International politics and the global economy are going through a phase of acceleration and convulsive disorder. This situation is reshaping center-periphery relations through the role played by information and communication technologies (ICTs) and, more recently, artificial intelligence (AI), in configuring an overwhelming system of neocolonial domination.
Focusing on Latin America, this situation could be illustrated as a circular economy, though certainly not one guided by ecological sustainability.
This circular economy encompasses the extraction of minerals in peripheral regions which, once processed in core countries, provide critical inputs for electrical infrastructure and electronic devices. These, in turn, underpin the processes of capital accumulation and reproduction on a global scale. In this way, these primary resources are, in a sense, returned to the periphery in the form of digital models, systems, and devices. Once deployed in consumer markets, these technologies enable the capture of vastly increased surplus value, thereby feeding back into the processes of capital accumulation and reproduction and intensifying mineral extraction in peripheral territories.
Territorial demarcations
To facilitate access to critical mineral resources in Latin America, the administration of US President Joe Biden relied on coordination mechanisms designed to formalize and preserve productive archipelagos and logistics corridors operating as enclave economies, consistently emphasizing the need to secure supply chains.
Alongside a plurilateral letter of intent known as the “Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity” (2023), the US government reactivated bilateral Trade and Investment Councils established under various framework agreements. These arrangements appeared deceptively informal, suggesting that the parties were entering into agreements based merely on “cooperation.”
However, the commitments to establish committees or technical working groups tasked with progressively implementing the stated objectives carried considerable weight. One could reasonably assume that, as the enclaves and logistics networks took shape, an increasingly solid strategic partnership would emerge between the parties.
Under Donald Trump’s second administration, those promises of cooperation and complementarity have been replaced by impositions of brutal force. Coercive measures include the United States invoking domestic legal provisions that allow for trade restrictions and retaliation without regard for multilateral frameworks, as well as signing a number of precarious agreements that, despite invoking “reciprocity,” consist largely of obligations assumed by the other parties.
While commentators focus on concessions relating to trade in goods, various clauses designed to institutionalize technological dependence deserve at least as much attention. These provisions validate the exclusive appropriation of the respective digital markets by US corporations. They include the unrestricted opening of services markets, unconditional adherence to restrictions imposed by the United States on third countries, international transfers of data—including personal data—and various commitments to avoid commercial ties with third countries for technological supplies whenever these might interfere with the concessions granted to the US.
Exacerbated capital gains
The concentration of capital within the ICT sector has reached such an extraordinary scale that it is difficult to compare with anything experienced in earlier phases of capitalism. But the issue is not merely one of magnitude. Rather than relying on the exploitation of wage labor, surplus value and the processes of capital accumulation and reproduction now draw on and monetize data supplied by consumers and digital users themselves. This amounts to a form of unpaid labor, extracted through devices and procedures designed precisely for that purpose.
Although capital concentration appears to be keeping pace with the feverish expansion of capitalism during the Industrial Revolutions, this exorbitant appropriation of economic rents foreshadows unprecedented developments, including a possible decline in effective or aggregate demand and the social crises that could follow (Yanis Varoufakis). Such projections deserve attention, particularly given the neocolonial constraints that reinforce technological dependence.
An aura of rationality
Artificial intelligence (AI) models and systems facilitate the manipulation of digital users. AI agents act as bait, wrapped in an aura of rationality that makes them particularly approachable. To begin with, they are trained to replicate the logical sequences of human discourse regarded as “rational” (algorithms). Then, by incorporating information gathered from users themselves, they develop a familiarity that makes them seem even more trustworthy.
These displays of rationality and reliability are precisely where the risks lie: AI responds to each and every demand made by digital users. This generates addictive behaviors and, consequently, cognitive dependence among vulnerable populations. We should therefore ask whether, to counteract such serious harm, it would be worth examining the concept of rationality underpinning the digital economy—and whether that concept should be regarded as inevitable.
A different kind of rationality
Different schools of thought converge on one defining feature of Western modernity: the construction of imaginaries and symbolic systems that reveal how difficult it is for individuals and social groups to establish meaningful connections with their own living nature.
This alienation helps explain why both the macrocosm and the microcosm are conceived as matter available for exploitation without limits, since such exploitation is disconnected from the goal of preserving the human species.
In the decades following World War II, the Frankfurt School examined this cultural disregard for nature, reflected in an instrumental conception of human reason. Max Horkheimer wrote: “Nature is conceived today more than ever as a mere instrument of man. Nature is the object of total exploitation, which knows no limits because it recognizes no goal established by reason. Man’s boundless imperialism is never satisfied.”
Other cultures, by contrast, including pre-Columbian societies, embody an objective rationality rooted in self-preservation. Their patterns of behavior are therefore incompatible with the reckless extraction of natural resources.
Latin American populations have repeatedly suffered the servitude imposed by the intensive and extensive exploitation of their resources, followed by a disconnect between production and consumption. Labor relations have consequently been organized along one axis—commercial exploitation—while family and domestic life have followed another: what people use and consume is not necessarily what they produce (E. Brailovsky; J. V. Rodríguez Cuenca).
Regional development
The devastation of natural resources leads to a progressive deterioration in living conditions for millions of Latin Americans. Reversing this long-standing trend will not be easy, particularly as it is being exacerbated by geopolitical conflicts fueled by ICTs. At the very least, production in economically depressed areas could be supported if a possible reconfiguration of economic multilateralism were to recognize the subsidies permitted for disadvantaged regions—provisions at the World Trade Organization that expired in 2000.
Meanwhile, the legend of El Dorado has acquired a stark new expression in the 21st century: enclave economies designed to increase mineral exports at the cost of greater impoverishment and environmental degradation. But why not promote alternative forms of production and labor that reflect a different kind of rationality, such as those occasionally practiced through communal associations and collective work inspired by the pre-Columbian tradition of tequio?
Perhaps the time has come for Latin America to recognize itself by recovering the collective imaginary that lies deep within its own roots.
Autor
Sociologist. PhD from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina). Consultant for international integration and cooperation organizations. Researcher and teacher at the Institute of Latin American Integration of the National University of La Plata.
