Description
Use at least eight different course texts, including films and primary sources, to answer the following essay prompt:
Identify one key element of coloniality; and show how it has been both expanded and challenged over time.
3 Key elements of Coloniality: Race-based hierarchy, Capitalism, Eurocentrism
10-11 pages. Please use Times New Roman, size 12 font, 1-inch margins, double-spaced, and APA citation format. Please do not fall short nor exceed the minimum / maximum page requirements.
I personally prefer Capitalism
Note that the 10-11 pages do not include the citation, acknowledgement, and title page.
Do not use any ouside sources!!!!! Only use the texts I provide.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Born
Blood
& Fire
–in–
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books by john charles chasteen:
Getting High: Marijuana through the Ages
Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Ind epend ence
Heroes on H
orseback: A Life and Times of the Last Gaucho Caudillos
National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance
Translations by John Charles Chasteen:
The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil by
Joaquim Machado de Assis
Juan Moreira: True Crime in Ninteenth-Century Argentina by Eduardo Gutiérrez
The Contemporary History of Latin America by Tulio Halperín Donghi
The Lettered City by Angel Rama
The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil
by Hermano Vianna
Santa: A Novel of Mexico City by Federico Gamboa
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Born
Blood
& Fire
–in–
Fourth Edition
A C onc i se H i s t ory of L at i n A m e r ica
John Charles Chasteen
Universit y of North Carolina
At C h a p e l H i l l
B
W. W. Nort on & C om pa n y
New York • London
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W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when
William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper
Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books
by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By midcentury, the two major
pillars of Norton’s publishing program—trade books and college texts—were firmly
established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to
its employees, and today—with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of
trade, college, and professional titles published each year—W. W. Norton & Company
stands as the largest and oldest publishing h
ouse owned wholly by its employees.
Copyright © 2016, 2011, 2006, 2001 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Editor: Jon Durbin
Editorial Assistant: Travis Carr
Project Editor: Caitlin Moran
Production Manager: Eric Pier-Hocking
Media Editor: Laura Wilk
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Design Director: Jillian Burr
Marketing Manager: Sarah England
Photo Editor: Trish Marx
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Composition: Graphic World
Manufacturing: R. R. Donnelley—Crawfordsville
Maps: Mapping Specialists
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chasteen, John Charles, 1955- author.
Title: Born in blood and fire : a concise history of Latin America /
John Charles Chasteen.
Description: Fourth edition. | New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. |
Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014210 | ISBN 9780393283051 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Latin America–History.
Classification: LCC F1410 .C4397 2016 | DDC 980–dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016014210
ISBN 978-0-393-28305-1 (pbk.)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London
WIT 3QT
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To my grandchildren,
Maya and Sam Ackerman,
now discovering their own Latin American roots
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CONTENTS
Maps … ix
Acknowledgments … xi
Time Line … xii
1 welcome to latin america … 1
Not Your Father’s Version … 4
Old Thinking on Latin America … 11
2 Encounter … 17
Patterns of Indigenous Life … 18
Origins of a Crusading Mentality … 22
The Brazilian Counterexample … 29
Africa and the Slave Trade … 34
The Fall of the Aztec and Inca Empires … 38
The Birth of Spanish America … 43
Countercurrents: Friar Bartolomé de las Casas … 50
3 Colonial Crucible … 55
Colonial Economics … 56
A Power Called Hegemony … 62
A Process Called Transculturation … 68
The Fringes of Colonization … 75
Late Colonial Transformations … 82
