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10.1177/0094582X03259904ARTICLELATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES Austin / AMERICANIZING LABOR

Americanizing Labor

Columbian Precedents, U.S. Agencies, and theConstruction of Culture in Postwar Australian

History Curricula

by

Robert Austin

We will not renounce ourpart in themission of our race, trustees under God, ofthe civilization of the world. God has not been preparing the English speakingand Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain [and] idle con-

templation and self admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers oftheworldto establishsystem where chaos reigns. He hasmade us adept in gov-ernment thatwe mayadminister government amongsavages andsenile people.

U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge, ca. 1890

In the twilight years of the nineteenth century, the United States consum-

mated its first sustained foreign military interventions by annexing Cuba,

Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. In each case, the Americanization of

autochthonous culture played or would subsequently play a central role in

pacifying national opposition to the appropriation of massive profits by U.S.

companies. A Harvard University summer school for Cuban teachers, for

example, was in place by 1900, contesting thepedagogical philosophy of the

assassinated Cuban independence leader Jos Mart (Santos, 2000; Mart,

1990). The parallel phenomena of economic and cultural intervention werewell established by the time the United States emerged as the hegemonic

95

Robert Austin is a research associate with the Center for Research and Advanced Pedagogical

Training in Santiago, Chile, and a participating editor ofLatin American Perspectives. Transla-

tions throughout this article are by the author, who was an elected member of the History Sylla-

bus Committee, New SouthWales Board of Studies, Ministry of Education, from1990 to 1994.

He thanks Anita de Frantz, Beth Parker, Ron Witton, Malcolm Vick, Anthony Welch, Brian

Hoepper, Stephen Niblo, Tim Harding, Viviana Ramrez, all the interviewees, the LAP review-

ers, andthe legendarySpanish Civil War veteran Lloyd Edmonds foradvice and/orcommentar-

ies.Planned or fortuitousdiscussionswithurban andrural history teachers in Australiawereheld

from 1992 to 2003; interviews based on a structured questionnaire were conducted around

August27, 1999.By agreement, theanonymity ofintervieweeshas been preserved. Some mem-

bers of the syllabus committee whoinitially supportedpublic scrutinyof Board of Studies prac-

ticesovert and covertwere subsequently unavailable for or declined interviews. Sections of

this article have appeared in History of Education Review 29(2) (2000) and 30(1) (2001).LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 134, Vol. 31 No. 1, January 2004 95-133DOI: 10.1177/0094582X03259904 2004 Latin American Perspectives


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world power in the wake of World War II, manifest in its dominance of the

terms under which global cultural bodies such as UNESCO and the United

NationsDevelopment Program(UNDP)indeed, theUnitedNationsitself

were constituted. While classical studies of U.S. imperialism have necessar-

ily emphasized economic exploitation, the accompanying cultural and edu-

cational interventionsrehearsed viaF. D. Roosevelts Good Neighbor pol-

icy in Central America once U.S. marines had suppressed the Nicaraguan

revolution of the1930shave been overshadowed, leading to an incomplete

if not inaccurate picture.

Official Australias 1988 bicentenary of British imperial occupation

sharedmuch symbolismwith the1992 quincentenary of Europes first-wave

colonization of the Americas. It also marked the initial year of a neo-

conservative National-Liberal party(NLP)government in themostpopulousAustralian state, New South Wales, signaling a national rightward shift. The

NLPs aggressive economic-rationalist agenda included a drastic restructur-

ingof theschool curriculum that was largely reproduced in subsequent years

across thecountry.1 Moreover, theNLP privatization-cum-elitizationof prof-

itable sectors of education and consequent degradation of public education

had a complementary national focus under the Hawke and Keating Labor

regimes from 1983 to 1996 (Frankel, 1997; Wheelwright and David, 1989:

117120), epitomized in the conversion of the University of Melbournes

School of Management into an unlisted public company, half-owned by pri-

vate enterprise. Alongside geography, the most widely reported and politi-

cally contested arena of syllabus reform at the New South Wales govern-

ments statutory Board of Studies was history, with direct intervention from

NLPministersfor education, themainstream media,and other powerful con-servative and private-sector lobbyists.2 The present study analyzes a less

public interventionwith deep roots in theconstruction of postwar Australian

society.

The former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles once remarked,

The United States does not have friends; it has interests. History curricula

in Australia would appear to have joined that list of interests in recent times.

Noam Chomsky (1973: 180182) has documented the direct policy and

operational links between the United States Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA) and the United States Information Agency (USIA), constituted in the

major Australian cities as the United States Information Service (USIS). In

the words of a senior USIA officer, It isnot entirely a figure of speech to say

that USIA forms an American frontline abroad (Coxsedge, Coldicutt, and

Harant, 1982: 114). Public insight into the postwar vortex of interventionistcultural practices on behalf of transnational U.S. corporations and their

global cohabitation with the extreme right has been updated recently in

96 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES


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Frances Stonor Saunderss Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural

Cold War(1999).

If globalism is the latest stage of imperialism and globalization its mate-

rial expression (Sivanandan, 19981999; Gowan, Panitch, and Shaw, 2001),

then cultural globalizationthe contemporary process of Americaniza-

tionhas had a profound resonance in education systems. Thus this article

responds to thehistoricprocess that haspromptedthe formerFrench minister

for culture Jack Lang (2000) to argue that if political power is incapable of

constructing a shieldin theface of allof thesephenomena of Americanization,

culture will disappear. Further, it resurrects the Trinidadian historian

C. L. R. Jamess hypothesis a half-century earlier contrasting the cultural

history of the postcolonial United States with that of ancient Athens, a state

comparable to Vermont in size, with no more than 100,000 inhabitants at itsheight (James, 1993: 32):

Yet within two or three generations it produced Socrates, Plato, Aristotle asphilosophers; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes as drama-tists;Pericles asa statesman; DemosthenesandAeschines asorators; Pindaraspoet; Praxiteles as a sculptor; Xenophon as a journalist; Thucydides andHerodotus ashistorians. . . . In anyestimate of contemporary culture, studies ofthe past or speculation into the future, their work is indispensable.

By comparison in this sphere, he concludes that, despite its unparalleled

material prowess, the mighty civilization of the United States by universal

agreement stands at the bottom of all great civilizations.

In sum, then, this article develops three principal arguments. First, it

locates the postwar cultural imperialism of the United States as part of abroader strategy of intervention on behalf of its own geopolitical and com-

mercial interestsanddemonstrates that thepolicies andpracticesof theUSIS

and its variants are antithetical to popular democracy wherever they operate.

Secondly, it highlights two complementary tendencies: the characteristic

ways in which such interventions present a construction favorable to the

United States, distorting its history, inflating its importance, and inducing

amnesia, and the way in which U.S. agency intervention in those countries

ownrepresentations of themselves shapes constructions thatconform to U.S.

imperial interests.Latin Americanhistorywillbe seentohaveespecially suc-

cumbedto such politics.Finally, it argues that theoperation of theUSIS inthe

construction of recent New South Wales history curriculaand, by exten-

sion, in all Australian states history curriculaought to be publicly

reviewed because it erodes the reconstitution of the study of history in

Australian schools, already ata postwar low (Austin, 1999; Broome, 1995).

Austin / AMERICANIZING LABOR 97


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PERVERSE PEDAGOGY AND FOREIGN INTERESTS

To explain the first contention and its relationship to thesecond and third,

we must look to a separate but related arm of U.S. foreign policy, the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA). The former senior agents Marchetti and Marks

exposed global CIA activities on behalf of U.S. capital and its allies, epito-

mized by systematic support for reactionary despots such as theshah of Iran,

the Cuban dictator Batista, Mobutu in the Belgian Congo, Diem in Vietnam,

andtheSomoza dynasty inNicaragua. They also documented CIAorchestra-

tion of the failed invasion of Cuba in 1961 and assassination attempts on its

president,FidelCastro; similar activities elsewhere included the massacreof

a half to one million Indonesian communists in 1965 in the coup that

installed the corrupt Soeharto dictatorship (Marchetti and Marks, 1974: 6,306307; Anderson, 1999). The agency owns airlines throughout the world,

masscommunications, armsdepots, and a varietyof installationsand compa-

nies referred to in CIA-speak as the Delawarecorporations (Marchetti and

Marks,1974: 23,51,134137, 160173; also Agee, 1978: 8792,583595).

Its connections with predatory multinationals like ITT (lately AT&T), Ana-

conda Copper, and United Fruit-Chiquita and what Henry Ford II called

creatures of capitalismfoundations such as the Ford, Rockefeller, and

Carnegiecontribute to an intricatenetwork of operations in which no inter-

vention is toobold, no schemefor theacquisition anddelegation of surrogate

power too bizarre, and no act too cruel in the pursuit of quite narrowly

defined U.S. interests (Ranelagh, 1987: 265266, 146; Dunkerley, 1988:

144145, 322323).

