LACLxS Work-in-Progress Seminar: Theorizing Racial Capitalism & the Capitalist World-System from Latin America

Description

The Program in Latin America, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLxS) is excited to present doctoral candidates Alonso Burgos from the Department of Sociology and Keely Kriho from the Department of Political Science as part of the LACLxS Work-in-Progress Seminar series.

Alonso Burgos | "Toward a Theory of Racial Capitalism and Census Race-Making: Insights from the Peruvian Case"

Sociological studies of population politics highlight how states and racialized actors co-create and mobilize census data for recognition while also revealing its use for oppression or resistance through non-enumeration. However, little attention has been given to the influence of the global political economy on these dynamics. Scholars of racial capitalism typically concentrate on the relationship between global capitalism, labor exploitation, and race, often overlooking the state's role in the processes of racialization. This article aims to integrate the literature on racial capitalism with scholarship on population politics. I propose a contingency-context theory that elucidates how shifts in the global political economy, coupled with the dynamics of states and the agency of racialized actors, shape ethnoracial categorization. Through a historical analysis of Peru, I explore periods when national censuses included ethnoracial data—specifically during colonial times (1725–40 and 1776–1815) and the republican era (1876, 1940, and 2017). During the colonial period, censuses served tax and control purposes, classifying Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations within the mercantilist and agricultural economy. After independence, the persistence of colonial categories was reinforced by an enduring agrarian economy and cultural racism. The 1960s and 1970s saw a shift with the removal of ethnoracial categories influenced by class-based Marxist rhetoric, the Agrarian reform, and the adoption of the import substitution industrialization model. However, the neoliberal era brought their reintroduction due to multicultural policies and advocacy for statistical visibility from Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups. While this contingency-context theory is grounded in Peru's context, it also highlights broader Latin American trends, illustrating how colonialism, economic policy shifts, and political dynamics have shaped the production and mobilization of ethnoracial data in the region.

Keely Kriho | "Mariátegui, the Mexican Revolution, and Marxist Dependency Theory"

In this presentation, I analyze the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) through the work of José Carlos Mariátegui and the Marxist dependency theorists Vania Bambirra, Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotônio dos Santos, and Aníbal Quijano. Building upon the work of Mariátegui and the Marxist dependentistas, I argue that political theories of revolution must centrally analyze the ways in which revolutionary political projects respond to and are constrained by global capitalism. I primarily consider the emergence and trajectory of Zapatismo in relation to competing liberal-nationalist political projects during the Mexican Revolution, showing how the Zapatistas—whose Plan de Ayala demanded the transformation and redistribution of landholding and productive structures in the state of Morelos and, more broadly, Mexico—posed a direct challenge to the capitalist planter and entrepreneurial classes, the liberal-nationalist political project, and Mexico's dependent status as a primary producer relative to the U.S. In this way, dependent capitalist relations forced the Zapatista movement to respond strategically to the challenges of capitalism at both the national and international levels. I intervene in the literature on revolutions in political theory by arguing that while anticolonial and postcolonial political theory acknowledges imperialism in a broad sense, fully accounting for the anti-capitalist character of revolutionary political projects requires theorizing how dependent capitalism functions as a structural challenge to emancipatory efforts at the local, national, and international levels.