The author’s title of professor in the University of Chile lends specious authority to this survey of inter-Ameri_ can relations. Actually it is just another party-line, machine-made production, attacking the “super-imperialism” of the United States as the source of most hemispheric and world troubles. After the Great Depression brought down American interventionism from its peak, the influence of labor and the conscience of the intellectuals produced the Good Neighbor Policy, but it was really motivated by fear and conceived in hypocrisy. Export-Import Bank loans, for example, were simply “an efficient instrument of pressure which the Government at Washington could operate … in conformity with its plans” (pp. 61-62). This being the case, it is not surprising to learn that the United States was really defending capitalist imperialism in World War II, not democracy and peace (pp. 103-104).
Ramírez Necochea’s methods are well illustrated in the section dealing with the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Here he could have made something of a case for his thesis with objective evidence, but instead he relies solely on an account of Guillermo Toriello and (for an appearance of fairness) carefully selected quotations from Hubert Herring’s textbook, omitting any details which might favor the American government or United Fruit. In the last sections he passes lightly over Castro, declaring that Washington followed a hostile policy toward him from the outset. The Alliance for Progress appears as a “modern version of the old Dollar Diplomacy,” (p. 219) administered by Teodoro Moscoso, “a servant of imperialism, while his country, Puerto Rico, remains captive” (p. 221).
With tracts like these masquerading as scholarship, one can hardly blame Americans for their reluctance to seek out Latin American views of hemispheric history.