Countercurrents: Colonial Rebellions … 91
4 Independence … 95
Revolution and War in Europe … 97
The Spanish A merican Rebellions Begin, 1810–15 … 101
The Patriots’ Winning Strategy: Nativism … 107
Patriot Victories in Spanish America, 1815–25 … 112
Unfinished Revolutions … 115
Countercurrents: The Gaze of Outsiders … 122
VI
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Contents
5 Postcolonial Blues … 127
Liberal Disappointment … 128
Patronage Politics and Caudillo Leadership … 132
Brazil’s Different Path … 139
Continuities in Daily Life … 143
Countercurrents: The Power of Outsiders … 156
6 PROGRESS … 161
Mexico’s Liberal Reform … 165
Other Countries Join the Liberal Trend … 171
The Limits of Progress for Women … 174
Models of Progress … 178
Countercurrents: International Wars … 189
A Tour of Latin America … M-2
7 NEOCOLONIALISM … 193
The Great Export Boom … 194
Authoritarian Rule: Oligarchies and Dictatorships … 206
Links with the Outside World … 213
Countercurrents: New Immigration to Latin America … 227
8 NATIONALISM … 233
Nationalists Take Power … 239
ISI and Activist Governments of the 1930s … 249
Countercurrents: Populist Leaders of the Twentieth
Century … 263
9 REVOLUTION … 267
Post–World War II Populism … 269
Onset of the Cold War … 275
The Cuban Revolution … 282
Countercurrents: Liberation Theology … 293
VII
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Contents
10 REACTION … 297
National Security Doctrine … 298
Military Rule … 303
Dictatorship Almost Everywhere … 309
The Last Cold War Battles: Central America … 314
Countercurrents: La Violencia, Pablo Escobar, and
Colombia’s Long Torment … 324
11 NEOLIBERALISM AND BEYOND … 329
Glossary … A1
Further Acknowledgments … A25
Index … A27
VIII
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MAPS
Modern Latin America … 13
African and Iberian Background … 27
Indigenous Groups and Iberian Invasions … 37
Original Areas of Colonization, 1500–1700 … 60
Colonial Administrative Divisions … 83
Campaigns of Independence Wars … 114
New Nations of Latin America, 1811–39 … 141
Mexico and the US Border before 1848 … 156
Liberals vs. Conservatives at Midcentury … 166
Paraguay in Two Wars … 189
Chilean Gains in the War of the Pacific … 191
Neocolonial Export Products … 204
Neocolonial Investments and Interventions … 217
Latin America in the Cold War … 310
Central America in the 1980s … 315
Neoliberal Economies … 333
IX
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Acknowledgments
At least one hundred of my students at the University of North Carolina read this book before it was published. To them, my grateful
acknowledgment. Their enthusiasm encouraged me to keep it informal, vivid, and short. “I feel like this book wants me to understand it,”
said one of them.
When the first edition appeared, several professors and graduate students helpfully set me straight on factual errors. Much appreciated! I also got, and still get, e‑mails from undergraduate readers who
write just to say “I like your book.” Thanks for those e‑mails. It’s really
your book.
And I can’t believe this is the fourth edition of it! The recent
past has shifted in my rearview mirror. Thanks to Phillip Berryman
for helping me appreciate just how much has changed since I first
traveled to Mexico over forty years ago.
XI
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Time Line
Mexico
Brazil
Argentina
Encounter
14 92–1600
The fully sedentary
Mexicas, who built the
Aztec Empire, were
conquered and their
empire was taken over
by the Spaniards, but
Mexican blood still runs
in Mexican veins.
The semisedentary
Tupi people of the
Brazilian forests were
destroyed and their
labor replaced by African slaves whom the
Portuguese brought to
grow sugarcane.
The nonsedentary,
plains-dwelling
Pampas people were
eventually wiped out.
Much later, European
immigrants took their
place on the land.
Colonial
Crucible
1 6 0 0 –1 8 1 0
Because of its dense
indigenous population
and its rich silver mines,
Mexico (or much of it)
became a core area of
Spanish colonization.
Profitable sugar plantations made the northeastern coast a core
area of Portuguese
colonization, but much
of Brazil remained a
poorer fringe.
Most of Argentina
remained on the fringe
of Spanish colonization until 1776, when
Buenos Aires became
the capital of a new
Spanish viceroyalty.
Independence
1810–1825
The large peasant
uprisings led by Hidalgo
and Morelos frightened
Mexican Creoles into a
conservative stance on
independence, which
they embraced only in
1821.
