HI 453 Interpretive Lectures
These followup lecture give you a brief "bird's eye view" of the
topic. Compare your interpretation of the documents with the thoughts
presented below. As you progress through the semester, you should be
able to formulate analyses closer to those of foreign policy experts.
US and Latin American Independence, 1810-26
 [Flag of Haiti] The latter half of the eighteenth century witnessed an era of political revolutions
on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. First the upstart British colonists
of North America broke away from Great Britain in 1776. In 1789 the bloody French
Revolution broke out in the name of "liberty, equality, fraternity." Latin
America's first independence movement arose in France's Caribbean colony
of Haiti (Saint Domingue). There slaves, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture,
revolted against their masters on August 22, 1791. After more than a decade
of intense fighting, Haiti achieved and declared its independence in 1804. Recognizing the dangerous precedent of freed slaves ruling themselves, southern politicians in the US steadfastly refused to recognize the new black republic. The US government would not officially recognize Haiti as an independent nation until after the US Civil War had settled that divisive issue. Later Haiti's president Petion would play a major role in arming and supporting Simon Bolivar's efforts to liberate Venezuela. Meanwhile the United States, fearful of harming its commercial interests, would remain on the sidelines, turning aside repeated pleas for assistance from the leaders of Spanish American independence.
 What gave rise to the push for Spanish American independence? The Spanish colonial system of the Habsburgs had declined sharply
and steadily over the years. In 1700 a new French dynasty, the Bourbons,
took over the Spanish throne and sought to reinvigorate the colonial economy.
They faced a formidable task. Mining revenues had declined as high grade
ores disappeared. Smuggling and piracy cut into royal revenues. Colonial officials often purchased their offices and
worked to recoup their investments as quickly as possible. Abuses of Indian
laborers and of African slaves abounded. Even the native-born white elite,
the criollos or creoles, faced discrimination at the hands of grasping
peninsular Spaniards. What did the empire look like? Here's a map of the political divisions of Spanish American empire in 1797. The sentiment for Latin American independence grew steadily with
the abuses of the colonial system. Trying to centralize colonial governance
and increase colonial revenues, the Bourbons instituted a wide-ranging series
of "Reforms." The Bourbon Kings sent new, powerful officials to Latin America. These intendants tried to increase tax revenues, enhance military defenses, promote trade, and bring improved technology to mining and agriculture. Fearing the power and wealth of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit religious order), the Bourbons expelled them from the New World. Despite the strenuous efforts
of the Inquisition, books and ideas of the European Enlightenment spread
to Latin America. You should also examine the important impact that these
new ideas exerted on educated creoles in the New World.
[Flag of Venezuela] Creoles (persons of Spanish ancestry born in the New World) took the lead in moving Spanish America toward independence.
From Francisco Miranda and Simon Bolivar in Venzuela to Father Miguel Hidalgo
and Father Jos Maria Morelos (yes, a priest) in Mexico to Jose de San Martin in Argentina, able
leaders arose to lead the independence forces. In a famous "Letter from Jamaica," written in 1815, Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) vehemently expresesed the depth of patriot rejection of Spanish dominion. Spain had reconquered many of the colonies by that year, but Bolivar and other patriots would fight on to victory.
The hatred that the Peninsula has inspired in us is greater than the ocean between us. It would be easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirits of the two countries. The habit of obedience, a community of interest, of understanding, of religion; mutual goodwill; a tender regard for the birthplace and good name of our forefathers; in short, all that gave rise to our hopes, came to us from Spain. As a result there was born a principle of affinity that seemed eternal, notwithstanding the misbehavior of our rulers which weakened that sympathy, or rather, that bond enforced by the domination of their rule. At present the contrary attitude persists: we are threatened with the fear of death, dishonor, and every harm; there is nothing we have not suffered at the hands of that unnatural step-mother--Spain. The veil has been torn asunder. We have already seen the light, and it is not our desire to be thrust back into darkness. Then chains have been broken; we have been freed, and now our enemies seek to enslave us anew. For this reason America fights desperately, and seldom has desperation failed to achieve victory.
The savage fighting raged
on from the initial declarations of independence in 1810 until the final battle of Ayacucho
in 1824. Finally freed of the Spanish yoke, the new creole leaders faced an equally difficult problem--how to govern their newly independent republics.
[The following section comes from my forthcoming biography of the Venezuelan independence leader Simon Bolivar.]
The United States, for reasons of self-interest, remained largely aloof from Spanish America's struggle against their Spanish masters. The one bright spot for Venezuelan efforts in the United States came from the skilled propagandist Manuel Torres. In October 1814, William Duane, publisher of the Philadelphia Aurora, provided Torres with letters of introduction to prominent politicians, including Secretary of State James Monroe. Duane described Torres as "a man of practical experience and [of] principles and views perfectly in the Sprit of our Government." Indeed, Torres activities attracted royalist attention to the point that they attempted to assassinate the Venezuelan. With his publications and personal meetings, Torres kept the patriot cause before the American people.
Pushed by propagandists like Torres and its own economic interests, the United States did not ignore events in South America. The State Department dispatched a number of special agents to the region to monitor events. Those serving in Gran Colombia from 1816 to 1818 included Christopher Hughes, Charles Morris, Baptis Irvine, a journalist of considerable experience, Joseph Devereux, and Commodore Oliver H. Perry, hero of the Battle of Lake Erie. Irvine, sent in early 1818 to demand indemnity for two American vessels seized and sold, failed in his mission. Perry made better headway, but he contracted yellow fever while descending the Orinoco River and died at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, on August 23, 1819. Perhaps owing to George Washington's warning against foreign intrigues, the United States posture ranged from neutral to aloof concerning the travails of its South American neighbors.
The patriot cause also attracted a new champion in the United States, fiery Senator Henry Clay (1777-1852). A Virginia native, Clay entered the Senate in 1806 representing Kentucky. He had publicly expressed support for Spanish American independence as early January 1813, but the War of 1812 hamstrung American policy toward its southern neighbors for several years. Indeed, Bolivar recognized the deleterious impact of the conflict between Great Britain and the United States. The latter, "which, through her commerce, could have supplied us with war materials, did not do so because of her war with Great Britain. Otherwise, Venezuela could have triumphed by herself, and South America would not have been laid waste by Spanish cruelty and ruined by revolutionary anarchy."
In January 1816, Clay asked Congress "how far it may be proper to aid the people of South America in regards to the establishment of their independence." He supported a strong military for the United States, "if necessary, to aid in the cause of liberty in South America." He urged creation of an "American system" of republics to counter threats from Europe's Holy Alliance. He also anticipated the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) by asserting that "I consider the release of any part of American from the dominion of the Old World as adding to the general security of the New." Like many others, Clay considered expanding American commerce and blunting European influence in the Caribbean as important foreign policy goals. Although he had little concrete knowledge of events in Spanish America, Clay espoused views that would become official policy within a decade.
On March 24, 1818, Henry Clay requested that Congress appropriate $18,000 to send a minister to the provinces of the Rio de la Plata. A month later, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams made clear the conditions under which the United States would recognize a new Spanish American republic: "It is the stage when independence is established as a matter of fact so as to leave the changes of the opposite party to recover their dominion utterly desperate." Obviously, with the series patriot setbacks of the year, Bolivar could not expect recognition from the hemisphere's first republic.
As Bolivar faced serious military challenges in South America, the diplomatic front brightened in North America, where United States President James Monroe cautiously moved his nation beyond its longstanding neutrality. On March 8, 1822, he declared to Congress that five colonies, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Buenos Aires, and Mexico, should be recognized as independent nations. He further asked for money to deploy diplomatic missions to the new countries. After spirited debate Congress agreed, and Monroe signed the resulting legislation on May 4. The same month Adams informed Colombia's charge d'affaires Manuel Torres that Monroe would receive him. Although seriously ill, Torres traveled to Washington, DC, and met with Monroe on June 18. The United States thus became the first country outside of Latin America to recognize a new Spanish American republic. The Portuguese monarch, operating from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, had recognized Buenos Aires as independent in 1821. Despite appearing more overtly sympathetic, Great Britain would not publicly announce recognition any of the new republics until early 1825.
The United States finally appeared to be coming from the aid of the patriot cause when President James Monroe (1758-1831) delivered his seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. Embedded in his remarks, crafted with assistance from Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, emerged ideas that would have long-lasting impact on relations between the United States and Latin America. Recognizing the imminent end of Spanish colonialism in Latin America, the "Monroe Doctrine" asserted that the newly independent nations should "henceforth not be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." The American president drew a sharp line between Old World monarchy and New World republicanism. Monroe then linked the destinies of North and South America: "we should consider any attempt on their part [Europe, including Russia] to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." With a few cogent paragraphs, Monroe seemingly served warning to the Holy Alliance that America, North and South, was and would remain in the control of Americans.
Most European powers dismissed the bluster of the upstart republic, but some American politicians wanted to give the doctrine teeth. On January 20, 1824, the ever energetic Henry Clay asked Congress to go on record "that the people of these United States would not see, without serious inquietude, any forcible interposition by the Allied Powers of Europe in behalf of Spain, to reduce to their former subjection those parts of the continent of America which have proclaimed and established for themselves, respectively, independent Governments, and which have been solemnly recognized by the United States." Clay's resolution died of neglect, tabled and ignored for seven months, a harbinger of the direction of American policy. The Senate never considered the resolution at all.
Many Latin American leaders welcomed the belated expression of support from the north. Vice President Santander termed the message "an act worthy of the classic land of liberty" which "might secure to Colombia a powerful ally in case her independence and liberty should be menaced by the allied powers." Furthermore, on December 12, 1823, American minister Richard C. Anderson had arrived in Bogota. The Gaceta de Colombia warmly greeted his arrival that "cannot fail to inspire the most pleasing sensations in the bosom of every friend of liberty." Adams, however, quickly quashed such optimism. Seven months after Monroe's speech, Colombian Minister to the United States, Jose Maria Salazar, expressed pleasure "that the government of the United States has undertaken to oppose the policy and the ulterior designs of the Holy Alliance." He then asked, rather pointedly, "in what manner the government of the United States intends to resist any interference of the Holy Alliance," and would the United States "enter into a treaty of alliance with her [Colombia] to save America from the calamities of a despotic system."
