay of autonomy and dependence on a global scale is somewhat obfuscated by an analytic approach which treats nation states as coherent units and which promulgates a simplistic division between core and peripheral nations, or those of the North and South, without acknowledging the myriad cores and peripheries which transcend and subvert strict national boundaries. That is to say that cores and peripheries exist both within and between so-called core and peripheral nations, with relations of autonomy and dependence thereby manifesting on both a subnational and international scale.

In the interest of better mapping the aforementioned dynamic, this two-part blog post encourages an ecological understanding of dependency in which the relative dependence, of a nation, region, or resource, is indexed not to the respective trade deficits, industrial capacities, or consumptive habits of core and peripheral states, but to the specific demands imposed on the natural world by transnational industrialised capital. Put differently, we might better comprehend the dimensions of dependence by analysing the subordination of peripheral ecologies (which might exist outside of, within, or even between core and peripheral nation states) to the enterprise of capital accumulation rather than by simply regarding, say, the subordination of various groups and structures within the Brazilian economy to Chinese industrial demand. Doing so frees us from the analytic rigidity of a nation-state focused approach and allows analysts to understand autonomy and dependence in a globalised context in which ecological concerns dominate both public and academic discourses. To illustrate this point, this post explores the relative autonomy and dependence of Latin American states, the traditional muse of dependency theory, from three sequential analytic standpoints, using the soybean supply chain as a prism through which to understand the working of dependency in the contemporary setting.  

Paraguay, Brazil, and the Colonization of Soy

Since the turn of the millennium, rising Chinese demand has stimulated a massive growth of the hectarage dedicated to soybeans across Latin America (North & Grinspun, 2016). This trend is indicative of the wider phenomena of 鈥楻eprimitization鈥�, or the marked expansion of sectors such as mining and agriculture which depend primarily on the extraction and export of primary resources (Cooney, 2016). Soy鈥檚 integration into international supply-chains renders it a useful prism through which to examine relations of dependency between national economic units. If, as this blog post suggests, dependence manifests as a complex interlock of border crossing extraction and exploitation, then the Soy supply chain serves as a distinct vein which runs through its myriad and overlapping strata, allowing for a more complete and more coherent viewing of its otherwise labyrinthine structure. Accordingly, the initial argument presented herein concerns the manner in which the colonisation of Paraguayan agriculture by Brazilian agribusinesses demonstrates the intra-continental function of dependence and autonomy.

In recent decades, Brazilian agribusinesses have expanded their search for territories of capital accumulation in their undercapitalized periphery (Luxemburg, 2015), with annual Brazilian outward investments in Latin America growing by $6 billion from 2004-2010 alone (Misoczky & Imasato, 2014). Even prior to this latest wave of agricultural colonization, Marini (1977: 208) influentially described Brazil as a 鈥楽ubimperialist鈥� power, able to exercise autonomy internationally through the pursuit of 鈥渁 relatively autonomous expansionist policy鈥�. Essentially, 鈥楽ubimperialist鈥� nations such as Brazil are able to exert influence over weaker states in their periphery and thereby achieve a greater degree of autonomy on an international scale as a condition of the intensified dependence of these peripheral states. Crucially, Marini (1977) argued that this development does not free Brazil from structural dependency on the industrialised core, but that Brazil鈥檚 role as regional hegemon grants it limited autonomy relative to those peripheral states coerced into a condition of dependence vis-脿-vis Brazilian capitalism.

This expansion of Brazilian 鈥楽ubimperialism鈥� has received significant state support under both leftist and conservative governments, with the national development bank funding infrastructure projects in Bolivia to allow for further integration between the two economies (Friedman-Rudovsky, 2012), and the PT government facilitating the purchase of vast swathes of arable land in Mozambique by Brazilian corporations (Clements & Fernandes, 2013). Investments of this type in peripheral nations open novel avenues for the expansion of the agricultural frontier, and therefore for capital accumulation, in regions where environmental protection is lax, wages are low, and the often-violent dispossession of smallholders is ignored, or even assisted, by local authorities (Clements & Fernandes, 2013).