The Portuguese royal
family’s presence kept
Brazil relatively quiet
as war raged elsewhere. Prince Pedro
declared Brazilian
independence himself
in 1822.
Without massive populations of oppressed
indigenous people or
slaves to fear, Buenos
Aires Creoles quickly
embraced the May
Revolution (1810).
Postcolonial
Blues
1 8 2 5 –1 8 5 0
The national government was frequently
overthrown as liberals
and conservatives
struggled for control.
The career of the
caudillo Santa Anna
represents the turmoil.
The stormy reign of
Pedro I (1822–31) was
followed by the even
stormier Regency
(1831–40). But the
Brazilian Empire
gained stability in
the 1840s as coffee
exports rose.
The conservative
dictator Rosas
dominated Buenos
Aires (and therefore,
much of Argentina) for
most of these years,
exiling the liberal
opposition.
Progress
1850–1880
The great liberal Reform
of the 1850s provoked
the conservatives
to support a foreign
prince, Maximilian. The
liberals, led by Juárez,
emerged triumphant by
the late 1860s.
Pedro II (1840–89)
cautiously promoted
liberal-style progress
while maintaining a
strongly hierarchical
system. Brazil ended
slavery only in 1888.
Liberals took over
after the fall of Rosas
(1852), but not until the
1860s did they manage
to unite all Argentina
under one national
government.
XII
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Time Line
Mexico
Brazil
Argentina
Ne o c o l o n i a l i s m
1880–1930
The dictatorship of
Porfirio Díaz, called the
Porfiriato (1876–1911),
embodied neocolo
nialism in Mexico. Díaz
invited international
investment and used
it to consolidate the
Mexican state.
Brazil’s First Republic
(1889–1930) was a
highly decentralized oligarchy built,
above all, on coffee
exports. The leading
coffee-growing state,
São Paulo, became
dominant.
Buenos Aires and
the surrounding
areas underwent
an agricultural and
immigration boom
of vast proportions.
Various regional
oligarchies ruled until
the election of 1916.
N at ion a lism
1910–1945
The Mexican Revolution
led Latin America’s
nationalist trend in
1910. The presidency
of Lázaro Cárdenas
(1934–40) marked
the high point of its
accomplishments.
Getúlio Vargas, president 1930–35, defined
Brazilian nationalism
in this period. In 1937,
Vargas dissolved
Congress and formed
the authoritarian
Estado Novo.
Argentina’s Radical
Party was driven by the
ballot box. It displaced
the landowning
oligarchy but remained
mired in traditional
patronage politics.
Re v o l u t i o n
1945–1960
Mexico’s revolution
became more conservative and institutionalized
(in the PRI) even as radical change accelerated
elsewhere.
Populism and the
electoral clout of
organized labor (led
first by Vargas, then
by his heirs) energized
Brazilian politics after
World War II.
Juan and Evita Perón
(1946–55) made the
working class a leading
force in Argentine
politics. Perón’s
followers remained loyal
long after his exile.
Re a c t i o n
1960–1990
Overall, the PRI used its
revolutionary imagery
to absorb challenges
from the left—except
when it used bullets, as
in the 1968 Tlatelolco
massacre.
The Brazilian military
overthrew the populist
president Goulart in
1964 and ruled for
twenty years in the
name of efficiency and
anticommunism.
Taking control in
1966, the Argentine
military won its “dirty
war” against Peronist
guerrillas but bowed
out in 1983 after
losing to Britain in the
Falklands war.
N E OLIB E RALISM
AND B E Y OND
1990–2 015
The post–Cold War
PRI shed much of its
nationalist heritage to
embrace neoliberalism,
fending off new
challenges from both
left and right.
The Workers’ Party, of
the orthodox left but
also indirectly heir to
Vargas, showed the
world that Brazil is a
serious country.
Peronist politics and
neoliberal economics
dominated Argentina
in a period of steadily
declining living
standards.