On August 6, 1824, Monroe dashed Colombia's hopes for such an alliance and revealed the Monroe Doctrine as more rhetorical than substantive. "By the constitution of the United States, the ultimate decision of this question belongs to the Legislative Department of the Government." Adams reaffirmed that the United States would retain its traditional stance of neutrality and that it "could not undertake resistant to them [the Holy Alliance] by force of Arms." So much for help from the sister republic to the north. Writing to Santander on March 8, 1825, Bolivar recognized the disjuncture between words and actions and reflected acidly: "The English and the [North] Americans are only possible future allies, and they have their own selfish interests."
Bereft of meaningful assistance from the United States, the patriot forces pressed on to ultimately defeat Spain's forces and gain independence.
19th Century: From Isolation to Expansion, 1820s-1850s
Fighting against the Spanish for independence had been a long, frustrating,
exhausting, and costly effort. Winning independence was difficult, but
creating a new nation proved equally challenging. The creole elite that
had led the independence movement agreed on only one point. THEY, the "gente
decente," (better people) should rule--not the illiterate, colored masses.
But what form of government should replace the old colonial system? How
should the economy function? These and other thorny questions faced the
creole elites during the difficult decade of the 1820s.
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) labored mightily to resolve the political
dilemmas of Latin America. He called together a Congress in Panama in 1826
to try to get the new republics to cooperate. He failed. Indeed, he would
survive assassination attempts only to be hounded into exile four years
later. He died in Santa Marta, Colombia, too ill to leave the continent
he fought to free.
Bolivar summarized his suggestions for forming new national governments in an important speech to the Congress of Angostura (Colombia), delivered on February 15, 1819.
Although those people [North Americans], so lacking in many respects, are unique in the history of mankind, it is a marvel, I repeat, that so weak and
complicated a government as the federal system has managed to govern them in the difficult and trying circumstances of their past. [Notice the Liberator's obvious distaste for North Americans and their "weak and complicated" government.] But, regardless of the
effectiveness of this form of government with respect to North America, I must say that it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the
position and character of two states as dissimilar as the English-American and the Spanish-American. Would it not be most difficult to apply to Spain
the English system of political, civil, and religious liberty: Hence, it would be even more difficult to adapt to Venezuela the laws of North America.
Nothing in our fundamental laws would have to be altered were we to adopt a legislative power similar to that held by the British Parliament. Like the
North Americans, we have divided national representation into two chambers: that of Representatives and the Senate. The first is very wisely
constituted. It enjoys all its proper functions, and it requires no essential revision, because the Constitution, in creating it, gave it the form and powers
which the people deemed necessary in order that they might be legally and properly represented. If the Senate were hereditary rather than elective, it
would, in my opinion, be the basis, the tie, the very soul of our republic. [Bolivar's distrust of the rule of the non-white masses comes through clearly here. By making the Senate an inherited position, the creole elite minority could maintain its powerful over time.]
Unfortunately, history would unfold in Latin America much as Bolivar warned in his last paragraph above. Historian E. Bradford Burns details many of the forces that destroyed any chance of democratic, stable governments in the newly independent Latin American nations. Just as not everyone agreed with Bolivar, not everyone agreed with
one another. Broadly speaking the creoles divided between liberal and conservative
elites.
In place of Simon
Bolivar's dream of a powerful "United States of Latin America," we find
a hodgepodge of small, often conflicting nations. Border disputes, such as that between Peru and Ecuador continue between many of these nations today. Of course the most costly border conflict would come at mid-century between the United States and Mexico. The latter country would lose half of its national territory.
 Despite the warning by US President James Monroe (shown at left) in 1823, many foreign
nations intervened routinely in Latin America during the 19th century.
The Monroe Doctrine held little weight among the colonial European powers
of the time. Sometimes foreign intervention came about because of liberal-conservative
conflicts. A liberal government might repudiate the foreign loans taken
out by the preceding conservative regime. Bankers in Europe would entice
their governments to send gunboats in to collect on the debt. Mexico suffered
the gravest intervention when Louis Napoleon sent 30,000 French troops
to occupy the country from 1862 to 1867. Mexico defeated the French near Puebla on May 5th, 1862, (giving rise to the still-observed Cinco de Mayo celebrations), but the French eventually prevailed. (Puebla is about 60 miles southeast of Mexico City). Preoccupied with its own great
Civil War, the United States was in no condition to enforce the Monroe
Doctrine. As with internal political divisions, foreign intervention further
disrupted the political evolution of the new Latin American nations.
Latin American politics became more complex and complicated in the twentieth century. New political contenders, including women, the middle class, labor unions, and the military pressed their demands in the political arena. Another new political contender, and over time the most powerful, was the United States. During the twentieth century, the US must be considered part of the internal political struggles in Latin America. Its economic clout, political leadership, diplomatic wrangling, and propensity to military intervention made the US an integral part of Latin American politics.
=========== Latin Americans have long held ambivalent feelings toward the "Colossus of the North." Some independence leaders of the early nineteenth century looked to the then-new North American republic as a model and as a source of support for their efforts. The US did not assist in Latin American independence, and some leaders, such as Simon Bolivar, feared the materialism and expansionism of the United States. Writing to a friend on August 5, 1829, Bolivar lamented that the US seemed "destined by Province to plague [the rest of] America with torments in the name of freedom." In contrast, in a letter written on November 12, 1847 while visiting the US, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Argentina's future president, expressed admiration for North American democracy. He observed that even in the sparsely populated western frontier, "there is an appearance of perfect equality among the people in dress, manner, and even intelligence. The merchant, the doctor, the sheriff, and the farmer all look alike. . . . Gradations of civilization and wealth are not expressed, as among us, by special types of clothing. . . . They have no kings, nobles, privileged classes, men born to command, or human machines born to obey." With considerable prescience, however, Sarmiento identified the most glaring drawback of US society at the time. "Alas slavery, the deep, incurable sore that threatens gangrene to the robust body of the Union. . . ! A racial war of extermination will come within a century, or else a mean, black, backward nation will be found alongside a white one--the most powerful and cultivated on earth!" Indeed, in 1861, southerners would fire on Fort Sumter, SC, ushering in the bloody Civil War that would break out and tear the nation temporarily apart, just as the Argentine politician had warned.
=========== North Americans traveling to Latin America often expressed a sense of superiority and racism. The high point of American filibustering came with William Walker (1824-60), a Californian who first tried and failed to take Mexican Baja (Lower) California. In 1855, Walker took aim at Nicaragua, taking advantage of a civil war that divided the country. In May 1856
US President Franklin Pierce recognized the Walker regime.
After Walker had disrupted Central American politics and commerce for years, British and US investors tired of his escapades. Walker tried to seize control of the Accessory Transit Company (an American transport company in Nicaragua) from none other than business titan Cornelius
Vanderbilt. In response, Vanderbilt organized a coalition of Central American states to fight Walker. The dictator of Nicaragua surrendered on May 1, 1857, but thereafter tried tried twice more to retake Nicaragua. On his final, fateful attempt in 1860, British forces captured him on the coast of Honduras and then turned him over to officials in Honduras. They executed the freebooter on September 12, 1860. Nicaraguans still remember Walker as the first gringo imperialist to plague their nation.
=========== Walker well exemplified the racist attitudes of the time. He reestablished slavery in Nicaragua and made no apologies for taking power by invasion and force. "That which you ignorantly call 'Filibusterism' is not the offspring of hasty passion or ill-regulated desire; it is the fruit of the sure, unerring instincts which act in accordance with laws as old as the creation. They are but drivellers who speak of establishing fixed relations between the pure white American race, as it exists in the United States, and the mixed Hispano-Indian race, as it exists in Mexico and Central America, without the employment of force. The history of the world presents no such Utopian vision as that of an inferior race yielding meekly and peacefully to the controlling influence of a superior people. Whenever barbarism and civilization, or two distinct forms of civilization, meet face to face, the result must be war. Therefore, the struggle between the old and the new elements in Nicaraguan society was not passing or accidental, but natural and inevitable."
=========== Filibustering expeditions sought new lands. Many leaders of these expeditions desired to conquer new territory to be added to the US as future slave states to the Union. In 1849, for example, Narcisco Lopez initiated the first of three unsuccessful expeditions against Cuba. He convinced many prominent Southerners that the islanders wanted to revolt against Spain. In his final attempt in 1851, Lopez and his band of southern sympathizers landed in Havana. They expected the population would follow their lead and rise up against
Spain. (Ironically, the CIA "experts" who planned the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1916 also assumed that the Cuban people would join the invading exile army and rise up against Fidel Castro. They, too, were wrong.) No popular acclaim greeted Lopez; instead Spanish military authorities executed him and 50 southerner supporters. It made little difference to Latin Americans that such freebooters operated without US government sanction. It seemed that "Yanqui" meddling would plague the region in a variety of forms.
The Big Stick and Interventionism, 1898-1934
 =========== Although US investment and influence had grown through the 19th century, European ties remained of greater importance for most Latin American nations. However, beginning in 1898, a few key events catapulted the US into a much greater role in the Latin American arena. Thanks to the War of 1898 [Spanish-American War], the US gained real estate in the Caribbean. We took over Puerto Rico from Spain. Historians debate the exact mix of causes for the war, but any short list certainly includes the following issues and events:
- Yellow journalism: A century ago, major New York City newspapers behaved like the supermarket tabloids of today. Anything to sell papers--truth be damned. In particular William Randolph Hearst saw the great salability of the conflict in Cuba and played a leading role in fanning anti-Spanish sentiments.
- Black Legend: Reinforcing the lurid (sometimes true) stories coming out of Cuba, stood the centuries-old Black Legend. The origins date to the sixteenth-century conflicts between Roman Catholic Spain and Protestant England. English writers and politicians created a corpus of infamatory anti-Spanish writings and views. These views continued for centuries, providing "historical proof" that Spaniards had always been cruel, domineering, undemocratic, etc. etc. Cartoons showed General Weyler, in charge of Spanish forces in Cuba, as the last of the Spanish conquistadores.
