COMMUNITY, SI-INDEPENDENCE, NO
Bishop, Jordan
But the seminary walk-out is now more than three months old; the headlines are getting smaller; the rallies less dramatic; the endless proposals for mediation less interesting. Concordia is...
...Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said that sharing a continent with the United States is like sleeping with an elephant...
...What they are called upon to do is to create a political force that will maintain stable, friendly relations with the United States...
...As a last resort, the ubiquitous military aid creates another group of elites whose main purpose is to keep Latin America in the American Empire...
...The Venezuelan government has repeatedly indicated that petroleum prices will remain high, and despite Mr...
...It is the real meaning of the Good Neighbor policy, and of the Alliance for Progress...
...This is the basic thrust of the Monroe Doctrine...
...As both sides contend, it is quite possible that there may be no compromise and no split either...
...While this is unlikely to result in any concerted action it may provide a sign of how some Latin American leaders are thinking...
...nearly every Latin American nation is tied to the United States through investment, aid, trade and--most important-military assistance programs that tend to ensure not only "stability" but the kind of stability demanded for "development" within a hemispheric (that is, imperialistic) system...
...Kissinger's new diplomacy...
...Mexico (and to the North, Canada) never did accept it...
...Concordia is operating in a fashion and undoubtedly can continue to operate without the dissidents...
...Sixty-five percent of Canada's industry is Americanowned...
...They are seldom called upon to exercise this mission...
...The United States would not press Latin America JORDAN BISHOP, JlOW a news editor in Canada, lived and worked in Latin America /or many years...
...Latin Americans who must, willy-nilly, share a hemisphere with the United States, have been treated to yet another "new relationship" with the United States as Mr...
...Hackles rose in Canada recently over the U.S...
...And there is little chance for Latin America to look forward to anything else as long as it remains within a hemispheric system...
...There have been no serious efforts on the part of Latin American nations--if one excepts the odd defense contract--to play off Europe and Japan against the monolith to the North...
...With the exception of Cuba...
...3 May 1974:212 As things stand, there may be little difference between a new hemispheric community and the present situation...
...Given the history of Latin America's relationships with the United States, it is not surprising that the idea was rejected...
...Argentina has yet to get a decision on whether similar sale of Argentine-built automobiles can be made to Cuba...
...to carry out its proposals for a new partnership...
...This in fact is what a hemispheric community must mean to Latin America, and what it has meant in the past...
...This has started with oil...
...Venezuela has questioned the embargo, although Venezuelan oil might now be priced too high for Cuba, which imports Russian oil in exchange for now-expensive sugar...
...There is no need to create a political bloc, least of all by the State Department...
...There are some old wounds still open--the courtroom where Regis Debray was tried in 1968 was festooned with banners proclaiming Bolivia's right to a Bolivian department occupied by Chile in 1879 and ceded to that country in 1901...
...They have little real choice, and if they are interested in a model, they might look to the North...
...Few people seriously think that a Latin American nation would be allowed to go to war with another one, least of all those who supply planes and tanks to Latin American armies...
...The real question is not how to achieve a hemispheric community, but rather how Latin Americans might escape from such a community...
...In context this means the establishment of industry along the lines of American industry, controlled by American interests and resulting in the establishment of elites that need the present system for survival...
...Canada is a developed nation, highly industrialized, with a high standard of living, well-accustomed to sleeping with the elephant...
...This may be overly optimistic by half...
...The recent case of Chile is but one example of this, more dramatic than others since the military were actually called upon to employ force to save Chile for the Empire...
...Of course not...
...Kissinger met in Mexico City recently with Latin American and Caribbean foreign ministers...
...Guayana under Forbes Burnham--the anti-Communist choice of a few years back--has been making friendly overtures to Cuba as well...
...Nixon proposed a new Latin American policy, and it turned out to be old Latin American policy, in which the "hemispheric" idea is central...
...That this has not happened is the best sign that the Monroe DoctrineBig Stick-Good Neighbor-Alliance for Progress-New Community tradition is still solidly established...
...In 1969 Mr...
...The enticing prospect for many Latin Americans is that if this works for oil, it may well work for other commodities as well...
...Latin America is tied to the United States as effectively now as it would be under any other slogan...
...The real problem is not how to form a hemispheric community, but rather how to escape it...
...They can look forward to a brilliant future as part of the hemispheric system, whether their leaders accept the rhetoric of a new "Western hemisphere community" or not...
