Instant Ebook Access, One Click Away – Begin at ebookgate.

com

Political Handbook of the Americas 2008 1st

Edition Cq Press

https://ebookgate.com/product/political-handbook-of-the-
americas-2008-1st-edition-cq-press/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWLOAD EBOOK

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookgate.com

Click here to visit ebookgate.com and download ebook now
Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Political Handbook Of Africa 2007 1st Edition Cq Press

https://ebookgate.com/product/political-handbook-of-africa-2007-1st-
edition-cq-press/

ebookgate.com

Political Handbook Of Europe 2007 Regional Political

Handbooks 1st Edition Cq Press

https://ebookgate.com/product/political-handbook-of-
europe-2007-regional-political-handbooks-1st-edition-cq-press/

ebookgate.com

American Political Leaders 1789 2005 American Leaders Cq

Press Editors

https://ebookgate.com/product/american-political-
leaders-1789-2005-american-leaders-cq-press-editors/

ebookgate.com

The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas 1st

Edition Kathryn Bosher

https://ebookgate.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-greek-drama-in-
the-americas-1st-edition-kathryn-bosher/

ebookgate.com
A World of Letters Yale University Press 1908 2008
Nicholas A. Basbanes

https://ebookgate.com/product/a-world-of-letters-yale-university-
press-1908-2008-nicholas-a-basbanes/

ebookgate.com

Modern Political Economics Making Sense of the Post 2008

World 1st Edition Yanis Varoufakis

https://ebookgate.com/product/modern-political-economics-making-sense-
of-the-post-2008-world-1st-edition-yanis-varoufakis/

ebookgate.com

Guide to Congress Congressional Quarterly s Guide to

Congress Two Volume Set 6th Edition Cq Press Editors

https://ebookgate.com/product/guide-to-congress-congressional-
quarterly-s-guide-to-congress-two-volume-set-6th-edition-cq-press-
editors/
ebookgate.com

Elections in the Americas A Data Handbook Volume 1 Dieter

Nohlen

https://ebookgate.com/product/elections-in-the-americas-a-data-
handbook-volume-1-dieter-nohlen/

ebookgate.com

Handbook of pharmaceutical excipients Rowe Handbook of

Pharmaceutical Excipients 6th Edition Pharmaceutical Press

https://ebookgate.com/product/handbook-of-pharmaceutical-excipients-
rowe-handbook-of-pharmaceutical-excipients-6th-edition-pharmaceutical-
press/
ebookgate.com
POLITICAL HANDBOOK
OF THE AMERICAS
2008
REGIONAL POLITICAL
HANDBOOKS OF THE
WORLD

Political Handbook of the Americas 2008

Political Handbook of the Middle East 2008

Political Handbook of Africa 2007

Political Handbook of Asia 2007

Political Handbook of Europe 2007

Political Handbook of the Americas 2008
Editors: Arthur S. Banks, Thomas C. Muller, William R. Overstreet
Associate Editors: Judith Isacoff, Thomas Lansford
Assistant Editor: Tony Davies
Production Assistants: Thomas Scalese, Erin Stanley, Kathleen Stanley

CQ Press
Sponsoring Editor: Anna S. Baker
Development Editor: Anastazia Skolnitsky
Chief, Editorial Acquisitions, Reference Publishing: Andrea Pedolsky
Managing Editor, Reference: Joan A. Gossett
Production Editors: Belinda Josey, Emily Bakely
Copy Editors: Elaine Dunn, Shannon Kelly, Jon Preimesberger
Manager, Electronic Production: Paul P. Pressau
Manager, Print and Art Production: Margot W. Ziperman
Senior Vice President and Publisher: John A. Jenkins
Director, Reference Publishing: Alix B. Vance
President and Publisher, Congressional Quarterly Inc.: Robert W. Merry
POLITICAL HANDBOOK
OF THE AMERICAS
2008

A DIVISION OF CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
CQ Press
2300 N Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20037
Phone: 202-729-1900; toll-free, 1-866-4CQ-PRESS (1-866-427-7737)
Web: www.cqpress.com
Copyright 
C 2008 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
Cover design: TGD Communications
Composition: Production staff at Aptara Corp. Inc., New Delhi
Maps by International Mapping Associates

∞ The paper used in this publication exceeds the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences–
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN 978-0-87289-903-2
CONTENTS

Intergovernmental Organization Abbreviations ix St. Vincent and the Grenadines 425

Suriname 431
Trinidad and Tobago 444
I INTRODUCTION 1 United Kingdom Territories 455
Introduction to the Americas 3 United States and Related Territories 467
Uruguay 501
Venezuela 514
II GOVERNMENTS 31
Antigua and Barbuda 33
III INTERGOVERNMENTAL
Argentina 40
ORGANIZATIONS 533
Aruba 61
Bahamas 65 Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in
Barbados 71 Latin America and the Caribbean
Belize 78 (OPANAL) 535
Bolivia 85 Andean Community of Nations (CAN) 539
Brazil 103 Association of Caribbean States (ACS) 544
Canada 118 Caribbean Community and Common Market
Chile 137 (Caricom) 548
Colombia 148 Central American Common Market
Costa Rica 167 (CACM/MCCA) 554
Cuba 177 Central American Integration System (SICA) 558
Dominica 187 The Commonwealth (CWTH) 562
Dominican Republic 194 Latin American and Caribbean Economic System
Ecuador 204 (LAES/SELA) 568
El Salvador 225 Latin American Integration Association
French Territories 239 (LAIA/ALADI) 571
Grenada 247 Organization of American States (OAS/OEA) 574
Guatemala 256 Organization of Eastern Caribbean States
Guyana 273 (OECS) 582
Haiti 284 Regional and Subregional Development
Honduras 302 Banks 586
Jamaica 314 Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) 586
Mexico 322 Central American Bank for Economic Integration
Netherlands Antilles 342 (BCIE) 587
Nicaragua 349 Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) 589
Panama 366 Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR/
Paraguay 381 MERCOSUL) 594
Peru 393 United Nations 599
St. Kitts and Nevis 413 Security Council: Peacekeeping Forces and
St. Lucia 419 Missions 602
viii CONTENTS

United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti IV APPENDIXES 605

(MINUSTAH) 602
Appendix A: Chronology of Major Events in the
Economic and Social Council: Regional
Americas, 2007 607
Commissions 602
Appendix B: Serials List 615
Economic Commission for Latin America and
the Caribbean (ECLAC) 603 Index 617
I N T E R G OV E R N M E N TA L
O R G A N I Z AT I O N
A B B R E V I AT I O N S

Memberships in non-UN intergovernmental organizations are listed at the end of each country’s section under
Intergovernmental Representation. An asterisk indicates a nonofficial abbreviation. In the individual country
sections, associate memberships are indicated by italics.

ACS Association of Caribbean States LAES Latin American and Caribbean

ALADI Latin American Integration Economic System
Association Mercosur Southern Cone Common Market
BCIE Central American Bank for OAS Organization of American States
Economic Integration OECS Organization of Eastern Caribbean
CACM Central American Common States
Market OPANAL Agency for the Prohibition of
CAN Andean Community of Nations Nuclear Weapons in Latin
Caricom Caribbean Community and America and the Caribbean
Common Market SELA Latin American Economic System
*CWTH The Commonwealth SICA Central American Integration
*IADB Inter-American Development Bank System
PART ONE

INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION TO THE
AMERICAS

Natural and Historical Setting that even so-called savages were full-fledged humans marks
the beginning of the human rights movement in the Americas.
The Americas present two faces to the humans who have On a practical level, Montesinos made a convert of Bartolomé
been settling there for millennia. Most of the region, which de las Casas, who joined the Dominicans and campaigned for
stretches out over two continents and a sea full of islands, boasts equal rights for Indians for the rest of his life.
conditions inviting to human settlement. In the area on which When Montesinos unleashed his wrath on his fellow
this volume focuses, running south from the United States’ colonists, the European presence consisted of settlements on
land border, and from the tip of the Florida peninsula on the Hispaniola and Cuba. The conquest of the mainland wouldn’t
Atlantic seaboard, temperature zones range from temperate to begin in earnest until 1519 (although Portuguese had landed
subtropical to tropical. Some of the highest mountain regions, on Brazil’s coast, without realizing the magnitude of the con-
or the deserts, or swamplands, challenge endurance, but they tinent beyond). Within a few decades of those early entries,
compensate with beauty what they lack in comfort. Spain and Portugal had established full-fledged colonies on
Counterbalancing these advantages, much of the region lies both continents of the New World.
atop seismically active ground. An earthquake zone runs from The independence wars that expelled the colonial pow-
Mexico down to Chile, and into the Caribbean. Tens of thou- ers didn’t flare up until the early 19th century—first in Haiti,
sands of people have died in earthquakes in the 20th century against France. Hence, as of the early 21st century, all of the
alone. Americas save the United States and Canada had spent more
By way of compensation, the same unsteady soil holds, time as colonies than as independent nations. In the Caribbean,
in several areas, silver, gold, and petroleum. The riches don’t where the conquest began, European powers still have at least
end there. Among the other bounties: the 2.3 million-square- formal ties to some nations. And Cuba, one of the earliest
mile Amazon, the world’s biggest rain forest; the vast plains of colonies, didn’t free itself of Spanish rule until the very end of
Argentina and Brazil that provide some of the world’s richest the 19th century.
farmland; and an extraordinary agricultural heritage. Europe’s legacy to the New World begins with language.
Maize, tomatoes, potatoes, chili peppers, chocolate, to- Spanish, Portuguese, and French—the languages of the vast
bacco, and coca (the raw material of cocaine)—all these are majority of the 533 million people of Latin America and the
native to the Western Hemisphere. They are known and sa- Caribbean—all come from Europe (as does English, for that
vored everywhere else as a result of the arrival of the European matter). And all of the region’s legal and political institutions
powers—the historical event that joined the Americas to the owe an enormous debt to European models, whose political
rest of the world. doctrines and parliamentary systems traveled to the former
The Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British all moved colonies. But the copies were not exact. Mexico, for exam-
into the region with one major goal: to exploit the New World’s ple, made a point of adopting a version of the U.S. constitu-
mineral and agricultural riches to the utmost. For the Iberi- tional model, with a strong president elected independently of
ans, transforming the Americas into a bastion of Christianity congress.
counted as nearly as an important a mission. Even so, the stability and prosperity that Europe achieved
Clearly, those two objectives collided, as one prelate saw in the second half of the 20th century still elude the former
when the Spanish conquest had barely begun. In 1511, An- colonies of Latin America and the Caribbean. The foundation
tonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar from Hispaniola (an of those achievements, the establishment of at least a minimum
English corruption of la isla Española, an island now shared standard of socioeconomic equality, remains only a vision al-
by the Dominican Republic and Haiti), condemned as sinners most everywhere in the region. Costa Rica, in Central America,
those who enslaved Indians. His sermon resonated as far as is the exception.
the mother country, shocking even the conscience of King The World Bank in 2003 ranked the region among the
Ferdinand. world’s most unequal, with the richest 10 percent of indi-
Montesinos’s sermon certainly didn’t transform the con- viduals receiving 40 to 47 percent of total income, and the
quest into a purely spiritual undertaking. But his insistence poorest 20 percent receiving 2 to 4 percent (in the United
4 INTRODUCTION

States, the wealthiest 10 percent earn 31 percent of total Colombia (1979), Mexico (1985), and El Salvador (2001).2
income).1 Like disasters everywhere, those in the Americas have revealed
Governments, international organizations such as the World enormous shortcomings by governments that left citizens de-
Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as the fenseless in the face of predictable events. Some governments
United States, have deployed numerous strategies designed to have paid the price.
spur economic growth and lessen inequality in Latin America In Nicaragua, chaos and corruption followed a major earth-
and the Caribbean. And citizens of the region have developed quake in 1972. Simmering discontent expanded into all-out
their own strategy to better their conditions: migration to the opposition to a long-reigning dictatorial dynasty that was top-
United States, Canada, and Europe. Mexicans living along the pled seven years later. In Mexico, government helplessness in
border have been working in the United States for the better the wake of a 1986 earthquake that leveled parts of the capital
part of a century. In the 1940s and 1950s migration took a altered the country’s political dynamic. The PRI lost much of
more organized form, when citizens of the British West Indies its credibility, setting the stage for the later loss of its political
flocked to Britain and then to the United States. monopoly.
The poverty and inequality that fostered migration devel- Another form of disaster grows out of poverty. Rainstorms
oped under a long series of dictatorships and authoritarian that lead to disastrous mudslides plague Central America and
regimes that characterized the entire region, with brief excep- the Caribbean region, where torrential rains are an annual event.
tions, for most of its postindependence life. Political systems There and throughout the region, landless poor people build
began opening up toward the end of the 20th century (except in communities on unstable terrain, sometimes in ravines or on
Cuba). Citizens of the Americas have come to see free and fair hillsides. Haiti, most of Central America, and Venezuela have
elections as a fundamental right. With that standard in place, experienced thousands of deaths due to major rains.
the regional political class has lost its exclusive hold on the Some of the rainstorms are brought by hurricanes, an an-
political process. nual danger in the Caribbean Basin and along the Eastern
To be sure, mass political involvement long existed in Seaboard of the United States. The word itself originated in
the Americas, but in appearance only. In some countries, po- the Caribbean: The Spaniards appropriated huracan from the
litical parties could put hundreds of thousands of members Carib people, who also gave their name to the area where they
in the streets. However, these parties were machines to de- flourished.
liver enormous blocs of votes, thereby providing the illusion As the hurricane zone crosses continental boundaries, so
of democratic process. Mexico provided the classic model. does the region itself. North America ends at the Mexico-
Its Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Guatemala border, where Central America begins. That nar-
Instituctional—PRI) enjoyed one of the longest-running po- row strip of countries, which bridge North and South America,
litical monopolies in the world thanks largely to its efficient leads across the Darien jungle to Colombia. East of the con-
stage-managing of national and local elections. tinents, the Caribbean Basin is dotted with 13 nation-states.
As the new century began, essentially fictitious elections Two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, share the
gave way to the real thing. In 2000 Mexican voters ended the island of Hispaniola. And Trinidad and Tobago and St. Kitts
PRI’s extraordinary 71-year-run as a state-owned party. Twelve and Nevis have formed two-island states.
years before that, Chileans had voted to end a military regime. In South America, the equator cuts through the continent
One year after Chile’s electorally generated transformation, and lends its name to the Republic of Ecuador. That nation and
Nicaraguan voters in 1989 turned out of office a government nearly all of its South American counterparts are also divided
that had seized power with most of the country’s support and internally by the Andes mountain range, the world’s longest.
then had its power ratified by voters. And in 1998, Venezuelan Only Brazil, Uruguay, Guyana, and Suriname are untouched by
voters elected a charismatic ex-army officer who had tried and the Andes, which run north-south for nearly the entire length
failed to stage a coup aimed at destroying a two-party system of the continent.
that had fallen into corruption and sloth. As a result, divisions between highlanders and lowlanders
Elections channeled political turbulence but didn’t end it. pervade most of the region’s continental countries. Rural in-
No mechanism exists to calm the geological instability that un- digenous cultures, from Canada’s far north to the southern An-
derlies much of the region. During the 20th century alone, the des, are persisting against a massive and irreversible trend of
Americas suffered 176 earthquakes at a cost of 190,000 lives. In urbanization. To some extent, these distinctions reflect histori-
recent decades, tens of thousands of people died in earthquakes cal and cultural identities. Most Latin Americans who identify
in Peru (1970 and 2007), Nicaragua (1972), Guatemala (1976), themselves as members of indigenous peoples are clustered in
the Andes. Amazon tribes and the Guaranı́ people of Paraguay
are among the exceptions.
1 See David de Ferranti et al., “Inequality in Latin America and

the Caribbean: Breaking with History?” The World Bank, 2003, 2 See Matt Pritchard, “Natural Hazards: Keeping Them

2, http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/LAC/LAC.nsf/ECADocByUnid/ from Becoming Natural Disasters in Latin America,” ReVista

4112F1114F594B4B85256DB3005DB262?Opendocument (ac- (Winter 2007): 30–33, http://drclas.fas.harvard.edu/revista/files/
cessed December 2, 2007). 4613c6a1bb9b7/revista winter07 web.pdf.
 INTRODUCTION 5

Latin American societies became predominantly urban dur- Americans would never be ready for democracy. He might have
ing the second half of the 20th century, with 75 percent of the been unhappy to learn that the reasoning he used served as a
region’s 500 million people living in cities by the year 2000, rationale for any number of 20th-century rulers who insisted
according to a United Nations study. Three Latin American ur- that their countries weren’t prepared for truly representative
ban centers—Mexico City, population approximately 19 mil- government.
lion; São Paulo, 18 million; and Buenos Aires, 13 million—are More recently, Mexico’s Lázaro Cárdenas (1895–1970), in
among the world’s 20 “mega-cities.”3 many respects a reformer who played something of the same
Rapidly expanding cities, inadequate job creation, and role in his country’s political culture as Franklin D. Roosevelt
frayed social safety nets have created a huge urban underclass in the United States, nevertheless helped consolidate the PRI,
throughout the region. Often residents of sprawling shanty- with its deeply undemocratic system of presidents choosing
towns, these so-called marginal citizens account for most crime their successors.
victims and for the robbers, kidnappers, and drug dealers who Most caudillos have shown few of the benign instincts that
have created a permanent crime wave in most of the region’s Cárdenas displayed. Among the many 20th-century strong-
big cities. Journalists who have reported on organized crime in men known more for repression and corruption are Augusto
countries including Mexico and Colombia have paid with their Pinochet (1915–2006), who headed Chile’s military junta from
lives. 1973 to 1988; Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua (1925–1980),
In the age of dictatorships, critical journalists were hunted who inherited his father’s dictatorship; and Rafael Trujillo
by government agents, not gangsters, and crime waves were (1891–1961) of the Dominican Republic. The latter’s rule
unknown. The price for freedom from nonpolitical crime was ended with his assassination; Somoza was assassinated in ex-
paid in massacres and death squad killings of alleged political ile following his overthrow; and Pinochet spent his last years
opponents. Not surprisingly, the crime upsurge has led some fighting indictments for corruption and human rights abuse.
to call for the old mano dura—the strong hand. The fates of these once all-powerful rulers make clear why the
life of a strongman doesn’t beckon as brightly today as it did
Twilight of the Caudillos only a few decades ago.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela began his career
The strongman, or caudillo, is a recurring figure throughout as leader of the failed Venezuelan coup of 1992, and then
Latin America and the Caribbean. Spanish political culture’s moved into electoral politics. A declared disciple of both Simón
emphasis on personal leadership and disdain for democratic Bolı́var and Fidel Castro, Chávez has broken with Castro’s
mechanics helped set the stage. Indeed, Spain itself didn’t grow precedent by insisting on adherence to democratic procedures.
out of the caudillo era until the death of dictator Francisco He paid the price in December 2007, when voters rejected his
Franco in 1975. In the Americas, a constant pattern of polit- proposal to amend the Venezuelan constitution to allow unlim-
ical and social disorder that seemed to call for a strongman ited presidential terms.
in charge kept the region for most of its independent life in a Other chief executives also have used democratic mecha-
cycle of turbulence followed by the emergence of yet another nisms to allow them to stay in office longer. As recently as
caudillo. the 1990s, the originally elected President Alberto Fujimori of
As that history implies, some caudillos are fondly remem- Peru won voter approval of a constitutional term-succession
bered. Simón Bolı́var (1783–1830), who led the war for inde- provision, and then maneuvered parliamentary approval of a
pendence of northern South America (José de San Martı́n and third successive term. This was before his corrupt regime col-
Bernardo O’Higgins commanded independence forces in the lapsed; he is now on trial for human rights abuses, having fled
southern part of the continent), had an upper-class distrust for to and been extradited from Chile.
direct democracy. “Institutions which are wholly representative But in Colombia, the enormously popular President Álvaro
are not suited to our character, customs, and present knowl- Uribe won parliamentary approval for a constitutional change
edge,” he wrote in his long “Reply of a South American to a that enabled him to run for a second successive term, which
Gentleman of This Island [Jamaica]” in 1815. “As long as our he did. Uribe’s supporters are considering allowing him a third
countrymen do not acquire the abilities and political virtues that successive term, which he may try. Uribe’s temperament verges
distinguish our brothers of the north, wholly popular systems, on autocratic; he recently accused of corruption a Supreme
far from working to our advantage, will, I greatly fear, bring Court justice who had ordered an investigation of Uribe’s
about our downfall.”4 Still, Bolı́var was not writing that Latin cousin. But whatever authoritarian tendencies he may possess
have been curbed by a still-powerful system of checks and
3 “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision—Fact balances.
Sheet 7,” United Nations, Department of Economic and So- Further south, the forms of electoral democracy coexist
cial Affairs, Population Division, 2006, http://www.un.org/esa/ with a tradition of spousally enabled continuity in office. The
population/publications/WUP2005/2005WUP FS7. pdf. politically popular Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and
4 “Reply of a South American to a Gentleman of This Island

[Jamaica],” September, 6, 1815, in Selected Writings of Bolivar, faculty.smu.edu/bakewell/BAKEWELL/texts/jamaica-letter.html

trans. Lewis Bertrand (New York: Colonial Press, 1951), http:// (accessed December 9, 2007).
6 INTRODUCTION

his wife, Cristina, a former senator, traded places when she in the late 15th century, Pope Alexander VI decreed that Spain
won election in 2007. The expectation is that Néstor Kirchner and its Iberian Peninsula neighbor, Portugal, had to divide the
will run for office again after Cristina Kirchner’s four-year term unexplored globe between them. A territorial division that the
ends. Members of a party founded by populist caudillo Juan two powers agreed to in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 effec-
Perón, the Kirchners were using a method he employed under tively gave Portugal dominion over the then-unknown region
different circumstances. In 1974, when Perón took ill, his third that became Brazil.
wife, Isabel, was sworn in as interim president, a post she kept Portuguese and Spanish aren’t entirely alone on the South
until 1976. American continent. Tens of thousands of people throughout
In Bolivia, the election of a charismatic one-time leader of Latin America speak indigenous languages, such as Guaranı́
coca-growing farmers—the first member of an Indian commu- in Paraguay and Quechua in Bolivia, and may speak Spanish
nity to be elected as head of state in Bolivia’s history—has in- as well. The Linguistic Society of America lists more than
tensified the country’s bitter ethnic-tinged socioeconomic con- 158 Indian languages in Brazil alone.6 English is spoken in
flict. Street violence that erupted during a political battle over Belize, a tiny former British possession. Further south, Guyana,
a new constitution led President Evo Morales to call in early formerly known as British Guiana, is also Anglophone.
December 2007 for a national vote on whether he and nine re- Purely local languages persist in some corners of the Amer-
gional governors should remain in office. Six of the nine oppose icas that remain isolated despite the overall expansion of ur-
him. “If the people say ‘Evo’s going,’ I’ve got no problem— ban territories. The New York Times has reported the case of
I’m democratic,” Morales said in a televised speech. In earlier a tongue, Palenquero, created centuries ago by rebel ex-slaves
decades, the events might well have served to justify a military along Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Some of their descendants
coup. Morales’s declaration made clear that that old method is in a small, hard-to-reach inland village still speak the lan-
no longer considered acceptable, at least for the moment. guage. One of Palenquero’s contributing strains is the Kikongo
Equally noteworthy, in Guatemala’s November 2007 presi- language of Congo and Angola; another is Portuguese, a re-
dential elections, voters rejected an ex-military man—a classic flection of the predominant nationality of 17th-century slave
would-be caudillo—who had vowed to call in the army to fight traders.7
criminals who have made the country one of the most danger- Portuguese forms a strand of another language born of
ous in the region. Instead, Guatemalans elected Álvaro Colom, African slavery. Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao, self-governing
a center-left president who explicitly rejected a military crack- Caribbean islands still part of the Kingdom of the Nether-
down as a strategy out of the country’s past. lands, are home to Papiamentu. That tongue grew out of Por-
A spirit of self-critical reflection has taken hold in the region tuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and West African and native Indian
casting the old traditions of strongman rule in a poor light. “We languages.
in Latin America are not trying to look for a leader,” President English is the mother tongue in Jamaica and the other 14
Luiz Inácio (“Lula”) da Silva of Brazil, a former union activist nation-states that make up the “British West Indies,” as they
from a poor family, told the New York Times in September 2007. are still called; 5 of them remain British possessions. In their
“We don’t need a leader. What we need to do is build political day-to-day business most Jamaicans, and residents of some of
harmony because South America and Latin America need to the other Anglophone islands, speak a creole English often
learn the lesson of the 20th century. We had the opportunity to impossible for English speakers from elsewhere to understand.
grow, we had the opportunity to develop ourselves, and we lost English is also an official language in Belize (formerly British
that opportunity. So we still continue to be poor countries.”5 Honduras) and Guyana (formerly British Guiana).
In Haiti and Martinique (the latter still part of France), a
Languages similar language regime prevails. French is an official language,
though in Haiti the dominant tongue is Creole (Kreyòl ), which
To outsiders, major divergences in political culture from is rooted in French and African tongues. Fluency in French is
country to country tend to be masked by the prevalence of one an unmistakable sign of education.
language, Spanish. In the continental region that runs south- Across the border from Haiti, Spanish reigns in the Do-
ward from Mexico’s border with the United States, Spanish minican Republic. Cuba is also Spanish-speaking (as is Puerto
enjoys a near-monopoly. That linguistic presence would be Rico, a U.S. possession).
a real monopoly but for the presence of another language in Throughout the southern zone of the hemisphere, English
the region’s biggest and richest country, Brazil. Its version of is widely spoken among top businesspeople and, increasingly,
Portuguese bears roughly the same relationship to Spanish as among politicians. Maintaining business connections with the
French does to Italian. United States, earning a degree from one of its universities, and
Portuguese owes its presence in the Americas to the stroke
of a pen. As the age of European exploration was beginning 6 See The Linguist List, Linguistic Society of America,

