[This is Chapter
17 of Murphey’s book Understanding the Modern Predicament.]
Chapter Seventeen
LATIN AMERICA
AND THE
COLD WAR
So far, I have discussed the "modern
predicament" only in the context of
Europe and the
United States. In the present chapter I will want to emphasize
that historic circumstances have made the predicament within the West also the
most important fact so far as the future of the so-called "Third World" of
Asia,
Africa and
Latin America is concerned.
I don't want to seem ungracious toward
civilizations that have, and have had, their own heritage and greatness, but I
think it is important to realize that these other continents contain a serious
void with regard to the prerequisites of liberal society. I say this even
though I wish them well in every sense of the word. This void combines with
their dependency on European and American intellectual sources, so that in an
important sense all three continents are in a situation that is analogous to
Russia's in the nineteenth century. Rapidly
expanding masses of people are appearing in
Asia,
Africa,
and
Latin
America at a time when their own dependency causes them to import the neuroses
that have plagued the West for so long.
This
unwitting reliance on the worst aspects of Western civilization in an age of
existential lostness has led and will continue to lead to some of the major
tragedies of the modern age. The impact of the reliance is reflected, for
example, in the pages of Solzhenitsyn's The
Gulag Archipelago, where he vividly describes the enormous suffering of
the Soviet people under the regime of imported nineteenth-century Marxist
ideology.
It is
entirely inappropriate for the non-European peoples -- in
Russia,
China and elsewhere -- to have absorbed the thinking
of the many fevered descendants of Rousseau, Hegel and Marx. But they have done
so because of the great pulse of alienated literature that has come from
Europe during the past two centuries. We can
imagine how different the world would be today, and how different its future
would be, if these peoples had drunk deeply instead, say, from the teaching of
such men as Benjamin Franklin and James Madison.
Since World
War II, the pressing question has been whether these peoples would succumb to
Communist totalitarianism. But actually it is a broader question that hangs
over their heads, because in a more general way we know that they remain
susceptible to the neuroses of
Europe and
America. Even if Communism were to disappear from
the world overnight, there would still be reason for profound doubt about these
peoples' ability to develop advanced liberal societies.
In all of
this, I see the key factor as being the nature of the West's intellectual
leadership. If that leadership continues to inject the West's own void into the
weakness that is already present in those other continents, their future -- and
ours -- will remain dangerously problematical.
It is hard to imagine how
Asia,
Africa
and
Latin
America will find
the way to embrace the principles of a free society if alienation continues to
stream from European and American thought. Little in their own past or current
condition will lead them to these principles. But if, on the other hand, some
profound change were to occur in the ontology of the West to reconcile its own
divisions, the affirmative leadership that would result would be immensely
constructive for the emerging peoples everywhere. In turn, this would remove,
or at least substantially alleviate, one of the main threats to the future
well-being of the new world civilization.
As it stands, the world is poorly prepared
for the precipitate rise of these peoples. Nevertheless, they are coming
rapidly into their own; they are taking their places as participating members
of a vastly expanded human community. A gradual process of globalization has
been underway for thousands of years. It is perhaps two-thirds of the way along
toward completion. Vast changes are still to come, but even now these other
peoples are no longer cast in the role of "superfluous people" who
exist in the shadow of a primarily European world order.
They are here -- and they are growing, both
in numbers and in assertiveness. This raises towering questions: What is to be
their future -- and ours, as affected inevitably by theirs? How will they
affect liberal civilization? What will their contribution be?
Ortega felt the "palpitating
danger" of what he called "the revolt of the masses" in
Europe. If this has rendered
Europe problematical, how much more so must it
make doubtful the future of the peoples of the
Third World! As has been true with
Europe, there is an element of great hope: the
rise of “average humanity" to a higher plateau is actually the
fulfillment, at least in part, of a basic human aspiration. It is a major step
along the way toward an abundantly rounded, fulfilled humanity. There is
enormous dynamic potential that goes along with the dangers. It may even be --
and we certainly hope so -- that the positive aspects, based on the energies
and intelligence of countless people, will predominate. Certainly I wouldn't
want to underestimate that possibility. But it is easier by far to identify the
reasons for doubt.
I have chosen
Latin America for specific discussion in this chapter,
with the idea that it will be helpful to get somewhat closer to at least some
of the concrete aspects of the subject. In what follows, I will want to survey
some of the factual highlights about
Latin America.
1.
