Unknown Neighbors
Goodsell, James Nelson
Unknown Neighbors Latin America: a cultural history, by German Arciniegas. Translated from the Spanish by Joan Mac-Lean. Alfred A. Knopf. 594 pp. $10. Inside South America, by John Gunther. Harper...
...610 pp...
...Taken out of context, it tends to jar...
...7.95...
...Arciniegas5 new work, Latin America: A Cultural History, is a masterpiece of historical synthesis and readability...
...He takes North Americans to task for overlooking Latin America's rich and diverse cultural background...
...Although they form an obviously compact geographical unit," he writes, "they differ widely from one another...
...Too often, Gunther observes, the United States has been more interested in stability than in democratic progress...
...it provides a solid, factual look at the present state of Latin America...
...South Americans are, in fact, just like us—they want to be for themselves...
...However, I opened each book with forebodings...
...Before another Santo Domingo intervention, Washington might well heed these words—as it should heed Gunther's parting salvo: "South America needs us, but the whole great quivering bunch of grapes of a continent is determined to establish its own destiny...
...It is only when he reaches the Twentieth Century that he seems to lose some of the perspective which enlightens the earlier centuries...
...He warns that their opposition to the moderate reformist movements of Chile, Colombia, and Peru could lead to the disintegration of the fledgling democratic forces in the hemisphere...
...And this is where John Gunther picks up the Latin American story...
...The main causes, he adds, lie in the fact that "the people will not continue to tolerate their present miseries and deprivations...
...Even in some of his earlier "Inside" books which provoked sharp criticism, Gunther never failed to fascinate...
...Both German Arciniegas, the respected Colombian educator-diplomat, and John Gunther, the perennial author of "Inside" books, make solid contributions to the limited shelf of good books on Latin America...
...His orientation is cultural, but he plants the story in the political and economic developments of each century...
...A genuine pre-revolution-ary pattern has been reached...
...a broad commercial system was in operation by the 1550s...
...If this answer is valid, it is a tragic situation...
...The real heart of Gunther's writing is in his analysis, and to a lesser extent his close observation of current trends and movement...
...Books were printed in Mexico as early as 1539...
...They "did not think to give the new nation a name of its own...
...With these two books, there is no excuse for such a lack of understanding of Latin America...
...The list of Spanish cultural achievements is long, and Arciniegas makes extensive use of it...
...Far from being the usual fare in cultural histories, his work is a sprightly study full of insight and challenge to traditional ways of thought...
...Yet both books come off well...
...He reminds citizens of the United States that Spain pioneered European civilization in the New World a full century before Englishmen came to the shores of North America...
...Not only does it fascinate...
...Arciniegas covers the whole length and breadth of Latin American history...
...While admitting that democratic practice in Latin America is difficult and expensive and does not necessarily bring progress, he concludes that by the same token "dictatorship does not bring progress either, even if it imposes temporary stability...
...Gunther's new book limits the story to mainland South America...
...Inside South America is probably his best book...
...This kind of criticism may sound somewhat overdone...
...it is an area that is too often taken for granted...
...Harper & Row...
...scholarly studies in botany, geography, and history were carried on in the 1540s...
...As a consequence, the United States is the only country in the world without an unmistakable name...
...For the United States, he counsels, the solution should be simple: Washington "should vigorously and comprehensively take the side of the people, even if a consequence of this is radical social change...
...The reasons for this are elusive...
...And he needles the Founding Fathers for their naming of the United States...
...Part of the answer may lie in Latin America's very closeness...
...The fact remains that the essence of democracy is the sharing of power, and a comparatively small percentage of South Americans are willing to accept the full subtle implications of this definition...
...Indeed, the author of Inside South America seems hardly the same person as the author of Inside Latin America written twenty-five years ago...
...Reviewed by James Nelson Goodsell "P|espite its proximity to the United States, Latin America may well be the least understood region on the earth to most North Americans...
...But read as part of the total Arciniegas concept, the point is a challenging one, one of many in this able study...
...South America, he says, "is a continent on the brink of revolution...
...Here he has a number of surprises for the reader...
...Moreover, he argues that citizens of the United States have embraced a type of provincialism which leads them to describe themselves as "Americans," overlooking the millions of inhabitants of Latin America who have equal claim to the title...
...It may explain the all too-frequent failure of Washington to appreciate developments, trends, and thought in the fastest-growing population in the world...
...Education, even if scant, is bound to unleash intensified revolutionary forces...
...somehow the task of putting all of Latin America into one neat package within hard covers seems like trying to put the growing chicken back into the egg...
...This is enough, for each of the ten countries in South America is individual and needs to be looked at separately...
...He is strongest on the earliest years of Spanish hegemony in the New World, and he provides some provocative viewpoints about the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries...
...Gunther has sharp words for Latin American reactionaries...
...He notes that there are many other "united states"—such as the United States of Mexico, the United States of Venezuela, and the United States of Brazil...
Vol. 31 • June 1967 • No. 6
