The National Interest
Winter 2001/02

A Whole New World?

by William Perry

 

. . . In contrast to North America, the vast and varied region south of the Rio Grande was subjugated by crusading states still evidencing strong medieval characteristics, as a continuation of their centuries-long struggle to recover the Iberian Peninsula from Moorish domination. The basic desire of those most directly involved was to extend the Catholic faith, extract wealth in the form of precious metals, and rule over these lands in a feudal fashion. In pursuit of such expansive aims, they found in native civilizations—themselves with pronouncedly authoritarian traditions—an already large subordinate class of peons. When disease decimated the native populations, slaves were imported to fill the role. Moreover, the riches drained away from their American empires served to prop up Spain and Portugal in gaudy splendor (for a time, at least), but their very success in these medieval terms removed any incentive to adapt, and thus made them losers in the modernization process then beginning in northern Europe. All of these factors left Latin America with a markedly different colonial legacy than the one bequeathed to North America.

By the early 19th century, locally-born New World elites—influenced by the American and French Revolutions, as well as Great Britain’s industrial and commercial ascendancy—threw off the feeble, exploitive hand of Iberian colonialism. But the violence of that struggle (except in Brazil), the weakness of the middle class and the absence of experience with even limited self-rule meant that the practice of genuine democracy (even republicanism) soon proved a sad travesty. Rather than providing for liberation and genuine self-determination, the removal of traditional authority made vacillation between near-anarchy and local authoritarianism the rule in Latin America’s political life. It made much of Latin America a synonym for misgovernment and underdevelopment until well into the 20th century.

Indeed, this debilitating cultural legacy persists to the present. Even when the worst was over and countries such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Mexico began to develop into their modern selves, enormous problems persisted. Even when comparatively successful, they tended to remain class-bound and statist, with many old conditions and habits conducive neither to good citizenship nor to the broad-based diffusion of economic opportunity. Thus, local intellectuals and aspiring politicians tended to be attracted by populist or Marxist dreams of utopian redemption. This trend, already evident by the end of the 19th century, led to a renewed round of often bloody contention in the new environment of the Cold War. . . .