2008, http://www.linguistlist.org/forms/langs/find-a-language-or-
5 Quoted in Alexei Barrionuevo, “A Resilient Leader Trumpets family.html.
Brazil’s Potential in Agriculture and Biofuels,” New York Times, 7 See Simon Romero, “A Language, Not Quite Spanish, with

September 23, 3007, A12. African Echoes,” New York Times, October 18, 2007, A4.
 INTRODUCTION 7

having the ability to send one’s children to its schools all mark century conflict in Brazil’s desperately poor northeast led by
privileged status elsewhere in the Americas. Brazil again stands a messianic prophet was more of a peasant uprising than a
out as an exception. The relative unimportance of English for church-state war). In the 1920s, Mexican Catholic guerrillas,
Brazilians reflects their country’s sense of self-sufficiency. the cristeros, waged an insurgency against the central govern-
ment. With the victory of the state, the Mexican Church defini-
Religion tively lost the political power that it had enjoyed in colonial
times and the early postcolonial period.
All Europeans arrived in the New World with at least some Elsewhere in the region, the Church and indigenous peoples
notion of converting indigenous peoples to Christianity. Of the made accommodations of belief and practice along the same
colonizers, the Spanish took that mission most seriously, be- lines as in Mexico. In Brazil, Cuba, and the French colony,
cause the church-state link formed a crucial element of their Saint Domingue, that became Haiti, the religions of Africa that
political culture. When the Spanish explorations began, the slaves brought with them also melded with Catholicism, but
Christian monarchs of Spain had just won a religious war, not completely. Slaves’ descendants kept more of the mother
reestablishing themselves throughout Spain at the end of the continent’s beliefs and practices. As a result, throughout the
15th century, after vanquishing the last of the Muslim rulers Afro-Americas, the African religions and Catholicism exist
who had governed a good part of the Iberian Peninsula for 700 side-by-side, often drawing on the same pool of worshipers
years. rather than having achieved a complete synthesis.
Those circumstances lent the Spanish conquests from the In the 1960s, one wing of the Church emerged as a major
start a more religious character than those of the other European political force. As challenges to governments and ruling classes
powers, especially the British, whose ranks were filled with re- gathered strength throughout the region, some priests and bish-
ligious dissenters. For the Spanish, observed one of Mexico’s ops aligned themselves explicitly with those demanding radical
great 20th-century writers, Octavio Paz, “The conversion le- change. Colombia’s Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army
gitimized the conquest. This politico-religious philosophy was (Ejército de Liberación Nacional—ELN) included two priests
diametrically opposed to that of English colonizing; the idea of in its ranks in the 1960s, one of whom rose to command the
evangelization occupied a secondary place in England’s colo- organization until his death in 1998. Both guerrilla priests drew
nial expansion.”8 their initial sympathy for armed conflict from the “Liberation
Although Spain and the other Old World empires eventually Theology” movement.
were forced out of the Americas, the religion they brought But most adherents of this influential school of Catholicism
with them remained. Roman Catholicism sank deep roots in rejected violence and Marxism-Leninism. At its simplest, Lib-
the culture of Spanish America. Above all, this development eration Theology holds that the Church must side with the
reflected the willingness of both missionaries and indigenous impoverished masses to the point of fighting for social justice.
peoples to adapt and blend their beliefs. “Certain Indian ideas— This means discarding charity alone as a way to help poor peo-
gods sacrificing themselves for men, the need to do penance, ple. Charity, the liberationists hold, effectively maintains injus-
the stoic acceptance of suffering, the evanescence and futility of tice because it seeks to alleviate immediate problems without
earthly pleasures—resembled those of the new faith,” historian attacking deeper conditions. Liberation theologians distilled
Enrique Krauze wrote about the Mexican experience, which and summarized their conclusions at a bishops’ conference
other nations shared.9 in Medellı́n, Colombia, in 1968. The “institutionalized vio-
Mexican Indians’ collective acceptance of Catholicism was lence” of the class hierarchy, they declared, grew out of a con-
consecrated by an event in 1531. The Virgin of Guadalupe, a temporary colonial system that, “seeking unbounded profits,
Spanish incarnation of the Virgin Mary, was recorded as having foment[s] an economic dictatorship and the international im-
appeared to Juan Diego, an Indian peasant, at the very place perialism of money.”10 Post–World War II France had seen a
where a pre-Columbian mother-goddess, Tonantzin, had been similar movement. There, “worker priests” doffed their clerical
worshipped. Over time, the Virgin became the supreme icon of garb, took jobs in factories, and joined unions, all in an effort
Mexican popular culture, both the mother figure of Christian to show workers that the Church was on their side. The Vatican
belief and a completely Mexican saint. That is, she represented shut the movement down in 1954, though it was later allowed
the dual heritage at the core of Mexican identity, even though to start again.
the church as an institution arrayed itself as the major opponent Liberation Theology too soon found itself in trouble with
to construction of a secular state. the hierarchy, especially in the Vatican. Before ascending to
That long conflict reached the point of open warfare, the the papacy, Pope John Paul II had shown some sympathy for
only such event in the history of the Americas (a late 19th- the “worker priests.” But with the Latin American political en-
vironment of the 1980s polarized between left and right, there
8 Octavio Paz, “Mexico and the United States,” The New Yorker, was no question which side of the divide the Liberationists
September 17, 1979, in The Labyrinth of Solitude (New York: Grove
Press, 1985), 361. 10 Quoted in Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People The Struggle for
9 See Enrique Krauze, Mexico Biography of Power (New York: Human Rights in Latin America—the Catholic Church in Conflict
Harper Perennial, 1997), 70. with U.S. Policy (New York: Penguin, 1991), 38.
8 INTRODUCTION

occupied. The Polish pope, a survivor of a totalitarian system 50 years ago, the Protestant Pentecostal surge draws on a power-
that cloaked oppression with some of the same vocabulary the ful social current. Along with Guatemala, the countries where
Liberationists employed, disciplined some of its leading expo- the trend has registered with greatest force are Brazil, Chile,
nents, forcing at least one of them from the Church. Sympathies Argentina, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. All are nations that have
for Cuba by some Liberation Theology priests was also a red suffered grievously from civil conflict and class divisions. Yet
line for the pope, given Castro’s alliance with the Soviet Union, other countries about which the same could be said—Bolivia,
oppressor of the Pope’s native Poland and the rest of Eastern and for example, or Honduras—have seen Pentecostalism gain far
Central Europe. (Fr. Alberto Libânio Christo, “Frei Betto,” con- less ground. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life notes
ducted long, sympathetic interviews with Castro that became a that Pentecostalism is also growing in Mexico, Colombia, and
book in which the Cuban comandante expressed sympathy for Peru. In most of these countries, members of Indian commu-
Liberation Theology.) nities have made up major portions of the Protestant churches’
Some Latin American churchmen with sympathies for the flocks.11
movement came into conflict with their fellows over allegiance Questions over national receptivity aside, there is little ques-
to the Cuban-inspired revolutionary model. During the San- tion of Pentecostalism’s appeal on a personal level. Much credit
dinista period in Nicaragua, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, goes to its insistence on personal discipline, a message that re-
archbishop of Managua, made a transition from supporter of sounds among many poor and lower-middle-class households.
the Sandinista insurrection to prominent opponent of the revo- Giving up drinking and smoking, remaining faithful to one’s
lutionary government, a government that included four Liber- partner—these are among the basic requirements of Pentecostal
ation Theology–identified priests in senior positions, three of churches.
them cabinet ministers. Catholicism, perhaps because of its history of adapting it-
Elsewhere in Central America, priests and nuns played ma- self to local custom, is seen as demanding less of its believers in
jor roles as human rights defenders against military counterin- their daily lives. But how many nominal Roman Catholics can
surgency campaigns. In fact, much of the peasant organizing in be counted as believers? Notwithstanding the Church’s histori-
El Salvador that large landowners and the military viewed as a cal position and Catholicism’s cultural roots, millions of Latin
gestating communist revolution began in “base communities,” Americans have little connection to the institutional Church.
prayer and study groups led by Liberation Theology priests or Edward L. Cleary, O.P., a political scientist and a Dominican
lay workers with liberationist training. priest with missionary experience in Latin America, writes that
Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917–1980) of San Salvador “the major sector of Catholicism affected by this shift has been
was assassinated as a result of his human rights advocacy; other that of nominal, indifferent Catholics, who have supplied most
priests in El Salvador and Guatemala met the same fate. Yet in of the converts to Pentecostalism.”12 Cleary may not be an en-
the most dramatic illustration possible that the Church was not tirely disinterested observer. Nevertheless, the erosion of the
of one mind on sociopolitical issues, an Argentine ex-priest institutional Catholic Church is plain to see in Latin America.
was convicted in 2007 of participation in seven murders, 42 To the extent that millions of people feel the need for an or-
kidnappings, and 31 cases of torture while serving as police ganized spiritual presence in their lives, the Pentecostals have
chaplain during the military dictatorship of the late 1970s and been knocking on an open door.
early 1980s.
In Haiti, a Liberation Theology priest, Jean-Bertrand Aris- Politics, Intellectuals, and the Media
tide, reached his nation’s highest office. But he resigned from
the priesthood in 1994, under what he called pressure from the Spanish has no word for “accountability.” That facet of
church hierarchy. the major language of the Americas has become a truism of
Liberation Theology may have divided the Church against Latin American politics. But long before anyone commented
itself. But in the years since the insurgencies and counterinsur- on the monarchist strain still running through Spanish political
gencies of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s wound down (except in vocabulary, Latin Americans knew that the inner workings of
Colombia), another challenge has come to face the Church as a their governments, in nearly all countries, were closed to them.
whole. Protestantism, specifically Pentecostalism, has made a Throughout the region, newspaper reporting was a low-
place for itself in the Latin American religious landscape. The prestige, low-paid occupation. Reporters, often corrupt by
challenge to Catholicism arose rapidly. Despite that dramatic
entrance, after more than four centuries of Catholic dominance, 11 Figures cited from Overview Pentacostalism in Latin

the chances of converting an entire country verge on nil. Since America, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 2006,
the Reformation era in Europe, times have changed sufficiently http://pewforum.org/surveys/pentecostal/latinamerica (accessed
that, in the only country in which a head of government openly December 1, 2007).
espoused Pentecostalism (Guatemala), his religious affiliation 12 See Edward L. Cleary O.P., “Shopping Around: Questions

did not force a national religious conversion. about Latin American Conversion,” International Bulletin of Mis-
Even so, Pentecostals now account for 75 million people in sionary Research, University of Texas, Religion in Latin America,
the region, about 13 percent of the total population. In a region http://www.providence.edu/las/Brookings.html (accessed Decem-
that was close to 100 percent Roman Catholic as recently as ber 1, 2007).
 INTRODUCTION 9

sheer necessity, covered daily events, while intellectuals—who claim by President Uribe that one of the journalists had helped
often had more freedom of maneuver—wrote analyses and the ex-mistress of a slain druglord write a book that accused
commentaries. Traditionally, members of the educated classes the president of ties to the late gangster. The journalist denied
tried to fill the vacuum with political journalism, essays, novels, the allegation.
and other works of art. One example among many: Mario Var- Elsewhere, reporters have paid for their work with their
gas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) reveals more lives. In 2007 alone, the committee records reporters (or, in
about the operation of Peru’s authoritarian military regime of one case, news employees) gunned down in Guatemala, Haiti,
the 1950s than newspapers of the time could publish, or than Honduras, Mexico, and Paraguay—a total of eight murders,
politicians could say publicly. in addition to the shooting and wounding of a Brazilian jour-
Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcı́a Márquez’s nalist and two nonfatal grenade attacks against a newspaper
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) has become a common in the border state of Sonora, a drug syndicate center. Four of
point of reference throughout the Americas for surrealism in all those killed were radio reporters, the backbone of journalism
dimensions of life, including politics. Arguably, the book tells in smaller towns throughout Latin America.
more about the interplay of personal honor, family ties, and Independent journalists in Cuba face a different set of prob-
the remoteness of central government than Garcı́a Márquez’s lems. Nongovernmental media don’t exist on the island, so in-
own political journalism, the field in which he began in the dependent journalists by definition file their reports abroad.
late 1940s as an editorial writer and reporter in Colombia’s With that practice, they have opened themselves to charges
Caribbean coastal region. by the government that they are betraying their country. As
Today’s journalists operate largely free of the state control, of mid-2007, 24 Cuban journalists were imprisoned; 22 have
spoken or unspoken, that stunted the careers of so many of their been behind bars since a March 2003 crackdown. They were
professional ancestors. The legacy of journalism as instrument convicted of charges including acting against “the indepen-
of big political and economic interests runs strong. Still, readers dence or territorial integrity of the state” and “the security of
in nearly all the big cities of the region can find newspapers and the state.”15
magazines that have managed to carve out a space for indepen- Though the written word hasn’t lost its power to provoke,
dent and critical journalism. (Brazil, an exceptional case, has a the advent of private television stations throughout the region in
stronger tradition of powerful but hard-hitting newspapers and the 1990s has shaken up the media industry. Tabloid-style news
magazines.) shows have proved especially popular. And secretly recorded
Disturbingly, censorship by government has been replaced videotape has emerged as a political weapon. The final collapse
in many countries by censorship by gangsters, especially in of the regime of Peruvian strongman Alberto Fujimori in 2000
small towns and cities. In Colombia, traditionally one of the began after a television station broadcasted tapes taken by his
most perilous countries for journalists, the New York–based intelligence chief, showing him bribing politicians and two TV
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that most jour- station owners on the regime’s behalf. In Mexico, two close
nalists in the provinces had abandoned reporting on topics such associates of the populist Mexico City mayor were shown, re-
as drug trafficking, paramilitary activities, and corruption. The spectively, gambling big money in Las Vegas and taking a bribe
dangers of pursuing such themes had become clear: The CPJ from a businessman.
recorded 54 journalists killed in the period from 1986 to 2006, Another indicator of the decline of writing is that artists
making it one of the four most dangerous countries in the world who want to shine a light on their societies are turning to film
for reporters since the mid-1980s (the others are Iraq, Algeria, and video rather than the novel. Mexican filmmaker Daniel
and the Balkans).13 Sarinana takes up that very theme in a popular 1999 movie,
In 2007, one Colombian journalist was killed, though the Todo el Poder (All the Power), that shows a moviemaker turning
CPJ called the circumstances unclear. The government cred- his camera on crime bosses, at a time when rampant lawlessness
ited the virtual absence of assassinations to an official policy had Mexicans terrified.
of providing armored cars, bulletproof vests, and bodyguards More recently, a Brazilian filmmaker lit a firestorm of con-
to threatened journalists. The CPJ countered that journalists’ troversy in 2007 with a film, Elite Squad, on the activities of an
self-censorship is another reason for the somewhat improved antigang police unit that runs rampant through slum areas, tor-
security climate.14 turing and killing. The film has opened a debate on the morality
In any event, death threats against Colombian journalists and efficacy of these tactics. Though the film, strictly speak-
continue. In 2007, three reporters were forced to flee Colombia ing, is fictional, the unit exists; the co-screenwriter is a former
because of death threats. In one case, the threats followed a member of the squad.
A pioneer of the new wave of film and video social re-
13 See “Special Report 2006” and “A New Front in Mexico,” alism, Venezuelan novelist and newspaper columnist Ibsen
November 7, 2007, Committee to Protect Journalists, http://cpj. Martı́nez used a classic Latin American melodramatic vehicle,
org (accessed December 5, 2007). See also “Attacks on the Press
in 2007—Americas,” 2008, http://cpj.org/attacks07/americas07/ 15 See “Cuban Journalist Released after 15 Months in Prison,”

col07.html (accessed March 8, 2008). August 21, 2007; “Cuba’s Draconian Laws,” Committee to Protect
14 See “Attacks on the Press.” Journalists, http://cpj.org (accessed December 5, 2007).
10 INTRODUCTION

the telenovela (soap opera), to attack the corruption and dishon- member, Neruda also provided diplomatic protection for the
esty of the political and economic system in the 1990s, which painter David Alfaro Siqueiros following his participation in
came to a head under President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Por estas the first, failed, assassination attempt against dissident Soviet
calles (On These Streets) became a big hit and helped rouse the exile Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), an operation mounted by the
civic consciousness that gave the former golpista Hugo Chávez Soviet NKVD, predecessor to the KGB.18
his first electoral victory in 1998. In the Caribbean islands, whose smaller populations make
“In that telenovela all the politicians were cynical, all multiple careers even more common, the leading figure of
the businessmen were for the ‘small state’ and for that reason Trinidad and Tobago’s independence movement and its leading
kept corrupt officials on the payroll, and all violations of law postindependence leader was Eric Williams (1911–1981), an
by the down-and-out poor were justified,” Martı́nez wrote in a Oxford-educated historian whose books include From Colum-
recent semiconfessional essay that also shows how small the bus to Castro The History of the Caribbean. In the Americas
world is for Latin American intellectuals. “During the week, today, a professional historian such as Williams likely would
as scriptwriter for Por estas calles I played the part of street not rise to the very top of a political system. Lower-ranking
agitator. On Sundays, in my Sunday column in El Nacional, members of government may have backgrounds as intellec-
I quoted Alain Touraine or Pierre Bourdieu* while obnox- tuals, but only full-time politicians become presidents. And
iously attacking the performance of Pérez’ economic cabi- full-time politicians don’t have the time, apparently, for schol-
net members, many of them friends of mine. Being a ‘pub- arship.
lic intellectual’ in Venezuela was never as easy as it was in
the ’90s.”16
Martinez, who more recently has become an ardent critic of Relations with the United States
Chávez, has never traded pen for government position. And in
turning a critical eye on himself and his brethren, he is break- Part I
ing with the custom of political intellectuals worldwide. (“The
belief in the independence of intellectuals, as so much of the Since the 19th century, no single nation has loomed larger
twentieth century proves, is nothing but a fairy tale,” writes for Western Hemisphere countries than the United States. Like
Charles Simic, poet laureate of the United States.17 ) neighbors of all large countries, the nations of Latin America
Latin American intellectuals, more than their counterparts and the Caribbean have developed complicated relationships
elsewhere, enjoy a long tradition of serving in senior govern- with the presence they can’t ignore. A sometimes brutal his-
ment positions. Francisco Santos, former editor of El Tiempo, tory, the long reach of U.S. economic power, and the magnetic
Colombia’s major daily, and an ex-journalist for the leading quality of U.S. popular culture form contributing elements.
Spanish newspaper, El Paıs, is vice president of Colombia. Another influence has taken hold in recent years, as millions
Jorge G. Castañeda, who was Mexico’s foreign minister in of people from the region have moved to or visited the United
2000–2003, has been otherwise engaged, more or less simul- States. In the past, most Latin Americans depended on what
taneously, as a university professor, political activist, jour- they heard about the United States. Today, residents or visitors
nalist, and author. Mario Vargas Llosa, one of a handful of forming their own impressions of the United States come from
Latin American novelists who has reached global literary star- every class, with ordinary working folk the majority, outnum-
dom, ran for president of Peru in 1990 but lost. Teodoro bering the privileged who have long traveled back and forth
Petkoff, a Venezuelan economics student-turned-guerrilla in between home and the United States.
the 1960s, then planning minister in the mid-1990s, edits But even without the benefit of travel or modern mass me-
Tal Cual, a newspaper that is a major voice of opposition to dia, politically aware Latin Americans realized by the time the
Chávez. 20th century dawned that the United States was the power with
History offers even more examples. Octavio Paz (1914– which they had to reckon.
1988), a poet and essayist who was one of the region’s No- In 1900, José Enrique Rodó, a Uruguayan writer, authored
bel laureates, was a career Mexican diplomat (he resigned in an impassioned essay that served for decades as a manifesto
protest of a massacre of students in 1968). Mexican novelist of Latin American values to be defended from the encroaching
Carlos Fuentes, an ambassador’s son, entered the diplomatic giant to the north. Rodó warned Latin American youth against
corps for a time in the 1970s. Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), an- a United States he defined as boorish, purely utilitarian, and
other Nobel Prize–winning poet, was a member of the Chilean profit-driven. Latin American civilization, by contrast, embod-
foreign service in the 1930s and 1940s. As a Communist Party ied a respect for art and culture inherited from Greece and
Rome. “The North American has managed to acquire . . . the
∗ French sociologists and social activists. satisfaction and vanity of sumptuary magnificence, but has not
16 Ibsen Martı́nez, “Una Conversación con Moisés Naı́m,” Le- succeeded in acquiring the chosen mark of good taste,” Rodó
tras Libres (November 2007), http://www.letraslibres. com/index.
php?art = 12459. 18 John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona Decoding So-
17 Charles Simic, “The Renegade,” New York Review of Books, viet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
December 20, 2007, 70. 2000), 277.
 INTRODUCTION 11

wrote in Ariel (1900). “The ideal of beauty doesn’t strike pas- Mercader, a Spaniard partly of Cuban descent, spent his final
sion in the heart of the descendant of the austere puritans. Nor years on the island as an honored retiree.20
does the ideal of truth.” The essay struck a chord throughout the
entire Spanish-speaking world. But beginning in the 1930s, and Part II
in far greater numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, Latin Ameri-
cans preoccupied with U.S. power turned from esthetics to class After World War II, with the United States and the Soviet
struggle. Marxism, with its hardheaded focus on material con- Union locked in confrontation, Roosevelt’s successors mixed
ditions and social justice, came closer, paradoxically, to the his kid-glove approach with a strong dose of raw power.
“North American” spirit that Rodó found so crass. Throughout the Cold War, with some exceptions, U.S. ad-
U.S. activities in a nearby area of the hemisphere during the ministrations of both parties supported military or military-
first three decades of the 20th century did their part to inspire a backed strongmen. They were virtually the only brand of
tough-minded view of regional geopolitics. Panama, site of the politician whom Washington trusted to maintain a consistently
United States-built-and-owned Atlantic-Pacific canal, became pro-American and anti-Soviet stance.
a de facto U.S. possession. Military occupations of Haiti and That strategy was first deployed in Guatemala. There, in
the Dominican Republic followed, as well as repeated military 1954, the CIA overthrew an elected government on the grounds
interventions in Nicaragua. The latter saw U.S. creation of a that its left-wing orientation posed a political threat to the region
military force which, in 1934, murdered a popular left-wing and an economic threat to U.S. business interests. Most impor-
nationalist guerrilla, Augusto Sandino. tant among the latter was the United Fruit Co., whose board
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) opened a new chapter had included CIA chief Allen Dulles. The former law firm of
in hemispheric relations in 1934 with his “good neighbor” pol- his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, also had rep-
icy. Its accomplishments included a refusal to retaliate against resented the company in Guatemala. In place of the elected
Mexico for a 1938 nationalization of the oil industry that shut government, the CIA installed a military regime. Guatemala
down operations of U.S. oil companies. For all of the benign wouldn’t see another freely elected government until 1986.
aura with which Roosevelt surrounded his moves, he was a The Guatemala coup inflated U.S. confidence to the point
highly practical politician who was building goodwill among that officials believed in their ability to shape events in Latin
U.S. neighbors in anticipation of a war against distant powers. America at will. But the coup was followed only five years
His strategic vision is summed up in a remark he is said to have later by the Cuban revolution. The triumph of Fidel Castro and
made about the U.S.-sponsored dictator of Nicaragua, Anas- his guerrilla army in 1959 set off a chain of events that tested
tasio Somoza: “He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s our sonofabitch.” American officials’ belief in their omnipotence. The series of
The line, a version of which was first reported in 1939, most defeats that the Cuban revolutionary regime and its Soviet ally
likely is apocryphal. However, some historians view it as an inflicted on the United States proved decisive for American
accurate summation of the American foreign policy establish- policy in the region until the Cold War ended.
ment’s unsentimental view of foreign relations in general and The outcome of the Cuban revolution fulfilled Ameri-
Latin American affairs in particular.19 can leaders’ worst expectations for political movements that
Whoever coined the remark, it anticipated Cold War atti- promised social and economic equality. As Cuban dictator Fi-
tudes. An event that occurred during the same period helped del Castro consolidated his rule, he took on the role of world-
set the stage for the long United States–Soviet Union standoff: class challenger to the United States. He supplied training and
the assassination in Mexico of Trotsky, the exiled revolutionary other aid to Marxist guerrilla armies in the region, while de-
who had become Stalin’s major enemy on the left. Trotsky had nouncing the United States as the imperialist power behind
been welcomed to Mexico by President Cárdenas, but Mexi- oligarchic regimes. Castro’s defiance of the United States ac-
can sanctuary couldn’t protect Trotsky from Stalin’s campaign counted for much of his appeal. Only 33 years old at his moment
to exterminate his left-wing opponents. Those who did survive of victory, and surrounded by even younger comrades, he and
were among the leading opponents of Stalin’s eventual takeover his fellow revolucionarios—above all the Argentine Ernesto
of Eastern and Central Europe, so Stalin’s strategy reflected a “Che” Guevara—captured the hearts and minds of young peo-
long-range strategy that anticipated the Cold War. ple across the region. All of that would have been dangerous
Cuba became a major front in that conflict. The Cuban enough, from the U.S. point of view. But Castro also brought
writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929–2005), who defected to life the nightmare vision of the U.S. foreign policy establish-
from the Cuban foreign service in 1965, told this writer in 1994 ment: Soviet expansion on America’s doorstep.
that the earliest visible sign of the Soviet hand in the Cuban Initially, the Cuban revolution prompted the John F.
government was the sudden disappearance of books by and Kennedy administration to reexamine the U.S. role in a re-
about Trotsky from Cuban bookstores. Another Cuban tie to gion characterized by social and economic injustice. In 1961
the Trotsky assassination led to the assassin himself. Ramón Kennedy launched the “Alliance for Progress” with the aim of

