The Social Contradictions of Regional Development in the ALBA-TCP: The Case of Food Production

The Latin American regional institution of the ALBA-TCP (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América-Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos) has garnered much deserved scholarly attention due to its radical rhetoric, novel forms of geopolitical cooperation and forms of regional development. However, extant studies of ALBA provide little insight into the concrete actors at the helm of its development policies. To expand our understanding of this regional organisation, this article offers a critical political economy perspective into the class dynamics of food production within ALBA, via empirically grounded research findings. Mobilising Nicos Poulantzas’ theory of the capitalist state, as well as subsequent innovations in neo-Poulantzian theory, the analysis reveals how the spatial organisation of food production exhibits a markedly statist character. With specific focus on a series of ALBA-created rice-producing factories located in Venezuela, I show how the prevailing relations of production within these factories assumes a state-capitalist form, which runs counter ALBA’s philosophy of social empowerment. Overall, the ALBA region’s organisation of ‘shared development’ remains highly fragmented and un-coordinated in the context of food production, vastly underwritten by the circulation of Venezuelan oil rents, and ultimately subsumed under the power of the bureaucratic state. There is, therefore, a conspicuous gap between the discourse of ALBA and the reality of its political economy.