Applying Woodrow Wilsons dictum that nationalist and popular democ-racies were an exception to the principle of self-determination, the CIA has

directly influenced all military coups throughout Latin America and the

Caribbean since 1945 (Julien, 1969: 343384; Grindle, 1981; Vitale, 1999:

402404). Examples include the decimationof the populist Arbenzadminis-

tration in Guatemala, extinguishing a decade of postwar democracy and

peasant-oriented land reform (1954), the Brazilian coup (1964), the installa-

tion of a puppet regime in the Dominican Republic (1965), the overthrow of

Allendes Popular Unity government in Chile (1973), the Argentine coup

(1976), and the invasions of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989) (Bulmer-

Thomas, 1988: 140147; Galeano, 1991; Vitale, 1999: 373374; Boorstein,

1987: 205236; Williams, 1997). In all cases the local armed forces leaders

havebeen trained at the U.S. armys Pentagon-advised School of the Ameri-

cas (SOA)the School of Assassins (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 1997;McSherry,2002) recently transferred from Panama to the United States. Luis Vitalehas

calculated that 25,000 LatinAmerican militarypersonnel were trained at the



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SOA Counter-InsurgencySchool and Center for Tactical and StrategicStud-

ies between 1945 and 1975 (1999: 428). While SOA officials admitted hav-

ing trained nearly 59,000 Latin American military, policemen, and civil-

ians by the mid-1990s (Nelson-Pallmeyer, 1997: 2, 34), the incomplete

official statistic of 3,850 for Chile alone suggests that around double that

figure is probably more accurate (School of theAmericas, 1997, analyzed in

Austin, 2001).

Colonel Nicholas Andreacchio, former commander of the SOA in the

Canal Zone, in effect confirmed the practice of torture training in 1983at

the height of U.S.-sponsored atrocities against civilians by the Salvadorean

armyby noting that SOA human rights training was essentially teach-

ing NCOs that it was more valuable in intelligence terms to keep prisoners

alive than to kill them. A seniorAmnesty International researcher noted thatthis simplymeantprolonging thetorture andpostponing thesummary execu-

tion that was nonetheless inevitable (McClintock, 1985: 338340).3 When

the Clinton administration was compelled to release the contents of SOA

training manuals in 1996, the New York Times commented that Americans

can now read for themselves some of the noxious lessons the United States

Army taught to thousands of Latin American military and police officers at

the School of the Americas (cited in Brown, 1998: 11).

The Marchetti-Marks thesis is graphically complemented by the film On

Company Business, which adds infiltration of the highest levels of the trade-

union bureaucracy in the West to the list of CIA operations (Francovich,

1980). The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), set

up in 1949 by British and U.S. top union bodies, was CIA-funded and CIA-

controlled from its inception (Ranelagh, 1987: 247; Agee, 1978: 611). Thisensured the harnessing of the noncommunist international labor movement

to the economic and political agenda of the U.S. establishment in both the

West and the Third World. There were particular consequences for the other

Americas in these arrangements (Spalding, 1988: 1):

Organized labors support forU.S. expansionistpoliciesdatesback to the 19thcentury. But it was the Cold War that gave the AFL-CIO a seat on the foreignpolicy team, with a mandate to limit communist influence on labor abroad. InLatin America, the Federations American Institute for Free Labor Develop-ment (AIFLD) has interpreted this broadly, working to undermine any radicalor nationalist tendency and, in AIFLDs words, to make the investmentclimate more attractive.

The CIA-ICFTU connection necessarily involves the Australian labormovement: theAustralian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)is an affiliate of

the ICFTU and (of particular interest here) includes all Australian education



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unions. Evidence of CIA penetration of the Labor party and the organized

labor movement abounds. In 1977, Gough Whitlamwhose center-left

Labor government had been toppled in a bloodless 1975 coup aided by CIA

operativesrevealed CIA manipulation of trade unions in Australia, but his

former minister Clyde Cameron had set the scene in the early 1960s with an

expos on one Robert Walkinshaw. This U.S. labor attach had been instru-

mentalin theCIA establishment andoperationof thetrade-unionpublication

SpotlightinMelbourneduring hisperiod asanagency functionary therefrom

1962 to 1964 (Pilger, 1992: 187). Australian teacher-union officers have

accepted invitations to U.S. universitieswhere the agency has clout, particu-

larlyHarvard (Marchetti and Marks, 1974: 3233; Austin, 2000: 99). By the

late 1960s there were hundreds of professors and administrators on over a

hundred campuses secretly contracted to the CIA (Marchetti and Marks,1974: 5960). Moreover, the Pentagons massive militarization of research

in U.S. universities during the postwar era has ensured that such visitors are

exposed to if not enlisted in the ideology of themilitary-industrial complexs

imperial agenda (Feldman, 1989: 189223).

Special training courses for senior Australian union bureaucrats are part

of the Australian Trade Union Training Program at Harvard Foundation,

essentially a CIA-front organization (Pilger, 1992: 186). The far-right National

CivicCouncil (NCC) under theCatholic Action cofounder B. A. Santamaria

admitted financing the right-wing victors in the 1983 New South Wales

Teachers Federation presidential elections (Scarrabelotti, 1983; OBrien,

1987: 88). In turn, theCIA-funded U.S. Congress for Cultural Freedom con-

tributed funds to Quadrant, the Australian magazine edited from its incep-

tion by the Santamaria confidant and fervently anticommunist Catholic poetJamesMcAuley (Saunders, 1999: 215, 395; Campion, 1983: 165167).Both

the Movementthe clandestine Australian precursor to the NCC, funded by

the Catholic hierarchy from 1945and the NCC itself nurtured links with

General Francos Spanish fascist organizationEl Movimiento and itsassoci-

ated secret Opus Dei Catholic political cell. One of the Opus Deis most

recent major national interventions in education and culture arose from its

alliance with theArgentinedictatorship, where a massive official program of

approved and prohibited books followed its fundamentalist moral dicta

(KaufmannandDoval,1997: 4570). In a World Bank strategy imposed mil-

itarily onmuch of LatinAmerica since the1970s, theArgentine dictatorships

under Galtierian SOA graduateand later generals paved the way for the

corporate Americanization of Argentine higher education, which responds

to interests of an economic rather than an academic nature, and aspires toeradicate [the tradition of] the humanistic professional, committed to the

community and to democratic practices (Mollis, 19992000).



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At the national level, the USIS role in this CIA-ICFTU-ACTU nexus has

historicallybeenbothconcreteandcircuitous: it systemicallylinksstructures

and individual functionaries mediated by common ideological interests.

More obvious has been the steadily increasing postwar U.S. influence over

educators in Australian schools and universities, replacingpostcolonial Brit-

ish dominance. This influence has been accompanied and conditioned by

economic and cultural penetration: a politics of cultural incorporation

(Apple and Christian-Smith, 1991: 9). Its postwar U.S. history includes the

indictable and successfully deployed offense of conspiracy to teach revo-

lutionary ideas, imposing a cultural straitjacket while paving theway forcor-

porate commodification and export of cultural products embodying the

rules and values of the market system that produced them. What has been

happening from the perspective of U.S. capital, wrote Schiller presently, isthe creation and global extension of a near-total corporate informational-

cultural environment (Schiller, 1989: 162, 33, 128).

Pentagon intervention in Australian universities came into focus in the

mid-1970s with wide-ranging allegations about the involvement of the

Flinders University of South Australia vice chancellor Roger Russell in sci-

entific research on behalf of the U.S. armed forces. Russell (a U.S. psycho-

biologist) hadworked fora numberof U.S.militaryinstitutions andagencies,

including the Department of Defenses National Security Agency, authorita-

tively described as more secret, larger, and more costly than the CIA and

the command center for the most far-flung intelligence agency in history

(Nancy Stein, quoted in Yates and McHugh, 1974: 22). Moreover, he was

coauthor of the confidential 1967 U.S. government Report of the Panel on

Defense Social and Behavioral Sciences, which promoted academic linkswith the Defense Department to provide it with data to expand U.S. interests

(militarily). Objects of research in foreign areas, reflecting the fact that the

war in Indo-China had dominated U.S.-Australia relations for a decade,

included sociocultural patterns,social organizationof troops, and the evalua-

tion of U.S. agency programs in underdeveloped countries. The USIS has

been central to the collection in Australia of data on perceptions of U.S. con-

trol of Australian natural resources and industry and on the reports stated

aimof support by militaryagenciesthat train foreign socialscientists toelu-

cidate the problems of social change in their own countries (Yates and

McHugh, 1974: 26, 33, 75). Indeed, Gordon OBrien, a psychologist at

Flinders and a contemporary of Russell, provided the Pentagon with a study

on techniques for rapid acculturation of U.S. troops in Guatemala

(Coxsedge, Coldicutt, and Harant, 1982: 116117).Outcomes of such research have regularly informed U.S. psychological

warfare, complementing the chemical and biological warfare research to



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whichRussell continued to contributeat Flinders (Richardson, 1998; Hilliard,

1991: 67). In theearly1970s, theGeorgetown UniversityCenterfor Strategic

and International Studiesheaded by the retired chief of naval operations

and major U.S. shareholder in AustraliaAdmiral Arleigh Burkelauncheda

multilayered program of cultural and economic intervention. It linked the

interests of the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, billionaire conglom-

erates such as Morgan Investments, Chrysler, General Electric, IBM,

Monsanto, and Goodyear, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Australia, and

Congress for Cultural Freedom emissaries with the initiative by the Ameri-

can Council of Learned Societiesfunded by the Ford and Carnegie Foun-

dationsto establish American studies courses in Australian universities.