19 William Safire traced the first reporting of the alleged remark 20 Mercader’s story is told in great detail in Asaltar los Cielos, a

to Time Magazine. See William Safire, “On Language: Realism,” 1996 Spanish documentary. See IMDb, Internet Movie Database,
New York Times, Sunday Magazine, December 24, 2006, 20. www.imdb. com/title/tt0115575.
12 INTRODUCTION

promoting non-Communist reform governments. The initiative tance to Nicaraguan guerrillas, known as the contras, who were
could claim modest success in its early years, but old ways soon trying to topple the Sandinista government. Both the Salvado-
returned. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, sent U.S. ran and Nicaraguan wars grew out of longstanding internal
troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent restora- conflicts and tensions. At the same time, the conflicts were
tion of an illegally deposed left-of-center president. By the end proxy confrontations between the United States and the Soviet
of the 1960s, a wave of military governments had seized power Union.
in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, with U.S. backing or implicit Reagan and his CIA chief, William Casey, saw it as their
approval. mission to help America’s friends fight America’s enemies. In-
Seemingly paradoxically, in 1961 the CIA had plotted the deed, while the United States was sending arms and advis-
assassination of the brutish right-wing dictator, Rafael Trujillo, ers to Central America, the CIA was aiding Afghan rebels
who then ruled the Dominican Republic (and who was, in fight Soviet invaders in Afghanistan. The Afghan aid cam-
fact, assassinated). During the same period, writes New York paign enjoyed widespread political support in the United States.
Times correspondent Tim Weiner in a history of the CIA, the Not so for the U.S. role in Central America, especially the
spy agency and the White House discussed sponsoring the Contra war.
overthrow and killing of the equally malign dictator François Aid to the Nicaraguan rebels defied an explicit congres-
(“Papa Doc”) Duvalier of Haiti.21 sional prohibition. Top administration officials’ contempt for
For the most part, though, the United States during the Cold that law led to the “Iran-Contra” scandal, which involved selling
War used its clout on behalf of right-wing political forces. Most arms to Iran—also prohibited—and using the profit to buy sup-
notoriously, the Nixon administration put the CIA to work to plies for the Nicaraguan rebels. After the scheme came to light,
block the election of socialist Salvador Allende as president of the spectacle of senior administration officials being hauled be-
Chile. After he won, the CIA promoted the idea of a military fore judges and congressional committees electrified spectators
overthrow. Ironically, U.S. intelligence and Allende’s many ene- in Latin America. Critics of the United States had viewed its
mies in the military and business establishment got unintended government as monolithic.
help from the Castro-allied Chilean left, who urged Allende The Reagan administration’s invasion of Grenada, and the
to intensify the class struggle and to arm the masses to fight invasion of Panama by Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush,
off any attempted seizure of power. But the right-wing mili- demonstrated, however, that the era of U.S. military interven-
tary brass deposed Allende in a bloody coup on September 11, tion in the region had not ended. Yet, the 1989 Panama in-
1973. Whether the United States directly participated, those tervention, aimed at toppling strongman Manuel Noriega and
who mounted the coup knew that the United States would wel- arresting him for drug trafficking, came as the Soviet empire
come their move, which proved to be the case. Gen. Augusto was in the process of disintegrating. With its dissolution, the
Pinochet, who headed the military junta, ruled Chile until 1988. Cold War came to an end.
In that year, he lost a plebiscite that he had called.
The 1977–1981 Jimmy Carter administration, with its new Part III
insistence on human rights observance, made a modest differ-
ence in U.S. policy toward a brutal military regime in Argentina, Once the USSR collapsed, the classic justification for sup-
then in the midst of a “dirty war” against the left. Carter had porting autocrats in the Americas disappeared. Indeed, at
a stronger effect in Guatemala, working with Congress to de- roughly the same time as the Soviet Union was fading away,
clare an arms embargo against a government whose counterin- military rule in Chile ended as the result of a national plebiscite.
surgency war against leftist guerrillas was turning its country Brazilian military rulers had anticipated the Chileans by relin-
into a slaughterhouse. quishing power in 1985. And voters in Nicaragua stunned the
President Ronald Reagan, upon taking office in 1981, re- Sandinista government—and its leftist supporters worldwide—
versed Carter’s course in Guatemala, among other countries. by voting in 1989 for a U.S.-supported politician as president.
Nonetheless, Carter’s administration left a lasting impression Peace accords in El Salvador and Guatemala followed.
in Latin America, persuading many that American power could Echoing these political developments, governments almost
be redirected from automatic support for military rulers. everywhere in the region made a break from the statist eco-
Reagan poured American aid into El Salvador, where an nomic policies that had marked virtually their entire histories,
elected civilian government fought a well-organized Marxist both in colonial and postcolonial times. Several trends con-
guerrilla army. The guerrillas enjoyed close coordination be- verged to swing the biggest countries in the region toward U.S.-
tween their military and political wings. But on the govern- style capitalism, the system that outlasted the Soviet Union.
ment side, civilians had little control over the U.S.-backed mil- The Latin American dictatorships and authoritarian regimes,
itary, which was closely linked to death squads that murdered whether of rightist (Argentina, for example) or of rhetorically
thousands of alleged guerrilla sympathizers. During 1980s, the leftist (Mexico) stripe, looked increasingly incapable of man-
Reagan administration also funneled weapons and other assis- aging national economies. That reality was clear to ordinary
citizens of the Americas who had to cope, for instance, with
21 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes The History of the CIA (New state-owned telephone companies that took months to install
York: Doubleday, 2007), 190. phone lines.
 INTRODUCTION 13

Under presidents such as Carlos Saúl Menem of Argentina banks for $12 billion to businesspeople who included cronies
and Gonzalo (“Goni”) Sánchez de Lozada of Bolivia, Latin of high-level politicians helped fuel a financial crisis in 1994.
America in the 1990s became the world leader in privatization, In its wake, the government renationalized 12 banks—part of
accounting for 55 percent of developing countries’ revenues a bailout that came with a price tag of $62 billion. “Mexicans,
from sales of government-owned businesses worldwide during does it seem right to you that the profits go, once again, to
that decade.22 the few,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then president of the
Meanwhile, protectionism, another longstanding feature of leftwing Partido de la Revolucion Democratica, said in 1998,
Latin American statism, was colliding with growing consumer “while the losses go, once again to the majority?”24
demand for higher-quality products made abroad—demand López Obrador was part of a wave of Latin Ameri-
that couldn’t be satisfied by the region’s smugglers, ranging can politicians and activists who condemned the onset of
from airline crews bringing in items for friends or acquain- “neoliberalism”— “liberal” in the European sense of open mar-
tances to gangs of professional contrabandistas. kets. In the Americas and Europe, critics of the process tended
Mexico, which had begun privatizing hundreds of notori- to use that term, while advocates of privatization and related
ously inefficient state enterprises in the 1980s, took the most measures typically favored the term “free markets.”
dramatic step toward opening its economy by approving the Beneath these terminology differences lay a reality in which
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a treaty be- countries characterized by deeply rooted socioeconomic in-
tween the three countries of North America. NAFTA took ef- equality arguably proved a poor environment for economic
fect in 1994 following U.S. ratification. The trade deal threw shock treatment. “Neoliberal reform takes no prisoners,” Jerry
open Mexico’s long-closed economy to a wave of U.S. imports. Haar, director of the Inter-American Business and Labor pro-
The Mexican “party-state,” the PRI, had thrown its weight be- gram at the University of Miami, told the New York Times in
hind NAFTA. But the sudden influx of U.S. companies, ac- 1999, “and a lot of these governments have failed to provide a
companied by a wave of privatizations of Mexican companies, safety net or focus on the tax and regulatory policies necessary
eroded the party’s control of Mexico’s economy. Those eco- to make free market development work and target allocations
nomic developments hastened the collapse in 2000 of the po- to those in need.”25
litical monopoly the PRI had enjoyed since 1929 as a result By then, the political ripple effects were already evident
of its uninterrupted control of the presidency. The entire chain with the election of Chávez in Venezuela. In 2002, the Latino-
of events illustrated a paradoxical quality of relations with the barometro annual survey of 17 Latin American countries re-
United States. The PRI’s critics on the left tended to oppose ported that 68 percent of respondents found that privatization
NAFTA as a vehicle for putting Mexico at the service of Amer- hadn’t benefited their countries.26 Over the next few years, as
ican corporations, yet the trade agreement also helped topple left-populist leaders such as Chávez, or social democrats in the
the PRI. Lula da Silva mode, rose to the presidencies of their countries,
The U.S. foreign policy establishment, which had enjoyed privatizations ground to a halt. Chávez, in fact, reversed the
a long relationship with the PRI, greeted its dethroning in 2000 trend, nationalizing the country’s major electric utility as well
as part of the worldwide spread of democracy and free-market as two oil-exploration projects owned by ExxonMobil.
capitalism. But, elsewhere in the Americas, the sudden shock The United States hadn’t created the neo-capitalist trend,
of major economic policy shifts proved to be more politically but U.S. officials lost no opportunities to promote and praise
volatile than supporters of the privatization and free-trade wave it. President Bill Clinton, who pushed hard for U.S. ratification
had anticipated. of NAFTA, had described it as a template for a hemispheric
Evidence that newly privatized firms proved more efficient trade deal, the “Free Trade Area of the Americas.” He chaired
and profitable than they’d been in government hands did little a 1994 summit meeting in Miami of political and business
to comfort thousands of workers who lost jobs in the process. leaders from the Americas intended to launch a campaign for
The median privatized firm in the region fired 24 percent of its the proposed pact. “Future generations will look back on the
employees.23
In addition, the privatization process in some countries
showed little sign of the “transparency” that officials of the 24 Quoted in Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon, Opening Mexico

United States and international organizations were preaching The Making of a Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
as a democratic free-market virtue. In Mexico, under the PRI 2004), 366–367.
(whose U.S.-trained technocratic wing began the privatiza- 25 Quoted in Larry Rohter, “After a Hard Year, Latin America

tion process in the 1980s) the sale in the early 1990s of 18 Looks for Better Times,” New York Times, December 20, 1999,
C26.
22 Alberto Chong and Florencio López de Silanes, “The Truth 26 Cited in Jorge Carrera et al., “Privatization Discontent and

about Privatization in Latin America,” Inter-American Devel- Its Determinants: Evidence from Latin America,” University
opment Bank, October 2003, 8, http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/ of La Plata (Argentina) and University of Milan (Italy), March
getdocument.aspx?docnum=771361 (accessed February 24, 2005, 38, www.iadb.org/res/includes/pub hits.cfm?pub id=S-
2008). 500&pub file name=pubS-500.pdf (accessed February 24,
23 Chong and López de Silanes, 15. 2008).
14 INTRODUCTION

Miami summit as a moment when the course of history in the form of Drug Enforcement Administration agents and military
Americas changed for the better,” Clinton said.27 trainers, include Peru, Bolivia, Haiti, and Mexico. Many com-
More than a decade later, prospects for the hemispheric mentators have likened the antidrug offensive to the Cold War.
pact are dim. And the disenchantment with, at least, the most But differences outnumber similarities. Communism was seen
extreme or corrupt versions of the free-market package revived as a threat largely because it could win the hearts and minds of
skepticism and animosity toward the United States. people on America’s doorstep.
Yet attempts to establish a radical alternative to the neolib- To be sure, drug consumption has grown steadily in Latin
eral model have been foundering. In Venezuela, milk and other America as well, one reason that Colombians aren’t alone in
basic foods have become unavailable while whiskey and other supporting some form of antidrug aid. Mexico, which is see-
luxury goods abound. These results of price controls on sta- ing horrific violence by narcotraficantes in its northern bor-
ples help explain the defeat of Chávez’s proposed constitutional der region, has been more concerned to avoid the presence of
changes in 2007. “Official statistics show no signs of a substan- armed Americans on Mexico soil. Some Mexicans also fear
tial improvement in the well-being of ordinary Venezuelans, that a built-up anti–drug force could ride roughshod over hu-
and in many cases there have been worrying deteriorations,” man rights. Human rights activists have concluded, however,
Francisco Rodrı́guez, chief economist of the Venezuelan Na- that their concerns aren’t shared by President Felipe Calderón’s
tional Assembly (the country’s congress) in 2000–2004, wrote administration.
in an article published in early 2008. “The percentage of un-
derweight babies, for example, increased from 8.4 percent to
9.1 percent between 1999 and 2006. During the same period,
the percentage of households without access to running water
Migration
rose from 7.2 percent to 9.4 percent, and the percentage of fam- Immigration has drawn the Americas closer together so-
ilies living in dwellings with earthen floors multiplied almost cially and economically more than any policy, trend, or event
threefold, from 2.5 percent to 6.8 percent.”28 ever did. The United States is home to more than 19 million
Politically, Chávez’s anti-Americanism remains undimmed. people born in Latin America and the Caribbean (according to
But its use as a mobilizing doctrine, given the failing results of 2005 data, the most recent available).29 People born in Mexico
the president’s economic moves, may have its limits. Never in- make up the single biggest group of immigrants to the United
vaded by the United States, Venezuela has never been a hotbed States from the Americas, and of the entire U.S. foreign-born
of opposition to the nearby superpower. population. Natives of Latin America and the Caribbean region
Colombia provides another example of the variances in U.S. working in the United States sent a total of $45 billion to their
relations in the region. Most people in the region view Ameri- families back home in 2006, the Inter-American Development
can military might through the prism of colonial histories that Bank estimates (counting the contributions of those working
inspire distrust for imperial armies. Yet a majority of Colom- elsewhere, remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean
bians support a president, Álvaro Uribe, who makes his mil- reached an estimated $62 billion).30 This spontaneous family-
itary relationship with the United States a cornerstone of his assistance program exceeds what the region receives in foreign
administration, as did Uribe’s predecessor. The United States is direct investment and foreign aid combined. Naturally, Mexico
helping Colombia wage a counterinsurgency war against guer- is by far the biggest beneficiary ($23 billion in 2006), but ev-
rilla armies who have been trying to topple the Colombian state ery single country in Latin America and the Caribbean receives
since the 1960s. The guerrillas’ deep involvement in the drug remittances that are counted in the millions of dollars.
trade, and their reliance on kidnapping as a fund-raising and The enormity of the migration flow to the United States
terrorism tool, have earned them the revulsion of most Colom- and, increasingly, to Canada marks a widely shared failure to
bians. (So much so that Uribe has even been able to make a provide jobs and possibilities for social advancement for those
disarmament deal with antiguerrilla paramilitaries on favorable born in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. In
terms to them, without paying a high political cost. Mexico, that failure, and the role that NAFTA may have played
U.S. law enforcement and military aid to Colombia pre- in encouraging Mexican workers to migrate, became major
dates Uribe by decades. The assistance grows out of the “war issues in the 2005 presidential campaign. As the candidates
on drugs” (a phrase first used by President Richard M. Nixon in fought for power, 14 percent of the Mexican workforce was
1971). Other countries that have received aid, sometimes in the employed in the United States, according to calculations by the

27 Quoted in Tracy Wilkinson and William R. Long, “Ameri-

cas Summit Ends; Clinton Hails ‘Watershed,’” Los Angeles Times, 29 “Foreign Born by Region of Birth: 2000 and 2005,” Pew

December 12, 1994, A1. Hispanic Center, http://pewhispanic.org/files/other/foreignborn/

28 Francisco Rodrı́guez, “An Empty Revolution: The Unful- Table-2.pdf (accessed December 3, 2007).
filled Promises of Hugo Chávez,” Foreign Affairs (March–April 30 See “The Largest Remittances Market,” Inter-American De-

2008), http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87205-p0/ velopment Bank, March 28, 2007, http://www.iadb.org/research/

francisco-rodriguez/an-empty-revolution.html (accessed March 9, homepageDetails.cfm?language=English&conid=61&page=1&
2008). frame=1 (accessed December 6, 2007).
 INTRODUCTION 15

nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think- Class distinctions that take racial form appear even in coun-
tank.31 tries that might seem, to outsiders, not to present an opportunity
American candidates in the primary elections for the 2008 for color prejudice to arise. In Haiti, where the Creole word
U.S. presidential race have followed the example of their Mex- blan, which literally means “white,” signifies “foreigner,” be-
ican counterparts by making immigration a major issue. No- cause virtually the entire nation is black, gradations of skin tone
tably, politicians campaigning for the Republican presidential have played a key role. The so-called mulatto elite dominated
nomination decried the presence of millions of Latin Ameri- the country for much of its post-1804 independent existence
cans with no authorization to be in the country. (a division explicitly reinforced in the early 20th century by
The sound and fury marked a change in treatment of immi- U.S. military occupiers). Language also works to some ex-
gration, specifically Latin American immigration, by national tent as a class signifier: All Haitians speak Kreyòl but the
politicians, including the patron saint of modern Republican- poorest speak nothing else. People with at least some education
ism, Ronald W. Reagan. In 1986, Reagan signed an immigra- also speak French.
tion law overhaul that granted an opportunity for legal status The culture of the neighboring Dominican Republic, whose
to millions of immigrants who were in the country illegally. majority population would qualify as black by U.S. standards,
When that law was found to have made no provision for people also shows a preference for lighter skin and a disdain for
from El Salvador who had fled civil war to settle in the United Haitians. Dictator Rafael Trujillo actively promoted hatred of
States, Reagan issued an order that these migrants not be de- Haitians. Even worse, he ordered a 1937 massacre of an es-
ported. He acted on a plea by President José Napoleón Duarte timated 20,000 Haitians in the Dominican border region. His
(1926–1990) of El Salvador to grant temporary legal status to protegé and eventual successor, Joaquı́n Balaguer, dealt with
his countrymen. Duarte pointed out that El Salvador couldn’t one rival’s ambitions to unseat him by spreading the word that
accommodate an influx of citizens newly deported from the the candidate, who was dark black, was really Haitian. Mis-
United States. Reagan formally rejected Duarte’s petition, but treatment of Haitian migrant workers and refugees is a constant
the U.S. president added, “There will be no large-scale depor- feature of Dominican political life.
tations.”32 Some of today’s Republican politicians might call In one Caribbean country, Cuba, the reigning ideology is
that presidential vow an amnesty. explicitly egalitarian. Nearly a half-century of Communist rule
Duarte had told Reagan that 400,000 to 600,000 refugees, hasn’t sufficed, however, to dissolve a social system of racial
about 10 percent of El Salvador’s population, sent family mem- preferences growing out of the colonial plantation economy.
bers back home as much as $600 million a year. By 2005, the Even diehard loyalists concede that the shortage of Afro-
number of Salvadoran nationals in the United States had grown Cubans at the upper levels of the system is not coinciden-
to nearly 1 million. Thanks in part to Reagan’s refusal to deport tal. The imbalance has become more striking as Cuba’s black
Salvadorans, total remittances to El Salvador from immigrants and mixed-race share of the population has grown, because
abroad reached $3.3 billion in 2006. those who leave Cuba legally or illegally are disproportion-
Meanwhile, two decades of booming migration to the ately white.
United States have forced a consensus throughout the region Another twist on the race/class dynamic comes in the
that no country would be capable of taking back all those who eastern Caribbean region. There, the major social, political,
have left. A related observation that became commonplace and economic divide lies between African-descended and
throughout the region is that migration serves as a safety valve East Indian–descended populations. The twin-island country
for social and political discontent, as well as a relief mechanism of Trinidad and Tobago and the nearby mainland nations of
for economic stress. Guyana have all experienced political conflicts that reflect
the ethnic split in populations. Racial expression of class
differences is less pronounced elsewhere in the Caribbean,
Race and Class where the population tends to be homogeneously of African
descent.
The interplay between race and class that marks U.S. society In the continental Americas, the black-white dynamic so
has counterparts throughout the hemisphere. Broadly speak- familiar in the United States plays out most notably in Brazil,
ing, “whiter” or “European” features tend to be more favored whose large black and mixed-race population—estimates vary
over those that show “Indian” or “African” descent. The rise of from 40 percent to half the population—enjoys little representa-
populist movements in much of the region represents a rebel- tion at the upper levels of politics, business, and the professions
lion against social barriers usually expressed in racial or ethnic but are disproportionately found among Brazil’s poorest. Easy-
terms. going personal relations between Brazilians of all colors long
camouflaged a connection between class and race, one that in
31 See “What Kind of Work Do Immigrants Do?” Migration recent years has become an open topic.
Policy Institute, January 2004, http://www.migrationpolicy.org/ In Colombia, Afro-Colombians concentrated in communi-
pubs/five industry occupation foreign born.pdf. ties along the Pacific coast have long complained of discrimina-
32 Quoted in Robert Pear, “Reagan Rejects Salvadoran Plea on tion, but at about 4 percent of the population lack the numbers
Illegal Aliens,” New York Times, May 15, 1987, A1. to make their grievances a national political issue.
16 INTRODUCTION

