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Latin American Report: Latin American UnityAuthor(s): Hugh FoxSource: The North American Review, Vol. 253, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1968), pp. 2-5Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116806 .

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LATIN AMERICAN REPORT

LATIN AMERICAN UNITY

1

To the "outsider" Latin America can easily be con sidered as one single, socio-economic unit. After all,

ostensibly all the Latin American countries stem from a common heritage, they all are formed out of the former Spanish empire, they have a common language, common religion, some common folkways. Beneath this superficial semblance of unity, however, from the

very beginning of their independence from Spain, Latin American countries have fought among themselves with as much ferocity as they ever fought against the

Spaniards?or the Spaniards fought against them. The letters of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of South Ameri

ca, who more than any other single individual was re

sponsible for freeing Latin America from Spanish dom

ination, are filled with disillusioned statements regard ing the disunity of the new republics at the beginning

of the nineteenth century. As soon as they were lib erated from Spain wars began within Chile, Mexico,

Guatemala, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru. Then, in the 1820's these conflicts spread, and Columbia was fight ing Venezuela, Peru invading Ecuador, planning on in

vading Columbia, Buenos Aires threatening to invade Bolivia. These wars continued on through the nine teenth century into the twentieth century and created

deeprooted enmities between most Latin American

neighbor republics: Peruvians against Chileans, Ecua dorians against Peruvians, Bolivians against Paraguay ans, Chileans against Argentinians, and so forth.

War, however, was not the only cause of "differ ences" between the Latin American republics; the dif ferences go much deeper. Racially, for example, there are vast differences between the Negro-based countries such as Venezuela, and Cuba and Indian-based coun tries such as Bolivia and Peru. Temperamentally the Peruvian or Bolivian doesn't feel "comfortable" in

Venezuela, doesn't understand?or want to understand

?the quicksilver and volatile nature of Venezuelan character. Other countries like Argentina have made a grand to do of their racial "purity," and look with a

disparaging eye at those mestizo countries that sur

round them. Sometimes, even within one country these racial differences make themselves strongly felt such as in Ecuador where a city like Guayaquil, hot

tropical, with a Negroid racial substratum, is totally different from the cold, introverted, Indian-derived

highlands of Quito. Indeed, these differences within countries are often

more marked than the differences between countries. The Peruvian Indian from Cuzco has much more in common with his racial-cultural counterpart in Bolivia

GETTING INTO PITTSBURGH LATE

I'm always getting held up? Highwaymen, detours, a busted umbilical? On my way to these streets that lie all around me Like beds with nothing better to do.

A stoplight corner of Federal & East Ohio: The foundling fathers in midnight Sabbath dress

who Built it dangle from it. Their feet twist downward through the pavement Like roots, The kind they use here to poison house painters.

Oh, Pittsburgh rises to a law And that law goes round inside a bridge, a hill A citizen's head. Sweet thighs The droves of secretaries walk home

Legislate madness for Citizen Head.

U.S. Steel glows like an electric ax.

The S?necas and Shawnees own their own pawn shops now

And a bell sitting outside the Orthodox church Takes up a collection for the French

Now long gone down the Ohio In their elegant bateaux.

SPIRIT

Dutchman of elms, rage Like a ship lost in the high branches

Promise me

Sea's belly, nine years gone With an old god

Deliver me

Row of windows betrothed to the rain

Spirit Wind walking out on my wife

Spirit Gull that has conjured my children

Shadows embrace above my ashes

Madden my eyes With the brightness of your circles

Ralph J. Hils

2 The North American Review

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(or the North of Argentina or even in some remote mountain areas in Chile where some watered down remnants of the Inca system still exist) than the in habitants of Lima, near the Peruvian coast. In Ven ezuela the whole coastal mystique is totally different from that in Merida.

At times these regional differences actually break one country into a series of de facto cultural groups which often have long histories of independence or

semi-independence. For a long time during and after the wars of independence it seemed that the East of

Venezuela was going to be a separate country under a separate ruler with its own congress and its own laws. Quito, it seemed, was going to set itself up as an independent city-state, and the same is true for

Guayaquil. In the literature of the early nineteenth

century no one talks of Argentina, but merely Buenos Aires?and even today there are still two Argentinas, Buenos Aires and "the rest."