XIII
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Pablo. Pablo was a little boy who lived at a Colombian boardinghouse in 1978, when I
lived there, too. On hot afternoons, Pablo sometimes took a bath in the back patio of the
house, the patio de ropas, where several women washed the boarders’ clothes by hand.
Until I so rudely interrupted him, he was singing on this particular afternoon, as happy as
any little boy anywhere, despite the modest character of our dollar-a‑day accommodations.
Snapshot taken by the author at the age of twenty-two.
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1
welcome to latin america
L
atin America was born in blood and fire, in conquest and slavery.
It is conquest and its sequel, slavery, that created the central
conflict of Latin American history. So that is where any history
of the region must begin. On the other hand, conquest and slavery is
old news, and partly, well, it’s “history.” The Latin America of 2016 is
no longer your father’s version.
Still, conquest and colonization form the unified starting place
of a single story, told here with illustrative examples from many countries. We need a single story line, because rapid panoramas of twenty
national histories would merely produce dizziness. And, before beginning the story, we must set the stage in a number of ways. We need to
ask, first of all, whether so many countries can really share a single
history. At first blush, one might doubt it. Consider everything that
story will have to encompass. Consider the contrasts and paradoxes of
contemporary Latin America.
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C h a p t e r 1 | W E L C O M E T O L AT I N A M ER I C A
Latin America is the “global south,” still struggling to attain the
standard of living of Europe or the United States. It has deep roots
in indigenous cultures. Most of the world’s indigenous Americans, by
far, live south of the Rio Grande. Yet Latin America is also the West,
a place where more than nine out of ten people speak a European
language and practice a European religion. Most of the world’s Roman
Catholics are Latin Americans, which has much to do with the first
non-European pope, chosen in 2013, being Argentine.
Some Latin Americans still grow corn and beans on small plots
hidden among banana trees and dwell in earthen-floored houses with
sagging red-tile roofs. International travelers who jet in and out of
sprawling Latin American metropolises rarely see them. You have
to go to the countryside, with its awful roads. Most Latin Americans
these days live in noisy, restless cities, some of them postmodern
megacities. Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Mexico City have far outstripped the ten-million mark. Rio de Janeiro, Lima, and Bogotá are
not far behind.
Next, consider the contrasts among countries. Brazil is a behemoth, occupying half the South American continent, its population
surging beyond 200 million. Mexico follows at around 120 million.
Thanks partly to their burgeoning internal markets, both countries’
economies have even spawned their own multinational corporations.
Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela constitute a second rank,
with populations between 30 and 50 million. Chile’s population of
17 million carries disproportionate economic weight because of its
high standard of living. The remaining, roughly one quarter, of Latin
Americans, live in a dozen sovereign nations, most with populations
under 10 million. In sum, the major Latin American countries are
global players (though nothing like China or India), while many others are ministates with a single city of consequence and two or three
main highways.
Latin American climates and landscapes vary more than
you may realize. Most of Latin America lies in the tropics, with
no well-defined spring, summer, fall, and winter. Many readers of the global north will envision beaches replete with palms.
Latin America’s coastal lowlands do often match that description,
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C h a p t e r 1 | W E L C O M E T O L AT I N A M ER I C A
but this tourist’s eye view is misleading overall. Tropical highlands cooled by their altitude, often semiarid, have played a larger
role in Latin American history. Mexico City stands above seven
thousand feet; Bogotá above eight thousand. Latin American mountains are the world’s most densely populated for historical reasons.
Meanwhile, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay—sometimes called
the “Southern Cone” of South America—lie mostly or entirely
outside the tropics, with climates similar to parts of the United
States. The continent’s craggy southern tip is a land of glaciers and
Antarctic influences.