In the rest of the continental Americas, the major race/class Indeed throughout the region, the persistence of links be-
gulf lies between Indian- and European-descended popula- tween race or ethnicity and class serves to illustrate the gulf
tions. The nuances of these divides can be confusing. Given between dreams of just social orders and the day-to-day reali-
centuries of mixed relations—mestizaje—millions of citizens ties that the vast majority of the region’s citizens face.
who identify with their larger societies are physically indistin-
guishable from members of indigenous communities, making
cultural self-identification the criterion. This mixed-heritage Introduction to South America
legacy serves to increase the social premium for “European”
appearance. Historical Background
That is even more the case in Paraguay, the landlocked
country bordering Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina. There, in National revolutions throughout the South American con-
a country where an estimated 90 percent of the population tinent had by 1830 created all of the countries that exist today.
speaks the indigenous language, Guaranı, the vast majority of Not all of them were full-fledged countries, however, and some
the population is of mixed ancestry. Some 75 to 80 percent of borders have changed considerably.
Guaranı́-speaking Paraguayans also speak Spanish. Despite the Over the course of the 19th century, South America en-
homogeneity, communities that identified completely with the tered the world economy. But it did so as an exporter of
indigenous culture suffered brutal repression during the 1970s, commodities—Argentina’s wheat, for example, and Bolivia’s
when right-wing ideology permeated the ruling classes of the tin. As a result, the continent became dependent on up-and-
entire region, especially southern South America. down market cycles. Above all, South America was late to
Argentina paid the heaviest price for the rightist orientation develop industries that matched those of Europe, depending
of its rulers during the military dictatorship of the 1970s and instead on the Old World for imports of manufactured goods.
early 1980s. Perversely fitting for a country so self-consciously Indeed, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, South Amer-
“European” in its culture, Argentina is the only nation to suffer ica maintained closer economic and cultural links to Europe
from Europe’s most noxious export, anti-Semitism. Hatred of than to the United States.
Jews played a role in the “dirty war” of the 1970s and early Edwin Williamson of the University of Edinburgh ques-
1980s, reflecting the Argentine security establishment’s em- tions whether the continent’s countries could have taken any
brace of the Old World notion that Communism and Judaism other path of development, given their relative lack of capital
amounted to the same thing. and the state of their educational systems. In any event, South
In three Andean countries, the late 20th and early 21st cen- America imported more than products. By the end of the 19th
turies have been marked by assertions of political power by century, the old Catholic Church–dominated ideas were fading.
Indian majorities. In two of those countries, Peru and Bolivia, “The educated classes were absorbing a truly secular, materi-
presidents who claimed their Indian roots as a point of pride alist culture,” Williamson writes in The Penguin History of
were inaugurated in 2001 and 2006, respectively, for the first Latin America (1992). Some of these imported ideas were wel-
time since independence. And in Ecuador, the newly mobilized comed because they validated the high opinion of themselves
Indian population has become the key actor in the country’s po- that the upper levels of society already possessed. “White”
litical life. peoples were superior to all others, according to the Social
Social discrimination continues in those countries, how- Darwinist doctrine, which was running strong in Europe (as
ever. That is the case in Guatemala as well, where the wounds well as the United States). And, Williamson says, “Strong gov-
of a civil war marked by guerrillas’ attempted mobilization ernment, even dictatorship, was necessary to contain the forces
of indigenous communities, who were then massacred by the of regression while material conditions could be transformed
military, still run deep. to pave the way for genuine liberal democracy.”33
Mexico’s upper-level political and business class tends to- The notion that naturally disordered societies need the firm
ward more European features than the country at large. Yet hand of the State resonated on both the left and the right
Mexico’s race-class dynamic varies from that of other countries throughout the 20th century, playing naturally into the cul-
where large Indian populations survived the conquest. Mexico’s tural affinity for caudillos. Right-wing parties and politicians
independence war against the Spanish was fought largely by were more frank in their allegiance to the doctrine of authoritar-
Indians under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. And while ian leadership. Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006), one-time
Peru and Bolivia didn’t elect Indian-identified presidents until military dictator of Chile, was the last—at least for now—of
the early 21st century, one of Mexico’s most revered presidents, the South American rightist advocates of the doctrine.
Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian from the state of Oaxaca, first As export-oriented development expanded from the late
took office in 1858. Mexico’s 1910 revolution led to a new so- 19th century and into the early 20th, this economic activity
cial code in which the nation’s mestizo heritage became part of took a form that did little to encourage indigenous capitalism.
official political culture. In recent years, still-unresolved politi- To a great extent, the resources being exported were in the
cal tensions in the heavily Indian states of Chiapas and Oaxaca
evidence the Mexican system’s failure to fully carry out the 33 Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America

revolution’s promises. (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 283.

 INTRODUCTION 17

hands of foreign companies. Argentina provided a dramatic tion to workers’ conditions gave him lasting influence. (Eva,
example. British companies owned essentially the entire mod- despite her enormous charisma, was never president, though
ern sector of the Argentine economy, including the railways she and her husband were contemplating running for president
and the meat-packing plants that supplied the export market. and vice president, respectively, when she died in 1952 at the
There and elsewhere, a near-absence of Argentine-owned in- age of 33). But, like Vargas, his regime wasn’t as successful as
dustry gave potential businesses little in the way of economic Mussolini’s, or that of Spain’s Francisco Franco, in establish-
environment in which they could pursue their goals. The native ing full control over all institutions, notably, in Perón’s case,
upper classes, meanwhile, saw no reason to do anything with the Roman Catholic Church. Perón did, however, sympathize
their wealth but use it for pleasure rather than for investment at openly with the Axis powers during World War II. Resisting
home. The resentment that this frivolousness created evolved U.S. pressure to side with the Allies, Argentina stayed officially
into a steadily building social pressure for social justice. neutral during the war. Brazil’s Vargas proved much more flexi-
Doctrines that laid the intellectual foundations for alter- ble, going so far as to declare war on Germany and dispatching
native social orders began to develop, partly with the help of troops to fight on the Italian front in 1944.
ideologies from Europe. As early as the 1920s, efforts began
to adapt left-wing ideologies to the far different conditions of From Coups to Courtrooms
South America. Peruvian political activist and writer Vı́ctor
Raúl Haya de la Torre founded the Alianza Popular Revolu- Golpes de estado—Spanish for coups d’etat—found a wel-
cionaria Americana (APRA), which melded European social- coming climate in South America. The continent didn’t invent
democratic doctrine about state ownership of the economy with them, but coups proved to be an efficient way of resolving
Latin American ideas about the need to end the oppression of power disputes in countries with poorly developed systems of
the Indian masses. APRA, which explicitly refused to subordi- political representation, when these existed at all. For a region
nate itself to Soviet Communism, made deep inroads in Peru- that welcomed caudillos, coups replaced elections as a means
vian politics. The party remains a force; President Alán Garcı́a of political succession.
is an aprista. One of the world’s most coup-prone countries, in fact, lies
At the same time as Haya de la Torre was formulating in South America. Bolivia has suffered nearly 200 coups and
his ideas, another left-wing writer and activist, José Carlos countercoups, by the CIA’s count, since it gained independence
Mariátegui, was developing a harder-line version, which drew in 1982. That number stands out, but the penchant for coups has
a direct link between socialism and Indian liberation. The latter plagued every single country on the continent, in most cases
goal would be accomplished largely by restoring Indian com- well into the final decades of the 20th century.
munal ownership of their ancestral lands. “Socialism preaches In the 21st century’s first decade, the collective body politic
solidarity with and the redemption of the working classes,” he may finally have built up resistance to coups. The strongest
wrote in an essay cited by Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. evidence is national courts’ willingness to hold ex-dictators
Smith in Modern Latin America (1989). “Four-fifths of Peru’s accountable for their crimes. Gen. Pinochet, the Chilean dic-
working classes consist of Andean Indians. Therefore, social- tator who had taken power in a 1973 coup, spent his last years
ism means the redemption of these Indians.”34 Mariátegui’s fighting off prosecution (his surviving relatives were indicted
linkage can be seen, in debased form, in the doctrines of in 2007 for looting state assets). Former Peruvian President
Sendero Luminoso, the guerrilla army behind an insurgency Alberto Fujimori, who had carried out a constitutional coup to
in Peru in the 1980s and early 1990s, which made a practice remain in office, went on trial in Lima in late 2007 on charges of
of assassinating opponents on the left and terrorizing Indian human rights abuse. Argentina has been trying officers—and
communities into cooperation. a priest—accused of participating in the “dirty war” against
European fascism also appeared in early 20th-century alleged leftists.
South America. The ideology’s appeal was largely confined Nevertheless, the absence of coups doesn’t guarantee sta-
to two countries, but they were two of the most influential bility. Bolivia, again, stands as the clearest example. Specifi-
countries on the continent. In Brazil, the Estado Nôvo regime cally, the country traded coups for popular uprisings—at best
of Getúlio Vargas, which lasted from 1930 to 1945, embodied a form of direct, if rough, democracy; at worst, mob rule. In
many of the doctrines put into practice by Benito Mussolini, 2003, mass demonstrations and street violence forced Presi-
including state control of the economy and a virtual absence of dent Gonzalo (“Goni”) Sánchez de Lozada to flee the country.
civil liberties. These features were moderated, at least in prin- His vice president and successor, Carlos Mesa, resigned under
ciple, by benefits for workers. A similar model was adopted in popular pressure. Neighboring Ecuador has seen a similar suc-
Argentina under Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974), an Army cession of sudden presidential departures. The three presidents
colonel whose regime ran from 1943 to 1955 and again in who preceded the present chief executive, Fernando Correa,
1973–1974. Perón’s personal magnetism—not to mention that who began his term in 2007, were forced from office.
of his second wife and political partner, Eva—and his atten- As for old-fashioned golpes, the most recent one attempted
as of this writing came in 2002, when oppositionists allied
34 Quoted in Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modern
with a military unit toppled President Chávez of Venezuela.
Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 202. The coup collapsed in less than two days, as those who had
18 INTRODUCTION

mounted it fought among themselves. A loyalist army faction other countries’ prosecutions of past leaders and followers of
freed Chávez to return to the presidential palace. The golpistas regimes born in coups. Born in barracks, golpes are being put
had accused the president of harboring dictatorial ambitions, to rest in courtrooms.
so they did their own cause little good by adopting the standard
tactic of military strongmen. To be sure, Chávez himself had
led a failed coup attempt in 1992 before embracing electoral Introduction to Central America
democracy.
Countries with little experience of coups would seem to Historical Background
be favored by fortune. But seizures of power don’t represent
the only danger. Colombia has suffered only three golpes in its The leaders of newly independent Central America saw the
history, the most recent one as far back as 1953, yet it leads isthmus as an ideal environment for a federation of all its coun-
the region in the frequency, durability, and savagery of its civil tries. That vision was realized relatively briefly in the years
conflicts. From independence in 1819 until the end of the 19th following independence from Spain. Since that interlude, how-
century, Colombia underwent no fewer than 55 internal wars, ever, each country has followed separate paths. The political
some of them regional in scope, though no less violent. Un- cultures that grew out of Central American countries’ histories
fortunately, the tendency to armed conflict only grew stronger share some elements, but otherwise diverge sharply.
in the 20th century. Equally unfortunately for those who see Early plans for a united Central America sprang from a
political parties as a countervailing force to war, virtually all of colonial heritage they all shared. The countries had all belonged
these wars were fought under the banners of the Conservative to the Kingdom of Guatemala, itself part of New Spain, whose
(large landowners) and Liberal (workers and small-business capital was Mexico City. Nevertheless, during the period of
people) parties, though some of the conflicts were intraparty Spanish colonialism, today’s Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras,
affairs. El Salvador, and Guatemala had already established individual
A stunningly brutal period that dates from 1948 roughly identities. However, today’s Mexican state of Chiapas was then
to 1958 left marks on Colombia that endure to this day. The part of Guatemala, as was today’s nation of Belize, and Panama
period known simply as La Violencia lay the groundwork for was part of Colombia.
an insurgency by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de After independence in 1821, some leaders of the former
Colombia (FARC). That nominally Marxist guerrilla organiza- kingdom accepted a postcolonial version of their former ar-
tion, founded in the mid-1960s, controls parts of several rural rangement, as a part of newly independent Mexico. But the
regions. The FARC enjoys a big enough revenue from the co- latter, hearing rumbles of discontent from nationalist Central
caine industry and kidnapping for ransom to endure widespread Americans, declared the isthmus countries free to establish an
hatred in the society at large—a response that would doom autonomous existence. Yet the “Federal Republic of Central
any ordinary civilian. (The smaller, Cuban-influenced Ejercito America” disintegrated amid civil war in 1838. Later attempts
de Liberacion Nacional has been more open than the FARC throughout the 19th century to reunite the old kingdom also
to disarmament talks with the government.) President Uribe’s provoked armed conflicts and also failed.
strategic decision to eliminate the FARC once and for all as a Central America’s early history of union and division helps
military threat is showing results. In early March 2008, the explain the paradox of small, neighboring countries whose po-
Colombian military killed the guerrillas’ number-two com- litical traditions show marked differences. Resemblances do
mander. Less than one week later, the Colombian govern- exist. Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua suffered horrific
ment announced that another senior FARC commander had armed conflict in the 1980s and into the 1990s and are expe-
been killed by one of his own men, who then surrendered to riencing alarming levels of criminal violence today. Political
authorities. violence hasn’t entirely disappeared either. Honduras, which
Links to the drug trade characterize not only the FARC but avoided most of the warfare that gripped its neighbors, has not
their opposite number, the “self-defense” (paramilitary) forces, escaped the criminal violence plague.
originally formed at the behest of big landowners. The paramil- One Central American country, however, evaded both civil
itaries, now partly disarmed, worked for years in cooperation war and its sequel. In this and in most other respects, Costa
with some elements of the army. A political scandal, still under Rica stands as an exception in its region, and in the entire hemi-
way, has produced evidence that paramilitaries exerted influ- sphere. Costa Rica’s good fortune began in its early colonial
ence in Colombia’s congress, by way of close relations with life. Geographically more oriented toward the Pacific than the
some lawmakers. The “parapolitical” affair demonstrates the Atlantic, Costa Rica was for that reason out of Spain’s eye, and
extent to which Colombian politics have been subverted by distant from the early postindependence conflicts. The caudil-
what Colombians call “armed actors.” In effect, the paramili- los who ran Costa Rica during its first century also differed
taries tried covertly to penetrate government institutions rather from their counterparts. They favored practical measures such
than openly take them over. as establishing sound school systems and diversifying agricul-
At the same time, the scandal demonstrates the vigor of ture from coffee into bananas. “They turned out to be ‘pro-
Colombia’s press and judiciary, which have maintained pres- gressive’ in the nineteenth-century sense, which meant that
sure on the government and political class. That effort parallels they were more than ready to use the authority of the state to
 INTRODUCTION 19

promote economic development,” writes a longtime historian that late 20th-century conflict. Paradoxically, the titular head
of the Americas, Lester D. Langley, then of the University of of government for much of that time was a centrist Christian
Georgia.35 Democrat politician who represented a strain of reformism in
By mid-20th century, Costa Rica, peaceful and democratic, Salvadoran politics that developed in the wake of the 1932
had abolished its military, making it a worldwide model. In the massacre, but couldn’t overcome the repressive impulse of the
1980s, then-President Oscar Arias used his nation’s peaceful, military and the business elite.
democratic tradition as political capital in his efforts to encour- Leading the insurgency was a coalition of Marxist par-
age peace negotiations in El Salvador and Nicaragua, efforts ties who fought as allies in the Farabundo Martı́ National
that won him the Nobel Prize in 1987. His peace brokering was Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martı́ para la Liberación
credited with playing an important role in persuading warring Nacional—FMLN). The FMLN took its name from a young
sides to quit fighting. Communist militant who helped spark the failed insur-
The contrast with Costa Rica’s neighbors could hardly have gency of 1932 and was captured and executed. The FMLN
been starker. Guatemala’s Spanish conqueror, Pedro de Al- did assassinate some enemies, including unarmed Ameri-
varado, made himself notorious even in the 15th century for can State Department officials and U.S. military personnel
the violence he unleashed on the country’s original inhabitants. on two occasions, showing greater ruthlessness and logisti-
Hugh Thomas, a leading historian of Spain and Spanish Amer- cal capability than the hapless young leftists of 1932 had
ica, writes that Alvarado’s career was characterized by “brutal displayed.
. . . unconcern for human life.”36 Whether Alvarado can be In the 1980s, however, assassinations were primarily a tac-
blamed for Guatemala’s subsequent horrors, the least that can tic of the political right. Killings of alleged leftists often were
be said is that he got the postconquest history off to a bad start. carried out by technically anonymous “death squads,” which
Indeed, relations between the country’s Indian majority and had close ties to elements of the military. Though that connec-
its mixed-race (known in Guatemala as ladino) and European- tion was known to all concerned, the military wasn’t in a po-
descended rulers have been defined, for a longer period of time sition to conduct formal executions. That step was presumed
than anywhere else in the hemisphere, by the rulers’ emphasis unacceptable to the U.S. public, hence impossible, given the
on repression. indispensable military aid that the United States provided to
In modern times, Guatemala’s civil conflict lasted longer government forces.
than that of any other Central American country, and as long as The Nationalist Republican Alliance (Alianza Republicana
that of any in the entire hemisphere, Colombia excepted. The Nacionalista—ARENA) a hard-right party (which has since
toll was enormous. An estimated 200,000 people, mostly high- moved toward the center) led by a former army major, Roberto
lands Indians, died during the counterinsurgency campaigns of d’Aubuisson, was at the center of death-squad activities. A
1960–1996, the country’s Commission for Historical Clarifi- “Commission on the Truth” established as part of the peace ac-
cation concluded in 1999. A peace agreement negotiated with cord concluded that d’Aubuisson formed the death squad that
the help of the United Nations created the commission. Despite committed one of the most notorious of the war’s killings of in-
the formal end of hostilities, political and criminal violence dividuals, the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.
still wracks the country. And Guatemala’s tormented history The churchman had denounced the military and its repression
bears another distinction: The 1954 CIA-managed coup that of leftists and liberals.
overthrew an elected left-leaning government marked a key Shortly after Romero’s killing, a sometimes violent political
moment in early Cold War history. conflict devolved into full-fledged warfare. The war ground on
Like Guatemala, El Salvador spent its formative first cen- through the entire decade of the 1980s, with guerrillas even-
tury under the dominion of large landowners. Until civil con- tually controlling a swath of territory in the eastern zone of
flict burst into civil war in 1979, the signature event that marked the Massachusetts-sized country. But a 1989 offensive in San
the country’s political landscape was an aborted Communist- Salvador that the FMLN hoped would topple the government
led military revolt and peasant uprising in 1932, followed by failed to do so. The defeat pressured the guerrillas to agree to
a massacre of suspected communists and their sympathizers. peace negotiations.
The Salvadoran army, which had taken power in a coup, killed United Nations–sponsored peace talks led to the signing of
at least 10,000 people; the country’s total population was then a peace accord in 1992. The FMLN now competes for votes as
1.5 million. Salvadorans dubbed the event La Matanza (the a legal political party, an outcome that seemed inconceivable
Massacre). during the civil war. The party’s candidates have won elections
The massacre both prepared the ground for and foretold the for mayor of the capital, San Salvador, and other cities, and for
savagery of the war that tore apart the country in the 1980s. At congress, but never the presidency.
least 70,000 people, civilians, soldiers, and guerrillas, died in At street level, the war prompted developments that under-
lay the creation of a multinational street gang culture. Hundreds
35 Lester Langley, Central America The Real Stakes (New of thousands of Salvadorans who fled the war for the United
York: Crown, 1985), 112. States settled in the Los Angeles area. There, many refugees
36 Hugh Thomas, Conquest Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall or their children found their way into a subculture of Mexican-
of Old Mexico (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 595. American gangs that had developed over decades. When some
20 INTRODUCTION

of the Salvadorans were deported to their homeland, or went in Central American politics for four decades, had ground to
back on their own, they took with them the mindset and rituals a halt. But with the lessening of chances for global military
of gang life. Many of the country’s slum-dwellers, hardened by confrontation, the end of the Cold War also prompted a sharp
a war that had also disrupted families, proved easy recruits for drop-off in American interest in Central America.
gangs, which have since spread through the region, especially Following Chamorro’s five-year term, politics in Nicaragua
in Honduras and Guatemala. reverted for a time to the unashamedly corrupt style that had
As war was brewing in El Salvador during the 1970s, the marked the Somoza regime. The most blatant abuser was Presi-
same process was under way in nearby Nicaragua. There, Anas- dent Arnoldo Alemán, who stole millions of dollars during his
tasio Somoza, who had essentially inherited power from his dic- 1997–2002 term, including for luxury travel on government
tator father, proved unable to meet the challenge. After years credit cards. Alemán was sentenced to 20 years in prison but
of underground organizing, the Sandinista National Libera- was allowed to serve it at his mansion. From there, he forged
tion Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional—FSLN) a working alliance with his one-time ideological foe, Sandin-
adopted a new strategy of allying with members of the upper ista leader Daniel Ortega, who was reelected president in 2006,
class who were alienated from the corruption of the Somoza bringing Nicaragua’s political course full circle.
regime. Pedro Joaquı́n Chamorro, editor of a major newspa-
per, La Prensa, was a classic example. But his role as socially
respectable oppositionist was apparently too much for the dicta- Introduction to North America
torship: He was assassinated in 1978. All fingers pointed to the
regime. Protest riots escalated into an insurrection which, by Each of North America’s three countries occupy such vast
1979, toppled the Somoza dynasty. By then, the United States, territories that the continent they occupy is rarely seen as a
the Somoza family’s original patron, had abandoned Somoza. whole. The continent presents the sharpest contrasts in the
The Carter administration cut off all military aid following the hemisphere. In the middle lies the country frequently labeled
Chamorro assassination. the world’s sole remaining superpower. To its south sits Mex-
At a time when right-wing dictators still ruled major coun- ico, one of the giants of Latin America. Mexico now boasts the
tries in the hemisphere, the Sandinistas found their victory world’s richest man (telecommunications and retail magnate
against an archetypal Latin American tyranny hailed world- Carlos Slim Helú). But for millions of ordinary Mexicans, jobs
wide among left-wingers and liberals. Adding to their luster, and possibilities for social advancement are scarce enough to
they pledged to hold elections—a sign that they would not have sent millions of its most ambitious citizens over the border
slavishly imitate the Castro government, their longtime patron. to the United States.
The Sandinistas’ adherence to the new worldwide minimum Canada, north of the U.S. border, has virtually nothing of
standard of political respectability seemed to reflect the same Mexico’s conflictive history with the United States. But surface
impulse that led them to embrace business-class opponents of similarities in language and culture belie a deep difference in
Somoza. Daniel Ortega, the leading advocate of that strategy, American and Canadian political cultures. Simply put, Canada
was the Sandinista candidate for president in a 1984 election, represents the European alternative to the American version of
which he won. modern capitalism. Canada’s version includes universal, pub-
But the Sandinistas, with their political mandate confirmed, licly financed health care and free higher education.
relied on Cuban security expertise and on Soviet military The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of
aid. Those relationships, in turn, convinced an already hostile 1994 represented a first step toward trying to link the continent’s
Reagan administration that the Sandinistas represented a gen- economies. How successful the attempt has been is a question
uine threat. Unrelenting American political and (via the Con- still debated in the three NAFTA countries. Mexico is at the
tra guerrillas) military pressure added to internal discontent. center of the debate. As the least advanced of the three partners,
Nicaragua’s business owners, large and small, saw their coun- it was supposed to gain the most from the agreement. For some
try as another Cuba in the making. Many ordinary Nicaraguans Mexicans, imbued with the sense of tragedy evoked by an old
came to hate the military conscription that accompanied the saying attributed to a 19th-century president, Porfirio Dı́az,
Contra war. And the Sandinistas legalized the expropriations the NAFTA result was no surprise. “Poor Mexico,” the saying
of property, including luxurious villas, that followed their vic- goes, “So far from God, so close to the United States.” Thus
tory, an act that many Nicaraguans found typical of all previous NAFTA awakened a fear of foreign domination whose roots
rulers. run deep in the history of a country that has tried, as none other
Amid this political turmoil, the country held presidential in the region, to meld the cultures of the conquered and the
elections in 1990. To the shock of the Sandinistas and their conquerors.
foreign supporters, they lost to Violeta Chamorro, widow of
the assassinated newspaper editor whose killing had helped Mexico: Divide and Conquer
propel the Sandinistas into power. Strikingly, Chamorro won
her victory only two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Of all the conquest histories of the hemisphere, none is as
With that, the Soviet empire entered the period of its final col- rich in characters, events, and intrigue as the expedition that
lapse. The Cold War, which had proved so critical an element marked the beginning of Spanish rule on the continent. The first
 INTRODUCTION 21