- The De Lome Letter:
[In February of 1898, a Cuban agent in Havana stole a letter that had been written the preceding December by Spain's minister to the United States, Dupuy De Lome. It was printed in William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, the most ardently pro-war newspaper in the United States. The letter helped to set the stage for the war fever that came with the sinking of the battleship Maine a short time later. The letter read in part. . . ]
Besides the ingrained and inevitable bluntness (groseria) with which is repeated all that the press and public opinion in Spain have said about Weyler, it once more shows what McKinley is, weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a would-be politician (politicastro) who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.
Nevertheless, whether the practical results of it [the message] are to be injurious and adverse depends only upon ourselves. I am entirely of your opinions; without a military end of the matter nothing will be accomplished in Cuba, and without a military and political settlement there will always be the danger of encouragement being given to the insurgents by a part of the public opinion if not by the Government.... I do not think sufficient attention has been paid to the part England is playing.
It would be very advantageous to take up, even if only for effect, the question of commercial relations, and to have a man of some prominence sent hither in order that I may make use of him here to carry on a propaganda among the Senators and others in opposition to the junta and to try to win over the refugees.
- Explosion of the battleship Maine: This startling event "proved" the evil and perfidy of Spain. It gave President McKinley the tangible reason he needed to urge war with Spain. You'll find lots of related documents on the Primary Sources Page.
- Anti-colonialism, Monroe Doctrine: Many Americans believed that nations should
not hold colonies, a vestige of the past. Others believed that, according
to the Monroe Doctrine, the US should continue to oppose European meddling
in the Western Hemisphere. Ironically, the US initially insisted in
the that it had no designs on taking over real estate that once belonged
to Spain. With the Teller Amendment, the US
Congress expressly stated that the US had no interest in taking over
Cuba. That sentiment would change quickly, however, and using the Platt
Amendment, the US made Cuba a de facto colony (a point developed in
greater detail below). We also took over other Spanish possessions,
including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines (after extended, bloody
fighting against Filipino independence forces).
The War of 1898 heightened US interest in the circum-Caribbean and in a canal linking the Caribbean and the Pacific. The battleship Oregon, steamed from the Pacific Ocean around South America, arriving at Cuba after the war had already ended. No medals, no parades. Navy supporters did not like the idea of ships arriving too late to fight.
The creation of the new nation of Panama (encouraged and supported by the US) and the construction of the Panama Canal [1904-14, see map] gives the US another strategic property to defend. The 1903 treaty between the two nations greatly favored the US, at the expense of Panama's sovereignty and economic interests.
The architect of Panama's independence, US President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919, shown in the photo at right taken in 1898, just after the war in Cuba had ended) also reinterpreted the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 from a statement of non-intervention to an excuse for US interventionism. In 1917, we purchase the Virgin Islands from Denmark to gain bases on this strategic approach to the Panama Canal through the Caribbean Sea. Massive US investments throughout Latin America give US corporations and therefore the US government strong interests to protect. As the cartoon at the right shows, Roosevelt advised America to "speak softly but carry a big stick."
- =========== Along with intervening to create the nation of Panama, the US exhibited other highhanded tactics in Cuba. Thanks to the Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitution, that nation becomes a virtual US colony just after gaining its independence from Spain. We could manipulate Cuban politics, take over its economy, and repeatedly land troops there--all "constitutional," thanks to this imposed arrangement. Orville Hitchcock Platt, long-time conservative Republican senator from Connecticut (1879-1905), introduced the
amendment that bears his name. Earlier statements on behalf of Cuban independence and autonomy vanished from political memory.
The Platt Amendment, passed by the the U.S. 56th Congress, 1901, signed by both nations May 22, 1903.
That in fulfillment of the declaration contained in the joint resolution approved April twentieth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, entitled 'For the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba, and to withdraw its land and naval reserve forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect,' the President is hereby authorized to 'leave the government and control of the island of Cuba to its people' so soon as a government shall have been established in said island under a constitution which, either as a part thereof or in an ordinance appended thereto, shall define the future relations of the United States with Cuba, substantially as follows:
- That the government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, or in any manner authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain by colonization or, for military or naval purposes or otherwise, lodgment in or control over any portion of said island.
- That said government shall not assume or contract any public debt, to pay the interest upon which, and to make reasonable sinking fund provision for the ultimate discharge of which, the ordinary revenues of the island, after defraying the current expenses of government shall be inadequate.
- That the government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the government of Cuba.
- That all Acts of the United States in Cuba during its military occupancy thereof are ratified and validated, and all lawful rights acquired thereunder shall be maintained and protected.
- That the government of Cuba will execute and as far as necessary extend, the plans already devised or other plans to be mutually agreed upon, for the sanitation of the cities of the island, to the end that a recurrence of epidemic and infectious diseases may be prevented, thereby assuring protection to the people and commerce of Cuba, as well as to the commerce of the southern ports of the United States and of the people residing therein.
- That the Isle of Pines shall be omitted from the proposed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto being left to future adjustment by treaty.
- That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defence, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States land necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.
- That by way of further assurance the government of Cuba will embody the foregoing provisions in a permanent treaty with the United States.
- =========== Indeed, Latin American leaders fought long and hard against European and US claims that they had a right to intervene in and invade other nations. Carlos Calvo (1822-1906), a jurist and diplomat from Argentina, pushed unsuccessfully for acceptance of a non-intervention doctrine. Writing in 1896, he asserted that "aside from political motives these interventions have nearly always had as apparent pretexts, injuries to private interests, claims and demands for pecuniary indemnities in behalf of subjects. . . . According to strict international law, the recovery of debts and the pursuit of private claims does not justify de plano the armed intervention of government, and , since European states invariably follow this rule in their reciprocal relations, there is no reason why they should not also impose it upon themselves in their relations with the nations of the new world. . . . The rule that in more than one has it has been attempted to impose on American states is that foreigners merit more regard and privileges more marked and extended than those accorded even to the nationals of the country where they reside. This principle is intrinsically contrary to the law of equality of nations." In 1902, Argentina's minister to Washington, Luis M. Drago (1859-1921), asserted that debt collection did not give a nation the right to intervene: "there can be no territorial expansion in America on the part of Europe, nor any oppression of the peoples of this continent, because an unfortunate financial situation may compel some one of them to the fulfillment of its promises. In a word, the principle which she would like to see recognized is: that the public debt can not occasion armed intervention nor even the actual occupation of the territory of American nations by a European power."
- =========== Writing in 1926, Peruvian intellectual and politician Victor Haya de la Torre (1895-1979) offered a leftist interpretation of hemispheric relations. He also organized APRA (Popular Revolutionary American Alliance), a populist political party to fight the problems he diagnosed.
The history of the political and economic relations between Latin America and the United States, especially the experience of the Mexican Revolution, lead to the following conclusions:
- The governing classes of the Latin American countries--landowners, middle class or merchants--are allies of North American Imperialism.
- These classes have the political power in our countries, in exchange for a policy of concessions, of loans, of great operations which they--the capitalists, landowners or merchants and politicians of the Latin American dominant classes---share with Imperialism.
- As a result of this alliance the natural resources which form the riches of our countries are mortgaged or sold, and the working and agricultural classes are subjected to the most brutal servitude. Again, this alliance produces political events which result in the loss of national sovereignty: Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic], are really protectorates of the United States.
You'll find more writing by de la Torre on the Primary Sources Page.
- ===========
Faced with such criticism from many in Latin America, in 1928, Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948), at the behest of the Republican Hoover administration, presented the US rationale for its interventions. Hughes has served as secretary of state under Harding and in 1930 became a very conservative voice as chief justice of the Supreme Court.
What are we to do when government breaks down and American citizens are in danger of their lives? Are we to stand by and see them killed because a government, in circumstances which it cannot control and for which it may not be responsible, can no longer afford reasonable protection? I am not speaking of sporadic acts of violence, or of the rising of mobs, or of those distressing incidents which may occur in any country, however well administered. I am speaking of the occasion where government itself is unable to function for a time. . . . Now it is a principle of international law that in such a case a government is fully justified in taking action--I would call it interposition of a temporary character--for the purpose of protecting the lives and property of its nationals. . . . Of course, the United States cannot forego the right to protect its citizens. No country should forego its right to protect its citizens.
- =========== Faced with such forceful, rising anti-imperialist sentiment, and slammed by the Great Depression of 1929, Hoover began moving the US away from interventionism. His successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), went even further with his "Good Neighbor Policy." The US finally and officially dropped its imperious insistence on its right of interventions. At the Seventh International Conference of American States, held in Montevideo, Uruguay, in December 1933, the US signed an agreement supporting nonintervention, albeit with reservations.
Article 4: States are juridically equal, enjoy the same rights, and have equal capacity in their exercise. The rights of each one do not depend upon the power which it possesses to assure its exercise, but upon the simple fact of its existence as a person under international law.
Article 8: No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.
Article 9: The jurisdiction of states within the limits of national territory applies to all the inhabitants. Nationals and foreigners are under the same protection of the law and the national authorities, and the foreigners do not claim rights over or more extensive than those of the nations.
Article 11: The contracting states definitely establish as the rule of the conduct the precise obligation not to recognize territorial acquisitions or special advantages which have been obtained by force whether this consists in the employment of arms, threatening diplomatic representations, or in any other effective coercive measure. The territory of a state is inviolable and may not be the object of military occupation nor of any other measures of force imposed by another state directly or indirectly or for any motive whatever even temporarily.
Reservations made at signature by the United States of America:
The United States Government in all its international associations and relationships and conduct will follow scrupulously the doctrines and policies which it has pursued since March 4 which are embodied in . . . the law of nations as generally recognized and accepted.
- ============
The Roosevelt administration also abrogated (cancelled) the Platt Amendment on May 29, 1934, thus abandoning its "legal" right of intervention in Cuba. After a lull in military interventions under Roosevelt and Truman, however, the Republican Eisenhower administration would renew intervention with a vengeance during the 1950s. Thus both foreign and domestic affairs for the Latin American nations become more difficult. Internal politics became much more complex as the new political contenders discussed above exerted influence and pursued their often conflicting interests. Not surprisingly, the political systems of many nations cracked under the strain. We'll find military dictatorships, revolutions, and other extreme forms on political organization on the rise in the twentieth century. All of this political conflict proved challenging for the United States, which more than anytime wanted stability and a good, profitable investment climate in its neighbors to the south.