...Man~ Latin Americans would maintain that this has already been done by the Pentagon...
...Yet in fact, the hemispheric system functions as securely as ever...
...Some diplomatic observers said that the fact that the Cuban issue was not discussed was a sign of the success of Mr...
...Nixon's "new" policy in 1969...
...Nixon's promise of self-sufficiency by 1980, they are on solid ground...
...Within the existing hemispheric system, there are now and again signs of unrest...
...The project was the formation of a "new Western hemisphere community...
...The tragic adventure of Ernesto Guevara in Bolivia was hardly a threat to the establishment...
...Prestige aside, there is hardly any reason for military aid except to keep the Empire going...
...If it is not, the threat of nationalization of the company in question has been made...
...I COMMUNITY, SI--INDEPENDENCE, NO JORDAN BISHOP Under whatever slogan, Latin America remains effectively tied to the U.S...
...embargo on a sale of locomotives to Cuba by a Montreal-based American company...
...Ominously, Chile under Allende opened relationships with Cuba, but this was probably a minor factor in the subsequent "Guatemalization" of Chile...
...This is reinforced by American aid--bilateral aid always being preferred to any effective multilateral (or non-hemispheric) aid, as many United Nations workers have discovered to their sorrow...
...And as the case of Chile demonstrates, it is effective...
...The problem might just go away through the twentieth-century version of schism--attrition...
...It is Mr...
...Kissinger has insisted that the United States is not trying to create a new political bloc in Latin America...
...The blockade of Cuba has not worked, even though Mr...
...Canada has apparently resorted to softer, but effective methods...
...But the principal mission of Latin American military forces, as spelled out by General Westmoreland in an address to chiefs of staff in Brazil in the mid-sixties, is counter-insurgency...
...Kissinger was able to keep the question off the agenda at Mexico City...
...Latin American nations---even Cuba--are still engaged in the pursuit of "development," and Latin American elites still have a vested interest in "development...
...For the moment, it sounds like wishful thinking, but the idea has been voiced, and reported in the Latin American press...
...The usual argument is made in terms of the relatively small export market, the fact that America produces largely for domestic consumption, the small amount of Latin American trade compared with the large American GNP...
...Commonweal: 213...
...Establishment economists have often remarked that the United States does not need Latin America...
...Aside from factors already mentioned, the principal instrument is the need for "development...
...Rhetoric can hardly cover the fact of continuity in United States policy towards Latin America, and the practical impossibility of any real change...
...And as the heat of the dispute continues to lose intensity, the moderates might discover that synod officials were counting on the walk-out too, counting on it to rid the synod of dissidents in one fell swoop...
...In October of last year there was a call for the formation of a common energy policy in Latin America--with no mention of extending an invitation to the United States to participate...
...This inevitably means American domination of Latin American politics, industry and trade...
...Eighty percent of Canada's resource industry is American-owned...
...Argentina is interested in selling automobiles to Cuba...
...If all this is successful, the nations to the South of the Rio Grande (they would call it the Rio Bravo) may one day become part of the developed world...
...This in itself guarantees the survival of the Empire, even though it also implies the creation of a "dual economy," of islands of twentieth-century technology in an ocean of poverty and increased unemployment, and ever-increasing dependence on the United States...
...In the Mexico City meeting, one foreign minister was missing...
...No amount of window-dressing or new hemispheric proposals can alter the facts of today's coexistence...
...Perhaps the most important development has been the sudden realization that a seller's market may develop in raw materials...
...Even increasing the ante for the area's raw materials reinforces the system...
...Franz Fanon has already remarked that "objective" studies always seem to favor the imperialist position...
...Three days of discussion were not enough to bring the Latin Americans around to open acceptance of colonial status...
...Fidel Castro has had kind words for the Velasco regime in Peru--a regime which raises some questions as to the ultimate effectiveness of military aid as a system of political control...
...If it comes, the Missouri Synod, the church militant still, could find itself free for another century of talk of fellowship and love and peace, free to get back to Bible reading, hymn singing and other preparation for becoming the church triumphant...
...On the other side is the fact that the highly efficient United States economy consumes--as E. F. Schumacher has pointed out--forty percent of the world's resources to provide for six percent of the world's population...
...That type schism comes not from an organized split but simply when some men decide they must get back to the business of making a living, some decide there are more important fights for freedom to be won and some just lose interest...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 9