major Spanish incursion on the mainland in 1519 culminated played roughly the role in Mexico’s political heritage that Lin-
in the takeover of Mexico by way of the conquest of the Aztec coln did in the U.S. tradition. But Juárez, who didn’t begin
court in Mexico City. Worthy of Shakespeare, the saga still learning Spanish until the age of 12, arguably rose against
echoes through Mexican culture. higher odds.
One of the major concepts to emerge from the conquest is As a political leader, Juárez not only kept Mexico united but
malinchismo. The term for betrayal of one’s country is taken also led it in war against the French occupation of 1864–1867.
from the name of Malinali (or Malintzı́n or Malinche). A young Juárez spearheaded the writing of a republican constitution
woman of Náhuatl origin—that is, the Aztec Empire’s ruling aimed at reducing the political and economic power of the
people—who had been sold as a child to Mayan Indians, she be- Catholic Church and at imposing civilian rule on the military.
came the translator and mistress of Hernán Cortés, the Spaniard Juárez also laid down a principle of Mexican foreign policy
who conquered the vast Aztec empire with a force of only 300 that later presidents invoked in setting out a national doctrine of
men. Malinali played an indispensable role in helping forge nonintervention: “Among nations, as among individuals, peace
alliances with Aztec subject peoples whose help was essential comes from respect for the rights of others.” The dictum has
to Cortés’s victory. become a staple of Latin American political culture.
Malinali’s intimate relationship with Cortés lends a female The next major president following Juárez was a military
dimension to a preference for foreigners. Hence the history hero of the war against the French. Porfirio Dı́az, he of the say-
of the Spanish takeover has taken the question of Mexico’s ing about Mexico’s distance from God, went on to rule Mexico
national identity to the depths of human emotion, where dramas until 1910. A dictator who professed allegiance to democratic
of woman’s betrayal and man’s conquests play out in all their forms, Dı́az surrounded himself with a group of advisers, the
endless variations. cientıficos (scientists), an early version of technocrats. They
On a less profound level, the conquest produced the Mexi- oversaw a modernization program that included construction
can political tenet that the country’s regions and peoples must of railroads, but saw no great value in democracy.
stay united. History also teaches that the center may pay a high Social and political pressures building up beneath the sur-
price for failing to attend to the needs of the provinces. face of the tranquil social order on which Dı́az and his advisers
The fact that Mexico was conquered as much by guile and prided themselves burst forth in 1910. Those pressures were
intrigue as by force of arms showed Mexicans that diplomatic intense enough that the revolution launched by liberal landown-
encounters may be life-and-death matters, even if they take ers and intellectuals in that year set off a period of civil conflict,
place in palaces instead of on battlefields. rule by regional warlords, and militarized central government
Cortés may have done as much as anyone to shape the Mex- that lasted until 1929.
ican nation. But Alan Riding, a former New York Times cor- Still, the struggles for sheer power that motivated many of
respondent in Mexico, notes in a classic work of reportage the main players existed alongside a vein of genuine idealism.
that Cortés is saluted by only one statue in all of Mexico. For many Mexicans, the peasant guerrilla Emiliano Zapata em-
Mexico’s honors go to the emperor whom Cortés dethroned, bodies this dimension of the revolution. At the head of armed
Moctezuma, but above all to his son, Cuauhtémoc, who re- farmers from his state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, Zap-
sisted the Spaniards more bravely than his father. 37 ata demanded land reform but turned down a chance to acquire
personal power, refusing a role in the provisional government.
The Long Revolution. After Mexico fought for its inde- Zapata and his fellow revolutionaries made another impor-
pendence from Spain, under the initial leadership of a priest, tant contribution to political culture, not merely in Mexico but
Fr. Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico entered decades of turmoil. A around the world. With their broad-brimmed hats, moustaches,
picturesque general and political leader, José López de Santa and ammunition bandoliers crossed on their chests, Mexico’s
Anna, would embody the period. President 11 times, in most irregular fighters helped create the iconic figure of what would
cases for less than a year, his career serves as a textbook of later be called the Third World revolutionary. Their contribu-
Mexico’s political ills. The threat of corruption, the struggle tions in this regard would have been impossible without the
between centralism and regional autonomy, and the temptation work of a small group of pioneer war photographers, who them-
to betray the country to stronger foreign powers form the major selves helped found a signature 20th-century art form.
themes of Santa Anna’s career. He fought in the liberation war For Zapata and other radicals, Mexico’s constitution of
against Spain, formally ceded Texas’ independence, led troops 1917, regarded as the revolution’s embodiment, fell short of
against the United States in 1846, was toppled from power, and their hopes. But the constitution did mark a clear break with
had his wealth confiscated on the grounds that he acquired it the past. The right to a free, secular education was guar-
illegally. anteed, with religious schools—meaning Catholic schools—
The definitive revolt against Santa Anna was led by one prohibited. Priests were barred from participating in politics,
of Mexico’s everlasting heroes, Benito Juárez, a man of hemi- including by casting ballots.
spheric stature. A contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, Juárez The revolution’s anticlericalism sparked a three-year re-
gional civil war in the deeply religious central zone of Mexico.
37 Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors A Portrait of the Mexicans Its national reverberations included the assassination of a mili-
(New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 22–24. tary strongman, ex-president Álvaro Obregón, in 1927, before
22 INTRODUCTION

he was sworn into a second term. The killer was a Catholic plaza near the city center. An estimated 300 people were killed;
activist. to this day, the exact number is unknown.
Mexico didn’t encounter a genuinely unifying postrevolu- A “dirty war” followed, marked by deadly repression fo-
tionary figure until the late 1930s. Lázaro Cárdenas, renowned cused on small underground guerrilla organizations. The Mex-
as the president who expelled the foreign oil companies, turned ican guerrilla movement was marked by a sharp difference
the ruling party—the Partido de la Revolucion Mexicana, later from its counterparts elsewhere—an absence of assistance from
renamed as the PRI—into an instrument of social peace in Cuba. Castro was repaying Mexico’s refusal to break relations
which the competing interests of labor and capital would be with the island, as other Latin American nations did at the
reconciled under the supervision of the party leader-president. United States’ behest.
Cárdenas, like his successors until 2000, was effectively chosen By the late 1970s, the violence, more limited than in
to be president by his predecessor, who named him as the rul- South America, had tapered off. The Mexican government
ing party candidate. In reality that dedazo, the laying-on of the began a period of courting the international left and buying
finger, meant appointing him as president. Even so, Cárdenas off peaceful left-wing leaders and intellectuals. The biggest
rose to the challenges of social and economic turbulence with- sign of change was the legalization of the Communist Party in
out succumbing to demagoguery. 1978. The political system held firm through financial emer-
gencies in the 1980s generated largely by massive borrowing
“The Perfect Dictatorship.” Following Cárdenas, in the 1970s, when oil revenues peaked. But the aftermath
Mexico entered into nearly six decades marked by the steady of the deadly Mexico City earthquake of 1985 revealed the
expansion of the PRI. For the first two postwar decades, the weakness and incompetence underlying the party-government
middle class grew as well, as Mexico’s closed economy and system.
policy of import substitution, producing Mexican versions of Still, Mexican presidents retained their power to appoint
goods that otherwise would have to be imported, delivered on their successors. Even an increasingly discontented and vocal
its promise. Through the 1960s, the real buying power of wages public found the system still impregnable. In the oft-repeated
increased by 6.4 percent a year.38 words of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Mexico’s rulers
Economic success and political tranquility came at a price. had invented the “perfect dictatorship.”
Independent labor unions were crushed and their leaders, some But by the time Vargas Llosa coined the phrase in 1990, the
of them Communist Party militants, were imprisoned. Political PRI monopoly had entered its final decade. The period of de-
opposition parties were tolerated, even subsidized, as long as cline actually began in 1988. The chosen presidential candidate,
they made no attempt to break out of the role of permanent Harvard-trained economist Carlos Salinas de Gortari, faced a
minority. nightmare opponent. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the revered
One exception was the center-right Partido Accion Na- president of the 1938 oil nationalization, had abandoned the
cional, which had a strong though technically illegal connec- PRI and helped form a new left-wing party. The combination
tion with the Catholic Church and a solid base in the north of Cárdenas’s ancestry, his appeal to ordinary Mexicans hard-
and north-central region. The ranchers and farmers of the agri- pressed by the crises of the 1980s, and the erosion of the PRI’s
cultural belt running through the states of Michoacán, Jalisco, authority and credibility made the race the first genuine contest
León, Colima and Guanajuato, Chihuahua and Sonora, and for president in memory.
the big-business community clustered in the industrial capital, Once the ballots were in, the interior ministry announced
Monterrey, cultivated a hostility to the centralist, statist, and that its vote-tallying computers had broken down. Once the al-
rhetorically revolutionary political culture of the capital. The legedly broken machines were supposedly repaired, Salinas was
northerners’ hostility often came mixed with a sense of ethnic declared the winner. Whether he really won likely never will
superiority. be known. The real result can be surmised from the fact that,
The panistas were unrelenting. For years, they kept enter- once Salinas became president, he ordered the paper records
ing candidates in elections. They were allowed to win a few of the election burned.
mayoralties, some seats in state legislatures, and a handful of Salinas’s departure was marked by mystery as well. The man
positions in the lower house of the national congress. But the he originally picked to succeed him, Luı́s Donald Colosio, was
senate and governorships were out of the question. As for the assassinated in mid-campaign in 1994. A confessed gunman
presidency—completely unthinkable. was convicted, but the reason for the killing is unknown. So are
In 1968, the PRI-gobierno demonstrated the penalties for the identities of whoever else may have been involved.
pushing past the system’s limits. In that year of student uprisings The man who replaced Colosio as the official candidate rep-
around the world, a student movement began calling for genuine resented one of the few successes of Salinas’s administration,
democracy. In Mexico City, where the movement was strongest, which was mired in scandal and murder. (Colosio’s wasn’t the
it began attracting older members of the middle class. The only one; Salinas’s brother was involved in a bizarre drama
movement came to an abrupt end on October 2, 1968, when involving the murder of a prominent politician.) The new can-
plainclothes army snipers shot into a protest meeting in a large didate was Ernesto Zedillo. With his doctorate in economics
from Yale, Zedillo seemed the archetypal cientıfico for a new
38 See Krauze, 681. age. But unlike the classic model, he took democracy seriously.
 INTRODUCTION 23

Zedillo refused to manipulate the 2000 presidential election to The enormous trade in humans grew out of the colonizer’s
ensure the PRI candidate’s victory. unending need for vast armies of laborers. The slave trade
The result was the first victory of a non-PRI candidate would guide the course of Caribbean history as well as that
since the long-ruling party’s formation as the Party of the of all the Americas, directly or indirectly. The descendants of
Mexican Revolution (PRM) in 1929. Vicente Fox, the election African slaves make up the overwhelming majority of the is-
winner, came from the National Action Party (Partido Accion lands’ population.
Nacional—PAN), and seemed to embody all its hallmarks. A Hence, it is fitting that the Caribbean became the site of the
devout Catholic from the state Guanajuato, a hotbed of the world’s first slave revolution since Spartacus led an uprising
Catholic guerrilla movement of the 1920s civil war, Fox came against the Roman Empire. In the 1790s, Haiti’s slaves rose up
from a farming background and spent most of his career as a and began their independence war. In 1804, after the French
sales executive for Coca-Cola. had been vanquished, Haitians founded the world’s first black
Fox left office without a cloud of scandal, but also with- republic. A wave of fear immediately rolled through white so-
out any major political victories. Among other things, he had ciety in the Caribbean, and all the way to the North American
promised to forge a migratory work agreement with the United mainland. But the revolution failed to spark any sequels else-
States. However, the Al-Qaida attacks of September 11, 2001, where.
ended U.S. attention to any such plan. Later in the century, the Cuban rebels who fought the
Caribbean’s longest and most brutal war of colonial indepen-
dence in 1868–1878 finally won in 1898, in large part due to
Introduction to the Caribbean black fighters and one brilliant commander, Antonio Maceo
(known honorifically as the “Bronze Titan”).
The Caribbean as a cultural region includes parts of the Though relatively late to independence, people of the
mainlands of Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, Caribbean pioneered the immigration trend that has spread
as well as Guyana (and New Orleans and Key West in the throughout the region. (Mexican migration to the United States
United States). But if the Caribbean is, in writer Mark Kurlan- began earlier but with a different character—largely as a back-
sky’s term, a “continent of islands,” the islands make up the and-forth movement between home and work north of the bor-
Caribbean heartland.39 der.) Mass emigration began in the Caribbean in the 1940s,
That region consists of 16 independent countries; one U.S. expanding in the 1950s and 1960s. Jamaica and other British
commonwealth (Puerto Rico); one U.S. territory (U.S. Vir- Commonwealth islands saw tens of thousands of citizens de-
gin Islands); two French departments, the equivalent of states part for Britain as early as the 1940s. Between 1948 and 1965 at
(Guadeloupe, made up of six islands, and Martinique, one is- least 300,000 citizens of the British Caribbean islands took ad-
land of the same name); five British territories (British Virgin vantage of their status as British subjects to move to England.
Islands, Anguilla, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks Xenophobic reaction by white Britons eventually forced the
and Caicos Islands, comprising a total of 13 islands in all); government to cancel automatic immigration rights for “West
and, until December 31, 2008, a self-governing possession of Indians.”
the Netherlands (the Netherlands Antilles, made up of five is- In the French-speaking Caribbean, doctors and other pro-
lands; those islands will be independent nations as of January fessionals, fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship in the 1950s, began
1, 2009). settling in New York and in French-speaking Canada. Dur-
Strikingly, the Caribbean islands, Europe’s gateway to the ing the same time, Puerto Ricans, whose American citizenship
Americas, hold the region’s longest-lasting political ties to the made travel as easy as stepping on an airplane, began creating a
old colonial powers. Because of the islands’ role as entry point virtual second island in New York City. As on the other islands,
to the New World, mistreatment of the indigenous inhabitants the combination of fewer job opportunities after World War II
sparked Europeans’ first criticisms of human rights violations and the postwar boom in the United States and Europe proved
in the New World. By a perverse twist of events, that criticism irresistible. Approximately 500,000 Puerto Ricans moved to
contributed to one of history’s great tragedies. the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. Puerto Ricans often
Bartolomé de las Casas, the Spanish Dominican friar who still call their New York community Nuyorico.
converted to the Indians’ cause in 1511, endorsed early requests The Puerto Ricans blazed a trail for other islanders. By the
for royal permission to bring slaves from Africa to work the mid-1960s, the United States replaced Britain as the destina-
land. “Like all enlightened men of his time, he believed that tion of choice for Caribbean migrants. The British immigration
an African enslaved by Christians was more fortunate than restriction virtually coincided with enactment of a 1965 U.S.
an African in domestic circumstances,” writes historian Hugh law that scrapped immigration limits imposed during the mid-
Thomas (Las Casas repented years later, but to no effect).40 1950s. In the 1960s, 470,000 Caribbean immigrants entered
the United States, including the tens of thousands of Cubans
39 Mark Kurlansky, A Continent of Islands (New York: Addison who fled the revolution and the Castro government.41
Wesley, 1992).
40 Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade The Story of the Atlantic 41 See “Caribbean Migration,” in In Motion The African-

Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 98. American Experience, undated, Schomburg Center for Research in
24 INTRODUCTION

Meanwhile, Canada, whose vast expanse and relatively Tobago to base its economy on petroleum exports. That stable,
small population made the country welcoming to immigrants, industrial foundation exists nowhere else in the Caribbean.
took in tens of thousands of foreign nationals. Canada shared a Trinidad and Tobago does share a demographic characteris-
British cultural background with immigrants from the English- tic with the nearby mainland nation of Guyana. The populations
speaking islands, and a French heritage with immigrants from of both countries are divided roughly evenly between people of
the Francophone Caribbean. By 2001, 5 percent of 5.4 million African and people of East Indian descent. And Trinidad and
Canadian immigrants came from the Caribbean (and nearby Tobago shares a feature of its political heritage with most of
Bermuda).42 the Americas—a long period of supremacy by a charismatic
To many who were touched by the phenomenon, the enor- figure.
mous dimensions of Caribbean migration seemed to mark an- Eric Williams, the historian and politician who spearheaded
other chapter in an epic, one that began with the forcible re- Trinidad and Tobago’s independence, served as the country’s
moval of millions of Africans from their home continent. In only prime minister for the first 18 years of its postcolonial life.
recent decades, members of the Caribbean community in the He died in office in 1981. Williams founded one of the country’s
islands and elsewhere have been describing the migration as major political parties, the People’s National Movement. Afro-
a diaspora, a biblical term originally applied to the far-flung Trinidadians make up its major constituency.
Jews. The term comes up frequently in the context of plans to Williams and other proindependence activists enjoyed a po-
use immigrants’ resources to benefit home islands. In a typical litical climate that differed greatly from the environment that
example, in 2006 the Inter-American Development Bank made surrounded their counterparts in Africa and Asia. There, inde-
a $10 million loan to Haiti to recruit “diaspora professionals” pendence came only after decades of struggle, in some cases
to the country’s nascent civil service. warfare. In the Caribbean, the move toward independence was
On all the islands, the emigration has existed for long a gradual process in which the British government and island
enough that an entire business sector catering to migrants’ leaders cooperated.
needs and those of their families at home has sunk deep roots As a result, Williams and his counterparts on other islands
(as it has now for continental migrants). It includes remittance- were willing to enlist in a British project to create a federa-
transfer houses, phone cards, cable TV news from back home, tion out of the former Crown colonies. Once formed, however,
as well as newspapers and radio outlets. the federation couldn’t bridge political differences between its
The absence of jobs in sufficient number for the islands’ ed- members—mainly Trinidad and Tobago, on the one hand, and
ucated and ambitious was the engine of emigration. An abun- Jamaica, on the other. Williams and his colleagues favored, in
dance of seductively picturesque settings couldn’t compensate effect, a U.S.-influenced model, with a strong central govern-
for insufficiently developed economies. ment. Jamaican leaders preferred what amounted to a European
Common Market approach. Williams himself, writing in gen-
Overview of the English-Speaking eral terms, blamed, “the desire of the units to continue pursuing
Caribbean—the “West Indies” competitive rather than complementary strategies of economic
development.”43
British heritage is the dominant political trait in the For Trinidad and Tobago, the economic backdrop of the
Caribbean. The British West Indies form the eastern edge of dispute was its natural resource wealth and an unwillingness
the Caribbean sea except for Jamaica, the biggest island, which to subsidize poorer islands. That economic solidity has given
lies south of Cuba and west of Hispaniola. Trinidad and Tobago the strength to weather its biggest chal-
Jamaica, whose population of 2.7 million dwarfs that of any lenge in recent years, an attempted uprising by a Muslim sect of
of its Anglophone neighbors (Trinidad and Tobago has slightly black Trinidadians. In 1990 the group took over the parliament
more than half as many people), is the West Indies’ cultural and building and held members and the prime minister hostage.
political powerhouse. Its problems are correspondingly big as One parliamentarian was killed, but the would-be insurrection-
well. ists eventually negotiated a peaceful surrender.
Trinidad and Tobago, lying east of the Venezuelan coast, The brief law-and-order vacuum that followed the takeover
occupies a far smaller space in world consciousness but plays a sparked riots and looting by black Trinidadians in the island’s
greater economic role. The twin-island nation’s offshore terri- main city, Port of Spain. Police quickly restored order, but the
tory enjoys the Caribbean’s biggest petroleum deposits. These episode did open a period of increased criminal violence that
are low by world standards, but high enough for Trinidad and continues to this day.
In Jamaica a steady stream of criminal violence, sometimes
Black Culture, New York Public Library, www.inmotionaame.org/ with political links, began earlier and has left deep wounds
migrations/landing.cfm?migration=10 (accessed November 15, in the island’s society. A countervailing trend of idealism and
2007). yearning for social justice hasn’t been strong enough to prevail.
42 “Immigrant Population by Place of Birth and Period

of Immigration (2001 Census),” Statistics Canada, undated,

http://www40.statcan. ca/l01/cst01/demo24a.htm?sdi=immigrant 43 See Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro The History

(accessed November 17, 2007). of the Caribbean (New York: Vintage, 1984), 508.
 INTRODUCTION 25

A politician who tried to embody that strain of Jamaican tourism and information minister in Seaga’s government, An-
culture was more successful in his international endeavors. thony Abrahams, said on a talk-show program in 1999 hosted
Michael Manley (1924–1997), a charismatic speaker who had by Beverly Anderson Manley, Michael Manley’s widow. She
graduated from the London School of Economics, became spoke frankly as well: “How did we get into such a stage of
prime minister in 1972 when his People’s National Party (PNP) anarchy? I knew the nature of our politics. I was married to a
won the parliamentary majority; he served until 1980, then held party leader. I couldn’t say I didn’t know.”45
the office again in 1989–1992. Jamaica has succeeded, however, in shielding its profitable
In a career that took off at the same time as singer- tourist industry from the effects of the country’s class divide
songwriter Bob Marley was becoming a world figure, Manley and its sometimes-murderous politics.
embraced the Caribbean version of Afro-consciousness, Rasta- Elsewhere in the West Indies, political violence and a friend-
farianism, that Marley and other Jamaican artists were preach- ship with Cuba that went beyond Manley’s rhetorical declara-
ing. In his 1972 campaign, Manley made a show of carrying tions of solidarity led to the first, and so far the only, open com-
the “Rod of Joshua,” a staff of ebony and ivory that he said bat between U.S. and Cuban troops. On the island of Grenada,
had been given to him by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, a 1979 coup against a longtime strongman led to the estab-
whom Rastafarians (Ras Tafari Mekonnen was the emperor’s lishment of a left-wing government that established close ties
given name) considered a holy figure. with Cuba. As the relationship deepened, Cuba dispatched hun-
Manley’s first term in office also coincided with the height of dreds of construction and other technical experts, many of them
influence of the “Non-Aligned Movement,” in theory made up also military men. Then, the Grenadian leaders fell out among
of developing countries that hadn’t formally enlisted with either themselves in 1983. Fighting broke out, and the head of gov-
side in the Cold War. Among its members was Soviet ally Cuba, ernment, Maurice Bishop (1944–1983), was executed by his
with whom Manley established friendly relations. Without es- former comrades.
pousing the Soviet-style system that Castro implanted, Manley Those events led President Reagan to order the Grenada
made an informal alliance with the Cuban leader, whom Man- invasion. The immediate rationale was the rescue of a group of
ley depicted as a champion of the developing world. Much young Americans who were attending medical school on the
of Manley’s admiration grew out of Castro’s military backing island. But Reagan had warned since taking office in 1981 that
of newly liberated Angola against a 1975 invasion by South Cuba and the Soviet Union were making Grenada a beachhead
Africa, at the time ruled antidemocratically by white-minority for subversion in the region. Following the Soviet Union’s col-
leaders. Toward the end of his life, Manley recalled in an inter- lapse, the notion of Cuba as a security threat to its Caribbean
view that he had rebuffed then–U.S. Secretary of State Henry neighbors essentially disappeared as well.
Kissinger, who asked for Jamaica to vote against Cuba’s pres-
ence in Angola.44 Overview of the Spanish-Speaking
Manley may have made Jamaica a player in global affairs, Caribbean
but the country’s own political culture was descending into
gang warfare. When the relatively conservative Jamaica Labour The Spanish Caribbean comprises the islands of Cuba and
Party (JLP) tried to displace Manley’s PNP in elections in 1976 Puerto Rico as well as the Dominican Republic, which occupies
and 1980, gun battles erupted. (Bob Marley was nearly killed half the island of Hispaniola (Puerto Rico, because it is not
in an attack seemingly intended to prevent him playing at a a country, will be treated only tangentially in these pages).
government-organized concert seen by some as a PNP event.) Though the English-speaking islands far outnumber them, one
In 1980, the preelection death toll reached 800. Spanish-speaking country alone far outweighs them politically.
The JLP finally displaced the PNP in that election. As a Cuba, the biggest country in the entire region, is the only
result, JLP leader Edward Seaga served as prime minister until Caribbean nation to have established a lasting presence on the
1989. He tilted Jamaica’s international stance in a more pro- world stage. Fidel Castro’s outsized personality partly explains
U.S. direction. Manley returned to office in 1989. Cuba’s international status. His seemingly limitless ambition
For all of their ideological and stylistic differences, neither found an outlet thanks to the Cold War. By transforming Cuba
Manley nor Seaga made much of a dent in the socioeconomic into a Soviet ally, one that sat practically on America’s doorstep,
inequities that pervade Jamaican society. Violence continues to Castro made himself and his country major players.
plague the political scene, though its frequency has lessened. The political culture that Castro inherited when he appeared
Indeed, criminal gangs often boast a connection to one of the on the scene as a law student and apprentice politician was
two major parties. still emerging from Spain’s lengthy colonial domination, which
Only recently have Jamaican political veterans begun to ended only in 1898. Slavery had ended only in 1873, leaving
admit responsibility for the country’s condition. “We are part
of a failed state and as such we failed the country,” a former 45 Both quoted in David Gonzalez, “A Killing Shocks

