The topics treated in this thin volume by Dr. Silvert of Dartmouth College are varied in the extreme. A Foreword proclaims the shortcomings of academia, business, and diplomacy in the Latin American area, and announces the intention to raise complex questions while citing only a few specific experiences. The analysis of Latin American societies relies heavily on the contemporary jargon: elite, structures, conceptualizations, continuum, connotatives, and manipulations. When telling anecdotes, plain speech is used. Granted that the changed syntax is appropriate to the changed subject matter, the net result is unevenness, at best.
The first two chapters make political and social characterizations of the area as a whole. The third tells of testing Guatemalan villagers on their political affiliations and attitudes, and the fourth sketches the history of Chile from 1879 to 1958. Chapter five is a translation of a rambling discourse by an Argentine general. The sixth chapter returns to Guatemala after the overthrow of Arbenz. Next comes a discussion of Rodó’s Ariel, which has discolored the views of many Latin Americans for two generations. Chapter eight gives impressions of the visiting professor in Buenos Aires. The ninth skips over the Southern Andes to describe the Santiago bus strike of 1957. Chapters ten and eleven portray a street scene in Buenos Aires, and the Argentines’ devotion to beef. Before we know it, in Chapter twelve we are back in Chile, engaged in an encounter with customs inspectors, returning to Argentina in Chapter thirteen to hear the story of a business man who sold out to an aggressive United States combine. Fourteen portrays class structure in Chile; Fifteen is the Challenge of Cuba. The concluding Chapter sixteen discusses modernism, freedom, nationalism, economic development, and Dr. Silvert’s remedies for it all.
The author is courageous in calling the University of Buenos Aires situation tragic, for he was made aware of the intense nationalism of the students there. He goes on to refer to the faculty as amateurs who publish strenuously, much of the production being “speculative, loose, repetitive” and probably polemical. Of the historians he says “they have done better work in Argentina than in perhaps any other Latin country. Almost their total output is in institutional history and limited amounts in general social and economic history. Their production is mountainous, all possible political interpretations are presented, and much documentary material has been published.” (p. 169).
There are some weaknesses in Dr. Silvert’s presentation. He refers to a paucity of civilian political revolts, but he could have mentioned those that deposed Arnulfo Arias, Elie Lescot, and Rojas Pinilla, respectively, from the presidencies of Panama, Haiti, and Colombia. He states that interest or pressure groups are few, but refers to the influence and pressure of the military, the Church, landowners, labor unions, coffee-growers, students, political parties, and others. Recalling Díaz in Mexico, Gómez in Venezuela, or Perón and Trujillo, it is hard to agree that Latin America has never had totalitarianism. And it appears doubtful that “since 1945 revolutions implying basic social changes have occurred in the following countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, and Cuba.” Perhaps each reader has his own definition of “revolution” and of “basic social change.”
The author is at his best in paraphrasing the Chilean argument for American aid: “We are poor, therefore we have discontent, therefore lend us money . . . for your own good, or the communists will take us over, and you wouldn’t like that.” Furthermore, the riots of 1957 were caused, he says, not by lack of American aid, but “because they could no longer stand what their own society was doing to them.”
Dr. Silvert’s proposals, advocating speedy action in supporting mixed economic systems, common market agreements, and the necessity of demonstrating that growing freedoms and growing economies are compatible, are stock in trade of the Alliance for Progress. But in all of this the author can not prevent himself from wondering “if it is logical to help prod countries into revolution by both conscious and uncontrollable actions, and then cross our fingers and hope that they will indulge in revolutions we will like.?”
The volume has a short index, and a well-chosen bibliography with some excellent annotations.