Three members of the Georgetown centers advisory board appeared in

Whos Who in the CIA (Witton, 1972).Not only had the Carnegie Foundations philanthropic establishment of

the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in 1928 opened a

permanent conduit for corporate U.S. ideology to Australian schools but

increasingly it permitted the articulation of the powerful business interests

represented by U.S. philanthropy with the discourse of compatible forms of

systemic education (Arnove, 1980). With ACER support, behaviorism

forms of which Vygotsky had located at work in U.S. education as early as

the 1920s (Braslavsky, 1995)entered Australian pedagogical practices

through the influence of Tylers instrumentalist curriculum of the 1950s and

Blooms taxonomy (Bessant and Holbrook, 1995: 1012). Alongside were

the Skinnerian, neo-behaviorist Science Research Associates reading kits,

evidently used in 60 percent of Australian primary and junior secondary

schools by 1966 (Connell, 1993: 135138). When in the 1970s the NationalCommitteeon Social Science Teaching attempted a liberalization of primary

social science curricula in theform of theSocialEducationMaterialsProject

(SEMP) and Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), Christian fundamentalist

opposition was both inspired and funded by friendly U.S. organizations

(Connell, 1993: 597605).

INFORMATION SERVICES AND

CONSTRUCTIONS OF AMERICA

The biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialismagainst collective defiance [of the oppressed and exploited] is the cultural

bomb. The effect of the cultural bomb is to annihilate a peoples belief in their



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names,in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, intheir unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.

Ngugi wa Thiongo

USIS publications subject the history of the Americas to what a reviewer

of Ronald Reagans memoirs has called ideological carpet bombing

(Wills, 1990). The USIS Outline of American Historyat least 12,000 cop-

ies of an earlier version had been donated to Australian schools and colleges

by the early 1970s (Witton and Richards, 1972)describes the Reagan

regimes neocolonial policy in El Salvador as a more assertive role for the

nation [in foreign policy] for which Central America provedan early test.

Hence in El Salvador the administration responded with a program of eco-

nomic aidandmilitary training to help thegovernment in stemming guerrillaattacks. On October 25, 1983, the mythologizing continues, U.S. forces

landed on theCaribbean island of Grenada after an urgent appeal for help by

neighboring countries (Olson n.d.:187189). The realitiesof extensiveU.S.

economic and logistical support for paramilitary death squads and military

dictatorships in El Salvador or Guatemala or the U.S. marines invasion of

Grenada and replication of its preferred puppet regime model seem to have

evaded the author (Bonner, 1985; May, 1999; Dunkerley, 1988: 318, 323).

Such has been the degree of colonization of Australian English that it has

becomecustomary to refer to that country, occupied by a minority of Ameri-

cans, not by its geopolitical name, but by the unrepresentative term Amer-

ica. One recent study revealed the presence of some 3,000 U.S. expressions

in regular usage in Australia (Peters, 1998), but itsauthors understanding of

U.S.cultural impactthrough, for instance, such programs as Sesame Streetisequivocal. Plaza Ssamo, principally the brainchild of the U.S. Education

Department and the Carnegie and Ford Foundations, emerged in the late

1960s duringa surge in USAID,World Bank, andFoundation-fundededuca-

tional television directed at areas of U.S. investment in theThird World. Pro-

vocatively, the program was launched in Allendes socialist Chile in April

1973, sixmonthsfrom the reimpositionof U.S. economic andcultural domi-

nance via General Pinochets bloody coup. It was carried by the putschist

Televisin Universidad Catlica on weeknights in prime time. UNESCO-

Chile praised its neutral literacy and numeracy content, ignoring thepeda-

gogical role of such series in the universalization of the U.S. mass cultural

model (Puiggrs, 1980: 201203; Austin, 2003: 181). Thecentral characters

were all entrepreneurs: the seriess subtext legitimated the transfer of

imported bourgeois culture to thepoor and presented theexistingdivisionof



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labor as natural. By associating unchanging functionswith themechanic, the

doctor, and the police and with money, literacy is simultaneously achieved

on two levels: the two pedagogies [those of culture and labor] are superim-

posed and appear in essence to be perennial (Mattelart, 1976: 8492, 99

100).

Most Americans, in fact, live in Latin America and the Caribbean, the

immortal Nuestra Amrica of the Cuban intellectual and patriot Jos Mart.

His New York exile (ca. 18751895)in the bowels of the monsterhad

led Mart to characterize U.S. schooling in terms of its narrow and stupefy-

ing pragmatism, and miserable specialization(quoted in Urrutia, 1959: 77

92; see also Mart, 1984: 177182). Large numbers of U.S. citizens are the

descendants of those Mexicans whountil U.S. annexation in the mid-

nineteenth centuryinhabited California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas,Colorado, and New Mexico as their homelands. They bear the cultural his-

tory that has produced a resurgence of theSpanish language to such a degree

that, according to current demographic forecasts, it will overtake English as

the first language of the United States by 2010 (Davis, 1999). The editors of

Americanization and Australia claim that Australia has avoided cultural

imperialismfrom theUnited States(Belland Bell,1998: vii),4 butthe book

published in Australia and showcasing localwritersemploysU.S. spelling

for its title.USAID, the USIA, the USIS, and the U.S. State Department have

been unambiguous about exporting U.S. English as an important vehicle for

cultural and economic penetration. Why is the USIA in the business of

teaching English to thepeopleof other nations?asked an anonymous USIA

writer. Director Murrow responded that just as much of the world would

share our knowledge and emulate our machine age productivity, so wouldthey speakour language. The English Teaching Divisionchief Harold Urist

continued, We teach English in tune with the objectives of USIS. We teach

American English, and thematerialsused reflect American life (USIA Cor-

respondent, 1962: 89, emphasis added).5

Among the substantial literature distributed gratis at the October 1987

USIS-funded in-service course for secondary history teachers in Newcastle

was an article comparing the frontiers of California and Victoria during

their respective gold rushes. Ignoring atrocities by the British imperial

authorities against indigenous groups living on prime mineral resources,

suppression of Aboriginal land rights, andspirited Aboriginal resistance, the

author concludes that the Eureka stockade affairthe anticolonial Irish-

led minersuprising in Victoria of 1854contributed to the development of

broad-based, representative government (Franklin, 1986). Moreover, heapprovingly cites a Ballarat entity whose name was to become associated

with the most radically right of postwar Australian think tanks, the H. R.



11/39

Nicholls Society. Aside from the Hollywoodesque appeal to frontier ideol-

ogywhich romanticized neocolonial intruders on indigenous lands as

classless civilizers (Kellner and Ryan, 1988: 7784)one might ask how

broad a base and representative of whom. For 120 years after the events

of the Eureka stockade, Aborigines were denied the vote, despite having

served in both world wars (Clark, 1979: 7982, 98, 393, 401; Kidd, 2000:

139, 240, 242243). Women have yet to gain more than a handful of repre-

sentatives in any Australian parliament despite a rich history of black and

popularfeministstruggle (Saunders,1991;Grimshaw, 1988;Reynolds,1995).

Another freelyavailable USIS publication designed to help history teach-

ers draw the desired conclusions about the ingenuity of U.S. society is the

450-page Community in American Culture. As with much USIS material,

publication details are incomplete. This collection contains a piece by DanielBellReaganisms end of ideology complement to Fukuyamas end of

history doctrinein which societies are divided into preindustrial, indus-

trial, and postindustrial, of which the only entrant is the United States (Bell,

n.d.: 431; on Bell on ideology, see Chomsky, 1995). Western Europe, the

USSR, and Japan are industrial, while Asia, Africa, and Latin America are

preindustrial societies.