As the
peoples absorb the techniques of applied science, the population is rapidly
expanding. Estimates are that the
population will more than double to between 500 and 700 million people by the
end of the twentieth century (and if this occurs, the population will far
outstrip the projected food supply).l
2.
Because of a
number of factors, there is little chance for truly liberal development. The
burgeoning population will, as in Ortega's
Europe, come to fill all of the places and will
fully establish the cultural tone. It will know and demand the amenities of
advanced civilization, but its peoples will have only the most superficial
understanding of what it takes to create and maintain those benefits. In their
present "have not" status, these peoples are often prey
to envy, resentment, impatience and direct-action techniques. Unfortunately,
these characteristics continue into advanced civilization in the form of
spoiledness and shallowness.
In many of
the countries, a majority of the people can't read or write. Preston James
cited the following literacy percentages for 1959 (which was almost twenty
years ago, but the percentages nevertheless give us a picture of the
situation): Argentina, 87 per cent; Bolivia, 31; Brazil, 50; Chile, 81;
Columbia, 56; Costa Rica, 80; Cuba, 76; Dominican Republic, 43; Ecuador, 56; El
Salvador, 42; Guatemala, 30; Haiti, 11; Honduras, 44; Mexico, 55; Nicaragua,
40; Panama, 72; Paraguay, 69; Peru, 42; Uruguay, 85; Venezuela, 69. These
statistics show the presence of a void that makes rapid progress extremely
difficult. It is a monumental task just to motivate so many people to learn to
read. But of course we know that even 100 per cent literacy won't assure that
these peoples are more than minimally educated. In fact, it might even increase
their vulnerability to neurotic social movements, since there has been a
certain protective conservatism in the ignorance and apathy of largely rural
masses of people in the past, just as there was with the peasants of nineteenth
century
Russia.
The population of
Latin America comes from three main sources: Indian,
Negro and European. The mixed-blooded mestizo
predominates, but it is significant that we are told that "the
Iberic-Negro-Indian mixture is not notable for mechanical skills and lives at
odds with the technocratic world of the twentieth century."2
The Europeans have made up the cultural elite; the negroes
and mulattos live mainly in the hot coastal regions and are almost all the
descendants of slaves. They have produced some leaders, but in
Latin
America, An Interpretive History
Donald Dozer tells us that generally they
are indolent. "They perform the minimum physical labor required for a
hand-to-mouth existence." Of the Indians, he says that they "are
agricultural traditionalists, living close to the land as have their ancestors
for thousands of years."
Most of the peasants live in extreme
poverty and hardly participate in the societies in which they live. According
to Dozer, "their only trade is the trade in merchandise carried on men's
backs. They do not enter into the life of the countries in which they reside
and in which their ancestors have resided for generations. They still live in a
precapitalist economy and supply their needs largely through barter." He
reports that if the real per capita income continues to rise at the slow rate
it has been rising, "Latin Americans will require almost two and one-half
centuries to reach one-third of the per capita income now enjoyed by citizens
of the
United
States.”
These economic conditions are made even
worse by inflation and land monopoly. There has been chronic inflation since
World War II. "On a base of 1953 = 100," Dozer says, "the cost
of living at the end of 1960 ranged from 98 in the
Dominican Republic to 622 in
Argentina, 945 in
Chile and 2,398 in
Bolivia, as compared with only 111 in the
United States." Land monopoly has been the target
of various land-reform programs, but these haven't been very successful. Dozer
says that "where land redistribution has been undertaken it has often
failed to create greatly improved living standards, important increases in
production per hectare, or democratic institutions in rural society." Land
reform has been more successful in
Mexico, but there the socialistic techniques used
have kept the farmers from becoming capitalists. "Members of the collective
ejidos show little desire to
care for land that next year may be worked by others. On parcelized ejidos the plot of ground may pass
out of the hands of one family to another. On private lands, even those which
conform to the legal size limits prescribed by law, there is always the
lingering threat of expropriation resulting from a change in the Agrarian
Code..."
3.
