Tricontinentalism and the Global South: African American Rights
This paper reviews Anne Garland Mahler's 2015 article "The Global South in the Belly of the Beast: Viewing African American Civil Rights through a Tricontinental Lens," published in the Latin American Research Review. Mahler argues that the contemporary notion of the Global South is rooted in the ideologies of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL), founded at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba. The paper summarizes the article's core argument, identifies its major concepts — including post-national subalternity, transnational subaltern politics, and the global struggle for racial justice — and explores the social and political implications of recognizing tricontinentalism as the ideological foundation of the Global South.
- Introduction: Overview of article topic and paper's purpose
- Concise Summary of the Article: Mahler's argument linking OSPAAAL to the Global South
- Core Concepts and Social Implications: Three key concepts and their political and social consequences
- Conclusion: Synthesis of findings and open discussion question
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper maintains a clear, structured approach by first summarizing the source article and then systematically unpacking its core concepts and social implications in separate, well-organized sections.
- It faithfully represents Mahler's three-part argument about tricontinentalism — as a post-national foundation, as a framework for transnational subaltern politics, and as the basis for the global racial justice struggle — without overstating or distorting her claims.
- The discussion of social implications moves effectively from the academic level (opening communication between intellectual traditions) to the political level (transnational resistance movements), giving the analysis practical grounding.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates effective secondary source analysis: the writer consistently attributes claims to Mahler using parenthetical citations, distinguishes between the source author's argument and the writer's own commentary, and uses direct quotation sparingly to anchor key interpretive points. This approach models responsible scholarly engagement with a single academic article.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a contextual introduction establishing the topic and article. A summary section presents Mahler's argument in detail. The central body section identifies three major concepts and three corresponding social implications, organized in parallel for clarity. A brief conclusion synthesizes findings and poses a discussion question, a technique common in seminar-style academic writing at the undergraduate level.
Introduction
Racial violence and inequality is a major issue in the history and politics of the United States. This issue has attracted the attention of policymakers, politicians, scholars, researchers, and the general public as it continues to dominate public discourse. Anne Garland Mahler published an article on this issue by examining the rights of African Americans using a tricontinental perspective. "The Global South in the Belly of the Beast: Viewing African American Rights through a Tricontinental Lens" explores the influential role of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference alliance on current conceptualizations of global subalternity, such as the idea of the Global South. Mahler (2015) argues that the contemporary notion of the Global South is based on the ideologies of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL), which was formed in 1966 at the Tricontinental Conference. This paper examines the article in terms of its main points and how it addresses the topic, beginning with a concise summary of the article, its major concepts and issues, and the social implications of those issues.
Concise Summary of the Article
Mahler (2015) examines the influential role of OSPAAAL on the contemporary notion of the Global South. OSPAAAL is an alliance formed at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba, in January 1966 to fight against imperialism. It was established after delegates from liberation movements of eighty-two countries assembled. Following its founding, the alliance soon became the driving force of global political radicalism as well as the primary instrument of radical cultural production across the globe. The alliance became an influential political movement whose ideologies shaped modern conceptualizations of global subalternity, including the growing notion of the Global South. OSPAAAL forms the ideological backbone of the Global South despite having been the subject of relatively few scholarly studies.
Mahler (2015) states that the Global South is a political consciousness emerging from the recognition by diverse peoples of their shared experience of the negative impacts of globalization. This consciousness emerged in the late 1970s with an emphasis on the European colonization experience. However, it has become characterized by debates regarding its relevance to people living within North America and Western Europe. Additionally, there are concerns over whether its use in reference to Latin America is simply part of an Orientalizing Western academy.
Mahler (2015) contends that OSPAAAL presents a theory of transnational subaltern political resistance through its connection with the African American Civil Rights Movement. This theory of political resistance is resurfacing in the modern notion of the Global South, whose historical and ideological parameters remain relatively vague. The central argument of the article is that tricontinentalism is the ideological basis of the Global South. Therefore, the emergence of the Global South represents an effort to recoup an underlying ideological legacy that is seemingly lost or overlooked within the surrounding frame of postcolonial theory.
To support this view, Mahler (2015) offers three key points. First, tricontinentalism provides a long view of the Global South, which compels a close evaluation of foundational Cold War texts. Second, the Global South in tricontinentalism is not a mere by-product of postcolonial theory but an obvious deviation from postcoloniality whose main objective is to recover the basic principles of the tricontinental. This implies that the Global South would commit to expressing the ideological grounds for inclusion through which people view themselves as part of a resistant, international subjectivity rather than as members defined by circumstantial and attribute-based conditions. Third, the centrality of Latin American and African American intellectual traditions is explicitly acknowledged when recognizing tricontinentalism as a model. The recognition of these traditions — which have historically been marginalized — carries significant implications for both the Latin American and U.S. academic contexts.
Conclusion
Mahler (2015) explores the influential role of the Tricontinental on current conceptualizations of global subalternity, particularly the idea of the Global South. The Global South is grounded in the ideologies of the Tricontinental, which emerged as an alliance against imperialism. The article identifies three major concepts relating to the modern notion of global subalternity: the post-national sense that forms the foundation of both tricontinentalism and the Global South; the Global South's effort to identify and theorize the current reality of transnational subaltern politics; and tricontinentalism as the ideological foundation of the global struggle for racial justice.
The social implications of these concepts include the potential for opening communication between intellectual traditions long neglected under postcolonialism, the promotion of a mutual view and collective effort against global capitalist exploitation and racial injustice, and the possibility that resistance to global imperialist exploitation could develop into organized transnational political resistance. For further discussion, one might ask: how does the Global South demonstrate a link between global imperialist exploitation and global racial justice based on the ideologies of tricontinentalism?
Reference
Mahler, A. G. (2015). The Global South in the belly of the beast: Viewing African American civil rights through a tricontinental lens. Latin American Research Review, 50(1), 95–116.
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