These differences, in fact, can often be traced back to colonial times where the division of the Spanish Em

pire created very distinct and independent political units. The centers, of course, were Mexico and Peru and consequently the two viceregal capitals, Mexico

City and Lima, were the most "Spanish" of all Spanish America. This "Spanish-ness" of Mexico City was de

stroyed by the Mexican Revolution, but there was no

analagous revolution in Peru and so Lima, City of the Three Kings, still retains its touch of Baroque grandeur. As Belaunde Terry, the president of Peru has pointed out in numerous books and articles, the Spanish were

coastally-oriented, looking back to Spain and Spanish trade and supply lines, and consequently for the most

part abandoned the interior of South America which in the case of Peru represented a complete historical reversal because in Inca times the country's backbone had been the cordillera and its heart, the ancient capital of the Incas, Cuzco. Three hundred years of colonial rule successfully split Peru into her two distinct con

temporary socio-economic units, and it may take an other three hundred years before any real national

unity can be restored. Those areas outside the power of the viceroyalties were for the most part neglected and their hispanization was at best rudimentary and scant. The seeming "Spanish" homogeneity of Latin

America is, in truth, incomplete and spotty and half

(or more) of Peru still speaks Quechua, most of Bolivia still speaks Aymara and Quechua, much of Guatemala still speaks Quiche, and Paraguay is still fundamentally a culture based not on Spanish, but Guarani.

In some respects the old pre-Columbian cultural units still hang on. Peru and Bolivia are two countries but the old Inca Cuzco-centered world that spread out into the Bolivian highlands still preserves it basic unity. In Mexico, Yucatan is still Maya, and the Maya cul tures move down across national borders into Guate

mala, Honduras and British Honduras. The republics in Latin America are not based on

RALPH J. HILS is leaving Alfred (University) for the Virgin

(Islands), where he will continue teaching. SHe has appeared in the WAR previously.

geographical or ethnic logic, but to a great extent on

arbitrary Spanish colonial divisions which were set down primarily with the ease of administration from

Spain in mind. There was a kind of pre-Columbian logic based on tribal areas, the Incas, the Mayas, Tolte

cas, Olmecas, the Araucanas, the Chimus . . . the

Conquest occured, the units were imperfectly frag mented and rearranged. It has been this imperfect ar

rangement that has carried down to the present, be cause one of the principles upon which the new re

publics were based was that they should be created not out of the pre-Columbian socio-economic but rather the Spanish colonial administrative units. And so it is that the myth of common language, religion, or

folkways is really more myth than reality, and the consideration of Latin America as a unit has been more the result of the thinking of non-Latin Americans than it ever has by Latin Americans themselves.

The fact that Latin America has been under the

scrutiny of both the Communist countries (in the early sixties, Russia; increasingly now, China) and the U.S., has exerted a cohesion-producing force on Latin Ameri can diversity and begun to force many Latin Americans to think of themselves not as solely Chileans, Peruvians,

Columbians, Argentinians, but also as participants in a cultural unit which others are convinced should be considered as a whole. The simple most impressive result of the Alliance for Progress on one hand and on Communist subversion and the spread of Castro directed guerrilla movements on the other, has been the beginning of a formation of overall unity which has begun to reverse the historical developments not of centuries but milleniums.

The U.S. Information Service, our system of bi-na tional centers throughout Latin America in every major city and most smaller towns, the "invasion" of Peace

Corps volunteers, the stepping up of educational ex

change programs both by Moscow (and Peking) and the U.S. has forced the Latin American for the first time to see himself as others see him. Whether the

supposed "sameness" of all Latin Americans has any objective validity or not is unimportant. The net effect, however, is important?and meaningful. Anticipating and antedating possible future economic integration a

great deal of cultural integration has already taken

place, the proof of which is amply demonstrated by the fact that for the first time all Latin American intellectuals know each other, know what they are

producing, thinking, hoping for.