Jamaicans into Soul-Searching,” New York Times, Octo-

44 See Manning Marable, “Michael Manley (interview),” ber 18, 1999, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=
The Progressive, July 1, 1993, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/ 9B01E4DE1739F93BA25753C1A96F958260 (accessed Novem-
1G1-13972336.html (accessed November 18, 2007). ber 18, 2007).
26 INTRODUCTION

a linkage between race and poverty. Economically, the country minister of Grenada—a post he may not have held if the inva-
depended on the volatile world markets in sugar and tobacco. sion hadn’t occurred—said in a 1997 interview with the New
“Political independence brought interludes of hectic prosper- York Times. “When we look back at our relationship with Cuba,
ity,” writes Hugh Thomas, “never freedom from unrest.”46 I think most Grenadians of all ages and groups agree that, over
Castro from the beginning of his career exploited the long- all, the Cuban role and presence here was positive.”49
standing tie between freedom and disorder in Cuba. Since Cuba itself, meanwhile, has been enjoying a new lease on
1959, when Castro’s guerrilla forces toppled dictator Fulgen- economic life in the 21st century. As Venezuelan president
cio Batista, Cuba has not held a genuine election. Except for Chávez has solidified his position at the helm of the region’s
the Catholic Church, Cuba has no independent political insti- major oil power, he has been shipping petroleum to Cuba at
tutions of any kind. And Castro’s 2006 transfer of power to his subsidized prices, in return for the services of more than 20,000
slightly younger brother and lifelong comrade, Defense Min- Cuban doctors in Venezuela.
ister Raúl Castro, as a result of his own failing health shows For many observers, the Venezuelan support has ensured
a dynastic strain running through the Cuban version of Soviet that Cuban communism will outlast Castro. However, the
socialism. The elder Castro made his retirement permanent in December 2007 defeat of Chávez’s proposed constitutional
February 2008, at the age of 81. Cuba’s National Assembly then changes has introduced a note of doubt into that assessment.
formalized the handing over of power to 76-year-old Raúl, who So did renewal of a current of critical comment from within
became president. Cuba—a trend that has appeared periodically since the rev-
Cuba’s quasi-monarchical system has shown considerable olution, only to be snuffed out. Vivid evidence of youthful
resilience. Despite widespread expectations, it survived the So- dissatisfaction came in a video leaked to foreign media, which
viet Union’s demise. Before Venezuela’s President Chávez ex- showed Cuban university students confronting veteran Cuban
tended substantial economic aid to Cuba, Castro weathered diplomat Ricardo Alarcón with tough questions about why they
the disappearance of Soviet subsidies in part by opening the couldn’t travel outside Cuba without authorization, or enjoy
economy to European and Canadian tourism operators and ho- free access to the Internet, among other restrictions. Alarcón’s
tel builders—a strategy that collided with early revolutionary responses included the comment that most Bolivians couldn’t
rhetoric decrying Cuba’s past as a playground for foreign visi- travel either—and the world aviation system wouldn’t be able
tors. to function if everyone in the world who wanted to travel were
The hard-edged realism reflected in that strategy coexists, able to do.50
confusingly, with a rhetoric that glorifies last stands against all Lest critics of the Cuban regime take too much encour-
odds. As the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada was getting under agement from the confrontation, Cuba’s official information
way, for instance, Castro ordered his 700 troops there to resist system released a second video in which one of the most tena-
the 1,900-strong American force to the death. But the Cuban cious of Alarcón’s questioners, Eliécer Avila, later appeared in
colonel in command surrendered with most of his men; all were a state-sponsored interview, saying his questions and those of
later repatriated to Cuba. According to Brian Latell, a retired his fellow students had no rebellious purpose. “It is to build a
career Cuba specialist for the CIA, a furious Castro demoted better socialism, not to destroy it,” Avila said, prompted by an
all officers including the colonel, who was sent off to fight in editor of a Cuban government Web site.51
Angola, where he was killed.47 Even though Cuba’s security apparatus seems to have lost
And when the invasion loomed, Castro sent no reinforce- none of its efficiency, the only full-fledged Soviet-style system
ments to the men he’d ordered not to surrender. “It is not the new in the region has been no better able than other Latin American
Grenadan government we must think of now, but of Cuba,” he countries to retain many of its inhabitants. Over the course of
said in a comment cited by Cuba specialist Edward Gonzalez nearly a half-century, approximately 10 percent of the Cuban
of the University of California, Los Angeles.48 population, now about 11 million, have departed the island.
Most Caribbean states supported the invasion of Grenada. That volume is not extraordinary in the Caribbean context.
But since the Soviet Union’s collapse, even staunch U.S. allies Nor is the sense among Cubans that emigration serves as a
have established warm relations with Cuba. “We have to be sociopolitical safety valve for a society unable to contain the
able to strike strategic relationships with those who are will- dissatisfactions of people who find no outlet for their talents
ing to help us in charting a course of serious development as or energies at home. Whatever price Cuba has paid for the
we confront the 21st century,” Keith Mitchell, then the prime
49 Quoted in Larry Rohter, “Caribbean Nations, Ignoring U.S.,
46 Hugh Thomas, Cuba The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Warm to Cuba,” New York Times, December 21, 1997.
Harper and Row, 1971), 1111. 50 “Alarcon y Estudiantes de la UCI, Video Completo,”
47 See Brian Latell, After Fidel The Inside Story of Castro’s February 14, 2008, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=
Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 862625216710039760 (accessed March 9, 2008).
2007), 176. 51 “Transcripción de Palabras de Estudiantes Cubanos
48 Edward Gonzalez, “Challenge in the Caribbean Basin,” in de la UCI,” February 18, 2008, http://www.cubainformacion.tv/
Cuban Communism, 7th ed., ed. Irving Louis Horowitz (New York: index.php?option=com content&task=view&id=3863&Itemid=
Transaction, 1989), 656. 65 (accessed March 9, 2008).
 INTRODUCTION 27

loss, first, of educated professionals and the business class, and, to mount a revolution today enjoy a relatively prosperous and
later, of numbers of independent-minded and daring citizens, peaceful existence.
the government evidently has calculated that it gains more in However, the realities of French rule discourage any easy
stability. conclusion that Haiti would have done better to have remained
Substantial Cuban émigré communities exist in Spain and a colony. Even by the standards of the time, that regime was
Mexico, but the real second Cuba lies in the United States, notable for the systemic sadism with which the French admin-
especially Florida’s Miami-Dade County. “Miami Cubans,” in istered the territory, whose sugar and cotton production were
political shorthand, have made themselves a national political mainstays of France’s economy.
presence, as their electoral dominance in their population center Colonial rule had so deformed Haitian society that life as
has made up for their relatively small numbers (1.6 million, an independent country began with what amounted to a reim-
versus 28.3 million U.S. residents of Mexican origin). As a position of slavery under the rule of Jean-Jacques Dessalines,
result, they play a major role in influencing U.S. policy toward a tyrant who had been one of revolution’s generals. The over-
Cuba. However, they aren’t all-powerful in that regard, political all commander, Toussaint Louverture, had showed himself to
folk wisdom to the contrary. be a more humane leader. But he fell victim to French trick-
A U.S. policy of turning back Cuban refugees at sea is only ery, the first of the countless tragedies that have scarred Haiti’s
one example of Cuban-Americans not getting their way. Yet, postrevolutionary history. French authorities invited Louver-
administrations of both parties have felt obliged to demonstrate ture to negotiate the terms of France’s definitive exit from the
that they take the conservative wing of the Cuban-American po- island. He was taken prisoner and spent the rest of his life in
litical establishment into account. One result is that the 1966 solitary confinement in a French mountain fortress.
“Cuban Adjustment Act” remains on the books. Under the law, Louverture’s fate has served as a cautionary example to
Cubans who reach the soil of the United States are granted every Haitian in public life. The lessons are stamped indelibly
virtually automatic permanent residence. The law now is ben- on the country’s political culture: No promise of negotiations
efiting Cubans who flee to Mexico and are allowed into the should be believed; foreign powers mean Haiti no good; a leader
United States at ports of entry along the U.S. southern border. who trusts adversaries’ good intentions will die.
Politics, in an odd way, has kept ties strong between Cubans In modern times, supporters of Haiti’s most charismatic
and Cuban-Americans. As legal residents of the United States, and polarizing figure, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, have cast him as
nearly all Cubans are eligible to make U.S.-allowed fam- a modern Louverture. Aristide, the former priest who emerged
ily visits back to the island (though the Bush administration as the first champion of Haiti’s impoverished majority, is seen
has reduced their frequency from once a year to once ev- by supporters as a victim of betrayal by the United States,
ery three years). Migrants from elsewhere don’t enjoy this aided by its friends among Haiti’s well-off. The ex-president’s
advantage. detractors scoff at the notion of Aristide as a liberator, viewing
Politics hasn’t played a role, since the fall of the Trujillo him as a would-be dictator every bit as corrupt as the bour-
dictatorship, in the migration of tens of thousands of Domini- geoisie he scorns. Each side points to a considerable body of
cans to the United States. Their mainland presence is centered evidence.
in New York, where they account for at least 400,000 residents. When he emerged as a revolutionary priest, during the 1986
In the age of air travel and instant communications, the island uprising that drove Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier from
and mainland Dominican communities are close enough that a the country, Aristide helped rally Haitians to the “uprooting”
New York–raised Dominican felt secure enough in homeland (dechoukaj) of Duvalierists, including members of the feared
politics to run for president. Leonel Fernandez, whose image and hated secret police force known as Tontons Macoute. In
as a Dominican rooted in the island and in New York accounted the uprooting, their homes were destroyed. Some of the Duva-
for much of his initial appeal, developed a track record of sta- lierists were beaten to death.
bility during his first administration (1996–2000). That record “Our consciences should be clear,” Aristide told Mark Dan-
was strong enough that voters brought him back for a second ner of The New Yorker at the time. “These Macoutes were Sa-
term in 2004, set to expire in mid-2008. tan, Satan incarnate. . . . The people must continue to show how
strong they are, how strong they can be!”52
But the Duvalierists remained powerful. Haiti’s first attempt
Overview of the French-Speaking at a postdictatorship election in 1987 was stopped short by ex-
Caribbean Macoutes who rampaged through Port-au-Prince, killing peo-
ple gathered at polling places—an estimated 34 in all.
The Francophone Caribbean consists of only one fully in- In 1990, when the pressure for an election proved unstop-
dependent country. Haiti, the first country in Latin America pable, Aristide was swept into office by a tidal wave of electoral
and the Caribbean to expel its colonial masters, has been a
free nation since 1804. That brave beginning may have marked 52 Quoted in Mark Danner, “Beyond the Mountains (Part I),”

Haiti’s best moment. Since then, oppression, corruption, and New Yorker, November 27, 1989, http://www.markdanner.com/
steadily increasing poverty have blighted the country. Making articles/show/beyond the mountains part i (accessed November
the picture even bleaker, the French colonial islands that failed 26, 2007).
28 INTRODUCTION

support. But months into his term, it was clear that his goal of Conclusion
a revolutionary transformation of Haiti collided with the in-
terests of the small business class and the military men they As the end of the new century’s first decade approaches,
subsidized. With rumors of a coup already flying around the most citizens of Latin America and the Caribbean face the same
capital, Port-au-Prince, Aristide gave a speech at the National social and economic inequalities that propelled alternating cy-
Palace in which he used his gift for allusion and his grasp of cles of revolution and repression for much of the past century.
popular imagery to call for what was universally understood to One difference stands out: free and fair elections have come
be the “necklacing” (placing a gasoline-soaked tire around the to be seen almost everywhere as the only acceptable means of
head) of Duvalierists who were plotting a counterrevolution: political change.
“What a beautiful tool! What a beautiful instrument! What a In Argentina, Guatemala, and Venezuela, voters made fun-
beautiful piece of equipment! It’s beautiful, yes it’s beautiful, damental choices in late 2007 about the directions they want
it’s cute, it’s pretty, it has a good smell, wherever you go you their societies to take. Whether electoral politics can contain
want to inhale it.”53 For Aristide’s enemies, the speech showed Bolivia’s interconnected regional, ethnic, and class conflicts
conclusively that he was a tyrant in the making. His supporters seem less certain; at the start of 2008, four of the country’s
called the speech a desperate attempt to rally the masses. But eastern provinces were vowing to pursue their effort to se-
it failed; Aristide was overthrown. cede almost entirely from the rest of the country. Ecuador is
In 1994, after three years as an exile in Washington, Aristide caught up in the drafting of a new constitution to replace one
was restored to office by a U.S. government that he still deeply written in 1998. President Correa, who won a 2007 referen-
distrusted. His suspicion was proved valid by the 2004 revolt dum on his proposal to call a constituent assembly, wants to
that toppled him a second time. The Aristide camp views the reduce the power of Congress, a center of opposition to his
revolt as a Bush administration production. U.S. officials have administration.
denied the accusation, though they clearly welcomed Aristide’s Venezuela’s referendum on the Chávez-proposed consti-
ouster. tutional changes has sparked a debate over the president’s
In any case, Haiti’s political scene had grown more compli- brand of socialism. Opposition has gone far beyond the privi-
cated. The former Aristide camp had fractured, with many one- leged sectors whom Chávez depicts as his main opponents. A
time supporters transformed into bitter opponents. And with newly emerged student movement took to the streets to protest
Aristide’s departure, the United Nations established a “stabi- Chávez’s political plan. Gen. Raúl Baduel, who had been a
lization” mission, including about 7,000 troops. The mission’s longtime comrade of Chávez among left-wing officers, played a
military force commander is a Brazilian major-general, and key role in rallying opposition to the Chávez-proposed amend-
countries that have contributed troops and police include Ar- ments. The general may also have been among those who forced
gentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Chávez to accept defeat.
Grenada, Peru, and Uruguay. Their participation represents a Heinz Dieterich, a Mexico City–based political scientist
break with a past in which Haiti’s neighbors wanted nothing to and ideological mentor to many chavistas, argues in a critique
do with a country that was seen as having nothing in common on a pro-Chávez website that corruption, ineptitude, and in-
with the rest of the Americas. tolerance were eroding Chávez’s administration from within.
The presence of the UN troops reflected another change in These ills, and Chávez’s emphasis on one-man rule, could spell
Haiti’s sociopolitical picture. The poorest of the poor were no doom not only for Venezuela’s incipient socialist system but
longer a humble, unarmed population. Cite Soleil (in Kreyòl, also for those of Bolivia and even of Cuba, Dieterich warns.
Site Soley), a vast slum on the Port-au-Prince waterfront, came “Not only is it true that ‘the Revolution devours its children,’
to harbor well-armed gangs who financed themselves from kid- but also that when revolutionary leaders transform themselves
nap ransom and the drug trade. Drug smugglers have made into unilateral directors, ‘they devour the Revolution.’”54
Haiti a busy transshipment point for South American cocaine Fidel Castro made himself “unilateral director” of Cuba in
and heroin headed for the U.S. market. Stabilization force the early days of the country’s revolutionary transformation.
troops have had some success in lessening gang control in Cite As his life enters what seems to be its final act, the path his
Soleil, though for how long remains uncertain. successor would take looms as an unknown, the subject of a
Haiti’s future is equally unclear. Despite some improve- long-running guessing game among Cubans on the island and
ments in infant mortality (from 150 per 1,000 live births in abroad. New president Raúl Castro, who took office on Febru-
1990 to 117 per 1,000 live births in 2004), the country remains ary 24, 2008, has been described by many as an economic prag-
the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Life expectancy there matist who might loosen a few of the restrictions that prohibit
is 52 years. nearly all private business ventures outside of tiny operations
such as selling produce. But Cubans on the island and in ex-
ile say they expect little else—above all no loosening of the

53 See “Aristide’s ‘Pe Lebrun’ speech”—President Aristide’s 54 Heinz Dieterich, “Derrota Estratégica en Venezuela;

speech of Friday, September 27, 1991, trans. by Haiti Obser- Peligro Mortal para Bolivia y Cuba,” December 3, 2007,
vateur, http://www.hartford-hwp. com/archives/43a/009.html (ac- www.aporrea.org/tiburon/a46125.html (accessed December 10,
cessed November 26, 2007). 2007).
 INTRODUCTION 29

political reins. As if to demonstrate the regime’s resistance to presidents, tensions could easily reemerge. Documents that the
change, the official named as first vice president is 76-year-old Colombian government said came from dead FARC comman-
José Ramón Machado Ventura, another of the shrinking circle der Reyes’s computer showed the guerrillas in contact with
of historicos—members of the Castro brothers’ guerrilla army. Chávez on a plan to establish diplomatic recognition of the
Machado Ventura’s appointment—by election of the National FARC as a legitimate combatant, instead of a terrorist force, as
Assembly, technically speaking—seems designed to squelch the organization is now classified by the United States and the
widespread foreign speculation that Fidel Castro’s successors European Union.
might undertake deeper economic and perhaps even political However long the FARC survives, its decades of existence
reform. Some analysts had said that appointment of one of the provide a sobering example of how drug trafficking can grow
regime’s 40- and 50-year-old officials could signal such inten- from a criminal problem into a national security threat. Mex-
tions. ico, where drug-trafficking gangs are expanding their power in
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner began several states, seems to be in the grip of the “Colombianiza-
her new administration in an atmosphere of tension. U.S. ar- tion” that had long been held out as a major peril. President
rests of men allegedly part of a scheme to deliver $800,000 Calderón’s plan to use U.S. aid to crush the regional syndicates
in campaign cash to her from the Venezuelan government whose power rivals the government’s has not yet begun.
occurred only three days after she was sworn in. Kirchner Of all the countries in the region, Mexico is also the nation
characterized the charges as a move against her government. most affected by the hardening of U.S. attitudes toward immi-
Neither she nor anyone in her administration was a target grants who enter or remain in the United States illegally. New
of U.S. judicial proceedings, so the effects of the criminal U.S. laws and border-control measures may succeed in reduc-
case, whatever they may be, will be political rather than ing the flow of migrants. An economic slowdown could yield
legal. the same result. Even so, there is little question that a substan-
Guatemalan voters clearly rejected the old military class tial Latin American and Caribbean population has become a
when they chose Alvaro Colom, a left-of-center president. But permanent part of U.S. society.
the challenge he faces from a criminal culture deeply embedded Latin American leaders since Bolı́var have been dreaming
in the country’s security apparatus can’t be overstated. about peoples of the Americas unifying. They are doing so
In Colombia, investigations into connections between law- in ways that weren’t predicted, and in the most unexpected of
makers and rightist paramilitaries raise the question of whether locations. Marriages between first- or second-generation immi-
the paras’s demobilization as a fighting force simply marks a grants from different countries of the Americas, for instance,
change in the way they exert their influence. The FARC, the have become commonplace in states with high immigrant pop-
left-wing guerrilla force, shows no serious interest in demobi- ulations. “If you ask an Anglo, where is your family from,
lization. Like its paramilitary enemies, the FARC devotes as they’ll say something like, my mother is Irish, my father is Ger-
much or more of its energies to the drug trade as to political man and my grandfather was Norwegian,” Nestor Rodriguez,
organization. For years, that diversification into the high-profit a University of Houston sociologist, told the Arizona Republic.
field of drug trafficking seemed to ensure the FARC’s long- “The same thing is happening to Latinos. One parent may be
term survival, even if its objective of seizing national power Mexican, the other Guatemalan, or Salvadoran or Honduran.”55
had become a mirage. The migration phenomenon has also introduced a new wrin-
However, early in 2008, the FARC’s prospects took a turn for kle in U.S. policy toward the Americas. Presidents from George
the worse. The Colombian military, pursuing President Uribe’s H. W. Bush on have been promoting the free movement of cap-
strategy of crushing the FARC, zeroed in on number-two com- ital and goods and services between the United States and the
mander Raúl Reyes (a nom de guerre) and killed him in an air rest of the Americas as a major strategy to promote economic
attack on an encampment on the Ecuadoran side of the border growth and prosperity. Ordinary people from Latin America
with Colombia. and the Caribbean have, by way of their unauthorized migra-
That violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty precipitated a brief tion, effectively added free movement of labor to the list of free
flurry of tension between Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. trade attributes.
Venezuela’s president, Chávez, had lately been in contact with After centuries of colonialism, and postcolonial authori-
FARC commanders to arrange the release of some of the tarianism and instability, ordinary people from all over Latin
guerrilla’s armies longtime captives. After Reyes died, Chávez America and the Caribbean have become agents of social and
praised him and even declared a moment of silence in his honor. economic change. As voters and as economic migrants, they
President Bush, meanwhile, declared U.S. support for Colom- have taken their futures into their own hands.
bian force’s pursuit of enemies across its border. As tensions
kept rising, the Colombian government announced that Iván Peter Katel is a staff writer for the CQ Researcher who pre-
Rı́os, a senior FARC commander, had been killed by one of his viously reported on Haiti and Latin America for Time and
own men, who then surrendered to the government. Newsweek and covered the Southwest newspapers in New
On the diplomatic front, Uribe and his Ecuadoran and Mexico.
Venezuelan counterparts declared their hostilities over, a move
that followed Uribe’s apology for the violation of sovereignty. 55 Quoted in Daniel Gonzalez, “Mixed Latino Families Are
But, even aside from the combative personalities of the three New Trend,” Arizona Republic, December 24, 2007.
PART TWO

G OV E R N M E N T S
A N T I G UA A N D B A R B U D A

The Country Government and Politics

Located in the northern part of the Caribbean’s Political Background
Lesser Antilles (see map, p. 342), the islands of An-
tigua and Barbuda are populated largely by blacks Colonized by Great Britain in the early 17th cen-
whose ancestors were transported as slaves from tury after unsuccessful efforts by Spain and France,
western Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Antigua became a founding member of the Fed-
Minorities include descendants of British colo- eration of the West Indies in 1958, following the
nial settlers, Portuguese laborers, and Lebanese introduction of ministerial government two years
and Syrian traders. Anglican Protestantism and earlier. Together with its northern dependency, Bar-
Roman Catholicism claim the largest number of buda, it joined the West Indies Associated States in
adherents, although a wide variety of other de- 1969 as an internally self-governing territory with
nominations exist, and complete religious freedom a right of unilateral termination, which it exercised
prevails.
Agriculture dominated the economy until the
ANTIGUA
1960s, when a pronounced decline in sugar prices AND

led to the abandonment of most cane fields and

BARBUDA Barbuda
Codrington
increased reliance on tourism, which currently ac-
counts for about 60 percent of GDP. The harbor
VENEZUELA
at St. John’s, long used as a dockyard for the
British Navy, is a port of call for 11 major ship-
ping lines, while a modern air facility, featuring a Caribbean ANTIGUA
Canadian-financed terminal complex, is served by Sea AND
6 international carriers. Although real GDP rose by
an average of 4.3 percent during 2000–2006, while BARBUDA
inflation averaged less than 2.0 percent through the
same period (the lowest in the region), the country
has long faced a variety of economic problems, Saint John's
including high external debt and damage from a Parham
series of severe hurricanes. As a result, Antigua Bolans Antigua
Freetown
and Barbuda have undertaken efforts to promote
agriculture, particularly livestock raising and pro-
duce cultivation; expand the fishing industry; and, Redonda
0 10 Mi
most recently, develop an Internet gambling indus- 0 10 Km
try (see Foreign relations, below).
34 A N T I G UA A N D BA R BU DA

on November 1, 1981. At independence, Premier port had castigated as a “thoroughly unprincipled