A Nationalist Backlash: Anti-Interventionism in Latin America
- =========== In Mexico, the great destruction and divisions of the Mexican Revolution generated tremendous nationalism, a violent reaction to the long dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915, shown in the portrait at the right). Many revolutionaries fought to end what they viewed as foreign domination of their economy, especially by the US. Pancho Villa [pictured at left] provided the most graphic and violent anti-American actions. In the spring of 1916 Villa's troops shot and killed 17 US miners. Later Villa and perhaps 500 troops invaded Columbus, New Mexico, and shot and killed another 17 US citizens. Nationalism would spur many later outbreaks of anti-Americanism as well. Mexico's new revolutionary constitution written in 1917 would reflect the nation's strong economic nationalism by declaring all subsoil resources to be inalienable (they could not be sold to foreigners). President Lazaro Cardenas would act on this nationalism by nationalizing foreign oil company holdings in 1938.
 
- Diaz had gained hero status among liberals by fighting against occupying French forces in the 1860s. As a reward, he won election as president in 1880. Following four years of constitutional rule, he developed a personal dictatorship and controlled the nation from 1884 until his ouster in 1911. The Diaz regime illustrates as clearly as any government the failures of 19th-century elite-based policies. Operating under the influence is his Positivist advisors, the "cientificos," Diaz purposely created a Mexico of mostly have-nots, the majority Indian peasants, presided over by a tiny elite of "haves." Historian Peter Bakewell (A History of Latin America, 1997, pp. 421-22) explains the pernicious impact of this racist philosophy in combination with social Darwinism.
The moneyed were happy to assume that a process of natural selection had lifted them to their superior position in society. They found it equally comforting to think of the poor as naturally being so as a result of innate incapacities. And yet more convenient was the notion that governments would be going against principles of Nature if they tried to raise the poor and servile from their inferior state. . . . Positivism and Darwinism thus instructed the wealthy and the aspirants to wealth in Latin America that possession of riches was part of the natural order of things, an outcome of their inherent superiority, and that conscious attempts to improve the conditions of the poor were doomed to failure because they contradicted natural laws.
The violent Mexican Revolution and many others to follow would of course demonstrate the complete bankruptcy of this fallacious doctrine.
-
 The dictator and his advisors believed that they should invite foreign capital, expertise, technology, and immigrants to Mexico to help uplift the country. Their racist point of view considered white foreigners superior to the mixed-blood (mestizo) and indigenous Mexicans. They hoped to improve the nation with foreign genetic and monetary infusions. Thus foreigners received great subsidies and opportunities not open to Mexicans. Foreign corporations, many based in the neighboring US, dominated mining, oil, railroads, plantation agriculture, and other key economic areas. "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so near the United States" went the popular lament.
- =========== After the massive fighting ended, the decade of the 1920s became one of reconstructing the nation. Artists, philosophers, writers, composers all lauded "lo Mexicano"--things Mexican -- in an attempt to draw people together and to heal the wounds of the preceding bloody decade. Murals and music proclaimed the pride Mexicans took in leaving their neofeudal past behind and marching forward together in the twentieth century. Minister of Public Education (1920-24) Jose Vasconcelos wrote optimistically of the "Cosmic Race" of Mexicans who could look to a brighter future thanks to the Revolution.
- =========== Similar cultural nationalism arose in other countries as writers, politicians, and philosophers celebrated their own heritage and roots, now increasingly viewed as superior to not inferior to things European.
 Cuba's independence hero, Jose Marti (1853-95), writing the year before his death, sharply criticism the US, which he held as inferior to Latin America. "It is surely appropriate, and even urgent, to put before our America the entire American truth, about the Saxon as well as the Latin, so that too much faith in foreign virtue will not weaken us in our formative years with an unmotivated and baneful distrust of what is ours. From the standpoints of justice and a legitimate social science, it should be recognized that, in relation to the ready compliance of the one and the obstacles of the other, the North American character has gone downhill since the winning of independence, and is today less human and virile; whereas the Spanish American character today is in all ways superior, in spite of its confusion and fatigue. . . . [We must] demonstrate two useful truths to our America: the crude, uneven, and decadent character of the United States, and the continuous existence there of all the violence, discord, immorality, and disorder blamed upon the peoples of Spanish America." On May 18, 1895, the day before his death, Marti (now fighting against the Spaniards) wrote to a friend that he worked to keep "those Imperialists up there [in the US] and the Spaniards from annexing the peoples of our America to the savage and brutal North, which holds them in contempt; with our own blood we are blocking their path. I have lived in the monster [the US] and know its entrails--and my sling is that of David." [Ironically and showing a profound ignorance of Marti's anti-American views, the Reagan administration would later name their propaganda radio beamed at Castro's Cuba "Radio Marti."]
- =========== Perhaps no one voiced rising cultural nationalism better than Uruguayan writer Jose Enrique Rodo ((1872-1917,shown at right in the year of his death) in his book titled Ariel (1900). While acknowledging the considerable economic and technological achievements of the United States, Rodo sternly warned Latin Americans against mindless imitation of "Caliban." He blasted US materialism and cultural shallowness.
<"North American life, in fact, perfectly describes the vicious circle identified by Pascal: the fervent pursuit of well-being that - no object beyond itself. North American prosperity is as great as its inability to satisfy even an average concept of human destiny. In spite of its titanic accomplishments and the great force of will that those accomplishments represent, and in spite of its incomparable triumphs in all spheres of material success, it is nevertheless true that as an entity this civilization creates a singular impression of insufficiency and emptiness. . . They live for the immediate reality, for the present, and thereby subordinate all their activity to the egoism of personal and collective well being. . . . Sensibility, intelligence, customs--everything in that enormous land is characterized by a radical ineptitude for selectivity which, along with the mechanistic nature of its materialism and its politics, nurtures a profound disorder in anything having to do with idealism.. . . The idealism of beauty does not fire the soul of a descendant of austere Puritans. Nor does the idealism of truth. He scorns as vain and unproductive any exercise of thought that does not yield an immediate result.
- In societies, as in literature or in art, blind imitation produces an inferior copy of the original. Respect for one's own independence, judgment, and personality is a matter of pride. . . . We Latin Americans have our own inheritance, a great ethnic tradition to maintain, a sacred bond uniting us to the past, linking us to our history. Our honor bounds us to preserve this tradition for the future. Any external influence which we accept must not preclude our own fidelity to the past. We must apply our own genius to the process of fusing and molding the future. . . .
- [Rodo exhorted Latin Americans to be guided by their spirituality; not by the materialism rampant in North America.]
Picture the Americas of the future. It will be hospitable to the intellect; it will give flight to the spirit; it will cradle the soul. It will be thoughtful, without sacrificing action; it will be serene and strong without abjuring enthusiasm; it will radiate charm while engendering thought. . . . I ask you to give of your spirit and soul for this labor for the future. For that reason I seek inspiration in the gentle and lovely image of Ariel here by my side. This bountiful Spirit selected by the genius of Shakespeare serves as our symbol. The sculptor rendered the statue appropriately spiritual. Ariel is the beacon and the higher truth. Ariel is that sublime sentiment of the perfectibility of the human being. Ariel, the spirit, is the crowning glory of evolution.
- =========== Economic nationalism is the belief that the people of a nation, not foreigners and foreign corporations, should own and control their own economy and resources. In 1939, for example, President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the foreign oil holdings of Mexico. An early proponent of economic nationalism, the Brazilian intellectual Alberto Torres (1865-1917) wrote influentially between 1909 and 1915. His argument equating economic development and nationalism would strongly influence many officers of the Brazilian military. To exercise "real sovereignty" and express "true nationalism," he said, a nation must control its own industry and trade. This summary of his ideas comes from his 1914 book O Problema Nacional Brasileiro (The National Brazilian Problem).
- OUR NATION has renounced its own heritage. Foreigners seize it. Foreign companies, recently arrived foreign immigrants, foreign businessmen without any headquarters in our country, foreigners in transit or with a residence just long enough for them to enrich themselves take advantage of our vast regions, our soil, our railroads, and our natural sources of wealth. They purchase our property; they take advantage of the credit extended by our banks. They seem to have future projects that would divide our country into spheres of influence. It is impossible to disguise the fear provoked by the contrast between these undeniable facts and the benign, even permissive attitude of our governments toward the growing reality of foreign domination.
The Brazilian people have no idea of the national danger that suddenly confronts them, even threatens them. Foreigners control the national patrimony as well as the exports. Our territorial integrity, our independence, and our sovereignty exist at the mercy of the great economic and military powers. ...
There can be no doubt about the present alarming economic situation of our country with its disequilibrium between production and consumption and the commercial and industrial inflation. Powerful foreign businesses, whose activities conflict with the best interests of our nation, exploit us mercilessly. The economic ideas that come to us from abroad are adverse and always alien to our best interests. Indifferent to our priorities and needs, foreigners view Brazil exclusively as a source of profits.
Their interests do not complement ours. They persuade some Brazilians with their logic to the extent that they have come to favor foreign exploitation to the detriment of their own Brazil.
- Our financial crises further expose us to foreign domination. Absorbed in matters of foreign credit and crushed by the pressure of debts, the governments descend to the lowly status of subordinates, showing real fear of foreign creditors and capitalist pressures. They are unable to give the nation the direction needed to serve its own best interests. They are slaves to foreign interests. They compromise the nation. Above all else, the independence of a people is founded on their economy and their finances....
In order for a nation to remain independent, it is imperative to preserve the vital organs of nationality: the principal sources of wealth, the industries of primary products, the instrumentalities and agents of economic vitality and circulation, transportation and internal commerce. There must be neither monopolies nor privileges, but there must exist ample guarantees and protection for free labor, individual initiative, small-scale production, and the distribution of wealth.