Socially, Latin America is a place of extreme inequalities. Enormous disparities of wealth and well-being exist within countries and
between them. Today many Latin Americans live and work in circumstances not so different from those of middle-class people in the
United States. But many, more than those who seem middle-class by
international norms, still inhabit hovels and endure a poverty and
deprivation rare in the developed world. The Southern Cone countries
have long stood respectably high in global rankings of social development, and most Latin American countries now hold middling rank,
globally, in a combined measure of people’s education, life expectancy,
and buying power. The small countries of Central America (notably
excepting Costa Rica) are worse off, as are those with large and historically oppressed populations of indigenous people, like Guatemala
and Bolivia.
Latin America is probably the most racially diverse of world
regions, fed from the gene pools of Europe, Africa, and indigenous
America. All three elements are present in every country, and the possible configurations vary kaleidoscopically. Guatemala and Bolivia,
along with Peru and Ecuador, are characterized by large populations
of indigenous people who continue to speak native languages such as
Quechua or Aymara, live more or less separately from Spanish speakers, and follow distinctive customs in clothing and food. African genes
are a predominant element of the mix in Brazil and on the shores
of the Caribbean. Latin America was the main destination of the millions of people enslaved and taken out of Africa between 1500 and
1850. Whereas the United States received about 523,000 enslaved
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C h a p t e r 1 | W E L C O M E T O L AT I N A M ER I C A
immigrants, Cuba alone got more, Brazil at least 3.5 million. In
addition, there are places in Latin America where people look notably
European, particularly where large numbers of Italian immigrants
were added to the population around 1900, such as in Argentina
and Uruguay. Probably most Latin Americans consider themselves
to some degree “of mixed race,” or mestizo, a key concept in Latin
American history.
Returning to our initial question, then, do these twenty countries in their startling variety really have a single history? No, in the
sense that a single story cannot encompass their diversity. Yes, in
the sense that all have much in common. They experienced a similar
process of conquest and colonization. They became independent more
or less the same way, mostly at the same time. They then struggled
with similar problems in similar ways. Looking back after two centuries of independence, one sees that similar trends have washed over
the entire region, giving Latin American history a well-defined ebb
and flow.
Not Your Father’s Version
Lately, it’s been more flow than ebb. Enormous changes have come
to Latin America in the forty years since I traveled there for the first
time, at the height of the Cold War. Yes, youngsters, that was before
the Internet! Telephones and postal services worked poorly or not
at all in many countries of Latin America. It was impossible to stay
connected to the United States on a daily basis. One experienced
total immersion.
There was a hint of timelessness, too—even still the occasional
burro or ox-cart to glimpse from the window of a cross-country bus.
Few rural dwellings had electricity or running water. The countryside
seemed a feudal zone, dominated by large landowners who were rarely
to be found on their rural estates because they lived in the cities. The
poor people who did live in the countryside were amazingly isolated,
although fairly well fed compared to the urban poor. I remember staying a few nights in a house that stood on an Andean mountainside,
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N o t Y o u r F a t h e r ’ s V e r s ion
a ten- or fifteen-minute climb from the road, impassible by any sort
of vehicle. The family who lived up there reckoned the hour by the
sun and the passage of two or three buses a day visible on the road
that threaded a yawning chasm, far below. An unimaginable variety
of fruit grew around them, but any kind of store was half a day away.
Rural-urban migrants had been flowing into Latin American
cities for decades before my arrival, although the only accompanying
construction boom had been the improvised housing that the migrants
built for themselves. At the height of the Cold War, Latin American
cityscapes still mostly resembled the 1940s or 1950s. There were no
malls, or practically none, and few major infrastructural projects in
the cities. There were few US brand-name consumer goods for sale because high import tariffs made them too expensive for almost anyone.
The idea was to protect and encourage local industries. There was
already a rising tide of Asian imports, although not yet from China,
which has become so suddenly a player in Latin America. Cold War
China was Mao’s China, where people wore only blue and rode only
bicycles and factories were a thing of the future. Latin America’s high
protective tariffs meant that imported blenders, televisions, and audio
tape players had to be smuggled in, or sold in a variety of “free trade”
venues created by various governments of the region in recognition
of the inevitable. Before the era of inexpensive Asian manufactures,
the clothing of Latin America’s destitute millions was put together by
hand and often seemed about to come apart at the seams like the first
pants that I had made in Colombia by a tailor who worked sitting in
the doorway of his shop, the size of a large closet.