Vere C. BIRD Sr., whose Antigua Labour Party man.”
(ALP) had returned to power in 1976 and was vic- In the course of a cabinet reshuffle on March
torious in the election of April 1980, became prime 15, 1991, Prime Minister Bird assumed the finance
minister. In the election on April 17, 1984, the ALP portfolio and in a subsequent parliamentary pre-
swept all the Antiguan seats in the House of Rep- sentation gave a summary rather than a detailed
resentatives, with Bird forming a new government account of his budget proposals. In response, four
two days later. government ministers, including Deputy Prime
In 1987 Prime Minister Bird resisted demands Minister Lester Bird, resigned after branding the
that his son, Vere C. BIRD Jr., be dismissed as action “unconstitutional,” both of the younger
public works minister in the wake of an official Birds, for quite different reasons, thus having left
inquiry that had charged him with conduct “unbe- the government.
coming a minister of government” in connection A new scandal erupted in January 1992, when
with the funding of an airport rehabilitation project. the opposition weekly Outlook accused Prime Min-
The issue led to a split within the Bird family. The ister Bird of having pocketed a government check
prime minister’s second son, Deputy Prime Minis- for $25,000 that was to have covered unspecified
ter Lester Bryant BIRD, joined a “dissident major- “medical expenses” incurred by the cousin of a
ity” of eight officials, including Education Minister longtime live-in companion. The charges provoked
Reuben HARRIS, who announced a campaign to a general strike as well as widespread civil unrest
rid the country of “family government.” that included arson attacks on a number of pub-
For its part, the opposition seemed unable to cap- lic and private buildings. The prime minister re-
italize on the intra-ALP cleavage. Efforts to form sponded with an announcement that he would not
an antigovernment alliance before the 1989 elec- seek reelection in 1994, although Lester Bird, who
tion proved unavailing, as a result of which the ALP had returned to the cabinet as external affairs min-
retained power in the March 9 vote by winning 15 ister, was unable to muster sufficient support at a
of 17 legislative seats. party convention in May to stand forth as a certain
In February 1990 Education Minister Harris successor to his father. He was, however, successful
continued his attack on his government colleagues in a second leadership bid in September after gain-
by suggesting that “corrupt practices” might be in- ing the support of Vere Bird Jr., who had previously
volved in a scheme to lease 400 acres of land in endorsed his opponent.
his district to a group of Hong Kong investors for The ALP won its fifth consecutive general elec-
the construction of a tourist facility. Far more em- tion in legislative balloting on March 8, 1994, albeit
barrassing was the revelation in early May that a with a reduced majority of 11 of 17 seats. Two days
shipment of arms that Israeli authorities said had later, Lester Bird announced the formation of a new
been approved for sale to the Antiguan govern- government that included John ST. LUCE, his most
ment had turned up at the ranch of a notorious recent challenger for the party leadership, while
Colombian drug trafficker. After it became known generating some surprise by excluding his brother
that his name was on the purchase order held by Vere Bird Jr. The ALP majority in the House of
Israel, Vere Bird Jr. was obliged to leave the cab- Representatives increased to 12 seats in the elec-
inet. In August, Lester Bird announced that the tion of March 9, 1999. Vere Bird Sr. died on June
cabinet’s “deep sense of shame and outrage” had 28, 1999.
yielded agreement on a government “cleanup” and In the wake of long-standing charges of corrup-
on November 13 the prime minister announced his tion involving senior ministers, the ALP was deci-
reluctant acceptance of all major recommendations sively defeated in the election of March 23, 2004,
of a committee of inquiry, including the banning with Lester Bird among those losing their House
from public office of his eldest son, whom the re- seats. On March 24, Winston Baldwin SPENCER,
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
I have said that, barring the church and tablet, there are no relics of
the old guild to be found in the Nuremberg of to-day. Until lately it
was supposed that the Municipal Library contained a number of
autographic manuscripts by Hans Sachs, but when I asked for them,
they were produced with the statement that they were no longer
looked upon as genuine. It did not require much investigation to
convince me that the claim long maintained that they were
autographs of the cobbler-poet rested wholly on presumption. Sachs
autographs are extremely scarce. The Royal Library at Berlin
possesses a volume of master-songs known to be in the handwriting
of Sachs (among them is one by Beckmesser), but when I was in the
Prussian capital this treasure was in Dresden, whither it had been
sent to enable a literary student to utilize it in the preparation of a
book on Sachs. A Berlin scholar, whom I found at work in the
Nuremberg Library gathering material for a new biography of Sachs,
informed me that the greatest number of Sachs autographs, and
they not many, had been found in Zwickau, whither they had been
brought by some member of the Sachs family many years ago.
There are, then, no manuscript relics of him who was the chief glory
of the Nuremberg guild in the old town. You may drink a glass of
wine at the street-corner where tradition says the old poet cobbled
and composed, but the house is a modern one. Of his companions in
the guild I found no manuscripts in the library, and not one of them
left his mark in any way on the town. But I did find a number of old
manuscript volumes dating back two hundred years or more, which
served to vitalize in a peculiarly interesting manner the record which
the learned old Wagenseil left behind him, and some of the
personages of Wagner's comedy. Those who have taken the trouble
to investigate the source to which Wagner went for the people and
customs introduced in his "Meistersinger von Nürnberg" (Wagenseil's
book) know that the names of the master-singers who figure in the
comedy once belonged to veritable members of the Nuremberg
guild. Wagenseil mentions them as singers whose memories were
cherished in his day, and some of them were also mentioned by an
older author, whose book, devoted chiefly to the Strassburg guild,
which at one time was even more famous than that of Nuremberg, is
referred to by Wagenseil. The book of the Strassburg writer,
singularly enough, was known to Wagenseil only as a manuscript,
and such it remained until two or three decades ago, when it was
printed by a literary society at Stuttgart. In Wagenseil's day it was
valued so highly that it was kept wrapped in silk, like the sacred
scrolls of the Jews, a circumstance that enabled the pedantic
Orientalist to air his learning on the subject for many pages in his
wofully discursive but extremely interesting book. But if Wagenseil
had not given his testimony, I could now bear witness to the fact
that Conrad Nachtigal, Hans Schwartz, Conrad Vogelgesang, Sixtus
Beckmesser, Hans Folz, Fritz Kothner, Balthasar Zorn, and Veit
Pogner once lived as well as Hans Sachs. I have read some of their
poems and copied some of the melodies invented by them and
utilized by their successors in the guild. The volumes containing
these curiosities of literature have been in the Municipal Library over
one hundred years. In the catalogue of the Bibliotheca Norica
Williana, printed one hundred and sixteen years ago, they are
mentioned as having been purchased from an old master-singer. Five
of them are small oblong books of music paper, upon which some
old masters or apprentices in the art of master-song have copied
melodies which were much used at the meetings in St. Catherine's
Church. It was the custom of the members of the guild to compose
poems to fit these melodies. In the second scene of his opera
Wagner mentions a great many of the singular titles by which these
melodies or modes were designated. He got them from Wagenseil.
Besides these books, there are two immense manuscript volumes, in
which some industrious old lover of the poetical art transcribed
songs which he evidently thought admirable. They are each almost
as large as Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, and must represent
months, if not years, of labor. One is devoted wholly to German
paraphrases of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," set to a great variety of
melodies. The author is M. Ambrosius Metzger, who was one of the
few members of the guild who were scholars. He wrote the poems in
1625. The other volume contains songs by a great number of
master-singers, though Hans Sachs is the principal contributor. The
plan of the volume indicates that it was a collection of admired
poems. It begins with paraphrases from the Pentateuch. Some early
pages are missing, the first poem preserved dealing with the sixth
chapter of Genesis. Chronological order is maintained up to chapter
twenty-eight of the same book. Then follow songs dealing with the
Gospels and Epistles. The Book of Job is not forgotten. Finally, there
are a number of secular poems, many recounting Æsop's fables and
anecdotes drawn from old writers. Songs of this character were
composed by the master-singers for diversion at their informal
gatherings. At the meetings in the Church of St. Catherine only
sacred subjects were allowed. It is for this reason that Wagner's
Kothner asks Walther in the opera whether he had chosen sacred
matter (ein heil'gen Stoff) for his trial song, which provokes the reply
from the ardent young knight that he would sing of love, a subject
sacred to him. Whether sacred or secular, however, the form and
style of the songs are alike. Nothing could more completely illustrate
the absurdity of the fundamental theory of the foolish old pedants
that poetry might be written by rule of thumb than the publication of
a few of the songs in this old book. The nature of the poetical frenzy
which fills them can, perhaps, be guessed if I record the fact that
the majority of them, I think, begin with a citation of chapter and
verse, or some statement equally matter of fact, as thus:
"The twenty-ninth chapter of Genesis records," or "Diogenes, the
wise master," or "Strabo writes of the customs," or "Moses, the
eleventh, reports," or "The Lesser Book of Truth doth tell," etc.
The last of these lines is the beginning of a master-song which has a
twofold interest. In the first place, it is a secular poem by Hans
Sachs which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been printed
or written about. In the second place, it is set to a melody by the
veritable Pogner who, in Wagner's comedy, offers his daughter and
his fortune to the winner in the singing contest which makes up
Wagner's last act. The poem is so amusing that I would like to give
it entire in English, but its irregularity of accent and peculiarities of
rhyme do not lend themselves willingly to translation. Of musical
accent the master-singers, who followed the rhyming rules of those
marvellously ingenious rhymesters the Minnesinger, had not the
slightest idea. Wagner knew that. Sachs' first critical tap on his
lapstone in Beckmesser's serenade is evoked by a blunder in accent
which the veritable Sachs would have passed unnoticed, though,
being a real poet, his sins in this respect were not as numerous as
those of his colleagues and predecessors. I content myself,
therefore, with the first Stollen, or stanza, and its Abgesang, or
burden, which the curious student will find to be composed in strict
accordance with the rules which, in the opera, Kothner reads from
the blackboard. These Leges Tabulaturæ, by-the-way, are almost a
literal transcription from the original laws preserved in Wagenseil's
book. The matter of the song is this: A boor falls ill. Finding that his
appetite is wholly gone, he calls in a physician, who informs him (in
a drastic fashion) that the trouble is caused by an accumulation of
slime in the stomach. He administers a purgative, but without result.
The sickness increases, and the boor upbraids the doctor, who
retorts that his patient will be a dead man within an hour unless he
consent to having his stomach taken out and scoured with chalk.
The boor consents, the physician performs the operation, cutting the
man open with a pair of shears, brushes out the offending organ
with a wisp, and hangs it on the fence to dry. What the farmer does
meanwhile is not recorded; but before the physician could replace
his stomach a raven carried it off to the woods and ate it. In this
dilemma the physician disclosed himself as a worthy progenitor of
the modern race of surgeons. He was terribly frightened, but didn't
let any one see it. By stealth he procured a sow's stomach,
introduced it into the farmer's body, and quickly sewed up the
aperture. The farmer got well, and paid eight florins for the job. But
heavens, what an appetite was that which he developed! To satisfy
him now was utterly impossible, for which reason, concludes the
moralist, an insatiable eater is nowadays said to be a hog (literally
"to have a sow's stomach"), who devours more than he produces, as
many women lament:
"Darum spricht man noch von ein Man,
Den man gar nicht erfuellen kan,
Wie er hab einen Sawmagen;
Verthut mehr denn er gewinnen kan,
Hoert man vil Frawen klagen."
 FIRST STOLLEN.

[PNG] [
The Less - er Book of Truth doth tell,
How ill - ness on a boor once fell,
Taste for all food de - stroy - ing;
A - gainst all drugs it did re - bel,
His pleas - ures all al - loy - ing.......

One day there came a doc - tor wise,

Who glanced him o'er with search - ing eyes,
Found out what caused his ail - ing.
His learn - ing proof a - gainst sur - prise,
Made work like that plain sail - ing.......
 THE ABGESANG.

[PNG] [

"Far - mer, of all your pains... the cause,

Is slime with - in your stom - ach wide dis - tend - ing."
The far - mer heard with gap - - ing jaws,
For gnaw - ing pains in - side his paunch were rend - ing.

The tale is an old one, popular in one form or another in the Middle
Ages. A variant of it is to be found in the Gesta Romanorum, to
which extraordinary collection of moral tales it is possible that Sachs
had reference when he spoke of the Buch der Kleinen Wahrheit, or
Lesser Book of Truth, as I have rendered it. In the Gesta, however,
the physician substitutes a goat's eye, and subjects his patient to an
extraordinary strabismus. Hans Sachs's variation is eminently
characteristic of the man and the people for whom he wrote.
 CHAPTER IV.
"DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN."

The common error of looking upon the outward covering of things

for the things themselves has led to the real plot of Wagner's
tetralogical drama "The Niblung's Ring" being overlooked by the
majority of persons who have written about it. Especially has the
significance of the prologue to the tragedy failed of appreciation. I
shall try to tell what I conceive to be the true story of the tragedy,
and at least hint at the meaning which that story had when it came
into the mind of the sagaman and myth-maker ages ago, which
meaning, moreover, Richard Wagner, unlike his modern predecessors
among the poets who have treated the subject, apprehended and
conserved.
It is a pretty solemn fact that unless this tragedy in four parts be
approached with other aims than mere diversion, much will be found
in it that appears ridiculous to the judgment, no matter how it
affects the senses. To some it may seem a fatal confession to say
that sincere and sufficient enjoyment of "The Niblung's Ring" is only
to be had by persons willing to let critical judgment wait upon the
imagination; yet I am willing to make that confession, and even to
augment it by the statement that there are scenes in the tragedy
when even this unfettered faculty must needs be as ingenuous as
the "raised imagination" of Charles Lamb at his first play, which
transformed the glistering substance on the pillars of Old Drury into
"glorified sugar-candy." Yet I do not believe that thereby the
potential beauty, impressiveness, and significance of the tragedy are
brought into question. Is it not easy to conceive of a mental
condition which would accept such a childlike receptivity as the only
mood in which an art-work designed to appeal to emotions which
the humdrum routine of modern life leaves untouched ought to be
approached? Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen" is not an idle fairy-
tale, the offspring of a mind working with fanciful material amid the
environment of the nineteenth century. It is a tragedy Hellenic in its
scope and proportions, dealing with one of the great problems of
human existence, reflecting the operations of the quickened mind
and conscience of humanity in its impressionable childhood.
"Das Rheingold" is the prologue to a tragedy which has not only the
dimensions, but also the aim, of a Greek trilogy. This conception of
its dignity greatly widens the significance of its few incidents. Of
necessity? Yes. Observe the manner in which Wagner approaches his
subject. The hero of the mediæval epic popularly called "The Lay of
the Niblung" is Siegfried; and this story of Siegfried is mixed with
considerable historical alloy. The character of Gunther, which figures
in the story, is Gundikar, founder of the Burgundian monarchy, who
was slain by Attila, A.D. 450. Attila himself is one of the personages
of the poem, the scene of which plays largely at Worms.
It was Wagner's aim to illustrate a profound truth of universal
bearing, and in harmony with his belief that such truths are best
taught by presenting pictures of humanity stripped of all
conventionality, he went back to the earliest forms of the tale which
the mediæval poet wove into the "Lay of the Niblung." By this
means he purified it of its historical dross; but also came in contact
with the creations of the myth-maker. The period into which he
moved his drama was the period reflected by our Northern ancestors
when they were striving by an exercise of a vivid imagination and
unyielding logic to answer the questions raised by a primitive
religious instinct. Whether we want to or not, we must look upon
"The Niblung's Ring" as a religious play which, by means of the
symbols created by the Northern myth-maker, teaches a lesson
universal and eternal in its application.
 I.
No legend dealing with the deep passions of human nature, and
reflecting the tragic struggle between the human and the divine,
which has been playing on the stage of the human heart since the
race began, is restricted by the circumstances of time, place, or
people. If it is really beautiful and moving it is a bit of universal
property, and in one form or another phases of it will be found in the
mythology or folk-lore of all civilized peoples. Not only the
foundation principles of such a legend, but even its theatre and
apparatus may be discovered. Parallels in religious mythologies will
readily occur, but perhaps not so readily parallels in those heroic
tales which reflect the national characteristics of peoples. Yet they
are not the less numerous. The grotto of Venus, in which
Tannhäuser steeps himself with sensuality, is but a German form of
the Garden of Delight, in which the heroes of classic antiquity met
their fair enslavers. It is Ogygia, the Delightful Island, where Ulysses
met Calypso. It is that Avalon in which King Arthur was healed of his
wounds by his fairy sister Morgain. The staff which bursts into green
in the hands of Pope Urban in token of Tannhäuser's forgiveness has
prototypes in the lances which, when planted in the ground by
Charlemagne's warriors, were transformed over night into a leafy
forest; in the staff which put on leaves in the hands of Joseph
wherefore the Virgin Mary gave herself to him in marriage; in the
rod of Aaron, which, when laid up among others in the tabernacle,
"brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds."
The Tarnhelm which the cunning Mime fashions at the command of
Alberich, what else is it but the Mask of Arthur, which had the power
of rendering its wearer invisible, or the Helmet of Pluto worn by
Perseus in his battle with the Gorgon? The Holy Grail, which Wagner
has surrounded with such a refulgent halo, is not merely a relic of
Christ's suffering and death. Its power of supplying food and
sustaining life identifies it with an article common to the mystical
apparatus of many peoples. As Achilles was dipped into Styx and
rendered invulnerable, so Jason was smeared with Medea's
ointment, and Siegfried became covered with a horny armor when
he bathed in the dragon's blood; and as the magic wash was kept
from Achilles's heel by the hand of Thetis, so the falling of a leaf
from a lime-tree on the back of Siegfried caused the one
unprotected spot through which a weapon might reach his life. The
sword of Wotan, thrust into the tree so firmly and miraculously that
none but a hero worthy to wield it and inspired by the desperation of
supremest need might draw it from its mighty sheath, what else is it
than the "fair sword" which stuck in the marble stone in the church-
yard against the high altar, which all the barons assayed in vain to
draw forth, but which young Arthur "lightly and fiercely" pulled out
of the stone, by which token he was recognized as rightwise king of
England? Or, going back further into story-land, who does not see in
it that bow of Ulysses which the wicked suitors of Penelope vainly
strove to bend, but which yielded to the hero disguised as a beggar
with such ease "as a harper in tuning of his harp draws out a
string?"
Horus, Apollo, and Baldur in Egypt, Greece, and the savage
Northland have represented the highest union of physical and moral
excellencies to millions of human beings; and when the Norse myth-
maker, exercising his imagination under the influence of that need
and longing and hope on which Plato based his argument in proof of
the immortality of the soul, drew his picture of Ragnarök, the
Twilight of the Gods, the end of the old regime of brute force, of
gods and giants, and the return of Baldur and his reign of peace,
gentleness, and loveliness, he felt the emotions with which the
Christian of to-day looks forward to the second coming of Christ the
Redeemer.
So striking are the parallels between the heroic tales of the class to
which the story of Siegfried belongs, that it has been possible for Dr.
J. G. von Hahn, in his Sagwissenschaftliche Studien, to draw up a
formula according to which the families belonging to the Aryan race
have constructed their most admired tales. This formula, he says,
exists more or less perfect in the heroic literature of every known
Aryan people. Hellenic mythology produced no less than seven of
these stories, of which the most striking are those of Perseus,
Theseus, Œdipus, and Herakles; Roman mythological history, one—
Romulus and Remus; Teutonic sagas, two—Wittich-Siegfried and
Wolfdietrich; Iranian mythic history, two, and Hindu mythology, two,
the most striking parallelisms occurring in the story of Krishna. Of
this story Mr. Alfred Nutt has found eight variants in old Keltic
literature, among them the story of Perceval. According to this
formula
I. The hero is born

(a) Out of wedlock.

(b) Posthumously.
(c) Supernaturally
(d) One of twins.

II. The mother is a princess residing in her own country.

III. The father is

(a) A god, or
from afar.
(b) A hero

IV. There are tokens and warnings of the hero's future greatness;
V. In consequence of which he is driven from home.
VI. Is suckled by wild beasts.
VII. Is brought up by a childless couple, or shepherd, or widow.
VIII. Is of passionate and violent disposition.
IX. Seeks service in foreign lands.

(a) Attacks and slays monsters.

 (b) Acquires supernatural knowledge through eating a fish or
other magic animal (the dragon's heart in the case of Sigurd, his
blood in the case of Siegfried).

X. Returns to his own country, retreats, and again returns.

XI. Overcomes his enemies, frees his mother, seats himself on a
throne.

II.
We should accustom ourselves to look upon the plot of "The
Niblung's Ring" as more celestial than terrestrial; the essential things
of the tragedy are those which concern Wotan, who is its real hero.
The happenings among the personages whose conduct under
varying trying circumstances is brought to notice in the three dramas
constituting the trilogy are, in reality, but accidents. In this respect
"The Niblung's Ring" is in a different case with Homer's Iliad which
also has a double plot, celestial and terrestrial. The cause of the
contest celebrated in the Iliad originated on earth; the gods took
part in it simply to avenge slights which had been put upon them by
one or another of the contestants, or because they were the special
protectors of certain of those personages. In Wagner's tragedy the
contest waged by the demi-gods, giants, dwarfs, and men, is but the
continuation of one invited by the gods. It is the consequence of a
sin committed by the chief god and his efforts to repair it. That
consequence, in its last and chiefest estate, is the destruction of
Wotan and all his fellows; this is what it signifies to all those
concerned in it, but to us it means a destruction followed by a new
creation. Wotan dies like a tragic hero, and his heroic offspring—the
bond connecting gods and men—die one after another, all in
consequence of his sin; but the death of the last, being the expiatory
self-sacrifice of loving woman, removes the curse from the earth.
"Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
This is the kernel of the plot of the tragedy, the beginning of which
is exhibited in "The Rhinegold," and the outcome prefigured. The
progress is from the state of sinlessness, through sin and its awful
consequences, to expiation. For each of these steps there are
symbols in the pictures, poetry, and music of the prologue.
The gods of our ancestors in the Northland were created in the
image of man. Originally the feeling of religion had been satisfied by
the conception of a dynasty of gods who, if they were made in the
image of man, were at least idealized; they had none of the passions
of men, none of their infirmities, none of their trials. When, in later
times, the impossibility of such a conception maintaining itself
became manifest, humanity among the rugged mountains and in the
deep forests of the North dreamed of a time that was past, before
the reign of primeval sinlessness and peacefulness had come to an
end. That was the Golden Age of the world. Wrong was unknown;
the passions which wreck men's lives and beget wrong were
unknown; it was the state of Eden before the advent of the tempter.
The silence of peace rested upon the waters. Gold was the symbol of
radiant innocency; it was but the plaything of the gods. As in
Milton's Eden, flowers were of all hue,
"And without thorn the rose."

"——Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring."

Put aside the prosaic frame of mind into which the Wolzogen labels
are calculated to throw one, and look at the instrumental
introduction to the prologue as a symbol of this state of physical and
moral loveliness. Could the peacefulness and passionlessness of
primeval purity be better typified in music? There are three aspects
in which the introduction should be viewed. It is most significant in
this study of the tragedy as a type of the Golden Age in Northern
mythology. Not until the principle of evil enters the play (in the
person of Alberich) is the serenity of the music disturbed.
Next, it is interesting as scenic music. By ingenious use of gauze
screens, painted canvas, and light-effects, the stage is made to
seem filled with water from floor to flies. Strange plants creep up the
side, and gnarled roots project into the water. Below is the rocky bed
of the Rhine. Above, a faint light plays on the rippling surface. The
music has begun with a single deep tone, but gradually it grows
more animated; there is no change in melody, but the introduction
of instruments with lighter and lighter tone-color, the introduction
and carefully graduated augmentation of a wavy accompaniment,
suggest to the ear at once growth in the movement of the water and
in the light which shines from above. The music is now doubly
delineative. While its spirit reflects the sinless quietude of the Golden
Age of the world, its matter depicts, first, the slow movement of the
water in its depths, then the gentle undulations of its half-depths,
finally the ripples and dartings and flashings and eddyings of its
surface.
The third aspect in which we may look at it is as a peculiarly striking
exemplification of Wagner's theories of composition carried out to
their most logical conclusion. That theory in its extremity would
demand that nothing be said when there is nothing to say—a self-
evident proposition much oftener honored in the breach than in the
observance. Remember that Wagner, in giving an account of the
genesis of his typical phrases cites his conduct in "Der Fliegende
Holländer," when, having found themes to stand for the mental
states described in the ballad, he resolved to repeat its thematic
expression every time a mental mood recurred. A necessary corollary
of such a logical proceeding would seem to be that until the play had
introduced something—a picture, a personage, an idea—there could
be no room for music. It is not necessary to go to this extremity; but
if we want to we will find that Wagner is true to himself even here.
Only the mood of the scene is delineated for us in the music of the
introduction, and his willingness to begin as near nothing as possible
is shown by the use at the outset of the single deep bass tone. The
whole introduction is built on this note and its simplest harmony, the
development being accomplished by the gradual changes of
orchestration, the employment of higher octaves, and the
augmentation of the wavy accompaniment.