A people cannot be free if they do not control their own sources of wealth, produce their own food, and direct their own industry and commerce.
- =========== Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-73) voiced poetic opposition to the growing US presence. In his poem "The United Fruit Co.," he criticized US economic domination of Latin America and US support for dictators in the region. Born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. A Marxist, he served as Salvador Allende's ambassador to France from 1970 until his death from cancer three years later. A US-backed military coup overthrew and killed Allende (September 11) less than two weeks before Neruda's own death on September 23, 1973.
- The United Fruit Co.
When the trumpets had sounded and all
was in readiness on the face of the earth,
Jehovah divided his universe:
Anaconda, Ford Motors,
Coca-Cola Inc., and similar entities:
the most succulent item of all,
The United Fruit Company Incorporated [note: United Fruit lobbying prompted the CIA to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1954]
 reserved for itself: the heartland
and coasts of my country,
the delectable waist of America.
They rechristened their properties:
the "Banana Republics"--
and over the languishing dead,
the uneasy repose of the heroes
who harried that greatness,
their flags and their freedoms,
they established an opera bouffe:
they ravished all enterprise,
awarded the laurels like Caesars,
unleased all the covetous, and contrived
the tyrannical Reign of the Flies--
Trujillo the fly, and Tacho the fly, [note: Trujillo=dictator of the Dominican Republic; Tacho=Anastasio Somoza, dictator of Nicaragua]
the flies called Carias, Martinez,
Ubico--all of them flies, flies [note: Jorge Ubico, dictator of Guatemala, overthrown in 1944]
dank with the blood of their marmalade
vassalage, flies buzzing drunkenly
on the populous middens:
the fly-circus fly and the scholarly
kind, case-hardened in tyranny.
Then in the bloody domain of the flies
the United Fruit Company Incorporated
unloaded with a booty of coffee and fruits
brimiming its cargo boats, gliding
like trays with the spoils
of our drowning dominions.
And all the while, somewhere, in the sugary
hells of our seaports,
smothered by gases, an Indian
fell in the morning:
a body spun off, an anonymous
chattel, some numeral tumbling,
a branch with its death running out of it
in the vat of the carrion, fruit laden and foul.
US Combats Revolutions
- The great, violent, bloody Mexican Revolution revealed the failure of nineteenth-century policies in Latin America. Faced with starvation and oppression, millions of Mexicans rose up against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Alas, similar governmental and economic failures would give rise to repeated revolutions throughout Latin America. It has become increasingly difficult for tiny elites to maintain themselves in power. From 1944 through 1979, revolutions flared and gained power in many nations, including Guatemala (1944), Bolivia (1952), Cuba (1959), and Nicaragua (1979). Obviously the long-simmering problems of the region had yet to be resolved. Click here to view a political map of Central America.
- Revolutions arise out of deplorable social, political, and economic conditions that give most people no legitimate means of making a living or influencing government policies. In Guatemala a potent combination of anti-Indian racism and foreign corporate domination held the country back. Dictator Jorge Ubico (1878-1946) kept the country under his heel from 1931 until his overthrown by a progressive middle-class movement in 1944. Richard H. Immerman [The CIA in Guatemala, 1982, p. 33] well described the old-style dictator:
Extremely conservative, Ubico called anyone a Communist whose social, economic, and political ideologies were more progressive than his own, and he equated Communism with any disobedience to his laws or opposition to his regime. He claimed that the presence of such radicals threatened Guatemala's stability and well-being and that the maintenance of order required that he continue to rule. [p. 34] Linked with his fear of political radicalism was Ubico's conviction that general prosperity bred revolution. He once commented that "if people have money, they will kick me out," and he characteristically opposed all forms of labor activity. [p. 35] The Indians bore a special grudge against Ubico, for he singled them out as targets of discrimination, apprehending and punishing them for minor infractions of the law much more often than the non-Indian population. He also pressed them into a variety of so-called voluntary services, such as carrying the mail from the department capital and acting as messenger boys, and only the Maya were subject to conscription into the army and forced to participate in martial drills each Sunday morning.
 Thus Ubico treated Mayan Indians much the same way the elite in Argentina treated gauchos during the nineteenth century. Both groups suffered under repressive laws that applied only to them. Thus a coalition of progressive military officers, middle-class political leaders, labor, and Mayan Indians brought an end to Ubico's rule with their 1944 "revolution." Led by Juan Jose Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz the "Guatemalan Revolution" would bring reform to the nation for a decade. Arbenz's agrarian reform law of 1952 threatened a half-million acres owned by the powerful United Fruit Company of Boston. Lobbying its many friends in Washington, the fruit company (called "El Pulpo" or the Octopus by its opponents in Guatemala) pushed hard for action against the Arbenz government. In response, the Eisenhower Administration's CIA plotted and carried out the overthrow of Arbenz's constitutionally-elected government in 1954, ushering in decades of brutal military dictatorship that claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Guatemalans, mostly poor Mayan peasants.
 [Flag of Bolivia] You may view a political map of Bolivia here. Similar conditions, forces, and political constituencies brought revolution to Bolivia in 1952. There the MNR [National Revolutionary Movement] brought together a leftist coalition of the middle class, peasants, and tin miners. Intervention by the Bolivian military kept Victor Paz Estenssoro from assuming the presidency after his election in 1951.  In 1952 enraged tin miners swept down from the mountains, wielding dynamite and other weapons, and, after seizing more weapons from armories, defeated the Bolivian army. MNR quickly passed a host of much-needed reform laws, including universal adult suffrage (the right to vote). In the countryside long-suffering Indian peasants took over lands putting rich landowners into flight. Paz Estenssoro went on to serve as Bolivia's president four times: 1952-56, 60-64, 64-65, 85-89. He died at age 93 in June 2001. Unfortunately for these progressive leaders, the one thing they could not control was the world market price for tin. They nationalized the tin industry, taking out of the hands of three very rich families. In the aftermath of the Korean War tin prices collapsed and so did Bolivia's dependent economy. The US provided much-needed aid but with the proviso that Bolivia reconstitute its Army to help the US in its battle against Communism. In 1964 the military reasserted its political control, ending a dozen years of progress in Bolivia. Through the 1980s corrupt, cocaine-smuggling generals, supported by US aid becaue of their avowed anti-Communism, dominated the country--to the detriment of most of its people.
-
Unlike the conditions of abject poverty and oppression found in Guatemala and Bolivia, Cubans, at least those in urban areas, enjoyed one of Latin America's highest standards of living. Havana boasted all the blessings of modern city life, with good medical care, private schools, imported luxury goods, and recreation (including casino gambling, drugs, and rampant prostitution). Bolstered by generous sugar quotas and price supports from the US, wealthy Cuban landowners also prospered. In 1952, however, Fulgencio Batista, long the military power behind the throne, seized control of the government. His dictatorship enflamed middle and some upper-class Cubans as did his open, cozy relations with the Mafia.
- Many Cubans, including a young law student named Fidel Castro [shown in the photograph at the right], recognized that rural Cubans did not share in the progress of their urban counterparts. With other young men mostly in their twenties, Castro unsuccessfully attacked the Moncada Army barracks on July 26, 1953. In his trial, he defended himself, asserting that "history will absolve me." He also provided a sharp critique of conditions in Cuba under the Batista dictatorship. Later, Castro addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in the fall of 1960, nearly two years after taking power. He accurately summarized the plight of Cuba under Bastista. The following are excerpts from Fidel Castro's "History Will Absolve Me" Speech, delivered in his own defense, at his trial for attacking the Moncada Army Barracks.
- XI: I stated that the second consideration on which we based our chances for success was one of social order because we were assured of the people's support. When we speak of the people we do not mean the comfortable ones, the conservative elements of the nation, who welcome any regime of oppression, any dictatorship, any despotism, prostrating themselves before the master of the moment until they grind their foreheads into the ground.
- When we speak of struggle, the people means the vast unredeemed masses, to whom all make promises and whom all deceive; we mean the people who yearn for a better, more dignified and more just nation; who are moved by ancestral aspirations of justice, for they have suffered injustice and mockery, generation after generation; who long for great and wise changes in all aspects of their life; people, who, to attain these changes, are ready to give even the very last breath of their lives--when they believe in something or in someone, especially when they believe in themselves. In stating a purpose, the first condition of sincerity and good faith, is to do precisely what nobody else ever does, that is, to speak with absolute clarity, without fear. The demagogues and professional politicians who manage to perform the miracle of being right in everything and in pleasing everyone, are, of necessity, deceiving anyone about everything. The revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas courageously, define their principles and express their intentions so that no one is deceived, neither friend nor foe.
- The people we counted on in our struggle were these:
- Seven hundred thousand Cubans without work, who desire to earn their daily bread honestly without having to emigrate in search of livelihood.
- Five hundred thousand farm laborers inhabiting miserable shacks, who work four months of the year and starve for the rest of the year, sharing their misery with their children, who have not an inch of land to cultivate, and whose existence inspires compassion in any heart not made of stone.
- Four hundred thousand industrial laborer and stevedores whose retirement funds have been embezzled, whose benefits are being taken away, whose homes are wretched quarters, whose salaries pass from the hands of the boss to those of the usurer, whose future is a pay reduction and dismissal, whose life is eternal work and whose only rest is in the tomb.
- One hundred thousand small farmers who live and die working on land that is not theirs, looking at it with sadness as Moses did the promised land, to die without possessing it; who, like feudal serfs, have to pay for the use of their parcel of land by giving up a portion of their products; who cannot love it, improve it, beautify it or plant a lemon or an orange tree on it, because they never know when a sheriff will come with the rural guard to evict them from it.
- Thirty thousand teachers and professors who are so devoted, dedicated and necessary to the better destiny of future generations and who are so badly treated and paid.
- Twenty thousand small business men weighted down by debts, ruined by the crisis and harangued by a plague of filibusters and venal officials.
- Ten thousand young professionals: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers, dentists, pharmacists, newspapermen, painters, sculptors, etc., who come forth from school with their degrees, anxious to work and full of hope, only to find themselves at a dead end with all doors closed, and where no ear hears their clamor or supplication.