Perhaps the most significant manifestation of this Brazilian 鈥楽ubimperialism鈥�, at least in the agricultural space, is the colonisation of Paraguayan soy production by Brazilian agribusinesses which are estimated to control 64% of the total area under soy cultivation (Guere帽a, 2013), equal to around 25% of Paraguay鈥檚 arable land (Glauser, 2009). With Brazilian enterprises thereby maintaining majority control over the cultivation a crop which accounts for 40% of Paraguay鈥檚 total exports (Wesz, 2021), and with many of the remaining soy plantations controlled by Argentine agribusinesses (Ezquerro, 2016), soy production in Paraguay can fairly be described as a manifestation of agricultural imperialism, and Paraguay itself more of a dependent plantation than a sovereign nation-state. Hence a quintessential distillation of the dependent relationship is realised in the cropland of Paraguay, with the direction of the agricultural sector largely 鈥榗onditioned鈥� by the development and expansion of Brazilian and Argentine agribusiness.

This 鈥榝oreignisation鈥� (Galeano, 2012) of Paraguayan agriculture has fundamentally compromised national autonomy by threatening food sovereignty. Following a nation-wide campaign of 鈥榓ccumulation-by-dispossession鈥� (Harvey, 2003), thousands of smallholder farmers have been displaced from their lands, with their plots appropriated by Brazilian-owned soy plantations (Ezquerro-Ca帽ete, 2016). This displacement is an overwhelmingly coercive undertaking, with smallholders convinced to abandon their plots to Brazilian soy barons through threats of violence and the active poisoning of communities via the intentional spreading of pesticides and other harmful chemicals around rural households and plots (Ezquerro-Ca帽ete, 2016). This cohort of smallholder agriculturalists traditionally produced the majority of staple-crops consumed within the country, whilst the plantations which have replaced them yield the overwhelming majority of their soybean harvests for foreign consumption, often as protein-rich feed for livestock (Guerena, 2013). Accordingly, a nation which, with regard to staple-crops, was once largely self-sufficient, now requires constant imports from Argentina and Brazil to feed its population, further compounding Paraguay鈥檚 dependence on the very 鈥楽ubimperialist鈥� powers which enacted this agricultural transformation (Elgert, 2016).

Any understanding of Paraguay as a unified and sovereign state should be questioned, therefore, given the privileging of the calorific requirements of foreign cattle over those of domestic rural populations enacted by this foreignization of agriculture and the colonisation of soy. Paraguay, therefore, is not so much an autonomous state as 鈥渁n assembly plant鈥� Guerena (2013: 19), for Brazilian agribusinesses, providing the land and labour required for cultivation before exporting much of the value produced within the nation麓s agricultural sector to its 麓Subimperialist麓 neighbour. In fact, even the labour required for these enterprises is often more readily supplied by Brazilian migrants (Correia, 2019), rendering Paraguay a passive staging ground for an entirely foreign venture, the recipient of several negative environmental and social externalities but vanishingly few benefits.

The political and economic subordination of Paraguay to Brazilian interests was categorically demonstrated in 2008 when newly elected leftist President Fernando Lugo attempted to levy a 6% tariff on soy exports and implement preliminary land-reform measures to alleviate the suffering of dispossessed smallholders (Galeano, 2012). The Brazilian government quickly enacted a decree which threatened military reprisals in the event of Paraguayan expropriation of Brazilian-owned farms (Turzi, 2016). Such a threat must be understood in the context of the 1864-1870 Paraguayan war, in which a Brazil-led military coalition killed the Paraguayan head of state, installed a Brazil-friendly government, and forced the defeated nation to concede much of its territory to its northern neighbour (Whigham & Potthast, 2002). Up to 60% of Paraguay鈥檚 population perished during the conflict, etching deep wounds in the Paraguayan political landscape, and permanently entrenching the nation鈥檚 dependence on Brazilian 鈥楽ubimperialism鈥� (Leuchars, 2002). Corrective Brazilian military action should therefore be understood as a plausible disciplinary threat which effectively compromises the autonomy of a Paraguayan state ill-equipped to resist the martial predations of its northern neighbour. Ultimately a more subtle approach was taken to the Lugo problem, with Brazilian agribusinesses collaborating with the 鈥楲umpenbourgeoisie鈥� (Frank 1974) of Paraguay鈥檚 Colorado party to engineer the President鈥檚 impeachment (Correia, 2019). This agribusiness-led 鈥楽tate-Capture鈥� (Grzymala-Busse, 2008) was followed by the relaxation of all restrictions on transgenic soy production and a literal invitation from the new President to an audience of Brazilian investors to 鈥淯se and abuse Paraguay鈥� (Martin, 2016).