There are a number of inter-American magazines and movements such as Eco Contempor?neo (Argen tina), Cormoran y Delf?n (Argentina), Corno Em

plumado (Mexico), Nueva Era (Columbia), Pajaro Cascabel (Mexico), Haravec (Peru), Cuervo Interna tional (U.S.) or Ghost-Dance (U.S.) which are based on a total inter-American "awareness" which did not exist even ten years ago. Traditionally the Latin

American has thought in terms of his own national literature. The Peruvian had read Ricardo Palma (but not Gallegos), the Venezuelan had read Gallegos (but not Palma). Now all Latin American intellectuals read Raquel Jodorowsky, Dukardo Hinestrosa, David

July-August, 1968 3

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Valjalo, Miguel Grinberg, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio

Cort?zar, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Ernesto Cardenal. Such a unified total culture-view is entirely new and

presages a unification movement that is now moving into economic and commercial areas. It might also be added that this same external pressure that has uni fied Latin American awareness has by the same token

placed Latin America in another category, that of the Third (underdeveloped, uncommitted to the U.S. or the Communist bloc) World and one finds Latin

American poets like Miguel Grinberg publishing reg ularly in African literary journals. This whole move

ment is beautifully summed up in an editorial of Ariel Canzani's in Cormoran y Delf?n (February, 1967) in which he says: "Cormoran y Delf?n was born as an

international review of poetry [and] we have seen that

many reviews in Latin America have begun their tasks

inspired by the same ideas." Previously Latin Ameri cans had been involved with groups, and sects, but now there is a new kind of "Planetarism," committed to the ideas of "internationalness."

2 Economic and political institutions which always

change last in terms of historical development, in the last few years have begun to reflect this Latin Ameri can-Internationalist view expressed by Canzani.

In 1958 the Central American Common Market

(CACM) was set up, comprising Costa Rica, El

Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, in 1960 the Latin American Free Trade Association

(LAFTA) was established which included Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay (and later Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela), and in April of 1967 at Punta del Este in Uruguay, there was a

meeting sponsored by the organization of American States which proposed setting up a Latin American Common Market, aiming toward 1985 as the latest

acceptable target date for complete economic integra tion of the Latin American republics. In September of 1967 at the meeting of LAFTA in Asuncion, Para

guay the first immediate sub-grouping within the larger Latin American context was set up?that of the An dean Group consisting of Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

The theory behind this entire move toward integra tion is that industrialization and subsequent economic

development in Latin America are hampered primarily by the fact that there is an insufficient market within individual countries to justify the establishment of the

kind of mass-production designed industrial plant that seems so integral a part of "modern times." As Gabriel

Valdes of Chile said at the Asuncion meeting, the for mation of the Andean subregional group: ". . . means the creation of a market, or even better, an economic 'nation' of some 55 million inhabitants and a combined

gross national product greater than that of Brazil." It remains to be seen, however, that the creation of

an economic "super-state" automatically will stimulate

industrialization, although certainly it will facilitate the movement of non-manufactured goods and raw ma

terials. In other words, if non-industrial Peru abolishes all her trade barriers with non-industrial Ecuador, how is this going to produce alarm clocks?

What very well might happen is that countries that are already producing manufactured goods (such as

Chile) will definitely benefit from an expanded market, but that what benefits the manufacturing nation will have no benefit whatsoever on the non-manufacturing nation and might very well be detrimental. Peru, in stead of importing alarm clocks from Austria, say, now

begins to import them from Chile. Chile, because of her inflation-crippled economy and because she is

merely in the initial stages of industrial development produces an alarm clock slightly inferior to the Austrian alarm clock in quality and twice as expensive. The net result is that Peru spends more money for slightly inferior goods.

Besides, how do the "poor" benefit from this kind of trade manipulation? The highland Peruvian couldn't afford an alarm clock from Austria in the first place.

He remains totally untouched by any supra-national change as long the internal economy within Peru re

mains essentially the same.

Even if traditional grudges and enmities, and rad

ically different national characteristcis could be sub ordinated to the interests of the larger issues of common

"progress," no meaningful progress can be accomp

lished unless all the participating countries move

simultaneously toward industrialization and increases in the Gross National Product are accompanied by a

democratic betterment of the lot of the Latin American lower classes. The great tragedy would be that the

already-industrializing countries could become more industrialized at the expense of their neighbors, and that in both industrial and non-industrial countries the

"progress" merely touches the managerial and entre

preneur classes.

Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and to a lesser ex tent Venezuela, are all controlled by a small oligarchical class which may very well benefit by increases in

Gross National Products while the lot of the poor re

mains unchanged.

