MAOISM ACROSS LATIN AMERICA: LEGACY FOR CHINA’S ADVANCEMENT IN THE REGION

Resumo

China’s current economic advancement in Latin America and the Caribbean is not an unprecedented phenomenon. The current economic scope of Sino-Latin American relations is the continuation of a historical connection that China built with the region, thanks to Maoism. Looking at Cuba, Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, this paper deconstructs the different adaptions that Maoism received in the four countries. Maoist China also enhanced people-to-people and party diplomacy to widen its influence in the region on various levels. All the studied Latin American countries show that Maoist China reacted to insert itself into the US-USSR competition, with less influential results in Cuba and Mexico. In Peru and Brazil, with current consequences, Maoism gave China an advantageous legitimacy because of its interactions with rural-socialist movements and national governments, or leftist political parties. Maoism appears to be the political legacy that benefited China in its new expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean.

            Keywords: Maoism, Latin America, China, influence, legacy