1 The Historical Roots of Migration and the Imagined Political Community in Latin America
Latin America can be understood as a result of a unique migration: the founding myth. That is, the discovery-colonization of the Americas, erroneously considered as an encounter of two worlds (Petrocelli 1988; Hosking et al. 1997).1 This founding myth has deeply influenced Latin America. As summarized by Carlos Rangel, the formation of the nation-state was the result of a paradigm, according to which the colonizers corrupted the good savage of the New World, violating their culture and customs in order to impose European ones. This idea evolved into the concept of the good revolutionary: the heir of the good savage who defends the traditional and besmirched heritage of the Indigenous people in the new Latin American governments (Rangel 1987).
The historical origin of Latin American nationhood is thus the consequence of a cultural miscegenation (mestizaje) that was something more than an encounter of two worlds, because it includes the European, Indigenous, and African cultures. These cultural differences were homogenized to some extent due to a common language and religion, but under the myth of a region that was colonized by a foreign culture (Stepan 1991; Uslar Pietri 1994).2
The colonization process—particularly under Spanish rule—was based on the foundation of the city (Brewer-Carías 2006). The city is, consequently, the basic cell of the nation-state in Latin America (Stepan 1966).3 Following the traditional concept of nation-state (Dunkerley 2002; Fukuyama 2014), it is possible to conclude that in Latin America the political organization of the state was based on the miscegenation concentrated in the city.
But in its origins, and in part due to this miscegenation, the Latin American nation-state had weak institutions, which facilitated the rise of the charismatic leader or caudillo (Elkins et al. 1992).4 The lack of a strong state hindered the satisfaction of collective necessities, a task assumed by the caudillo that reinforced the cultural image of the nationhood. As was explained by Benedict Anderson, the nation is a “cultural artifact” that acts as a limited and sovereign “imagined political community.” As a consequence, nationhood is the result of the collective consciousness of this imagined political community. The “national consciousness” is, therefore, the set of cultural beliefs that help imagine a collective political community, in this case Latin America (Anderson 2006). The caudillo helped create this image based on the unique migration of the colonization. Within the region there was a culturally mixed imagined community. Abroad, this image was used to defend Latin America from so-called imperialism and nationalism (but not to promote domestic wars or revolutions) (Wade 2003; Masur 1966),5 particularly in the field of international law, due to the insistence of the country on defending national sovereignty over foreigners (Breuilly 1994; Masur 1966; Shea 1955).6
As a result, migration helped create a culturally mixed imagined community that has not driven domestic conflict based on migration, race, and ethnicity. In this vein, liberalization and globalization could have triggered political unrest—as with the 1994 Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico—but not issues to do with ethnicity or even the defense of Indigenous rights (Collier and Collier 2005).7 Another example is Bolivia. The plurinational state implemented by President Evo Morales is not only an attempt to uphold Indigenous rights and promote decolonization; additionally, it is intended to promote socialist policies against neoliberalism (Postero 2017).
Consequently, Latin American populism (De la Torre 2017) has not been triggered by migration, race, or ethnicity, as happened, for instance, in Europe. In the twentieth century, the defense of the people against the establishment facilitated an inclusive democratization process (Burgess and Levitsky 2003). Later, it paved the way for an authoritarian populism (Vargas Llosa 2017). But this was not a result of backlash based on migration, but of the traditional weakness of Latin American political institutions.
To understand migration in Latin America, therefore, it is necessary to consider the complex historical process through which the mixed imagined community of the nation-state was created. After more than five centuries, the colonization process’s unique migration is still shaping Latin America.
2 Latin American Migration Waves
In order to analyze migration trends in Latin America, it is important to clarify some concepts. Migration is an ambivalent word that tends to have different meanings according to its context.8
From a general perspective, migrants are people who move from their usual residence. They can move within their resident or home country (domestic migration), but they can also move abroad to a host country (international migration). Migration can be permanent or temporary, and only the last is particularly relevant to determine its impacts on geopolitics. Permanent migration could be a consequence of voluntary decisions, for instance, pursuing economic improvements: this refers to so-called economic or labor migration. Also, people can be forced to migrate. Forced migration can be driven by political reasons (the strict concept of refugee), but also by civil, economic, and social turmoil (the expanded concept of refugee according to the Cartagena Declaration) (Gianelli Dublanc et al. 2004). Domestic forced migration is also called internal displacement. Finally, the distinction between legal and illegal migration could help researchers analyze migrants’ socioeconomic conditions (Donato and Massey 2016).
Since its origin, Latin America has been shaped by migration. The Latin American nation-state is a result of the original migration wave of those colonizers who promoted a cultural miscegenation or mestizaje. After their independence, the new Latin American countries received migrants, particularly from Europe during the world wars of the twentieth century. This wave of migration transformed the Latin American national consciousness and promoted a diverse and heterogeneous society (Luque 2013).9
A new wave of migration started in the 1980s, particularly after the end of the Cold War. This was a complex wave characterized by two elements: an intraregional migration and forced migration due to civil unrest, particularly in Central America. The Venezuelan humanitarian crisis (2017) is causing major transformation in these migration trends. Amidst unparalleled economic, humanitarian, and political crises, around 2 million have fled the country in what is considered the worst massive migrant and refugee crisis in the region. The consequences of this crisis for Latin American geopolitics are hard to determine, because it is still ongoing. But as the Organization of American States (OAS) concluded, the Venezuelan migration crisis will influence Latin America in the coming years.10
The current data about Latin American migration demonstrate a change in migration trends. According to the International Migration Report 2017, Latin America and the Caribbean is the fourth-biggest migrant host area, encompassing 10 million people, but has the third-largest number of international migrants (38 million).11 Consequently, Latin America is a region of emigrants more than immigrants, with intraregional migration in South America having special relevance.12 Intraregional migration has risen due to the economic growth of some countries with stable political environments, as is the case in Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Chile (Pizarro and Orrego Rivera 2016).