The “New Imperial History” and U.S. Imperialism (original) (raw)

¡Basta! Radical History for the Classroom and Community

Radical History Review, 2001

the day the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented, a campesino army rose up in Chiapas, Mexico, declaring ¡Basta! (Enough!) to corporate globalization and its deleterious impacts on indigenous and working people. Similar cries of ¡Basta! have been heard in places as diverse as Brazil, Ecuador, France, the Philippines, and South Korea. In the United States, the 1999 demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle are a symbol of popular challenge to the structure of the world economy and represent the potential for an international social movement. Radical historians can play an important role in such movements for social change by connecting research and teaching to struggles for social justice. Similar to the ways that New Left activists drew upon William Appleman William's critiques of U.S. imperialism and E. P. Thompson's studies of the working class, radical historians can collaborate with social movements to challenge corporate globalization, racism, sexism, and heterosexism. In this era of media monopolization, engaging a broader audience requires creative and multidimensional approaches. My own development as a radical historian has been influenced by my position in U.S. society and the communities in which I have lived and worked. My vocation and political commitment have been shaped by my parents, who as public school teachers possessed a passion for history and egalitarian ideals. Early in life I learned the importance of challenging imperialism and class domination. It was U.S. imperialism, in part, that stimulated my father and his parents to migrate in 1950 to the U.S. from Nicaragua, a country occupied by the U.S. Marines for the first two decades of my grandparents' lives. My mother, a second-generation Italian American whose father was an organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union in New York, instilled in me a critical view of capitalism and a determination for social justice. It was the Nicaraguan Revolution that awakened my political consciousness. The final revolutionary offensive occurred as I entered high school and I witnessed how it impacted and divided my family. I eagerly read the work of Juan José Arévalo, John Gerassi, Walter LaFeber, and Gregorio Selser to learn about revolutionary struggle and U.S. intervention in Latin America. As a college student in the 1980s, I was influenced by radical Latin Americanists who, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, challenged scholarship that justified U.S. domination. 1 At UCLA, where I studied, E. Bradford Burns was a courageous critic of U.S. intervention in Central America. His scholarship demonstrated the devastating impact of colonialism and Latin American strategies of resistance. His ability to convey this in vivid detail to a general audience and to hundreds of undergraduates was inspirational.