Imperialismo, geopolítica do petróleo e desenvolvimento: relações globais de acumulação e o caso da Venezuela

Abstract

Recent Venezuelan history has been marked by differences in development processes with respect to the use of foreign currency from the oil sector. The problematization of the country's dependence on oil has already been pointed out by authors such as economist Celso Furtado, who recognized the benefits of “black gold” as a potential source of foreign exchange, but advocated the need for caution regarding the lack of industrial diversification. Without prejudice to the country's contextual observation, it is pertinent to analyze the strategies adopted by Venezuela after the emergence of Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) - regarding the use of petroleum currencies -, seeking to understand the relationship between the different political projects who have headed the country since then and the possible overlapping with Venezuelan development, based on the relationship with the imperialist dynamics (as an expression of the expansion of the process of accumulation in space) and its implications for internal / external contradictions. The research presented here aims to understand, under the historical-material perspective, which processes within the scope of International Relations that led Venezuela to perpetuate the situation of an underdeveloped country and the political-economic crisis from internal and external factors that, combined, culminated in the impossibility of Venezuelan developing, between the years 1976 and 2013. The literature review made from the reading of the theorists of imperialism (linked to the Marxist tradition) and from the CEPAL theories are an important tool for the understanding of the dynamics of accumulation of capitalist production on a global scale, as well as the correlations with the oil industry within the scope of global geopolitics. The development of the country has passed by many obstacles derivated from low economic diversification and the dependency of one singular product. The perspectives of rupture with underdevelopment where supressed by the low level of industrial heterogenity and by irregular national development plans.