- These are the people, the ones who know misfortune and, therefore, are capable of fighting with limitless courage!
- To the people whose desperate roads through life have been paved with the brick of betrayals and false promises, we were not going to say: ''we will eventually give you what you need, but rather -- Here you have it, fight for it with all your might so that liberty and happiness may be yours!''
- XIII: The problems concerning land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the problem of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the health of the people; these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to resolve, along with the restoration of public liberties and political democracy.
Perhaps this exposition appears cold and theoretical if one does not know the shocking and tragic conditions of the country with regard to these six problems, to say nothing of the most humiliating political oppression.
- 85% of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and live under the constant threat of being dispossessed from the land that they cultivate. More than half the best cultivated land belongs to foreigners. In Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the United Fruit Company and West Indian Company join the north coast to the southern one. There are two hundred thousand peasant families who do not have a single acre of land to cultivate to provide food for their starving children. On the other hand, nearly three hundred thousand ''caballerias'' [unit of land measure] of productive land owned by powerful interests remains uncultivated.
- Cuba is above all an agricultural state. Its population is largely rural. The city depends on these rural areas. The rural people won the Independence. The greatness and prosperity of our country depends on a healthy and vigorous rural population that loves the land and knows how to cultivate it, within the framework of a state that protects and guides them. Considering all this, how can the present state of affairs be tolerated any longer?
- XIV: With the exception of a few food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to be a producer of raw materials. We export sugar to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import plows. Everybody agrees that the need to industrialize the country is urgent, that we need steel industries, paper and chemical industries; that we must improve cattle and grain products, the technique and the processing in our food industry, in order to balance the ruinous competition of the Europeans in cheese products, condensed milk, liquors and oil, and that of the Americans in canned goods; that we need merchant ships; that tourism should be an enormous source of revenue. . . .
-
 Just as serious or even worse is the housing problem. There are two hundred thousand huts and hovels [One of these thatched huts, called bohios in Spanish, is shown in the picture at the right, although this one stood in Puerto Rica, not Cuba]; four hundred thousand families in the country and in the cities lived cramped into barracks and tenements without even the minimum sanitary requirements; two million two hundred thousand of our urban population pay rents which absorb between one fifth and one third of their income; and two million eight hundred thousand of our rural and suburban population lack electricity.
- If the State proposes lowering rents, landlords threaten to freeze all construction; if the State does not interfere, construction goes on so long as the landlords get high rents, otherwise, they would not lay a single brick even though the rest of the population should have to live exposed to the elements. The utilities monopoly is no better: they extend lines as far as it is profitable and beyond that point, they don't care if the people have to live in darkness for the rest of their lives. The State folds its arms and the people have neither homes nor electricity.
- Our educational system is perfectly compatible with the rest of our national situation. Where the guajiro [peasant] is not the owner of his land, what need is there for agricultural schools? Where there are no industries what need is there for technical or industrial schools? Everything falls within the same absurd logic: there is neither one thing nor the other. In any small European country there are more than 200 technical and industrial arts schools; in Cuba, there are only six such schools, and the boys graduate without having anywhere to use their skills. The little rural schools are attended by only half the school-age children--barefoot, half-naked and undernourished--and frequently the teacher must buy necessary materials from his own salary. Is this the way to make a nation great?
- XVII: Cuba could easily provide for a population three times as great as it now has, so there is no excuse for the abject poverty of a single one of its present inhabitants. The markets should be overflowing with produce, pantries should be full, all hands should be working. This is not an inconceivable thought. What is inconceivable is that anyone should go to bed hungry, that children should die for lack of medical attention; what is inconceivable is that 30% of our farm people cannot write their names and that 99% of them know nothing of Cuba's history. What is inconceivable is that the majority of our rural people are now living in worse circumstances than were the Indians Columbus discovered living in the fairest land that human eyes had ever seen.
- To those who would call me a dreamer, I quote the words of [Jose] Marti [hero of Cuban independence]: ''A true man does not seek the path where advantage lies, but rather, the path where duty lies, and this is the only practical man, whose dream of today will be the law of tomorrow, because he who has looked back on the upheavals of history and has seen civilizations going up in flames, crying out in bloody struggle, throughout the centuries, knows that the future well-being of man, without exception, lies on the side of the duty."
- I know that imprisonment will be as hard for me as it has ever been for anyone--filled with cowardly threats and wicked torture. But I do not fear prison, just as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who snuffed life out of 70 brothers of mine. Sentence me. I don't mind. History will absolve me.
Poor rural Cubans had ample reason to support Castro and his revolution. Castro and his guerrillas found refuge and support among peasants in the mountains of eastern Cuba. After Batista fled on January 1, 1959, Castro made a triumphant week-long journey across Cuba to Havana, gathering popular support along the way. Here's a map of Cuba to locate significant places of the Cuban Revolution. Note also the location of the "Bay of Pigs" on the south side of the island below Havana. This is the site of the ill-fated invasion by 1500 US-trained Cuban exiles in April 1961.
Faced with unrelenting opposition from the United states, Castro would turn his revolution from a liberal nationalististic movement to a Communist one within two years. Fearing, "more Cubas," US President John F. Kennedy would announce a new foreign policy initiative in his inaugural address delivered in January 1961. He delivered on a campaign promise to devise an "Alliance for Progress" to bring US assistance to Latin America.
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge to convert our good words into good deeds—in a new alliance for progress—to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak —and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
 [Flag of Nicaragua] You'll find a political map of Nicaragua here. Inspired by Castro's successful revolution in Cuba, young Nicaraguans formed their own revolutionary movement in 1961: the FSLN (Sandinista Front for National Liberation). Named in honor of the nationalist guerrilla fighter who opposed US Marines in Nicaragua in the late 1920s, the FSLN now opposed the dictatorship of the Somoza family. Anastasio Somoza Garcia (1896-1956) and her two sons (Luis and Anastasio) ruled the country like their private fiefdom from the mid-1930s until 1979.
Conditions worsened considerably for most Nicaraguans in the 1970s. First in 1972 a tremendous earthquake leveled Managua, the national capital, killing 10,000 people. The third Somoza of the family dictatorship, Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza Debayle (1925-1980), callously exploited the disaster. He bought land on which to rebuild the capital for $30,000 and sold it back to the government for $3 million a few weeks later. This bald profiteering angered many Nicaraguans. Real wages in Nicaragua declined 36 per cent between 1970 and 1979. By 1977 the wealthiest 20 percent of Nicaraguans enjoyed 60 percent of the national income. The poorest 50 percent had only 15 percent. FSLN grew steadily through the decade as they launched daring raids that showed Somoza's weakness. The murder, probably at Somoza's orders, of popular journalist Pedro Joaquin Chamorro in January 1979 provided the spark for a mass uprising. Faced with mass opposition and loss of US support, owing to President Jimmy Carter's human rights policies, Somoza fled. The FSLN coalition assumed power on July 19, 1979. Probably at Sandinsta request, South American revolutionaries tracked down Somoza in exile in Paraguay the following year. They put a bazooka shot through his Mercedes Benz ending his life and political ambitions. The Sandinistas would struggle against massive US economic and military pressures until an exhausted Nicaraguan people voted them out in 1990. Unable to convince Congress or the American people that the Sandinistas represented a threat to US security, the Reagan Administration would take its foreign policy underground. First covert and then open aid to the "contras" (counter-revolutionaries led by ex-Somoza National Guard officers) would end in the Iran-Contra Scandal (see below).
Despite the fall of Communism, revolutionary groups continue to operate in many countries, notably Colombia and Peru. The root causes of revolution still exist, making renewed political violence a real future danger.
Taking Foreign Policy Underground: The Reagan/Bush Intra-Contra Scandal
Latin Americans are often confused by the sharp changes in US foreign policy toward their region. One of the sharpest breaks came between the administrations of Jimmy Carter (1977-81) and Ronald Reagan (1981-89). In his Inaugural Address, delivered on Thursday, January 20, 1977, Presiden
t Carter stressed the US commitment to improving human rights around the world.
We have already found a high degree of personal liberty, and we are now struggling to
enhance equality of opportunity. Our commitment to human rights must be absolute, our laws
fair, our natural beauty preserved; the powerful must not persecute the weak, and human
dignity must be enhanced.
The world itself is now dominated by a new spirit. Peoples more numerous and more
politically aware are craving and now demanding their place in the sun, not just for the benefit
of their own physical condition, but for basic human rights.
The passion for freedom is on the rise. Tapping this new spirit, there can be no nobler nor
more ambitious task for America to undertake on this day of a new beginning than to help
shape a just and peaceful world that is truly humane.
We are a purely idealistic Nation, but let no one confuse our idealism with weakness. Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere. Our moral
sense dictates a clearcut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect
for individual human rights. We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which
others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the
well-being of all people.
 =========== Carter acted upon his human rights agenda by cutting aid to and publicly criticizing the many repressive military dictatorships in Latin America. In contrast, even before Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, his transition team visited and reassured the military dictators of the region that the US needed them to fight communism. The Reagan administration dropped all human rights criticism and restored relations and aid to the dictators. To the very conservative Reagan team, fighting what they perceived as communist threats took precedence over every other foreign policy concern. Unfortunately for the Reagan approach, neither the American people nor Congress perceived the same level of communist danger in Central America. Unable to convince a majority in Congress to support his war on Central American communism, Reagan took his foreign policy underground. That dark chapter in American foreign policy became known as the Iran-contra scandal. Read a summary of events and examine some of the documents from the scandal. The covert and then overt contra war devastated Nicaragua and threatened the political stability of surrounding nations. Alas, the bitter struggle left Nicaragua one of the poorest nations of the region. Equally damaging, the Reagan administration tramped on the Constitution and laws of the land, obstructed justice, lied to Congress and the American people, sold arms to a terrorist state, negotiated with terrorists (in violation of publicly stated Reagan policies), and covertly defeated the checks-and-balance systems fundamental to sound American democracy.