To conclude

Through the erosion of food sovereignty, threats of military action, and political subterfuge, the Brazilian colonization of Paraguayan soy production has largely dissolved the state鈥檚 autonomy. In light of Dos Santos鈥� (1970) definition of dependence, it is clear that Paraguay鈥檚 economy is significantly 鈥榗onditioned鈥� by the expansion of a Brazilian-led consortium of foreign agribusinesses. Paraguay, therefore, is largely dependent on Brazil which, as a 鈥楽ubimperialist鈥� power, has been able to exercise a degree of autonomy through the subjugation of its southern neighbour.

Yet whilst Brazil is able to wield significant autonomy relative to Paraguay, Mozambique, or Bolivia, it is by no means a fully-fledged imperialist power and assumes a dependent role in relation to the industrialised core. At this juncture we must heed Marini鈥檚 warning (1997) not to overstate the autonomy of 鈥楽ubimperialist鈥� powers and instead consider Brazil鈥檚 exact positioning on the hierarchical chain of dependence. Part Two of this analysis explores how Chinese industrial demand constrains Brazilian subimperial autonomy, before complicating this hierarchical state-centric understanding of dependency by exploring the ecological foundations of the economic interrelation between Paraguay, Brazil, China.  

I hope this post (and the next) serve to illustrate the shortcoming of state-centric analyses in obscuring the fluid transnational function of dependency. In so far as capital, in its expansive phase, pays little heed to national borders, neither should our analysis. Rather it should be adapted accordingly to better catalogue the dynamic interplay of capital and ecology. Hence, whilst specific states may be more autonomous or dependent, or more so belonging to the economic core or periphery, than others in relative terms, no one state can be categorised as autonomous or dependent in its entirety due to the internal contradictions which define all capitalist economies.

Bibliography

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Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (2021). Dependency and Development in Latin America. In Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkley: University of California Press.

Clements, E. A., & Fernandes, B. M. (2013). Land Grabbing, Agribusiness and The Peasantry in Brazil and Mozambique. Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2(1), 41-69.

Cooney, P. (2016) 鈥楻eprimarization: Implications for the Environment and Development in Latin America: The Cases of Argentina and Brazil鈥�. Review of Radical Political Economics, 48:4, 553-61.

Correia, J. E. (2019) Soy States: Resource Politics, Violent Environments and Soybean Territorialization in Paraguay, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46:2, 316-336, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2017.1384726

Dos Santos, T. (1970). The Structure of Dependence. The American Economic Review, 60(2), 231-236.

Ezquerro, C. A. (2016). Poisoned, Dispossessed and Excluded: A Critique of the Neoliberal Soy Regime in Paraguay. Journal of Agrarian Change, 16(4), 702鈥�710.

Frank, A. G. (1974). Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment (Vol. 285). Monthly Review Press.

Friedman-Rudovsky, J. (2012). In Bolivia, A Battle Over a Highway and a Way of Life. Environment360.

Galeano, L. A. (2012). Paraguay and The Expansion of Brazilian and Argentinian Agribusiness Frontiers. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’茅tudes du d茅veloppement, 33(4), 458-470.

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George Shepherd is a politics PhD student at the University of York currently researching lithium extraction in Latin America in an attempt to understand the ecological implications of a 鈥榞reen鈥� energy transition predicated on intensified resource extraction in the periphery. He tweets at .

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