Remaking transnational solidarity in the twilight of neoliberalism: US anti-imperial activism with Latin America

The tactics of U.S. activists working in solidarity with communities and organizations in Latin America have undergone distinct transformations since the 1960s. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork and a decade of personal involvement, this paper examines how the tactics U.S. activists employ to support anti-imperial work in Colombia have been contoured by the rise of human rights, diminishing practices of democracy in the U.S., and the normalization of neoliberalism. Informed by leftistactivists and communities across Latin America, U.S. solidarity activists often reference goals to build transnational communal solidarity that counters top-down power with communal care. However, they simultaneously engage in individualized tactics such petition signing and personalized education that do not embody the same theoretical ideas of solidarity they admire. Using the distinction between allyship and comradeship, this paper examines how a group of U.S. activists have negotiated a desire to move beyond the limitations of allyship but struggled to reach a fully embodied comradeship witnessed in Colombian peers.The lack of cohesion betweenactivists’ theories and practices is a site of struggle indicative of conflict inherent in processes of solidarity.