Rain Forest Preservation: An Inter-American Issue
 The meeting of politicians and environmentalists from 178 countries in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 3-14, 1992, dramatized the world significance of the Amazon Basin. Many attending the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED or the Earth Summit) meeting consider the Amazon rain forest of global significance. They argue that the immense rain forest's vital impact on world climate and its tremendous stores of genetic material make its preservation a matter of global concern. Brazil and surrounding nations, however, often bristle at such views and consider them an infringement of their national sovereignty.
 Rain forests provide a multitude of benefits, real and potential. Trees absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide. The gases and particles from burnings forests, especially on the massive scale of the Amazon, may contribute to global warming through the greenhouse effect. Replacing the forest canopy with crops and pastures interrupts the important hydrologic cycle and the constant recycling of nutrients that keep rain forests alive. Once the canopy is gone, erosion from water runoff and the sedimentation of rivers increases rapidly. Tropical soils, thin and poor, quickly erode or become sterile, leading to desertification--expanding desert lands where tropical forest once grew.
Raintree Nutrition, Inc. of Austin, Texas, offers some pertinent insights and data from their excellent web site.
Tragically, rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6%. In less than 50 years, more than half of the world's tropical rainforests have fallen victim to fire and the chain saw and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, over 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day in the world. That is over 150 acres lost every minute of every day. Experts estimate that at the current rate of destruction, the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Experts also estimate that we are losing 130 species of plants, animals and insects every single day as they become extinct from the loss of rainforest land and habitats. How many possible cures to devastating diseases have we already lost?
You may view a Political Map of Brazil here. The unknown potential of the rain forest lies in its incredible, unique genetic diversity. The Amazon Basin is home to two-thirds of organisms already identified and who knows how many still unknown. Increasing numbers of pharmaceuticals are derived from rain forest flora or fauna--the next burn may extinguish a cure for cancer, AIDS, or stupidity. Again, from Raintree Nutrition:
It is also the richest biological incubator on the planet. It supports millions of plant, animal and insect species - a virtual library of chemical invention. In these archives, drugs like quinine, muscle relaxants, steroids and cancer drugs are found. More importantly, are the new drugs still awaiting discovery -- drugs for AIDS, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer's. Many secrets and untold treasures await discovery with the medicinal plants used by shamans, healers and the indigenous people of the Rainforest Tribes. So alluring are the mysteries of indigenous medical knowledge that over 100 pharmaceutical companies and even the US government are currently funding projects studying the indigenous plant knowledge and the specific plants used by native shamans and healers.
The human cost of rain forest destruction lies in the extermination of forest-dwelling cultures that have adapted to tropical conditions over thousands of years. In the early twentieth century, river boat travelers would shoot Indians along the shores of the Amazon River for sport. Today outside diseases and vices ravage peoples long isolated from the modern world. Without their forest habitat, they and their way of life is doomed to extinction.
The economics of sustainable development appear very sound. According to one study, an acre of rain forest, harvested of its natural wealth, produces an annual income of $9,000. The same acre yields only a one-time return of $3,000 if the trees are cut and sold as lumber. Another study, cited by Raintree Nutrition, Inc., indicates "that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre." Will economic reason prevail? If not, further impoverishment awaits many Latin Americans in the future--that that spells trouble for the entire Western Hemisphere. The Bush administration has demonstrated clear indifference to this and other global environmental issues, following its own perverse "Lone Ranger" policies. Continued dire economic conditions in Latin America (see essay below) put further pressure on sensitive lands as poor peasants seek to carve out a living in the wilderness.
Latin American and Latino Culture Today
Despite the many pressing problems--and sometimes inspired by them--Latin Americans have developed a vibrant, varied culture. Thanks to a fast-growing Hispanic (Latino) population in the US, Latin American culture is increasingly evidence and influential here. Just think back a few days and ponder the number of Latino influences you probably saw. Did you shop for groceries? Note the extensive Mexican food section in every supermarket. Eat fast food? Your server may well have been from Latin America. Bringing together indigenous, African, European, and other influences, Latin America has created a cultural landscape of tremendous vigor and diversity. Indigenous influences are clearest in those areas with large Indian populations: Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Guatemalan women, for example, continue to weave brightly colored textiles much sought after as collectibles and still used as traditional clothing. The three Andean republics listed above have large Aymara and Quechua-speaking populations that retain the folklore, humor, dance, and music of their ancient ancestors. For many of these cultures, rich archeological ruins remain along with the musical heritage.  This photo shows the fine stonework done by Inca masons. Music, played on reed flutes or pan pipes, is typical of the Andes.
Drums often accompany the flutes, with European instruments, such as guitars and brass, sometimes added. Mexican mariachi music, for example, prominently features trumpets. Mexico, especially through its famous national ballet troupe, has preserved much of its traditional indigenous music and dance.
During the colonial sugar boom in the Caribbean, planters imported millions of African slaves. Not surprisingly, Caribbean culture is heavily influenced by Africa. Music tends toward the strongly rhythmical, with a great range of percussions instruments struck or shaken. Many of the music and dance that make their way into the US--the rumba, reggae, salsa, merengue, and more--show their clear African ancestry. Although sung in a variety of tongues, Spanish, English, French, and dialects, nearly all Caribbean music exhibits some African influences.
Brazil, again owing to its large slave population and to the longevity of slavery there (abolition came in 1888), also exhibits strong African cultural influences. Its samba and bossa nova, indeed the riot of color and dance at Rio de Janeiro's famous Lenten Carnival, show off the contagious rhythms and movements dating back to slave days. Even the typical dance of urban Buenos Aires, Argentina, the tango, shows African influences probably imported from Cuba. The tango, however, is played on that very European instrument, the accordion, which probably arrived with nineteenth-century Italian immigrants.
 Art is often very political in Latin America. Folksingers, such as the martyred Chilean Victor Jarra, raised their voices against military dictatorship during the 1960s and 1970s. The Chilean Army, led by General Augusto Pinochet, tortured and murdered Jarra publicly after their violent September 1973 coup toppled the regime of Salvador Allende. Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley (1945-81, shown at left) and the Whalers sang against racial discrimination and used his music to push for needed political reform in the Caribbean. Likewise filmmakers, novelists, poets, and painters have expressed opposition to political repression and unjust, inequitable societies through a variety of media. As you examine various elements of Latin American culture, look for and listen to the political message. It is probably there.
 Latin American literature has only begun to receive international acclaim since World War II. The award of the 1945 Nobel Prize for Literature to Chilean Gabriela Mistral marked the region's debut on the international stage. But Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986, shown at right) has shown his creative genius as early as the 1920s when he launched an avant-garde, modernist publication, Ultraismo, in Buenos Aires in 1921.
During the 1930s, Brazil's so-called "Northeastern school" brought regional topics and social criticism to an international audience. Sociologist Gilberto Freyre examined social and race relations in The Masters and the Slaves (1933) was fundamental to Jose Lins do Rego took up a very common Latin American theme, the struggle between the traditional and the modern in his "Sugarcane" cycle of novels. Jorge Amado of Brazil gave voice to the plight of workers and the rural poor in a number of powerful novels of the Northeast: Cacao, The Violent Land, and other works.
Latin American writers put their own special stamp on international literary movements. Borges would become famous for his wildly improbable but always riveting metaphysical tales. In Peru, poet Cesar Vallejo blended social activism and Surrealism into creative, innovative works. Another Chilean, Pablo Neruda, won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. You'll recall his sharply anti-US poem, "United Fruit Co." from a prior lecture. Like Vallejo he combined social criticism with Surrealism in his earlier work. In 1950, his large, magnificent poem titled Canto general ("General Song") appeared--a litany of Latin American suffering and strength.
Again, not surprisingly, the plight of the rural poor, the vast major of the population until recent decades, got lots of attention from novelists. Mariano Azuela, an army doctor in one of Pancho Villa's armies, captured the trauma of the huge revolution on poor peasants in Los de abajo (The Underdogs), published in 1915. Andean writers would also explore their nation's rural indigenous roots. Peru's Clorinda Matto de Turner's Aves sin nido (Birds Without a Nest, 1889) and Ecuador's Jorge Icaza's Huasipungo (1934) are powerful examples.
Likewise several important "cowboy novels" explored the clash between old and new. Ricardo Guiraldes masterfully captured Argentina's gaucho culture in Don Segundo Sombra (1926). Ezequiel Martinez Estrada used the plains of Argentina to explore national psychology and pathology in X-Ray of the Pampa (1933). Benito Lynch poignantly depicted the vast gulf between city and countryside in his novel, The Englishman of the Bones (1924). In Dona Barbara (1929) Romulo Gallegos explored the same theme for the llanos (plains) of Venezuela. The latter book also foreshadowed later "magical realism," a powerful creative forced used by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others.
More recently social criticism has remained a strong force in Latin American literature. Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his brilliant works of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981). Octavio Paz delved into the Mexican psyche in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. Women's voices are appearing with greater frequency today. Chile's Isabel Allende has produced a series of widely translated and well received novels. Mexico's Laura Esquivel creates her own magical, mystical world in Like Water for Chocolate (1989). In short, Latin American writers now rank among the world's best known and most appreciated. Burns gives you a good, quick overview of Latin America novels in an appendix at the end of his text).
 Since the 1930s, Latino music had popped in and out of mainstream US culture. The "king of rhumba," Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, and Eddie Palmieri brought Latin rhythms to US dance halls. In 1959 Ritchie Valens had a Spanish-language rock-and-roll hit with "La Bamba." In 1961 "West Side Story" (play and film, see picture) brought New York's Puerto Rican culture to a mass audience. Rita Moreno (1931), born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, danced her way to fame in the rooftop number, ''America.'' She earned an Oscar for her role in the film, the first Latina to be so honored. She has also won a Tony and an Emmy. Today Latino performers are increasingly visible and recognized for their excellence.
In the 1960s, Carlos Santana mixed rock with Latin rhythms. He made a giant comeback several decades later with his smash album "Supernatural." The reggae of Bob Marley and the Wailers brought Jamaican sounds and political protest to the States. In the 1980s, Cuban-born Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine again brought Latin-flavored hits to the pop charts. Spaniard Julio Iglesias and later his son Enrique became international stars and heart throbs. Panamanian salsa singer Ruben Blades and Los Lobos from Los Angeles gained critical and popular acclaims.
