Susan Calvert

Land and Liberty

Latin America is the product of conquest. Conquest is the seizure by others of the sole basic economic resource, land. Without access to land, hunters and gatherers cannot find food and crops cannot be grown. But land is clearly not a standard product of uniform quality. Its value depends on its nature and composition, the prevailing climate and its proximity to markets. The conquerors, as far as their limited technical knowledge allowed, took the best land for themselves. The indigenous inhabitants were left with land of poor quality, mountain or forest land far from ‘civilization’, desert land lacking water resources or areas where excess rainfall and tropical diseases made colonization unattractive. The distribution of land, therefore, has been and remains a major theme in the story of Latin America in the twentieth century.

Postscript: Rio and After

The Rio Conference of 1992 briefly focused world attention on some of these problems, which are, of course, of world-wide significance. As ever, though, Latin America is uniquely well placed to act as a mediator between North and South. When in 1988 the idea that the United Nations should take the lead in problems of environment and development was first suggested, President Jose Sarney was quick to suggest that the proposed ‘World Summit’ should be held in Brazil. In the event it was his successor, President Collor, who welcomed more than 120 heads of state and government to Rio and presided over the conference, and ex-President Sarney was not even invited.

The Olive Branch and the Arrows

The single most important influence on post-war Latin America has been the emergence of the United States as a global superpower. Nevertheless, the surprising thing is not that Latin America has been drawn into the sphere of the United States or involved in its confrontation with the Soviet Union, but that it has not been more involved and that the involvement came rather slowly. Yet this is not hard to explain. For the conflict was from the beginning a northern one, in which the two superpowers and their allies confronted each other over the Arctic. The remoteness of the South American continent from the scene of confrontation and the limited value of its states in terms of the world balance of power gave it a degree of isolation which enabled its leaders to indulge their own ambitions in largely rhetorical terms within a protected environment. When any serious challenge to US hegemony appeared to be on the way, Washington was not slow to act against it.

The Military and Development

The attempted kidnapping and killing of US Ambassador Gordon Mein in Guatemala in 1967 heralded an outbreak of urban violence which took many forms: bombings, political assassination, hijacking of aircraft and kidnappings. The choice of diplomats and executives of transnational corporations for kidnapping and ransom demands was no accident; the Left saw the political systems of Latin American countries as integrated with and hence sustained by the world capitalist system, led by the United States. This rise of urban terrorism in Latin America, coupled with the emergence of left-wing governments in Peru, Bolivia and Chile, formed the pretext for changes that in the 1970s led to the emergence of a new wave of military governments in Latin America.

Order and Progress

Many Latin Americans believe that theirs is the continent of the twenty-first century. South America alone is twice the size of the whole of Western Europe, and has a smaller population. As the legend of ‘El Dorado’ (actually modern Colombia) bears witness, it has long been seen as a source of almost limitless wealth and in terms of mineral resources this is true. The fortunes of the Spanish monarchy in Europe were based on the wealth of the Indies; Mexican silver funded the Napoleonic Wars. Yet today huge numbers of Latin Americans live in poverty such as Europe seldom, if ever, sees. As the twentieth century nears its end, the inhabitants of much of the region are divided into a wealthy few and a vast poverty-stricken mass, and the story of Latin America remains largely the story of the Third World facing the First and Second, the South versus the North.