The Political Economy of Foreign Investment in Latin America Dependency Revisited

Examination of foreign investment inflows, stock, and outgoing profit flows from Latin America in the neoliberal period shows that the basic tenet of the dependency thesis still holds: there is a huge and underreported transfer of surplus value out of the continent. European capital has overtaken U.S. capital as a source of investment, and within the Andean region there are two distinct groups of countries with regard to investment regime: the Andean nations of the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), which have succeeded in increasing the proportion of surplus profits retained in their national economies against that part captured by international capital, and their non-ALBA neighbors. A new dialectic of domination and dependency is at work, with the focus on contesting bilateral free-trade agreements and investment treaties.