Thanks to rapid immigration and growing self-awareness and market clout, Latino culture today is increasingly visible in the US as well. Especially in the area of music, Latino performers are hot. Handsome, charismatic, gyrating Ricky Martin from Puerto Rico, has become something of a Latino Elvis Presley. Martin began his career as part of Menudo (which means "tripe" or cow guts--a Latino delicacy), a teeny bopper boy group. He later appeared on "General Hospital" and in "Les Miserables" His fiery performance of "Livin' la Vida Loca" at the 1999 Grammy Awards electrified audiences and boosted Latino music to the pop charts. Sultry Jennifer Lopez ("If You Had My Love"), a Nuyorican (New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent), has wowed audiences with her films and live musical performances. "The dress" (green and revealing) made cultural history at the Oscars. Warning: This style is not to everyone's taste. Before starring in the film biography of "Selena," the ill-fated Tejano pop sensation, Lopez danced on television's "In Living Color." New sounds, new names, and new dances from Latin America and the Caribbean will continue to enrich the culture of the US. Ironically, the oldest cities of the United States were founded by Spaniards--St. Augustine, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thus Spanish-speakers have a long connection to the country. The latest round of immigrants are merely joining their forefathers, who established a presence here in the 1500s.
Western Hemisphere Economics: NAFTA, FTAA, Globalization
Latin America today remains a land of the future where its 270 millions hope its potential will be realized. The region has a rich, variegated cultural landscape that you will explore in the next lesson. Its creativity in the arts, music, dance, and literature are second to no other region in the world. But stubborn, long-term problems continue to block the region's tremendous potential. Burns lays these problems out clearly in his concluding chapter (10). This essay will provide further historical perspective on the contemporary problems described by Burns.
Brad Burns, one of the foremost historians of Latin America until his death in 1995, commented on the links between the 19th and 20th centuries. It is worth repeating here: The 19th century "was not, after all, a century of random conflicts, meaningless civil wars, and pervasive chaos, but one in which those who favored modernization struggled with those loyal to
their folk societies and cultures. Finally, it provides one insight into
the constant and major enigma of Latin America: prevalent poverty in a
potentially wealthy region. The triumph of progress as defined by the elites
set the course for twentieth-century history. It bequeathed a legacy of
mass poverty and continued conflict." In short, the burden of the past continues to haunt the present and future in Latin America. As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The 1990s has witnessed the welcome return of civilian rule throughout Latin America. The repressive military dictatorships that dominated the region from the 1950s through the 1980s are now largely an unhappy memory. But civilian leaders must show that they can tackle and solve the region's many pressing problems, or popular unrest may spur the military to reassert its political control. As noted earlier, nineteenth-century liberal politicians placed great faith in professionalizing their militaries. Leaders in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and other nations invited Prussian or French military officers to help professionalize their own national armies. These newly professionalized armies helped to end, once and for all, the disruptions of caudillos and their personal armies. However, the newly professionalized military officers in Latin America developed a kind of "superiority complex." They began to consider themselves--and only themselves-- dedicated enough to the national interest (as opposed to personal or partisan interest) to govern well. Military interventionism in politics escalated during the twentieth century, notably during the economic crisis of the 1930s. By and large, military officers made common cause with the elites in opposing the growing demand for political power by the middle class, workers, and peasants. As noted earlier, the United States also bolstered military regimes in its frantic search for anti-Communist allies.
 Even stable Chile saw a fifty-year period of civilian rule end violently with the military coup of September 11, 1973. That overthrow, supported covertly by the US, brought one of Latin America's bloodiest dictators to power, Augusto Pinochet (shown at right). Under his rule, thousands died in torture chambers and 130,000 suffered arrest. Tens of thousands fled into exile. In a 1988 plebecite (popular vote), a majority of Chileans voted against Pinochet's rule. Honest elections and civilian rule returned to Chile in 1990. Only Costa Rica, the peaceful, democratic republic in Central America, has escaped the scourge of repeated military dictatorships. Costa Rica has kept the military out of politics by eliminating them. Following a brief civil war in 1948, in which military officers sided with the losers, a liberal coalition of reformers led by Jose (Don Pepe) Figueres abolished the Costa Rican army and ushered in fifty years (so far) of civilian democratic rule. Why couldn't other Latin American nations follow suit? The external threats to most Latin American nations are minimal. Like Costa Rica, most nations could remain secure with a border patrol, police, and national guard units. A large standing army is an expensive and dangerous anachronism for most Latin American nations. Militaries suck up huge amounts of resources sorely needed for other national priorities. However, a civilian president who challenges the perogatives of the military (still tied closely to the reactionary elites) runs the risk of being ousted BY the military!
Many short-sighted economists hype Latin America is the latest boomtown with lots of money to be made: Dina Temple-Raston of Bloomberg News, reported such optimism in "Business Optimistic About Latin American Economies, Study Says," on May 2, 1998.
"Just a little more than two years after the peso crisis of 1995 Latin America is coming back,'' said Leslie Lassiter, managing director of Chase Manhattan Latin America. "The free trade agreements popping up throughout the region are a real stabilizing factor and that's promoting investor confidence and it is showing up in the numbers.''
This is the short-sighted, whistle-in-the-dark mentality that made Latin America the world's largest debtor region (nearly half a trillion dollars owed), thanks to the overly optimistic largesse of US bankers.
Alas the optimism associated with NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, ignores the fact that the economic reality for most Latin Americans remains very gloomy. One reason is that needed infrastructure and investments in social capital (education, housing, transportation, health) continue to lag. And the future does not look brighter, owing to the continued irrational arms race. Most Latin American militaries use their arms against their own people; not imagined foreign threats.
Writing from the Hemispheric Conference in Santiago, Chile, on April 19, 1998, Susan Ferriss, of the N.Y. Times News Service, highlighted the problematic link between the military and economic progress. Source: "Summit of Americas: Optimism Tempered by Anti-trade Sentiment
and Accusations That Democracy is
Still a Dream" (C) 1998 N.Y. Times News Service
Of special concern to Carter, former Costa Rican
president Oscar Arias and former Bolivian president
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, was the specter of a
costly weapons race developing in Latin America.
For more thoughts from Arias, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner, see his  policy speech given October 29, 1997 to Northeastern University students in Boston
Chile has been planning to spend up to a billion
dollars over the next few years to buy advanced
fighter jets, putting pressure on Argentina, Brazil
and Peru to do the same, Robert Pastor (Latin American expert) said.
"The Santiago Summit's main goals, education and
poverty eradication, cannot be achieved if hundreds
of millions of dollars are spent on weapons that are
not needed,'' Jimmy Carter and the other two former
presidents wrote in a letter to the 34 leaders who
will attend the summit.
Pastor said the planned weapons purchases are
"terribly incongruous'' at a time when the Latin
countries are making strides toward tackling gross
inequality and peacefully resolving their differences.
Perhaps the greatest socioeconomic problem of the region remains the extreme inequity of income distribution and continued high levels of poverty. Recall that economic "progress" in the region during the nineteenth century brought poverty to the rural masses. Economists Shahid Javed Burki and Sebastian Edwards provided a realistic analysis in a paper for the World Bank, "August 1995: Latin America After Mexico: Quickening the Pace". They conclude that if Latin America "is to achieve higher rates of growth and if that growth is to be sustainable, the accumulation of capital and labor has to be complemented by several other factors and policies. Of particular importance are the development of infrastructure, the education of the labor force, the reduction of policy-induced distortions, the enhancement of international competitiveness, and an overall reduction in the size of the public sector."
Burki and Edwards continue their analysis:
Poverty and inequality have long been salient features of Latin America. The inability to deal effectively with these issues is, perhaps, the saddest illustration of the traditional policies of government intervention. Income inequality precedes the debt crisis and the adjustment programs of the 1980s; in the late 1970s the percentage of income received by the poorest 20 percent was lower in LAC than in any other part of the developing world. The debt crisis negatively affected an already battered social picture. Although a number of countries reacted to the crisis by implementing emergency social programs, the overall level of poverty and inequality nevertheless increased in many countries.
Besides the human suffering of extreme income inequality comes the very negative macroeconomic impact. Two-thirds of US economic activity lies in the consumer sector. Yes, millions of people buying stuff (most of which we probably don't need) is the "motor" that drives the world's biggest economy. Contrast that with Latin America, where the vast majority of people don't have disposable income to be consumers (beyond buying subsistence foods.) Surprise! Surprise! Those economies lack the consumer's economic engine to drive growth. Second, where does investment capital come from? Does it fall from the sky? No, it comes from savers--again individuals with more money that they need to spend on subsistence. Latin America's poor obviously can't save any money, so investment capital remains in short supply as well. In short, the region suffers from badly deformed economies made even worse by unwise policies of international lending agencies.
In November 1998 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had to pump $41.5 billion dollars into Brazil to keep Latin America's largest economy solvent. One Sao Paulo economist predicted that the employment rate of 7.8 percent would hit double digits by early 1999. ("US Share of Brazil Aid to Come to $5 Billion," "IMF Seeks to Avert Collapse in Brazil," Raleigh News and Observer, 14 Nov 1998, pp. 11A, B). By early 1999 Brazil had suffered some $9 billion in capital flight from the country, and the nation's currency had lost 40% of its value. The continuing economic troubles reflect both problems in Brazil's economy and in IMF thinking (Word Press Review, April 1999, p. 36).
IMF-imposed policies generate further suffering among the poor and further spur unemployment. Of course additional problems are intermingled with those of continued military influence and weak, uneven economic development. Must Latin America sacrifice its environment and degrade further its living conditions to pursue economic growth? Can the region confront the ills of drug trafficking, which after all brings billions of dollars into the economies of several nations. Perhaps the most important task for the region is to educate its people. It will take lots of very intelligent, well-trained people, working very hard, to improve the lot of the region in the coming years. The market economy doesn't work and often neither do the political systems. Little wonder that political conflict and revolution remain commonplace. We can only hope that we will see wiser policies and leadership in Latin America, the US, and in international agencies, so that the Western Hemisphere will see more economic justice and progress in coming years.
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