In terms of social methodology, the latter are locked into commonsense

experience (which apparently contributes to their backwardness); empiri-

cism and experimentation characterize the industrial societies, and the

United States alone has achieved the highest form of abstract theory: mod-

els, simulation, decision theory, systems analysis, to which theother groups

aspire. While according to Bells time perspective preindustrial societies

display orientation to thepast andadhoc responses, theUnitedStatesbycontrast is future orienting and forecasting (Bell, n.d.: 434). Extending

the metaphor, we come to the underlying explanation for the preindustrials

backwardness: they are subject to the laws of diminishing returns and low

productivity. Whereas enlightened research has elaborated the realities of

neocolonialism, neoimperialism, structural underdevelopment, and adjuncts

such as dictatorship, illiteracy, and chronic indebtedness to explain theThird

World quagmire, here we see a variant of the tribal backwardness account

of underdevelopment (for contrast, see Mies, 1998; and Chilcote, 1984).

Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians are depicted in a general schema

of socialchange as limited byphenomenasuch astraditionalism andland/

resource limitation (the converse in reality being what makes them such

prime targets for the expeditions of Columbus, Marco Polo, and latter-day

interventionists) in contrast to the United States, which has achieved cen-trality of and codification of theoretical knowledge (Bell, n.d.: 434). The

imperial cultural perspective and associated racism underscoring this model



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are barely disguised. The imposition of such models was assisted during the

1960s in Central America by the USIS-cousin USAIDs distribution of 10

million copies of school texts that concluded with regard to the Spanish

appropriation of indigenous lands that the Indians felt grateful to those who

made them flee (Regional Office for Central America and Panama Affairs,

1969, quoted in Jonas and Tobis, 1974: 30). Following the 1990 electoral

defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the right-wing Chamorro regime

paved the way for a major USAID intervention with textbook pulping and

burning. Presentlya USAID official wrote that it hadbeen thefirst time in the

agencys history thatat a cost of US$12.2 millionit had in the span of

ten months . . . totally replaced textbooks for all the schools in a country

(Long, 1991).

Colonizers, notes Pavla Miller, routinely asserted that natives, likechildren incapable of self-control and rational thought, respond best to firm

paternal control and beatings (1999: 113). Indeed, the childrens literature

exported to theThird World is frequently imbuedwith Westerncivilizations

modernist crusade, as a redoubtable critique of Disney in Latin America has

shown.The hegemony. . . detectedbetween thechild-adults whoarrive with

theircivilizationand technology, and thechild-noble savageswho accept this

alien authority and surrender their riches, stands revealed as an exact replica

of the relationsbetween metropolis andsatellite,between empire and colony,

between master and slave (Dorfman and Mattelart, 1991: 4849).

Neoliberal economic texts by William Petersonprofessor of philoso-

phy of business at Campbell University in North Carolinahave been dis-

tributed to Australian schools since the1970s under theCIA-connected U.S.

Chamber of Commerce economics education program. A 1949 U.S. Con-gressional reporthaddescribedoneof itsassociates, theFoundation for Eco-

nomic Education, as closely linked to organizations that were part of the

latent fascistelement in theUnited States (Coxsedge,Coldicutt,andHarant,

1982: 121123). An Outline of the American Economyrewritten by the

sameauthorisanother widely distributed USIS publication. On Petersons

account, the absence of any American labor party is due to the countrys

egalitarianism: most American working people have thought of themselves

as essentially no different from other groups of Americans (Peterson, 1991:

173; for a conflicting view, see Roediger and Foner, 1989: 177207). This

characteristic instance of what Terkel calls the Law of Diminishing Enlight-

enment ignores definitive evidence on the profound disparities of wealth in

U.S. society and theequally profound effects of race andgender exploitation

(1989: 3).The linchpin of theChilean dictatorships harsh economic restruc-turing (19731990) and steadilyimposed on theentire continent, Friedmans



13/39

neoclassical Chicago Boy economics have well suited USIS projects

(Born, 1995: 6):

By means of a rather simple manipulation of complex historical categoriessuchas competitive capitalism and democracyFriedman endsin the recipro-cal assimilation of both terms. The historical and theoretical problem of therelationshipbetweencapitalismanddemocracy . . . isthus solved by way ofatautology: democracy simply becomes the political organization of capital-ismcompetitive ex definitioneand capitalism is posited as the sole struc-tural support congruent with the specific needs of a democratic state. Thissophistic operation is far from being an extravagant turn of Friedmans ideas:in one way or another the diverse expressions of the established politicalthought regularly assert this substantial identity between capitalism anddemocracy.

In Part 9 of Petersons Outlineentitled Labor in America: The Trade

Unions Rolehigh-profile AFL-CIO links to the Mafia and the CIA are

ignored (Ranelagh, 1987: 345, 356, 386, 793, and247249 respectively) and

low wages (low labor costs) arepraised forhavinghelped foreign compa-

nies in such fields as automobiles and electronics to gain larger shares of the

American market (Peterson, 1991: 180). Part 10 depicts U.S. foreign policy

as benignandequitable, a position noteven sharedby such conservative bas-

tions as Newsweek, wherein correspondents presented a different history of

U.S.-Latin American relations (LeMoyne and Walcott, 1981):

When the republicsof Central America wontheir independence from Spain in1821, their history was already marked by poverty, violence, greed, treachery,

and enslavement. . . . With resources to exploit and rulers willing to sell, itwasnt long before American and European entrepreneurs came looking forbargains,and what Latin Americanscame to call Yanqui imperialismbecameahabit.

In addition to its own glossy publications, USIS widely distributes Voice

of America (VOA) publications toAustralian schools andcollegesgratis(for

instance, Rose, 1978). Marchetti, Marks, and Ranelagh have all emphasized

VOAs undisputed institutional links to the CIA by virtue of its integration

with the USIA in Washington. According to one senior teacher (interview 6,

June 29, 2003),

Theviewof theU.S.that emerges from schoolhistory is inseparable fromwhatis served up on T.V. Disneyland, Hollywood;somethingessentially benignand

wonderful. No notion of its realities, the poverty, infant mortality rate, illiter-acy, theviolence,breakdownof infrastructures,inability to deliverbasic healthto all, racism, huge inequalities, the corruption of the political process, the



14/39

huge national debt, the way the economy survives by screwing the rest of theworld,the dominanceof blacksin theprison system andon death row andwhy.

Standard New South Wales and Queensland school history texts show a

certain congruencewithUSIS-centric cultural politics.Pioneers All, a junior

secondary text in wide use, preserveswhite Australian explorers andpio-

neers as the spearhead of civilization. Captain Cook remains Australias

discoverer, and what the historian Raymond Evans calls the Frontier or

Great Land Warswherein armed Aborigines defended their territoryare

reduced to massacresperpetrated as much by theblacks as by the pioneers

(1999: 204207, 233; Johnson and Johnson, 1989: 3354). Like USIS texts,

Modern Questequates popular culture with mass culture, elevating it to a

technology-based and therefore desirable commodity (Cortesis et al., 1996:

32). In its13 chapters it makes no substantive reference to Latin America and

the Caribbean, employing the U.S. misnomer America throughout.

Despite the prominence of the Americas from pre-ancient times on in the

1992 junior syllabus options and purpose-written support materials (History

Syllabus Committee, 1994), the popular Checkpoint 1 excludes them from

ancient, medieval, and earlymodern history. Columbus remains the discov-

erer of the Americas, which are understood only in terms of European

impact on indigenous societies (Mooreet al., 1994a: 146206) and then as

British-occupied America and later the United States throughout (Moore et

al., 1994b). A notable exception is thejunior textbookWas It Only Yesterday?

(Coupe, Coupe, and Andrews, 1998), which breaks with America as a

generic term, substituting the U.S.A. throughout. Their Ghosts May Be

Heard(1997), a second text by thesame authors, uses the innovative conceptAncient Australia to frame thestudy of preinvasion Aboriginal society and

culture. Academic advisers seem not to havedeterred prominent Queensland

authors from reproducing the age of discovery fiction in that state through

their widelyused juniorhistory textTraditionand Change(Guest, Lawrence,

and Eshuys, 1984: 169188).6

A more sober account would show that the principal political legacy of

Spanish colonialism has been savage state violence against the indigenous

and later the working and peasant classes of postcolonial Latin America

(Ramrez Necochea, 1965; Carew, 1992; Vitale, 1992: 183250; Cueva,

1990: 145164; Collier and Quaratiello, 1999). Columbian discovery ide-

ology resonates with the Bernal Daz tome, which exalts the heroic over-

throw of the Aztec empire and the heroism of the Spaniards much as

Smiths definitive work had done a century earlier for Valdivias genocidalpolicies against the Mapuche of Chile (J. M. Cohen, in Daz, 1963: 7, 10;

Smith, 1855: 282). For the 1992 quincentenary, the petroleum multinational



15/39

Texaco endorsed the official U.S.-organized Columbus festivities through

theSpanish dailyEl Pas, claiming for itself the inheritance of themercenary

expedition leaders discovery spirit (Philip, 1982: 104105, 287). But, as

the Guatemalan Maya recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace observed

(Mench, 1992: 98-99),

It is only necessary to look at the number of indigenous people who have diedcompared with the number of Spanish dead to knowwho were the victors. It isonly necessary to look at thecurrent conditionof thepeopleto understand whois the victor. It is true that expressions of indigenous culture have been inte-grated into mestizo culture, but in general indigenous culture has been pushedaside, discriminated against, or simply served as decoration.

