Much ado about nothing

expropriation and compensation in Peru and Venezuela, 1968-75

Edición de la obra Much ado about nothing

The iconic Latin American expropriations of the late 1960s and early 1970s turn out to have been far less revolutionary than they appeared on the surface. In Peru, the Nixon Administration defanged the automatic sanctions mandated by Congress in regard to IPC, but once the Revolutionary Government moved against other American assets it quickly reversed itself and extracted a fair compensation—using market values as the definition of fair—from the Peruvian government. In Venezuela, conversely, the Ford Administration had no need to try to reach into the deep toolkit available to all American governments—ranging from diplomatic pressure to covert action—because the settlement offered by the Venezuelan government was extremely favorable to the oil companies. In Latin America, at least, the seeming decline of American hegemonic power in the face of economic nationalism was a mirage.