Even though
there is an immense void in
Latin
America, stopgaps
have come in to fill it, and it is almost certainly due to this that Communism
has not been more successful. In 1830, Simon Bolivar, in despair over the
failure of his Gran Columbia, exclaimed that "our
America will fall into the hands of vulgar
tyrants; only an able despotism can rule
America."3 His prediction seems to
have accurately described the political future of the continent. Almost a
century and a half later, a more or less innocuous form of Latin American
neo-fascism serves as the bulwark against Communist seizure. A combination of
intense nationalism and welfare statism led by a mercurial leader known as a caudillo, or by the military, has
been the pattern. Even though Dozer says that "democracy is everywhere
latent in
Latin
America" and
that "even the most ruthless dictator cannot indefinitely and with
impunity ignore public opinion," he also observes that
"constitutional government is only a facade and the observance of the
forms of representative democracy only a ruse designed to placate local
visionaries or foreign public opinion." He makes it clear that
"personal leadership or caudillismo
continues to be the salient feature of Latin American politics." He
even goes so far as to say that "to ask whether or not
Latin America is becoming more democratic is to pose a
question which is immaterial in the Latin American milieu.”
Nystrom and
Haverstock point out that "military governments, since the formulation of
the
Alliance (for Progress), have seized power in more
than half of the Latin American republics."4 Fortunately, this
military rule hasn't involved intense armament or expansionist military
policies. Nevertheless, Dozer says that "the aspirations of these people
for a better life...have come to be bound up with an ardent, even a fanatical
nationalism.”
In this
context, the state has become a major instrument for accomplishing social
objectives. Dozer gives a good description of what this involves: "Many of
the so-called 'dictators' of Latin
American countries, particularly those of the nineteenth century, remained in
office in order primarily to serve the interests of wealthy oligarchic classes,
such as large landowners, the church hierarchy, an entrenched military
organization, or foreign business interests. This type of dictator still
continues, but more typical in the twentieth century is the dictator who comes
to power and maintains himself in power in order to satisfy the material
aspirations of the mass of the population in his country. He responds to their
importunate demands for economic relief and social justice, and he resorts to
the methods of dictatorship and uses the enlarged powers of his office in order
to crush out the traditional oligarchies who are held
responsible for the plight of the masses. As the glamorous caudillo of the people he becomes the
instrument for achieving a social revolution."
All of these
factors justify the conclusion that, as judged by classical liberal values,
there is a significant civilizational void within
Latin America. This is made considerably worse by the
void coming in from
Europe and
America in the form of alienated intellectuality.
Since nothing really points in the direction of truly liberal institutions, the
caudillo's stop-gap nationalism
is probably as satisfactory a solution as we could hope for, at least as long
as it remains separate from any world-wide expansionist totalitarian system.
The question in the long run is whether the growing peoples of Latin America
can move gradually into the new age without catastrophe for themselves and
without endangering liberal values elsewhere. This is equally true for
Africa and
Asia (although I wouldn't have us ignore the
fact that in all three continents there has in fact between Communist
encroachments, often very extensive).
The West's
effort to inhibit the spread of Communism in these continents is bound to be a
frustrating one. Wherever there is no viable liberal middle (and that is rare),
we are forced to stand more or less behind the status quo. And this status quo is usually inconsistent
with our own ideals. Our will to resist Communism in such a situation is sapped
by the fact that our own intellectual subculture, which is leftist in its
orientation, does not understand the problem in this light. Instead, it tends
to minimize the threat of Communism and to overplay both the possibility of
finding a viable middle and the unworthiness of the status quo. Here again,
we get back to our own divisions as a root cause of difficulty.
If I were a military strategist on a global scale,
I would emphasize that the most important aspect of the struggle against
Communism lies in overcoming the alienation of Western intellectuals against
Western culture -- although I would recognize, too, that this problem, which is
crucial to the military picture, is not subject to military solution. Were the
alienation overcome, the world would be a vastly different place, and the
future would be a great deal less clouded. Until the fundamental existential
division is healed within the West, alienation, hatred and class-division will
continue to seep out to the Third World. This is
something to which military and economic assistance to the countries of Asia,
Africa and Latin America is
almost totally irrelevant. The assistance can at best provide additional
stop-gaps. The struggle against totalitarianism must be resolved primarily
within ourselves.
NOTES
1. In his
Latin
America, An Interpretive History (New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company,
Inc., 1962) Donald Marquand Dozer (at p. 15) projects the increase to 550
million people on the basis of a 2.5 per cent rate of annual increase. In
Preston E. James'
Latin America (New York: The Odyssey Press, 3d ed.,
1959), at p. 4, the projection is to 500 million. J. Warren Nystrom and Nathan
A. Haverstock, in their The Alliance
for Progress (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., l966), at
p. 17, speak of 600 million, based on a 2.6 per cent rate.
2.
Dozer, Latin America, pp. 11,
13, 555, 556, 20, 562, 554, 559.
3.
James,
Latin America, p. 63.
4. Nystrom
and Haverstock,
Alliance, p. 112.