Twentieth-Century Australia: Conflict and Consensus(Cahill and Stew-art, 1987) is a senior text that approaches foreign relations, including imperi-

alism, from a novel and critical perspective. Its coauthor, the distinguished

labor historian Rowan Cahill (1969; Cahill and Evans, 1978; Cahill and

Fitzpatrick, 1981), taught history from theearly 1970s until his retirement in

2001 after the abolition of the history departmentconsistently among the

states most successfulin a burst of neoliberal downsizing athisNew South

Wales high school (interview 6, June 29, 2003):

The mechanics of cultural subversion, the role of the CIA, are not part of gen-eral teacher awareness. . . . Regrettably, theidea that American knowledgepro-duction works ina covert, duplicitous manner, that alleducation isbasicallyanideological process, is not part of general understanding. No understandingalso that cultural subverters and CIA hirelings and thugs may come as gentle,

lovely, impeccably credentialed and attired people.

To suggest that these interventions in the process of cultural formation in

secondary schools are unilinear and unchallenged would surely be mistaken

(see OBrien, 1987: 148178; Connell, 1993: 420424). Nevertheless, if

commentary by one experienced teacher elected by the New South Wales

state teachers union to history syllabus committees since the 1980s can be

taken as a guide, at best a minority of teachers would be aware that cultural

imperialism hadbothhistoryand historiography. Revealing tooare the impli-

cations of thatteachers reductionist reconstructionof moves by severalcom-

mittee members to broaden student familiarity with Latin Americaover-

whelmingly and repeatedly endorsed by statewide surveys of history teach-

ersas a campaign by one member wanting to playpolitics in order to

get as much on the Americas into theSyllabus as possible (Paige, 1992: 47,

72). The teacher in question reported visiting USIS offices on invitation and



16/39

receiving resources during the development of the 19901994 syllabi.7

Given that a veteran syllabus writer displays such impoverished understand-

ing of the geopolitical fundamentals of North-South borders, both the trans-

mission of implicit knowledge gaps to the blackboard and the academic

training of history teachers seem in need of a radical overhaul.

The Yale professor and CIA operative Norman H. Pearson observed that

American studies abroad were of clear imperial import to the United

Statess unique suitability for its postwar role as the worlds governor

(Saunders, 1999: 238). Since the 1970s and possibly earlier, USIS has

offered tours of selected U.S. universities and institutions to academics and

history teachers. These tours are all-expenses-paid and normally of around

six weeks duration and generally include both briefing and debriefing ses-

sions with USIS officers in Washington. Fulbright scholarships offered forthe same purposes appear to function similarly and have on occasion pro-

vided academiccover forCIAprojects (Saunders, 1999: 365366). Since the

mid-1980sandmore so since theformation of theNew South Wales Board of

Studies in 1990, there has been a marked shift in participants from ordinary

classroom teachers to policymakers. At least 6 of 17 members of the boards

19901994history syllabuscommitteehavebeen on tour,including thethree

key board officers attached to the committee and exercising most direct

influence on its work.

For several decades USIS has copiously funded in-service programs on

U.S. history. The cost of teacher release and replacement, incidentals, and

operations isborne by theUSIS, andtheagency commonly provides selected

speakers from U.S. and Australian institutions. Impressive participants are

sometimes subsequently offered tours. Teachers involved with the toursrecalled that these courses to date have not had a single black, Hispanic, or

woman speaker; thesameapplies to lectureson theUSIS circuit in theUnited

States. Reflecting the USISs one-dimensional America, the Sydney Uni-

versity historian Richard Waterhouse argued that the time for the introduc-

tion of a comprehensive American history syllabus is past due. . . . A more

thorough and comprehensive examination of United States history will lead

Australian students into a more mature understanding of the uniqueness of

American civilization (Waterhouse, n.d., [1981?]). Subsequently, he dis-

missedas ill-founded an Australian intellectualtradition of suspicionof U.S.

mass (which he confused with and called popular) culture, claiming wide-

spread Australian admiration of a whole range of [U.S.] cultural virtues,

particularly those philanthropically supported (1995: 186). Yet prominent

U.S. writers had already exposed the intimate links between philanthropyand U.S. imperialism: the foundationsargued Edward Berman (1979:



17/39

145)have directed their support at areas of political or economic

importance to American corporate interests.

While an accurate gauge of the effects of USIS materials on students

constructions of history is elusive, it seems reasonable to suggest that these

influenceswhen taken together with Whig historiography and the

broader globalized cultural contexthave operated as heuristic cues in the

dialectical processes of cultural (de)formation and Americanization. On the

geopolitical level, since 1991 USIS materials have been disseminated in a

unipolar world in which thecultural politics of teacherswork is policed by a

uniform and authoritarian Teaching Services Act or its analogue in every

Australian state. Typical of my 13 interviewees, an experienced history edu-

cator observed that teachers have been pivotal in interpreting thenew syllabi

for students.Significant numbers of teachers seem threatenedby the termsinvasionor occupation, preferring thecontactview of British colonial-

ism in Australia generally promoted in texts (interview 2, September 17,

1999), which conforms neatly with official U.S. agency descriptors.

My intent in offering these observations is to highlight themisrepresenta-

tion of the subject America at thepoint of academic production and itsdis-

tribution and consequences, relegating the majority history of the Ameri-

casincluding the history of black and Hispanic U.S. communitiesto

esotericbackwaters. Suchpractices, imported intohistorypedagogy andcur-

ricula, go hand in hand with the romanticizationpromoted by theUSIS, cog-

nate agencies, and sympathetic intellectuals: what C. L. R. James called the

delusive belief, based on Americas early history, that America, in its mere

existence, was a rebellion (1993: 65) or the national origin story that

Edward Said has described as a strange mixture of invention, history, andself-aggrandizement (1993: 381).

OUT WITH THE NEW, IN WITH THE OLD

In the United States . . . cultureis a business, justlikemaking sausages or serv-ingin a restaurant.Culture isnot . . . a socialnecessity that shouldbe made a giftof, rather . . . an activity which has a market so long as it has quality.

G. Domnguez, General Pinochets head

of the Cultural Corporation of Santiago, 1979

The Americanization of the history curriculuminitiated with the U.S.

strand in the 1982 New South Wales senior syllabus, complemented by theacademic formation of teachers at major pedagogical universities and USIS-



18/39

driven professional developmentwas extended in the 19901994 syllabi

and consolidated in the new junior history syllabus implemented from 1999.

Despite shortcomings, the 1992 junior syllabus and the senior modern his-

torysyllabusgave visibility to capitalism andcommunismas discretehistori-

cal forces. For instance, the first mandatory question of the junior syllabus

listed trade unions, labour, and capital for study (now eliminated), while

the second offered the environmentally focused and communist-led Green

Bans (now eliminated), the Aboriginal land rights movements (now voided

of their political economy and defined merely as protest movements), and

reconstruction of the past as research topics for the study of heritage. The

third specificallymentioned communism and anti-communism and mul-

tinationals as examples of economic issues that the teacher could legiti-

mately present as vehicles for understanding Australias international rela-tions since European contact (New South Wales Board of Studies, 1992:

1620).

But as if inspired by a USIS-distributed Fukuyama (1993) equation of

capitalismwith democracy, the1999 juniorsyllabus readministers thelast rites

of communism, promoting instead a contradictory identity history that is

nationalist butdevoid of autochthonous roots and susceptible of Hobsbawms

critique as prone to anachronism, omission, decontextualization and, in

extreme cases, lies (Hobsbawm, 1997a: 351366). For instance, the third

mandatory area of study is anti-communism and theVietnamWar, making

anticommunismrather than anti-imperialism or anticapitalismthe

default focus. Reading as if written by Senator Joseph McCarthys House

Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, the mandatory question is

How did the Australiangovernment respond to the threat of communism inAustralia? (New South Wales Board of Studies, 1999a: 24). Such questions

intentionally shape answers.

Proponents of the active or multiple-reading thesis might here inter-

ject that such text, like all text, is open to various readings. We cannot

assume, asserts Michael Apple, that what is in the text is actually taught.

Nor can we assume that what is taught is actually learned. Teachers have a

long history of mediatingand transformingtext materialwhen they employit

in classrooms. Students bring their ownclassed, raced, andgendered biogra-

phieswith themaswell. Paulo Freires evocation of thebankingeducation

model, he concludes, no longer applies (Apple, 1993: 211). Nevertheless,

Freire held to its relevance through much of his later writings (1985: 100).

