Beyond Imperialism: Rethinking Latin Americanism through the Venezuelan Authoritarian Drift
Dr. Magdalena Lopez, University of Notre Dame & Centro de Estudos Internacionais, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
Abstract: This presentation questions the US-centric framework that still shapes left-wing readings of Venezuela's authoritarian drift. That framework shifts attention away from the chavista-madurista state itself and onto an external “enemy”: imperialism. Drawing on my previous work on the Latin American left, I show that this shift is not accidental. It stems from two ideas that have long defined the field: anti-Americanism and the notion of Latin America as a utopian alternative to the West. These same ideas have also granted intellectuals writing from outside Venezuela—often from the US or Europe—their authority to speak about it. By focusing on US responsibility, much of this literature ignores Venezuela's own history: decades of bipartisan social democracy, state control over oil revenue, and uninterrupted trade with Washington before the chavista regime. At the same time, it overlooks the today regime's control over public institutions and security forces, alarming levels of inequality and poverty, the government's plunder of state resources and massive human rights violations. This is not just a blind spot—it functions as a form of complicity, allowing institutions like CLACSO, the Foro de São Paulo, and parts of LASA to keep supporting the regime while claiming to remain critical. Rafael Uzcátegui calls this the “Sartre Effect”: placing ideological loyalty above victims' testimony. This problem is tied to a deeper one: who gets to speak. Those most focused on blaming the US mostly write from outside Venezuela, where US-centered discourse—and, more recently, anti-Trump positioning—circulates far more easily than any view centered on Venezuela itself and its need for a democratic transition. I argue that renewing critical Latin Americanism means moving the US out of the center and putting local voices and human rights first.
Bio: Magdalena López (PhD, University of Pittsburgh) is Visiting Associate Professor at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Auxiliary Researcher at the Centro de Estudos Internacionais of the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. Her work focuses on contemporary cultural criticism in relation to the historical experience of the Hispanophone Caribbean. López is the author of El otro de nuestra América: imaginarios sobre Estados Unidos en Cuba y la República Dominicana (2011), Desde el fracaso: narrativas del Caribe insular hispano del siglo XXI (2015), Pensar la izquierda latinoamericana with Margarita López Maya (2026), and the novel Penínsulas rotas (2020). She has edited several volumes, including New Perspectives on Hispanic Caribbean Studies with María Teresa Vera-Rojas (2020), an anthology of Caribbean women writers (2019), and a volume titled Intelectuales e imaginarios de izquierda en América Latina (2022). She has published numerous articles on the Caribbean in indexed journals such as Latin American Research Review, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Revista Iberoamericana, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, and Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. López is currently developing a project on biopolitics and culture in Angola, Cuba, and Venezuela.