LATIN AMERICAN THUNDER
Goodsell, James Nelson
LATIN AMERICAN THUNDER revolution next door: latin america in the 1970s, by Gary MacEoin. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 243 pp. $6.95 cloth. $2.95 paperback. reviewed by James Nelson Goodsell This...
...What MacEoin has to say has been said before, but he somehow manages to say it more effectively, with the perspective of twenty-five years of covering the area as a newspaperman...
...He may well be correct...
...He recognizes that there is always a threat of military dictatorship when military men come to power, yet he notes that as "unattractive as military dictatorship is . . . it is the only transitional process which Latin American progressives see as capable of getting them out of their current satellite condition within the neocolonial system of Western capitalism...
...Will North Americans find their government enmeshed in a situation that will be as difficult to disengage from as Vietnam...
...Yet there runs a thread of hope throughout MacEoin's book, an expectancy that the revolution he sees coming will actually improve the lot of the Latin American...
...Another way to look at the whole issue would be for Washington's policymakers to read Gary MacEoin's book and then reflect on Washington's current role in Latin America...
...Latin Americans are simply fed up with U.S...
...One question the author raises by inference, but does not answer, is this: if the United States is so deeply involved in controlling the economic destinies of Latin America, what is going to happen when the revolution gets going...
...It is possible that the current hassle between Washington and Santiago over Chile's copper nationalization will provide an answer...
...Such reflection could lead to changes in U.S...
...Early in the book he quotes a young Latin American, with a graduate degree from a U.S...
...Interestingly enough, he sees hope for improvement in the revolutionary movements active within the church and the military...
...Goodsell is Latin American correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor...
...Indeed, these two institutions are today in the forefront of Latin America's revolutionary movements, often far ahead of the politicians and traditional liberals in calling for change...
...The Latin complaint, so ably recorded by MacEoin, is not simply an isolated view nor an unsubstantiated one...
...Over and over again, MacEoin encountered this view on the part of Latin Americans representing a wide spectrum of opinion, and among government, business, education, and political leaders in most countries...
...Both of these institutions are shedding their old images of conservatism, their support of the oligarchies and status quo principles...
...But whoever leads the revolutionary movement now developing in Latin America, revolution is coming and perhaps in the 1970s, as MacEoin suggests...
...This revolution, moreover, is going to have an impact on the United States...
...The present scene is anything but a good one...
...His basic theme, repeated throughout Revolution Next Door, is the steadily growing gap between the rich and the poor, between the developed and undeveloped countries, between the United States and Latin America...
...This young Latin termed the 1960s "the most disastrous decade in the entire history of Latin America" and then went on to charge that "instead of narrowing, the gap between rich and poor countries grew significantly wider...
...university, concerning the decade of the 1960s, when the Alliance for Progress was supposed to be narrowing the gap between rich and poor...
...Much of Revolution Next Door makes for gloomy reading, particularly that part which deals with the 1960s...
...It is not necessarily a revolution of arms, but it certainly is a revolution of ideas, of breaking longstanding ties with the United States...
...Moreover, and much more important, it just might help to improve the conditions in Latin America upon which the revolution feeds...
...And it helps explain just why so much of Latin America is headed in the direction of socialism and away from capitalism, which has failed to solve the hemisphere's economic dilemma...
...The hopes of the early 1960s for the Alliance for Progress have clearly been dashed...
...reviewed by James Nelson Goodsell This is a book that should be read by anyone even remotely interested in Latin America...
...Latin Americans want to control their own destinies and feel more and more that they have not been able to do so, that the Alliance for Progress of the 1960s was a method of exerting American control over the lives of nearly 290 million Latin Americans...
...policy that might save some of the good will that still exists for the United States in Latin America...
...Although he is a Catholic, MacEoin concludes somewhat reluctantly that the military may well provide the more effective avenue for bringing about much of the change...
...In brief but cogent fashion, Gary MacEoin gives North American leaders a revealing glimpse of the revolution that is stirring in Latin America...
...As he notes, this opinion, so common among Latin Americans, is shared by a number of outside observers and is borne out by statistics which consistently present a dismal picture of conditions in Latin America...
...why Latin America is marching to a leftist drummer, and why there is growing bitterness about the United States throughout the hemisphere...
...It won't change the basic idea of revolution, but it could be a positive rather than negative factor in that revolution which is coming...
...influence in the hemisphere—whether it is called neocolonialism, imperialism, foreign capitalism, or whatever...
...It is the harsh reality...
Vol. 36 • May 1972 • No. 5