While it isundeniable that multiple readings arise,the boardensures that they

coalesce around a hegemonic interpretation via its most potent ideologicalinstrument, the centralized examination system. In practice, the overlap

between history syllabus committee and syllabus examination committee



19/39

memberships has always been decisive. Moreover, the board polices the

boundaries of meaning through periodic model answer advice to teachers.

Simultaneously, schools have become more rather than less hierarchical,

integrating managerialism alongside verticalist pedagogical practices.

Reviewing the shortcomings of the multiple-readings thesis in the context

of mass culture industries, after noting how capital adapts to, incorporates,

and then subordinates client taste, Schiller responds appropriately: How

much more satisfying to be told that you already possess power than to be

instructed that you must struggle for it against some very formidable oppo-

nents (1989: 152).

Indeed, the signposts to teachers are clear, situated in the most politically

constrained antilabor and unipolar context since the 1930swhat Robin

Blackburn calls absolute capitalism. Despite the heterogeneous massmovement of opposition to the Vietnam War in Australiaembracing the

AustralianQuaker PeaceCommittee, liberals, trade unionists, centrist Labor

politicians, theold andnew lefts, theStudentsfor a Democratic Society, Save

Our Sons, Catholics for Peace, the Student Christian Movement, womens

organizations, and otherwise apolitical citizens with draft-aged sonsthe

board in effect has deemed that movement a communist threat. Its impera-

tive, therefore, is to obscure theanti-imperialist or antifascistactivities of the

popular movement (dating from at least the Spanish Civil War) that finally

forced Australian military withdrawal from neocolonial U.S. intrusions in

Southeast Asia (Feith, 1976; Hobsbawm, 1997b: 244245). Rather, students

and teachers are to construct anticommunism, the threat of communism, and

the official rationale for the Vietnam War as synonymous. Their implied ref-

erents are the sophistically constructed freedom and democracy sobeholden to USIS, Pentagon, and New Right propaganda.

The single mandatory question on the theme Popular Culture redefines

industrially produced, corporation-controlled U.S. mass culture as Ameri-

can popular culture, thereby implying congruence with the vibrant,

autochthonous, and frequently anti-imperialist popular cultures of Latin

America and the Caribbean (in contrast, see Schutte, 1993: 98, 193194;

Kellner and Ryan, 1988: 3748, 266286; Reyes Matta, 1988). But popular

culture is also dominatedculture. Conceptually it sharesthe propositionsof a

broader struggle that seeks to transform society, making it more just andcol-

lectively responsible. Behind this formulation there is an understanding of

economic,social, andpoliticaldomination that defines a politicalstruggleby

the popular sectors as necessarily connected to a cultural struggle (Gramsci,

1992: 8289).Thus, in deference to theascendant new imperialism, the latest junior syl-

labus removes capitalism entirely from the areas of both mandatory and



20/39

optional study (Perera, 1999). There is no requirement that capitalism be

contemplated, still less historicized, let alone subjected to scrutiny, despite

(or perhaps because of) itsvirtually complete routing of real existingsocial-

ism and near-totalhowever contingentglobal hegemony. Rather, it has

been molded into the framework of the syllabus as an incontrovertible and

natural historical given: like God, this ideology admits of no doubts. The

dangers of studentsbeingdenied access to criticalperspectiveson globaliza-

tion in itshistorical context haveeitherescaped theboards attentionor, more

likely, been written out. This process of exclusion intensified after the board

downgraded syllabus committees in 1995 andbegancontractingout thewrit-

ing of the syllabi and support materials on free-market principles (interview

2, September 17, 1999). Although 75 percent of secondary schools remain

public, the production of curriculum has been effectively privatized.Whereas the board included no acknowledgments in the earlier junior sylla-

bus, it now both acknowledges and quotes from the Sydney University his-

tory department website in thenew one(New South Wales Board of Studies,

1999a: inside front cover, 6). Since this article has also highlighted the at-

least-20-year trajectory of USIS links to that department, it seems reasonable

to adduce an intensified tripartite project that, however carefully or coinci-

dentally organized, sees history syllabi as a convenient vehicle for preparing

would-be Americans cum consumers-in-waiting for a World Bank/IMF,

Multilateral Agreement on Investment, structurally adjusted history of the

future.

LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY AND THE CURRICULUM

When the trumpet sounded, and everything on earth was ready

Jehovah divided the world between Coca Cola Inc,

Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other entities.

The Fruit Company Inc reserved the most juicy piece . . .

the sweet waist of America.

It baptized her lands anew as Banana Republics

And on top of the sleeping dead . . . established the buffoon opera.

Pablo Neruda, La United Fruit Co. (ca. 1948)

In an uncanny reflection of their distorted twentieth-century interface,

USIS-driven American history has lately expanded and consolidated its

curricular role while Latin American historydespiteor perhaps because of

its prolific literary iconographyand an organic popular rather than manufac-



21/39

tured mass culturehas been relegated to the unresourced periphery. It is a

decline that mimics the results generated in Latin America by thecomprador

practices of corporate global recording companies such as Capitol and CBS,

wherein radio programmers and disc jockeys are bribed to promote main-

stream U.S. artists, thereby drowning out autochthonous music, and calypso

songs from Trinidad and Tobago are pruned of any local insurrectionist con-

tent for mass consumption at home and then repackaged for the country of

origin (Reyes Matta, 1988; Holton, 2003). Far from being a desultory or

teacher-endorsed decline, the trajectory of Latin American history in the

New South Wales syllabus revisions since the 1980s is a fertile case study of

the power relations within the reigning national cultural, educational, and

political structures.

The negation of Latin America and the Caribbean in the West derives inpart fromand isconditioned by thecolonialandpostcolonial constructions

including metaphorical absorption into the fiction Americafostered by

Western scholars. The Orientalism of Saids sharp analysis of the Eastern

world hasa mirrorin this Westernconstruction of Nuestra Amrica, thecrud-

est examples of which include sombreroed Mexicans lazing under cactus or

tailor-made religious icons such as themestiza Virginof Guadalupe, thought

more presentable in the region by religious colonizers. Denial of a vigorous

feminist history has accompanied the gender stereotyping of such construc-

tions,whichoften borderon thesubstantialerasureof womenas protagonists

in Latin American history. Routinely produced in the West and then trans-

lated and pressed into the service of Latin American dominant classes, such

positivist historiesportray historical processesin theregion asa chainof con-

quest, independence, and republicbarely touched by modern imperialismor popular struggleand the province of patriarchs (for contrast, see Zea,

1949; Labarca, 1947; Lavrin, 1995).

Release of theNew South Wales juniorsecondary history syllabus in1992

coincided with the mass indigenous and popular mobilizations in Latin

America against orthodox historys usurpation of the symbolism of the

Columbus quincentenary. The pertinentacademic literature in Spanish alone

was massive: a single Argentinine bibliographic guide listed 665 publica-

tions (Ezcurra, 1991). International press coverage was constant and high-

profile for much of the ten-month lead-in period, stimulated by the award of

the1993 Nobel PeacePrize toa QuichMayanleaderin exilefrom hernative

Guatemalaafteratrocities against her familyandhighland communityby the

U.S.-backedmilitarydictatorship (Burgos,1993). Again, muchof thiswould

appear to have eluded the board and would have been inconvenient for theUSIS syllabus project.



22/39

Board equivocation on the inclusion of any Latin American history in the

options of the new junior secondary syllabus stood in marked contrast to its

uncritical embrace of U.S. history. Despite categorical teacher endorsement

for the inclusion of Latin American history in the syllabus throughout 1991

and 1992, the board consistently omitted Latin American material from

draftssent to schools forteacher evaluation.When itwasfinallyincluded, the

material gained wide support (see minutes of the History Syllabus Commit-

tee, March 12, 1991; January 24, 1992; April 9, 1992). Tactically, the board

persistently misplaced my response to a request by the syllabus committee

for potentialunits of work on Latin American history. Such tactics frustrated

public opportunities for critical and informed reflection. Nonetheless his-

torythat department of unexpected resultsalso produced an unexpected

deterrent, from theSchool of Spanish andLatinAmerican Studies at theUni-versity of New South Wales. At the very moment that all the Americas

stood their first serious chance of entering a mainstream syllabus for inte-

grated study, University of New South Wales academics evidently triggered

the removal of Hispanic cultural studies from the new senior Spanish sylla-

bus, thus eliminating a potential area of cognate study. Hispanic culture,

remarked one academic, was not being well taught; the solution had been to

remove it altogether.8

Then, a syllabus-writing team of experienced history teachers appointed

by the board to update 1991 drafts was reportedly unable to find evidence of

LatinAmericancivilizations before around 2000B.C. (see minutes of theHis-

tory Syllabus Committee, January 24, 1992). This outmoded Western ortho-

doxypremised on a culturally exclusive historiography and oblivious to

societies that were not alphabetically literate but finally challenged in thenew juniorhistory andseniorancient history syllabistill found itsway into

widely usedcontemporary government publications.An Introduction to His-

torical Techniques, an official New South Wales seniorancient history guide,

asserted that history is thestudy of written records. So the invention of writ-

ing marks the beginning of history (Simpson and Davis, 1992: 45).9 Con-

gruence with the USIS construction remained, ignoring even the education

ministers simultaneous launching of an antiracism policy statement that

obliged the director-general of education to develop materials and docu-

ments to support the policy and, by inference, to remove from circulation

those that clearly breached it (New South Wales Department of School Edu-

cation, 1992: 4).10 Eventually, under pressure from supportive minority ele-

ments of the syllabus committee, its full decision was implemented, with

Latin American history becoming available in seven of ten options in thefinal 1992 junior secondary syllabus.



