TWO OVER-PRICED BOOKS ON OUR NEIGHBORS
Rodell, Katherine
Two Over-Priced Books On Our Neighbors MEXICO SPEAKS, by Guido Rosa. John Day. $3. LATIN AMERICA AND THE UNITED STATES, by Graham H. Stuart. Appleton-Century. $5. Reviewed by Katherine...
...Rosa seems merely to be saying: "Aren't these simple people quaint...
...In an astonishingly naive section on "dollar diplomacy" he says casually that because of the large amount of U. S. capital invested in Central American coffee and bananas "it is evident that the American government cannot wholly ignore the investment interests'of its citizens in this quarter," and then goes on to talk about trade and tariffs as though that were the real essence of the matter...
...Even more distressing is the literal translation of-Mexican speech, so that his people "have the hunger," "speak the English," are "at the service of yourselves," find things "much terrible" or "much good" or "more better," and "to all of which it is enjoyed the music...
...He proudly points to the increases of trade with the United States after various marine interventions as proof of economic advance, ignoring the fact that because of United States ownership of means of production such trade increases benefited citizens of the United States rather than the Latin Republics...
...At least Mr...
...However, because of its biases and blind spots I should like to be able to require that large doses of the early books of Carleton Beals be taken as an antidote immediately after reading...
...They don't know any better...
...Unfortunately, Mr...
...Perhaps the original blame for this sort of gibberish should fall on Mr...
...Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, but that is no excuse for anyone else...
...Hemingway was making a conscious, if arty, effort to reproduce a foreign speech...
...This is that although there are lamentable chapters in U. S.-Latin-in American relations, by and large the United States has been noble and right...
...Loaded with footnotes and larded with supplementary reading lists, this is a work of conventional scholarship...
...Stuart's book, too, there is an unspoken assumption which ^colors all his conclusions...
...Reviewed by Katherine Rodell GUIDO ROSA spent four months rambling through Mexico in a temperamental and decrepit Chevrolet, sticking to the by-ways and the villages, talking to everyone he met...
...The prices of these books are, respectively, $3 and $5...
...In Prof...
...The innate dignity of the Mexicans, their profound belief in education, their wide comprehension of political issues, their ageless wisdom, are understood and recorded, and give the book its depth and stature...
...Moreover, as a political scientist, Prof...
...What people said to him is faithfully set down in this book, which contains too a collec-lection of photographs of individuals and places...
...Rosa has also recorded his own inverted sense of snobism, a "lo the noble Indian" point of view which seems to imply that anyone who wears shoes and has more than three pesos in his pocket is a crass materialist with no sense of the finer things of life...
...Stuart has apparently little interest in economics...
...Thus, although in the detailed chapters on Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Central American republics he notes that United States rule or intervention has not always been an unmixed blessing, and has at times been a gross violation of local sovereignty, in summing up he says blandly, "The United States has always stood staunchly for the territorial integrity and political independence of its Latin American neighbors...
...At 30 cents and 50 cents they would be good buys...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 18