III.
It was an inevitable consequence of the structure of the Northern
mythological system that the gods should lose their primeval
sinlessness. Before the mind of the Northern myth-maker, as before
the minds of the Athenians, who erected the altar on Mars-hill "to
the Unknown God," there hovered a dim apprehension of a First
Cause of all being, older and more puissant than the gods whom he
conceived as reigning. As Zeus and his fellows reigned by reason of
having overthrown Cronos and the dynasty of the Titans, so Wotan
and his fellows reigned by reason of conquest and treaty. In
consequence, there was a perpetual struggle between the sky-
dwellers, the mountain-dwellers, and the earth-dwellers—the gods,
giants, and dwarfs—for dominion. This lust for power it was that
caused the downfall of the gods. Dormant within the radiant gold,
buried in the Rhine and guarded by the daughters of the Rhine, lay
the secret of universal dominion. In the Golden Age no one courted
it because there was no need. But when the greed of power and
gain asserted itself, the gold was a prize to be sought after and
bought at any price. The first change in the stage picture still leaves
us the spirit of purity and innocency undisturbed. The Rhine
daughters, whose duty it is to guard the magical gold, are careless
creatures, as well they may be, for, though warned, they have never
seen danger approach their treasure. Floating up and down, they
sing and gambol with each other as they swim around the jagged
rock, their song being as undulating as the element in which they
live. They partake in their nature of that element, and the melodies
with which they are associated are imitative of watery movements.
The beginning of the end of the Golden Age was dated by the old
poets from the time when three giantesses were admitted among
the gods. They were the Nornir, the Fates, whose deep thoughts
were given respectively to the past, present, and future. The
entrance of a stranger into the domains of the Rhine daughters is
also the signal for the introduction of evil into the drama. The
representative of this evil principle is Alberich, the Niblung—one of
the race of dwarfs; musically his mischievous character, his restless
energy, and his strangeness to the element in which he finds himself
is told by the orchestra in the abrupt, jerky music to which he
enters, and which accompanies his slipping and sliding on the slimy
rocks of the river's bottom. Alberich's aims were simply lust. To the
nixies he is merely amusing. They engage him in tormenting
dalliance till he utters an imprecation against them and shakes his
fist. He forgets his anger at his pretty tantalizers, however, when a
new spectacle falls upon his sight. The sunlight, piercing the water,
has fallen upon the gold, which lies in the cleft of a rock and now
begins to glow. The increasing refulgence is seen and heard
simultaneously, for as the new light floods the scene, singers and
orchestra break out into a ravishing apostrophe to the gold.
Now we reach the point where the ethical contest, at the bottom of
the entire tragedy, is first foreshadowed. The nixies, rendered
careless by the long uselessness of their watch, prattle away the
secret that universal power would be the reward of him who would
seize the gold and fashion it into a ring:

"The realm of the world

By him shall be won,
Who from the Rhine gold
Hath wrought the ring,
Imparting measureless might."

But the power to fashion the ring can only be obtained by one
willing to renounce the delight and happiness of love:
 "Who the delight of Love forswears,
He who derides its ravishing joys,
He alone has the magic might
To shape the gold to a ring."

The issue is joined. Here Love and contentment in the Niblung's lot;
there the prospect of power universal and lovelessness. The dwarf
does not hesitate long. In the next scene the giants hesitate longer,
and Wotan ponders longer than either whether the gold is worth the
price demanded for it. But the Age of Innocency is past—all yield in
turn to the lust for power, the greed of gain, which the gold
promises to satisfy. The first step in the tragedy is taken. Alberich
puts love aside forever and curses it. Then, in spite of the shrieks of
the nixies, he seizes the gold and dives into the depths.
The light dies out of the scene. The bright song of the nixies runs
out into minor plaints, and the orchestra discourses mournfully of
the renunciation of love and the rape of the ring, until the scene
changes from depths of the Rhine to the heights where Valhalla,
newly built, stands in massive strength, gleaming in the morning
sun.
We have witnessed the beginning of the struggle for dominion
begun cunningly by a dwarf. Not the race of the Niblungs, but the
race of giants had caused Wotan concern. Against them he thought
to raise an impregnable fortress, and the cunning Loge, the
representative of the evil principle in the celestial plot, had contrived
to have the work done by two giants, to whom Wotan, at Loge's
instigation, promised the goddess Freia as a reward, though Loge
had privately assured him that he would never be called on to meet
the obligation. The whole tale is borrowed by Wagner from Norse
mythology.
Once upon a time, so runs the old story, an artisan came to the gods
and offered to build for them a fortress which would forever shield
them from the frost giants, if they would give him, in payment,
Freya, the goddess of youth, beauty, and love, besides the sun and
the moon. The gods agreed, provided he would do the work alone,
and in the space of a single winter. When summer was but three
days distant the castle was so nearly finished that the gods saw that
the compact would be kept by the strange artisan. The imminent
loss of Freya frightened the gods, and they threatened Loge with
death if he did not prevent the completion of the work within the
period fixed. The artisan had the help of a horse named Svadilfari,
who drew the most enormous stones to the castle at night. Loge the
next night decoyed the horse Svadilfari into the forest, so that the
usual quota of work was not done. Then the mysterious workman
appeared before the gods in his real form as a giant, and Thor killed
him with a blow of his hammer. The Norse Freya is the Teutonic
Freia. In Wagner's poem Freia is the reward which the giants Fafner
and Fasolt expect for having built Valhalla in a single night. Loge had
instigated the compact, and promised to relieve Wotan of the
obligation of payment. But the giants carry Freia off and restore her
only after Wotan and Loge have given the Niblung's hoard in
exchange. To Freia, Wagner has given an attribute which, in
Scandinavian mythology, belongs to Iduna. She is the guardian of
the golden apples, the eating of which keeps the gods young.
Iduna's apples the student of comparative mythology will at once
identify with the golden apples which Hera received as a wedding-
gift, and which were guarded by the Hesperides and stolen by
Hercules. In the Norse story they are carried away by a winged giant
named Thiassi, and brought back by Loge, who had tempted Iduna
out of her beautiful grove "Always Young," in order that the giant
might swoop down upon her and carry the apples away. Wagner
gives these apples to Freia for the sake of a dramatic effect. The
gods turn wrinkled and gray so soon as the giants carry off the
goddess of youth and beauty.
Wotan has his Valhalla, but the giants demand their reward. Loge is
summoned to extricate the god from the predicament in which his
lust after power has plunged him. The god of fire and the restless
representative of the destructive principle appears, and thereafter he
is never absent long from the action. He pervades every scene, his
red cloak fluttering, eyes, hands, feet, body moving synchronously
with that fitful chromatic phrase which crackles and flashes and
flickers through the orchestra whenever he takes part in the action.
He has searched through the world for a ransom for Freia, and
found but one creature who estimated anything higher than the
beauty and worth of woman. It is Alberich who, having wrought a
ring out of the magic gold, has bent the race of Niblungs to his will,
and is now preparing to conquer universal dominion for himself.
Thus a new danger threatens the race of gods. In this extremity
Wotan listens to the advice of Loge and decides to possess himself
of the Niblung hoard, that with it he may purchase the release of
Freia, and "make assurance double sure." The two descend to the
abode of the dwarfs. In Nibelheim the rocky caverns glow with the
reflection of forge fires, and the ear is saluted with the clang of
hammers falling upon anvils. Loge cunningly tempts the dwarf to
exhibit the magical properties of the Tarnhelm (the cap of darkness),
and when he assumes the shape of a toad the gods seize and bind
him. Under the walls of Valhalla they compel him to ransom himself
with gold for the giants and rob him of the ring. Then Alberich
burdens it with a curse, introducing into the tragedy the poison
which accomplishes the destruction of all its heroes, and remains a
bane upon the earth till restitution is made and expiation achieved
by the self-immolation of Brünnhilde.
The first fruits of the curse follow hard upon the heels of its
utterance. The giants, ravished by the tale of the wealth of the
Niblung treasure, exact it all as ransom for Freia. Wotan had aimed
to keep the ring as another hostage for the future—with ring and
fortress he would feel secure—but the giants demand, the runes
upon his spear contain the pledge, and Erda warns. The ring is
grudgingly surrendered, and at once its baneful effect is seen. The
giants quarrel for its possession, and Fafner kills Fasolt with blows of
his staff. Not till then does Wotan realize the deep significance of the
warning words of Erda. A solemn duty, an awful task devolves upon
him. Murder as well as theft lies at his door; with the ring a fearful
curse has entered the world as a consequence of his wrong-doing;
henceforth he must devote himself to the work of reparation.
Mayhap the wrong may be righted by a restoration of the ring to the
original owners of the gold. His own hands are bound, but he
conceives a plan, of which the visible symbol is the magic sword. A
new race shall arise, the sword shall aid it in obtaining the ring, and
of its own will it shall return the circlet to the element from which
lust for power wrested it. It is this creative thought which makes him
pause with his foot upon the rainbow bridge, across which the
celestial household have passed into Valhalla. The sword phrase
flashes through the pompous music which is the postlude of the
prologue.

IV.

"Höre, höre, höre!

Alles was ist, endet.
Ein düst'rer Tag
Dämmert den Göttern.
Dir rath ich, meide den Ring!"

Thus does Erda warn Wotan. Of all the words of the prologue they
are biggest with significance for the tragedy as a whole. They
foretell the consequences of Wotan's sin. Erda is the Vala, the
goddess of primeval wisdom, "the pantheistic symbol of the
universe, the timeless and spaceless mother of gods and men," as
Dr. Hueffer calls her. She is the mother of the Nornir. Their phrase is
an elemental one, like that of the Rhine. Its ascending intervals
suggest growth. The antithesis of this concept is decay, destruction.
The melody of the "Twilight of the Gods" (b), in the prediction of
Erda, appears as an inversion of the elemental melody (a).
[PNG] [

[PNG] [
It is an awful consummation that is predicted by Erda and
symbolized in this descending phrase—the destruction of a world as
the outcome of that contest which since time began has been the
basis of religions and mythologies. No civilized people has escaped
being confronted by that problem, but all peoples have not solved it
alike. In our own religion the spectacle of its tragical consequences
has held the world in awe for nearly nineteen hundred years.
Generally in the legends which the human imagination, fired by
religious instinct, has created to symbolize the eternal conflict, the
hero who goes to destruction is an ideal man. Sometimes he is a
god; but only the daring imagination of the Northern myth-maker
was equal to the task of making that hero the chiefest of the gods,
and connecting his downfall with the end of the race to which he
belongs. In this awful flight of the Northern imagination, this sublime
achievement of the Northern conscience, lies the essential difference
between the religious systems of the classic Greeks and our savage
ancestors. The Greeks, profoundly philosophical as they were, would
yet have shrunk back appalled from such a solution of the great
problem as the Teuton provided in his Götterdämmerung. Logic
might force them to recognize the necessity of it or something like it,
but they would not permit logic to compel them to contemplate it.
Once the stern mind of Æschylus seemed on the point of disclosing
a divine tragedy approximate in its proportions. Prometheus, chained
to the rock on Mount Caucasus, comforts himself in his bitter agony
with thoughts of the time when grim necessity shall force Zeus to
right his wrongs. But observe that the end of his sufferings is not to
follow as an act of retributive justice, but is to be purchased by a
compromise. The time will come when Zeus will need his help, for of
all the gods Prometheus alone knows how the plot will be laid and
how Zeus can escape it:

"I know that Zeus is hard,

And keeps the right supremely to himself;
But then, I know, he'll be
Full pliant in his will
When he is thus crushed down.
Then calming down his mood
Of hard and bitter wrath,
He'll hasten unto me,
As I to him shall haste,
For friendship and for peace."

This is the nearest approach that the Greeks came to a parallel with
the most tremendous conception of Northern mythology. Does it
strike you as strange? It need not. Remember, the loveliness of their
country and climate kept before the Greeks perpetually the
benignant aspect of their gods. It is true they found themselves as
little able as our ancestors later to maintain these embodiments of a
primeval conception of idealized humanity in a state of sinlessness;
but when brought face to face with the contradictions which
followed, they extricated themselves as best they might by the
makeshift of a compromising reconciliation, or flew to the extreme of
unbelief. The moral obliquity of the gods was recognized, but was
not permitted to throw a shadow over the radiant ones in the
Olympian court. You may observe an illustration of this mental trait
in the unwillingness of the Greeks to call unpleasant things by their
right names. The Euxine, or Hospitable Sea, was once righteously
called by them the Axine, or Inhospitable Sea. The dreadful Furies,
with their heads covered with writhing snakes, after they had
scourged Orestes through the world, were given a temple and
worship at Athens as the Eumenides—the kind or good-tempered
ones. These Furies belonged to the class of gloomy deities, which
was the offspring of conscience and the sense of moral
responsibility. They were bound to present themselves to a thinking
people, but a people who basked always in Nature's smile were
equally bound to subordinate them to the gods of nature that were
the embodiment of cheerfulness and light. To contemplate the latter
was a delightful occupation; the former were viewed through a veil
which concealed their hideousness.
There was nothing in the surroundings of our ancestors to
encourage such a species of indirection. The natural powers which
confronted them oftenest were inimical. They did not live in the
sunlight of Nature's smile, but in the shadow of her frown. The
simple right to exist had daily to be conquered. The vague
apprehensions of a sinless, an absolute and omnipotent Deity, which
flitted furtively across their minds, took deeper and deeper root
when the logic of necessity began to taint their dynasty of gods with
weakness and crimes. But, like the Greeks, they could give such a
conception neither form, habitation, nor name. It remained hovering
in the background. As their physical life was a ceaseless struggle
with Nature in her sternest aspects, and as the more cruel of those
aspects were connected with the phenomena of winter, it was
natural that when the conception of overshadowing Fate had to be
personified in the process of mythological construction, the Nornir
should have been imagined as daughters of the giants of the North
—harsh, cruel, vengeful, implacable. The terrible Fimbul winter was
to precede Ragnarök. All their training taught them to look the
actual in the face. They lived in war, and death possessed terror only
to those who could not die in battle. Destruction was a conception
with which they were familiar; destruction was the logical outcome
of all activities. So soon as they began to contemplate a race of gods
who were offenders against that moral law which was the outgrowth
of the primitive religious instinct, just so soon such a people had to
provide for a catastrophe which would resolve the discord. The
Greek tragedian made Prometheus the symbol of humanity and
achieved his aim by a reconciliation with offended Deity. The Norse
myth-maker chose the chief of the gods as his representative, raised
the issue between him and unpersonified moral law, and compelled
the god to go down to destruction with all his race to satisfy a vast
and righteous necessity. "If," says Felix Dahn, "a religion has become
thoroughly corrupt, then, unless the nation professing it is to be
destroyed along with its civilization, a new religion, satisfying to the
needs of the period, must either be introduced from without—as
Christianity was introduced in the Roman world in the first centuries
of the Empire—or the existing religion must be purified and
reconstructed; as was the case with Christianity in the sixteenth
century through the Protestant Reformation, and also, indeed,
through the very material Catholic improvements achieved by the
Tridentine Council.
"But beside these two there is a third means of resolving the
difficulty; this third was seized upon by the Germanic consciousness.
It is the tragical remedy.
"The Germanic gods, too, placed themselves in irreconcilable and
unendurable opposition to morality; and the Germanic conscience
condemned them every one to destruction—to death! That is the
meaning of the Götterdämmerung; it is a peerlessly great moral
deed of the Germanic race, and it stamps Germanic mythology with
its tragic character.
"Destruction because of an irreparable rupture with established and
peaceful order in Religion, Morality, or Law, is essentially tragical.
"The Götterdämmerung a sacrifice? A stupendous deed of morality?
Aye, indeed, that it is!"[D]
 V.
We are henceforth to observe Wotan in his conduct when brought
face to face with the consequences of his violations of moral law.
That conduct it is which reflects the real tragedy in "The Niblung's
Ring." Bound by the contract whose runes were cut in the haft of his
spear, the god could not again possess himself of the ring, which
was now become doubly a menace. If it were again to fall into the
hands of Alberich, whom he had so cruelly wronged, the desire for
vengeance would spur that mischievous Niblung to seize the
dominion which had been forfeited. To prevent such a catastrophe,
Wotan would beget a new race of beings and endow them with a
magic sword. This was to be the extent of his activity in the
development of his plot. As a Volsung he wandered through the
forests with Siegmund, his son born of woman. At an early age this
son had lost his mother and been separated from his twin-sister.
Then his father left him mysteriously to be seasoned to his task by
hardships. At the climax of his distress, the culmination of his need,
he was to arm himself with the divine sword which the god had
thrust up to the hilt in a tree, around which was built the hut of that
very enemy of the Volsung race, who had carried off the sister and
married her against her will. The achievement of the sword was to
be the sign of Siegmund's fitness for the enterprise. Of his own free-
will the divinely-begotten hero was to acquire the ring, and rid the
world of the curse by restoring it to its rightful owners. How vain a
plot! The first step in its development shatters the whole elaborate
fabric! Both of the children forfeit their lives to outraged law; the
god is compelled to destroy the very agencies on which he had built
his hopes. The curse under whose fatal influence he had fallen
because of wrong-doing was not to be averted by so shallow a
subterfuge; but even if such an outcome had been possible, the plan
would have split on the rock of newly offended morality.
In this outline of the contents of "Die Walküre" I have but hinted at
its incidents, yet we have before us a whole vast act of the Wotan
tragedy, and one, too, that is pregnant with consequences to the
tragical scheme of the myth-maker. I do not ask that the occasional
interpretations of Wagner's music which I attempt be accepted as
literal expositions of the composer's purposes; but we can benefit in
our understanding of the scope and progress of his tragedy by
discovering symbols for its great philosophical moments in the
musical investiture. In this view of the case observe how appropriate
is the instrumental introduction to the first act. We have gone
beyond the hand-books in seeing a reflection of the purity and
quietude of the Golden Age in the introduction to the prologue. Its
antithesis is presented in the introduction to the first drama of the
trilogy. Again Wagner makes nature reflect the mental and moral
states of his personages. Again he presents a musical mood-picture.
And again the musician is invited to discover that, in spite of the
contrast between the objects of his musical delineation, the technical
means resorted to are the same. There the peacefully undulating
major harmonies over a sustained bass note—a pedal-point, if you
will—pictured the age of sinlessness; the harmlessness of the
untainted, uncoveted virgin gold; the gentle flux and reflux of the
element in which it was buried; the careless innocency of its
unsuspicious and playful guardians. Here wildly flying minor
harmonies under a sustained note—again a pedal-point—picture the
storm which buffets the exhausted, unprotected Siegmund, and
impels him to seek refuge in Hunding's hut.
If this parallel is merely fanciful, it at least invites such an exercise of
the fancy in the listeners as will better help them to appreciate the
interdependence of the arts which Wagner consorts in his dramas
than any amount of structural dissection and analysis. If you wish
you may note that in addition to the music which aims merely at
imitative delineation of a thunder-storm (the rushing figure in the
basses, the incessant staccato patter of the sustained note, the
attempts to suggest flashes of lightning in short and rapid figures in
the high register of the instruments, the crashing and rumbling of
thunder, and the howling of the wind in the chromatic passages), the
music also presents a pompous phrase with which, in the scene of
the prologue where Thor created the rainbow bridge, the Thunderer
summoned the elements to his aid, and at the close a heavy-footed
phrase which may be identified with the weary Siegmund.
If these two preludes be accepted as broadly and comprehensively
delineative of moods in the theatre and personages of the play,
another significant parallel will now present itself. It was to a phrase
which has the rhythm afterwards associated with the Niblungs in
their capacity as smiths (see Chapter I.)—the hammering rhythm—
that Alberich disclosed his wicked nature and resolve when he shook
his fist at the nixies. Observe how the element of danger to the
Volsung pair is introduced in the first scene of the tragedy. It enters
with the sinister Hunding, who, as the unconscious instrument of
Fate and Fricka's vengeance, brings death to Siegmund. In the music
which precedes Hunding's entrance there are only strains of pathetic
tenderness which invite sympathy for the unhappy children of
Wotan, and which we are asked by the analyst and commentator to
associate with the compassion which they feel for each other, and
the growth of that feeling into the more ardent emotion of love. The
phrase which ushers in Hunding is in sharp contrast; if is gloomy in
harmony and orchestration, and publishes the evil in his heart, not
only by its dark colors, but also by employing the threatening rhythm
which Alberich used against the Rhine daughters. The incidents
which serve to complete the first great step in the drama so far as
Wotan, the hero, is concerned, can now be hastily reviewed.
Hunding discovers his guest to be the enemy of his race; the laws of
hospitality protect him for the night, but he must fight on the
morrow. Siegmund's need has reached its climax. But Sieglinde,
after putting Hunding to sleep with a draught, returns to him and
discloses the mystery of the sword. Mutually they confess their love,
and discover their relationship in the moment when the magic sword
is won. A new thought prevents that terrible discovery from checking
the progress of their passion. The race of the Volsungs must be
perpetuated. If you want to learn how powerful an element this
thought is in the old legend from which Wagner borrowed the
episode, you must study it in the Volsunga Saga, where it is
consorted with elements which largely atone for the features so
offensive and so much criticised in Wagner's drama. There Signy
(Wagner's Sieglinde) desiring to avenge herself on her husband
Siggeir (Hunding), who had murdered all the race but her and
Sigmund, and kept her in loveless wedlock, tried in vain to rear a
son of sufficient hardihood to perform the deed of vengeance. At
last, fearful that the Volsungs might become extinct, she changed
semblance with a witch-wife, and in this guise visited Sigmund at his
hiding-place in the woods. When their son grew to manhood he and
his father avenged Signy's wrongs. But when they offered her great
honors Signy told Sigmund: "I went into the woods to thee in witch-
wife's shape, and Sinfjötli (Siegfried) is the son of thee and me both;
and therefore has he this great hardihood and fierceness, because
he is the son of Välse's son and Välse's daughter. For naught else
have I so wrought that King Siggeir might get his bane at last; and
merrily now will I die with the King though I was naught merry to
wed him;"[E] and she entered the burning palace and died with the
King and his men. The motive here is the same as in the
objectionable episode in Wagner, but it is presented more forcibly
and, at the same time, less offensively—or, at least, with less show
of moral depravity. But the sin is speedily expiated. Fricka, the
patron goddess of marriage, demands that Siegmund shall become
her victim; and Fricka's right cannot be gainsaid by the
representative of Law. Wotan pronounces the oath that Fricka
demands. The Volsung is doomed; the plan of the god frustrated.
The first act of the tragedy is complete; the second stage of the
development of Wotan's tragical character is entered upon. These
are the essential features of that stage:
In despair the god surrenders his plan, invokes the consequences of
his guilty deed, and pronounces a blessing on the inimical agency
which has been established for his punishment. He turns his longing
gaze towards that outcome of the terrible conflict in which he
became involved because of his greed of power, which his own
wisdom, clarified by the mystic words of Erda, recognizes as
inevitable.
Welcome to Our Bookstore - The Ultimate Destination for Book Lovers
Are you passionate about books and eager to explore new worlds of
knowledge? At our website, we offer a vast collection of books that
cater to every interest and age group. From classic literature to
specialized publications, self-help books, and children’s stories, we
have it all! Each book is a gateway to new adventures, helping you
expand your knowledge and nourish your soul
Experience Convenient and Enjoyable Book Shopping Our website is more
than just an online bookstore—it’s a bridge connecting readers to the
timeless values of culture and wisdom. With a sleek and user-friendly
interface and a smart search system, you can find your favorite books
quickly and easily. Enjoy special promotions, fast home delivery, and
a seamless shopping experience that saves you time and enhances your
love for reading.
Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and
personal growth!

ebookgate.com