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The Costs of US Mineral Needs in Latin America

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The Costs of US Mineral Needs in Latin America Undermining Sovereignty: The Costs of U.S. Mineral Needs in Latin America by Nicholas Alexandrov B.A. in Literature, May 2008, Yale University A dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 15, 2016 Dissertation directed by James G. Hershberg Professor of History and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Nicholas Alexandrov has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of January 13, 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Undermining Sovereignty: The Costs of U.S. Mineral Needs in Latin America Nicholas Alexandrov Dissertation Research Committee: James G. Hershberg, Professor of History and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Peter F. Klaren, Emeritus Professor of History and International Affairs, Committee Member Cynthia McClintock, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2016 by Nicholas Alexandrov All rights reserved iii Abstract of Dissertation Undermining Sovereignty: The Costs of U.S. Mineral Needs in Latin America This dissertation assesses the costs of U.S. mineral needs in Latin America during the first half of the 20th century, focusing mainly on the 1940s. During this period, the U.S. used protectionist policies to boost its domestic industrial sector, which was dominated by private firms. These firms required massive amounts of copper, manganese, tin, tungsten, zinc and other minerals—and due to deficiencies in the U.S. geological endowment, many of these minerals had to be acquired from Brazil, Chile, Mexico and other foreign countries, both in Latin America and on other continents. Foreign procurement of minerals became particularly crucial during World War II, when the U.S. exploited a range of metals to sustain its military efforts, and then after the conflict, as minerals made the postwar boom and emerging “permanent war economy” possible. In developing strategies to acquire foreign minerals, planners in Washington assumed they could adapt the land, laws, and people of other countries to U.S. needs. U.S. planning had nothing to do with promoting self-determination abroad, in other words, and instead expected foreign countries to conform to the needs of U.S. industry— and of the industrial lifestyles U.S. citizens enjoyed. iv Table of Contents Abstract of Dissertation ................................................................................................ iv Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Mining ........................................................................................................ 44 Chapter 2: Copper ........................................................................................................ 60 Chapter 3: Manganese ................................................................................................ 106 Chapter 4: Tin ............................................................................................................ 154 Chapter 5: Tungsten ................................................................................................... 199 Chapter 6: Zinc ........................................................................................................... 244 Chapter 7: The Environment ...................................................................................... 286 Conclusion: The Role of Mining in U.S. Foreign Policy ........................................... 314 Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 339 v Introduction The argument This dissertation is about the ways U.S. mineral needs shaped Washington’s foreign policy, especially in the 1940s but also throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It focuses largely on the plans U.S. officials developed to secure these minerals, many of which were found in Latin America, where they were controlled by private companies. Since these companies were in charge of extracting minerals that were essential, often irreplaceable, ingredients in industrial production both for U.S. wartime needs—military transportation, ammunition, plenty more—and for the day-to-day lives of U.S. residents, I make the modest proposal in this work that private firms need to be considered as central actors in U.S. foreign policy. But I also suggest that the business of mineral procurement is inherently disruptive, impacting far more than just the site of extraction itself, and entailing—in the ideal scenarios U.S. planners envisioned—a range of changes to the land, laws, and people in the countries where mining takes place. Regarding land, I will explain that U.S. planners kept running up against a fundamental problem—namely, that Mother Nature did not have humans in mind when depositing minerals throughout the world. This means that the most desirable mineral sources are often difficult to reach, if not inaccessible, given existing infrastructure. Roads thus had to be built, and rails laid, for extraction to proceed. Their public pronouncements celebrating self-determination notwithstanding, U.S. officials simply assumed Latin Americans would be directed towards these construction ends, thus facilitating mineral exports from the region to satisfy U.S. industrial needs. 1 And as I will also explain in the coming chapters, U.S. officials considered a country’s legal architecture as crucial as its physical infrastructure where mining was concerned. Laws had to be shaped in such a way to grant sufficient rights, as U.S. Americans conceived of them, to foreign firms operating in mineral-rich territories. Laws also had to guarantee that taxes would remain low for these foreign firms, ensuring high profits while limiting their social obligations to workers. Again, against the common assumption that U.S. officials were concerned with promoting democracy abroad, reviewing the legal aspects of Washington’s mining policy suggests that Latin American self-determination was anathema to U.S. officials. I will explain how in Brazil, for example, Washington’s representatives discussed changing Brazil’s constitution in accordance with the desires of mining firms, as one way of getting around the problems the country’s mining laws posed. And an examination of other U.S. legal objectives in the region reveals a similar preoccupation with getting Latin American laws to conform to U.S. industrial needs. Latin Americans themselves, in the eyes of U.S. officials, posed the final barrier to extraction that I will discuss in this dissertation. By this I mean not only that the men in Washington, or stationed at diplomatic posts throughout Latin America, were concerned with the productivity of the men in the mines—though this issue was certainly a major concern. But I also mean that, more generally, U.S. officials discussed the need to cultivate the mentality of the wage laborer, as opposed to that of the peasant or subsistence farmer, among Latin Americans, particularly the indigenous peoples of Bolivia and Peru. Such a mentality was seen as a desirable way to insure mining, as well as the related infrastructure development described above, could proceed rapidly, with an 2 adequate labor supply. Latin Americans had to want to rent themselves out on the labor market, in other words. One could no doubt trace parallels between this aspect of U.S. planning, and that of, say, Washington officials preoccupied with reeducating North American indigenous populations during the era of territorial expansion westward. And insofar as U.S. officials spoke of the need to “convert” Latin Americans from peasants to wage laborers, one could also make a connection between Washington’s project, and that of Spanish imperialists in the region centuries earlier. By discussing these changes—to infrastructure, the law, and to people—U.S. planners wished to effect beyond the site of extraction, in order to enhance corporate exploitation of the region’s resources, I hope to suggest that Washington’s mineral policies were a form of intervention or interference abroad. By this I mean that U.S. foreign policy is not interventionist strictly when, say, the Marines are sent into Central American, or when the CIA helps orchestrate a coup in the Southern Cone. These are simply the most egregious, militaristic forms of U.S. interventionism, occurring in addition to a more persistent form, implemented by Washington in collaboration with the private firms that control and profit from mineral deposits, and existing to fulfill U.S. industry’s most basic needs. Because this form of interference serves such a fundamental purpose for the U.S., it can be considered a constant feature of U.S. foreign policy. That is to say that, while one could make the case that the U.S., as an industrial powerhouse, might have survived had Árbenz or Allende been permitted to complete their terms, it is much less certain that U.S. industrial might could have survived without exploiting—for decades—Brazilian manganese, Chilean copper, Bolivian tin, Mexican zinc, or any number of other Latin American minerals. Manganese is a crucial input in 3 steel production, and zinc essential for steel’s protective coating; steel, in turn, underpinned the lifestyles
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