Gunner Myrdal in his recent (1968) Economic

Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, in speaking of the economic integration of developed and developing areas, makes the important observation that "the play of forces in the market normally tends to increase, rather than to decrease, the inequalities between re

gions." What this means in Latin America is that certain industrial centers may arise essentially at the

expense of the non-industrial. Certainly foreign invest

ment, which is often offered as the quickest and surest

way to industrialization in underdeveloped areas such as Latin America may turn out to be little more than

exploitation?where the profits of the industrialization accrue to the original investors, who are not "nationals" in the exploited country. If any industrial complex is

introduced into a country by international interests without massive national participation, it makes little or no difference where the industry is located because the profits are not plowed back into the national econo

my. And, as industrial automation increases, the num

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ber of jobs created within a given country is not a sig nificant factor in raising the overall national living standard.

The terms "progress" and "development" can cover a multitude of partial-truths. The U.S. is presumably the most developed country in the world with an en viable record of industrialized progress, but in 1963 we were suddenly informed that 35 million Americans

belonged to families earning less than $3,000 a year. In Latin America the majority of the people lived in a state of slavery or semi-slavery during the whole colonial period, and in the 150 years since independ ence, conditions have not appreciably changed. Vene zuela is oil-rich and semi-industrial, but the city of Caracas is ringed with hills that are covered with make shift shanties housing the poor. Chile has great in dustrial promise; but from the lower middle class down,

meat is a luxury. It is possible, as demographer Ray mond Ewell predicts, that by the 1980's Latin America will be hit hard by massive famine and Lima, Caracas, Asuncion, Santiago will be filled with the starving homeless as is the case in contemporary India. Certain

ly population control is just as important as industrial

ization, and widespread industrialization just as im

portant as industrialization confined to a few already industrializing areas. Foreign private direct investment

capital must be carefully watched and controlled?

further economic colonization must be discouraged. And, most important of all, internal, individual pro grams of social justice must go hand in hand with pro grams of supra-national economic development, or

"development" can come to be regarded solely in economic terms without the slightest consideration of the common weal.

"Progress" and "development" cannot be measured

solely in terms of GNP growth. Progress must mean total progress, progress for everyone and progress not

merely considered from the point of view of per capita income, but rather the total economic and human gains in the lives of individuals involved in development programs. Economic development in itself is a very

incomplete and deformed thing if not accompanied by a larger spiritual and human development well distrib uted over the total population. Latin American eco

nomic integration may very well contribute to this sense of development in a larger sense, but it is only one among many programs that must be initiated if

"progress" and "development" are to have any viable

meaning in relation to overall socio-economic reality.

The Fabulist

THE MYRMIDONS Once when a ruler of a great power lost all his sub

jects at one stroke, he climbed a lofty hill to a temple, where he saw a troop of busy ants. Thereupon, he

prayed that the ants be made into people to fill his

empty cities. A peal of thunder answered his prayer, and suddenly an angel appeared before him.

"You have prayed that the ants be made into people to fill your cities," said the angel, "but your prayer is ill-considered. Look closely at the ants."

And when the ruler of the great power looked closely at the ants, he saw that any distinction between them and people was purely academic.

THE KING OF AHURMACA AND THE SOOTHSAYER

Once the king of Ahurmaca dreamed he was holding a rock to his bosom. First painters came and painted the rock gold, and then old women came and shed tears over it. Finally a beautiful young damsel came before the king and spit on the rock. When he awoke, the king called his soothsayer and asked him for an

interpretation of the dream. "The meaning of the dream is this," said the sooth

sayer. "The rock you held to your bosom represents your foreign policy by which you support the various dictators to the south, particularly the kingdoms of Barnalia and Murgum, supplying them with weapons that they may keep the ignorant populace in a state of subjugation. The painters who came and painted the rock gold are the legislators who support your policy and appropriate the money for it. The old women who watered the rock with their tears are the mothers of your soldiers who lost their lives in support of such dictatorships, and the beautiful young damsel who spit on the rock is the Future that will surely condemn your policies."

"I see," said the king, "that you are taken in by anti-Ahurmaca propaganda. Consider this: if Ahur

maca does not support the dictatorships to the south

by supplying them with weapons to keep the ignorant populace in a state of subjugation, Ahurmaca will lose its international reputation as Upholder of Freedom and Defender of Democracy."

"The gods themselves," replied the soothsayer bow

ing low, "cannot refute such logic." Victor Contoski

July-August, 1968 J

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