The extractivist model and its socio-environmental consequences in Latin America: the dependence on commodity

Abstract

The idea that permeates this essay is to address and problematize the economic model based on extractivism and on the export model of productive specialization, a predominant model, in general, throughout Latin America. It will also score on the place that Latin America occupies in the international division of labor, since the invasion and conquest of our territories by Europe from 1492, as producers of raw materials, with activities that presuppose the extraction and exploitation of natural goods. Especially, the intention is to point out the ecological and socio-environmental consequences to biodiversity that the historical maintenance of extractivism implies, pointing out that cursed heritage as something that tends to extrapolate political ideologies, in the sense that both governments politically to the left or to the right, not only have they not weakened, but they have promoted a supposed primary-exporting vocation of the Latin American countries. Thus, the intention is to provide a brief reflection on the subject that starts from the verification of the dependence on the export of commodities that affects a large part of the countries of Our America, to a greater or lesser extent, as well as their respective socio-environmental consequences and bio-sociodiversity. Deductive methodology was used, in theoretical and descriptive research, with the use of diversified bibliographic material, as well as the use of official economic indices for object analysis purposes.