Oil And Politics In Latin America

This book provides a study of the transformation of the Latin American oil system from one in which the international oil companies dominated to one which is dominated by the main state oil companies, and an account of how some of the more important of the state companies have operated. This comprehensive guide to the evolution of the Latin American oil system combines in one volume a synthesis of material from secondary sources and original research and thus provides an invaluable reference for all concerned with the history and economy of Latin America and with the development and functioning of the international oil industry.

This book seeks to consistently explain the role of ideas and institutions in policy outcomes, and addresses the problem of how resource nationalism causes a deficit of public accountability in oil producing countries from Latin America and the Caribbean. The authors present a causal mechanism linking ideas and policy outcomes through institutional arrangements, focusing on policy design to describe the role of instruments selection and combination in improving or reducing public accountability through agenda setting, policy formulation, cross-sectorial coordination and political interplays.

Essays covering five case studies to gain an insight into the unique Latin American approach to petroleum resources and industries.

The Mexican oil boom of the 1970s brought great hope and prosperity with it. George Grayson shows the influence of oil and the oil sector both within Mexican society and in its relations with other nations. He traces the development of the oil industry from its beginnings in 1901 up until the 1980s, looking at topics that include the history of expropriation; the creation of the state-run company Petróleos Mexicanos; graft and corruption within the Oil Workers Union; Mexico's relations with OPEC; the political nuances of oil and gas agreements with the United States; and the prospects for the Mexican oil industry and domestic reforms generated from oil revenue.

Offers a comprehensive, region-wide analysis of the politics of taxation in Latin America to make reforms politically palatable and sustainable.

Ecuador is the third-largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the western United States. As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. Crude Chronicles traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neoliberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neoliberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America’s strongest indigenous movements. Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneuvers and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality—that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and rewriting narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain-forest resources.