23/39

There were, however, to be other obstacles. Despite of its multimillion-

dollar budgetincluding lavish funding for computer materials that were

never considered by the syllabus committee but that render specialist history

teachers redundant (Preston, 1994)11the board claimed for several years

that it could not afford six teacher release days (at around A$800) to have

Latin American teaching materials written. Education reform means that

history no longer has to exist as a separate faculty in New South Wales

schools and can be swamped by a general (Human Society and Its Environ-

ment) department. It would be interesting to know how much junior and

senior history teaching in New South Wales is now being done by untrained

generalists (interview 6, June 29, 2003). The net effect of this bureaucratic

block in a resource-barren climate, especially as it afflicts state schools, has

been that teachers cannot readily obtain resources for the Latin Americanoptions and rely instead on the well-worn paths of traditional European and

North American material (asanticipated by USIS). As one experienced state

high school history head teacher noted, Most teachers would have chosen

options according to available resources and interest (interview 5, Novem-

ber 25, 1999).12 The political economy of publishing remains conservative:

publishers survey schools, seek the topics most likely to be taught, and

produce accordingly (interview 2, September 17, 1999).

Critical study of paradigmatic (and anti-imperialist) modern revolution-

ary societies such as Cuba in the senior modern history syllabusperma-

nently contentious among state education bureaucrats and USIS allies

becomes vulnerable in such circumstances. History teachers are already

insufficiently criticalof texts, according to another experienced head teacher

(interview 2, September 17, 1999). Finally, after persistent pressure from thesame minority group of the syllabus committee, an academic member was

allocated one days pay to write Mesoamerican material to be included in a

teachers resource book for the new 710 syllabus (History Syllabus Com-

mittee, 1994). Two of 15 case studies addressed precolonial Latin American

history, while funding for the writing and production of materials for Latin

American history in the remaining 50 percent of the syllabus options was

denied.

While direct board-USIS-Ministry of Education links have been demon-

strated, successful USIS intervention at the level of curriculum construction

required a politicalpredispositionamong administrators. Predicated on what

a private-school teachersunion leader called sycophancy to U.S. academic

imperialism, this was framed by the internalization of the New Right free-

market agenda in Australian education, including U.S.-style large-corpora-tion adopt-a-school schemes, lip service to critical thought, and the unre-

strained adoption of late-capitalist ideology in education articulated by such



24/39

groups as the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia

(CEDA), representing U.S. multinationals such as Honeywell, Ford, Caltex,

and GMH, alongside Shell, AMP, Kodak, ANZ Bank, and others (Lee,

1985). Taken together with the preconditions created among educational

administrators via a history of persistent high-profile, opulently funded, and

strategicUSIS interventions in thecomplex process of syllabusconstruction,

theseweresufficient to legitimateeffectiveopposition to the incorporation of

Latin America and the Caribbean into thecurriculum on equal terms with its

imperial neighbor. According to one interviewee (interview 6, June 29,

2003),

The exception to all this was the three-unit Revolutions course (senior sylla-bus) and the study of Cuba, which did have a following amongst teachers andstudents, and had to look at American imperialism. But there was a great lackof resources here. . . . Teaching the subject still required access to hard-to-get,expensive books. It was cheaper and easier to prepare the Russian and FrenchRevolutions and just use the readily available materials in the bookroom.

Paradoxically, the Americanizationof history curriculacarried through in

the most recent syllabi has also meant their de-Latin-Americanization.

Whereas theadvanced level of the1986 and 1993 senior modern history syl-

labi permitted the comparative study of Cuba and China as one of two revo-

lutions options, available from four electives, that option has been dropped

from the latest revision. Instead, Nicaragua and Cuba (reconstructed from

primarily nonaligned revolutions to terminal sites of cold war conflict) may

be chosen among six coldwar crises, asone of eleven subsections, inanelec-

tive with five sections, among seven electives, of which only one may betaken under International Studies in Peace andConflict (New South Wales

Board of Senior School Studies, 1991 [1986]: 3842; New South Wales

Board of Studies, 1993: 4852; New South Wales Board of Studies, 1999b:

55, 6061). Mathematically this reduces the likelihood of a Latin American

topicsbeingchosenfrom 1 in 8 in 1992 to less than 1 in 1,000 at the dawn of

the new millennium.

CULTURAL INFLUENCE OR

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM?

If the term imperialism wasused in a syllabus it would compel some aware-ness of what it involved. The word has a hard edge missing from the shoulder-rubbing gentility of influence. Imperialism comes at the point of a gunassimpleas that.The omission of thetermis culturally significant,as itwarpsand



25/39

distorts a whole cultural process. The same with contact versus invasion/occupation. Attitudes and processes are lost in the selection of language.

Interview 6, June 29, 2003

As a historical phenomenon, cultural imperialism datesfrom theEgyptian

and Roman empires and the Minoan, Classical Athenian, and early Meso-

american civilizations. Politicaland economic domination of subjugatedter-

ritories requiredin Gramscis sensecultural hegemony (Forgacs and

Nowell-Smith, 1985: 88, 164165, 172173). Contemporary analyses dat-

ing from Gramsci and the Peruvian Jos Carlos Maritegui (1955), later

indebted to the Trinidadian C. L. R. James (1993), the Mexican philosopher

Leopoldo Zea (1949), the almost Chilean Brazilian Paulo Freire (1972;

1985), the Filipino Renato Constantino (1978); extending through the pio-neering work of Dorfman and Mattelart (1991), Edward Said (1993), Ana

Pizarro (1987), Gabriel Salazar andJulioPinto(1999) inChile toGail Ching-

LiangLow's. Fanonist inversion White Skin, BlackMasks(1996), have added

new dimensions to publicknowledgeof the intertwined operations of culture

and imperialism. It is no geopolitical accident that much of this work has

come from Latin America and only then been discovered by the West.

Neoliberal discourse permeated the reconfiguration of the curriculum

during the 1990s. The board introduced an outcomes-based curriculum fol-

lowing Ronald Reagans Nation at Risk prophet William Spady, whose

reinventionof measurement in educationformed partof theconservative cul-

tural restoration (Update, 1992; Shor, 1986). Through national education

policy reports in the early 1990s overseen by business executives, further

political pressures were placed on curriculum teams to link the demands ofglobal capital more closely to schooling agendas. By 1999, enhancing stu-

dentsglobal identitywasan aimof theboards new juniorhistory syllabus

(New South Wales Board of Studies, 1999a: 5; Wexler, 1993/1994). The

national profiles imposed on the curriculum in 1993 through the collabora-

tion of all state ministersof educationemphaticallyrestored measurement as

a focus. Indeed, such is thepriority assigned to measurement in thenew pro-

files that many teachers began to speculate publicly on their chances of ever

having enough teaching time. At least one officer from the quantitatively

driven assessment branch of the board attended history syllabus committee

meetings from 1993 on, at one stage proposing that the essay-based univer-

sity entrance examination at the end of the final year of secondary schooling

be abandoned for a multiple-choice questionnaire that would replace

teacher-examiners with computers.In thiscontext, strugglesaround the exclusion/inclusion of LatinAmerica

and the Caribbean in the syllabus and official nomenclature for cultural



26/39

imperialism can be seen to be related. Diverse potential interpretations of its

subject matter endow LatinAmerican history withsufficient latent challenge

to globalization ideology, if not practice, to prompt conservative opposition

to its inclusion. Closely linked to this political struggle has been the triumph

of official euphemism in the representation of cultural imperialism in the

1992 junior syllabus core and, by implication, in the options (where Latin

America was, finally, prominent), but that outcome was decidedly unrepre-

sentative of syllabus committee and teacher preferences.