The streets of cities were not studded with US fast-food franchises, as now, nor did they overflow yet with cars, which were too
expensive for most people to own. Thus there was no need, yet, to create
laws keeping cars (with odd numbered plates, for example) off the
road on certain days or hours, as many Latin American cities do today
for sheer lack of street space. Diesel-belching buses, yes, however—
lots of those. Innovative bus rapid transit systems with dedicated
high-speed lanes, such as the one first created in Curitiba, Brazil
(and now re-created in a series of major Latin American cities)
remained on the drawing board. There were a few supermarkets in
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C h a p t e r 1 | W E L C O M E T O L AT I N A M ER I C A
the richest parts of town, but most people did not buy food in supermarkets. Instead, there was a complex of open markets for produce
and commodities and neighborhood stores and bakeries for daily staples. In sum, Latin America’s middle classes were smaller and much
less Americanized than today. Strong trading blocs like NAFTA and
Mercosur were decades away.
Nobody had a cell phone until the 1990s, and many people had
no telephone at all. Then cell phone use rocketed in Latin American
cities, precisely because landlines had always been scarce. At least in
Colombia, where I first rented a place, you had a telephone in your
house, or you didn’t, period. Forget about getting one if you didn’t,
because state-run telephone companies rarely added lines. Houses
were rented, bought, and sold with existing lines. A house with a telephone brought a better price, obviously. Before the era of plastic digital watches, a wristwatch of any kind was a prestige item in Latin
America. People sometimes wore watches that didn’t keep time, just
to maintain their image. Few urban people seemed to possess a credit
card, wear seat belts, have insurance coverage, or fuss over their
diet except to worry about their weight if they were women. No one
had heard of multiculturalism or of threats to the rain forest.
Sociology was for revolutionaries, and psychology was for the insane.
Remittances from people working in the United States were not a
yet major source of income in the region. Mexican immigration to
the United States was growing, but not yet a flood, and Central
American immigration had hardly begun. Large cities were wellknown hotspots, but, overall, street crime was moderate by comparison with recent decades.
Yes, those were the good old days—for me, anyway. I noticed,
by the way people treated me, that I had become better looking. At
greetings, I learned to embrace my buddies and shake hands with
their girlfriends. The relationships between men and women seemed
to me very old-fashioned and stylized. My first Spanish-language flirtations were supervised by dutiful younger sisters who were assigned
to surveil me constantly. Fortunately, they could be bought off with
money to go get a Popsicle, or better yet, go see a movie. In Mexico,
at least, girls still did a lot of courting at the evening paseo, when
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N o t Y o u r F a t h e r ’ s V e r s ion
people walked in circles around the town plaza, half in one direction
and half in the other, occasionally switching, so that everyone eventually saw everyone. Daytime park benches were full of teenagers kissing because young people didn’t have cars. (Wait. Maybe that hasn’t
changed.) The evening meeting place, on the other hand, was at the
girl’s house, under the watchful eye of her family, not inside but at the
doorway, or even—although this was pretty old-fashioned even then—
at the window, he outside, she inside, separated by wrought-iron bars.
Companionate marriage (focused on the personal compatibility of the
couple) was far from unknown, but didn’t seem to prosper. Male infidelity was the rule, rather than the exception. I’m not so sure how
much has changed, in that regard. But clearly, these days middleclass women are much more likely to hold a job and middle-class
husbands are more likely to accept, at least in principle, that they
ought to share household duties.
Many thought patterns were quite conservative. People rarely
went to mass, but their Catholicism was automatic and unquestionable. Young people of a respectable family did not cohabit before
marriage. The ubiquitous public presence of Catholic religious devotion had yet to be challenged by growing numbers of evangelical
Christians. Perfectly ordinary middle-class people had live-in maids
who earned an unbelievable pittance, inhabited tiny windowless
cubicles at night, and were treated, whether cruelly or kindly, as a
different category of human being. Often they came from the country,
where, it was believed, people were more honest and hardworking.
Urban middle-class families with provincial roots might bring trustworthy servants with them to the city. City girls, even very poor ones,
were unlikely to stay long as live-in maids, simply because they had
more alternatives, so savvy housewives with means preferred to hire
country girls who didn’t know their way around. Eventually, though,
even the country girls found something less humiliating to do than
being a servant. The muchacha (of any age) has walked out again, a
perennial problem for the ama de casa!
Only a tiny minority attended universities, and most who did
studied to be lawyers, doctors, engineers, or architects. As students,
they did not take part-time jobs waiting tables, for example, even if
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they needed the money. Class consciousness. Some were born to serve,
apparently, others to be served. During the 1980s and afterward, those
who were born to be served moved increasingly into high-rise apartment buildings or strongly enclosed apartment complexes with armed
guards at the gate, an ugly reality that is likely to shock anyone who has
never experienced it. At least, I would like to think so. This is the aspect
of Latin America that most disturbed me personally, and it hasn’t gone
away. Still today, the expanding middle classes of Latin America are
trying to raise perfect children in a defensive crouch. Although indicators of social well-being are improving, Latin America’s distribution of
wealth remains among the most unequal in the world. What nobody
expects these days, however, is a revolution, and that’s precisely what
was expected of the Latin America I encountered in the 1970s.
Revolutionary organizations spray-painted slogans on every
available urban surface, featuring the Communist Party’s hammer
and sickle, the iconic visage of Che Guevara, and an alphabet soup
of acronyms representing worker federations, guerilla armies, and
student organizations. Walls sprouted jagged crowns of broken glass
embedded in concrete, as families with something to defend fortified
themselves against the urban poor. A “population explosion,” as they
named it, was under way when I got to Latin America. Latin American
women had high fertility rates, and twentieth-century improvements
in public health were lengthening life expectancies. Demographers
read the tea leaves and foretold disaster. Hunger and deprivation on
a vast scale seemed the inevitable result. The threat of impending
social cataclysm hovered over everything. No one suspected that the
women’s interest in having lots of children would drop so precipitously
as their horizons expanded in the cities. But that was happening by
the 1980s, and today Latin America’s population is graying faster
than it is growing. The future has a way of not turning out the way
you expect.
During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union rivaled the United
States militarily, Latin America became a sort of battleground or geopolitical chessboard. Marxist guerrillas and nationalist regimes squared
off against their own armed forces, which were allied with the US
military. That story will be told in detail toward the end of the book.
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Suffice it to say, for now, that since the Cold War the region has seen
sustained economic growth and political stability. But current freemarket growth seems to make the rich richer, the middle class more
middle class, and the poor comparatively poorer. In Latin America,
where the idea of a middle-class majority is not a reality but, rather,
a fond aspiration for the future, that kind of growth can produce more
losers than winners. Winners and losers. Rich and poor. Conquerors
and conquered. Masters and slaves. That is the old, old conflict at the
heart of Latin American history. Aspects of it go right back to 1492.
Europeans no longer ride on the backs of indigenous porters, as
they once did in Colombia, or in sedan chairs carried by African slaves,
as in Brazil. But everywhere in Latin America, wealthier people still
have lighter skin and poorer people still have darker skin. The descendants of the Spanish, the Portuguese, and later European immigrants
to Latin America still hold power, and the people who descend from
slaves and subjugated “Indians” still serve them. Half a millennium
later, this is clearly the enduring legacy, rippling across the centuries,
of the fact that African, European, and indigenous American people
did not come together on neutral terms, like various pedestrians
arriving simultaneously at a bus stop. On the contrary, they have a
history. To understand Latin America, you’ve got to understand that
history. That’s what this whole book is about.
Here it is in a nutshell: In the 1550s, Spanish and Portuguese
colonizers imposed their language, their religion, and their social institutions on indigenous Americans a