Seven of eight board-approved drafts of the 1992 New South Wales Year

710 history syllabus listed cultural imperialism as an issue in the manda-

tory Australian section. Statewide school surveys by the board had revealed

consistent support for its retention. However, in mid-1992 a bare quorum of

the history syllabus committee decidedby a majority of oneto representcultural imperialism as cultural influence in the junior syllabus, at the

instigation of the Sydney University historian Richard Waterhouse.13 Water-

house, whose position on Aboriginal and gender issues was a consistent ral-

lying point for right-wing elements on the committee (whose lines to board

authority seemed ensured), had also opposed the representation of the colo-

nial occupation of Australiaas an invasion, successfullypromoting thecon-

tact reconstruction in itsplace. Congruentwith therepackaging of imperial-

ism as mere influence, the mandated question on Aboriginal history thus

framedinvasion as contact. In both history anda comparable dispute over a

board primary-school social science syllabus, the NLP Education Ministry

also promoted constructs such as encroachment over invasion (Lewis,

1994). This quasi-Nation at Risk coalition was completed by elite private

schools such as Knox Grammar, Sydney, which lobbied for similar USISanalogues.

All met strenuous resistance from progressive teachers, academics, the

Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Social Justice Commission, theAborigi-

nal EducationConsultative Group (AECG), anda substantial minority of the

committee.The boardsown Aboriginaleducationunit rejectedthecontact

construction, arguing that it was Eurocentric and euphemistic, sociological

rather than historiographic, and (misleadingly) suggestive of equal power

relations and broke the boards public History Round Table consensus that

invasionand massacre werekeydescriptors for thismandatoryquestion.

On the issue of whether this may be inflammatory terminology, the author

ruminated, we have to ask whether prejudice and ignorance should be the

guiding principles of syllabus design (New South Wales Board of Studies

Aboriginal Education Unit, 1992). Responding in a similar vein to Anglo-phobic hysteria in Big Brother Writes the Syllabus by the Murdoch jour-

nalist and Quadranteditor P. P. McGuinness (1991), the AECG president



27/39

and teacher Linda Burney reminded readers that Australians were indoctri-

nated for generations both by the denial of Aboriginal history in school and

by the racist lie of white Australia. It was about time, she concluded, that

the real Australian story was told (1991).

These events stand in marked contrast to the advances made in the 1995

Queensland (senior) modern history syllabus, in which cultural imperialism

is an option for study under the topics Modern Australia (post-1939) and

Imperialism. Balanced and intelligently organized resource material for

that study is provided in the two-volume textbook series Inquiry (Hoepper

et al., 1996a; Hoepper et al., 1996b), despite itsoccasional andequivocal use

of the generic America where the United States or its citizens, culture, or

political institutions are meant (Hoepper et al., 1996a: 434437). One of its

academic authors observed that since 1973, Queensland has had broad-framehistory syllabi, giving schools greatchoicein thespecific topicsthey

choose to exemplify themes such as nationalism, imperialism, racism.

Moreover, students can study black-white relations in a semester unit Im-

perialismand Racial Conflictsand Compromises (interview 4, October 27,

1999).

Nonetheless, in the New South Wales casegiven the combination of

consistent media misinformation or marginalization of the issue, the stifling

conservative climate in schools, thesubordination of teacher training to free-

market ideology, and theequivocal signals sent by thenotion cultural influ-

ence as opposed to cultural imperialismfew history teachers would

interpret the influence construction as a call to problematize the political

economy of culture. Unremarkably, then, one senior head teacher regarded

the influence-versus-imperialism distinction as immaterial, reportingthat his staff was unaware of U.S. agency influence in syllabus development

(certainly a common position) (interview 5, November 25, 1999). Another

preferred contact as an adequate, nonthreatening notion for teachers and

students, most of whom would balk at the term invasion if used to define

British colonial occupation of Australia. Moreoverimplying a systemic

failurethe concept of colonialism was beyond the reach of most students

until the twofinal senioryears (interview 2, September17, 1999). Reflecting

the verticalist power practices that commonly transmit officially sanctioned

culture, a classroom teacher noted that the programs were done and, in

effect, teachersjust followedthem(interview 3, October 11,1999). In such

conditions, teachers tend to fall back on that tangle of crimes, blunders,

oversights and off-chances which for the more conventionally minded goes

by the name of tradition (Eagleton, 1992).In late 1991 theboard sought guidance on the juniorhistory syllabus from

the Sydney University history professor Brian Fletcher, one of the eminent



28/39

historians who would talk to us about what they think kids 15 years of age

should know about Australia, the big issues (Susskind, 1991). He urged the

board to base its junior syllabus on the Californian model, which had suc-

ceeded (Fletcher, 1991). This view had less support in California, where the

model in questionsynchronized with the Reagan and later Bush adminis-

trationshad been undergoing drastic revisions discreetly initiated in 1989.

The University of California Los Angelesbased Winston Committee had

begun promotinga history educationthat emphasized both thesudden revo-

lutions and the long-term shifts, encouraging for instance the study of the

earlyIndustrialRevolution as a development involving worldwideeconomic

interrelationships, rather than merely as a topic in the history of England.

Pivotal for this discussion, it did not encourage history teachers to embark

upon a search for the eternal essences of individual civilizations. Syllabusstandards would be multicultural and inclusive, avoiding the traditional hier-

archy of cultures that, argued a key academic contributor, would assuredly

lead to divisive rhapsodizing over which civilization was the greatest moral

success, or which placed first in this or that cultural achievement (Dunn,

1995). Resonant with the New South Wales case, the new syllabus came

under concerted attack from the Moral Right, which accused it of political

correctness and extravagant multiculturalism. One of its loudest critics was

the CIA asset and Watergate plumber Charles Colson, who had once

described himself as a flag-waving, kick-em-in-the-nuts, antipress, anti-

liberal Nixon fanatic (Ranelagh, 1987: 804).

In 1992 U.S. president Bush opened a multimillion-dollar Australian

Center for American Studies (ACAS) at the University of Sydney, home to

consistentsupport for USIS ideology and interventionist practice.Funding ischanneled through the USIA, and the center aims to expand U.S.-Australia

links in theareas of business, finance, trade, academia,culture, andmilitary-

strategicrelations. A schools program wasplanned from theoutsetand USIS

involvement acknowledged (Gazette, 1992). In this new high age of conser-

vatism, the inauguration of the ACAS marked a shift from Reagans impos-

ing approach to cultural affairs to decentralized domination. Its parameters

are Gramscian, using the locals to do the colonizing through informal

empire, where U.S. and Australian corporations in Australia pay, along

with our universities and governments, for what was previously done by the

CIA (Ian Tyrrell, personal communication, November 7, 1994).

Inevitably, theprocesses that shapethehistory curriculumincluding the

erasure of Nuestra Amricaare complex andrequire analysis and response

beyond the limits of this investigation. Nonetheless, it has underlined thesheer force of the USIS and related agencies and organizations, their amoral

tactical arsenal, and the gargantuan budgets with which they operate. The



29/39

exercise of that power in selective policy-making circles away from public

scrutiny has become essential to the USISs capacity to insert racist, patriar-

chal, and Americanized late-capitalist discourse into national curriculum

development andimplementation.Thepracticesof a publicBoard of Studies

that responds less to consultative democracy than to the boards of transna-

tional corporations ought to be subjected to ongoing public examination and

interested response. To cede this struggle to globalcapitalism and theUSISs

substantive role in promoting it through the self-serving practices of cultural

imperialism promises only an anesthetizing, Americanized curriculum

tailored to precipitate the end of history in Australian schools.

NOTES

1. Among the early changes by Terry Metherill, minister for education (19881991), were

abolition of the broadly representative Education Commission and Higher Education Board,

reinstatement of the Year 10 statewide school certificate, introduction of basic literacy and

numeracytests in Years 3, 6,and 10,and a doublingof thenumber ofselectivestate high schools

(Barcan, 1988: 314). These, coupled with the abolition of 2,500 (of around 80,000) teaching

positions, led to the most prolonged popular mobilizations around education since the equal

paycampaigns of the 1960s. On the politicsof economicrationalismin the Australian educa-

tion system, see Marginson (1993: 5580).

2. The board itself consisted of Leonie Kramer, a high-profile antifeminist, member of the

CIA-funded Association for Cultural Freedom, and public advocate for U.S. neocolonialism in

Southeast Asia, the managing director of multinational AMATEK Ltd., the principal of Knox

Grammar (oneof Australias wealthiest private schools), conservativeCatholic education repre-

sentatives, and state bureaucrats. The representatives of the Aboriginal Education Consultative

Groupand public school Parents and CitizensAssociations were the singular nonestablishmentvoices. Curriculumis used throughout in a broad sense,implyinga pedagogyof thesocialsci-

ences as distinct from the physical and natural sciences (Surez, 1997), a contentious disci-

plinehistorybeyondthe subject matterof a formal syllabus (Zemelman,1998),and theoper-

ationof an exclusivebut contested political economy of education basedon class,race/ethnicity,

and gender (Tosh, 1993; Freire and Shor, 1987: 10, 116117).

3.TheCosta-Gavras filmStateof Siege (1973)suggeststhat political prisonerswere usedas

subjects forpracticaltorture training in Panama; the

americanizing labor - lap 31 (1) 2004

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