To the Editor: August 2, 1984
Professor Gustavo Anguizola’s review of Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas and Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus in the February 1984 issue of the HAHR substantially misrepresents the contents of both volumes. The most serious misrepresentation is his statement (p. 187) that I asserted in chapter 2 of Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas that armed forces in Latin America were inclined to take power because of “the military’s concern for the poor. ” No such statement, or anything like it, appears on page 90 or anywhere else in the book.
What was argued on page 90 and elsewhere was that in the face of increasing pressures resulting from the “demands by the poor for the fulfillment of basic needs,” the military in a number of countries intervened in the 1960s and 1970s to put an end to the “growth of dissent, guerrilla activities, terrorism and civil disturbances” resulting from those pressures. Furthermore, it was clearly stated that the armed forces in such countries as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile staged coups principally because they regarded themselves “as the only ones capable of restoring stability and/or realizing their country’s economic potential and, hence, international role. To accomplish this, society would be disciplined and extraordinary controls imposed, justified by the promise of realizing the nation’s potential ” as defined by the military. Both chapters 2 and 3 focus on a wide variety of political, economic, social, military, ideological, and cultural factors that contributed to military interventions and authoritarianism. Contrary to Anguizola’s suggestion, the causes of the latter were repeatedly described as multiple, highly complex, and rooted in the entire historical development of Latin America within the context of worldwide developments.
Anguizola’s assertion that “elected regimes in Latin America generate torrents of human rights abuses in their attempts to elevate their members to comfortable economic plateaus ” is biased. While human rights abuses are not eliminated under elected civilian governments, gross violations of human rights, particularly the right to life and the physical integrity of the person, have been more frequently committed by military governments in Latin America in the past 25 years. Argentina, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Uruguay are all cases in point.
In sharp contrast to Anguizola’s concentration on population pressures as a single primary cause of misery, poverty, destitution, and repression, the authors in both volumes repeatedly cite and analyze a multiplicity of causes for such conditions. The reviewer’s implication that the volumes reflect a religious bias also has no basis in fact. The authors come from a variety of religious backgrounds including Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic. Some are nonbelievers. All were selected for their expertise and scholarly integrity. The latter is clearly demonstrated by the accuracy with which they represented the arguments and interpretations of their sources, even those they disagreed with.
Anguizola’s statement that “nowhere do these writers differentiate between poverty and repression,” is also contrary to fact. The distinction is made throughout both volumes and specifically in chapter 4 of Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas and chapters 4, 5, 10, and 11 in Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus.
Studies of factors contributing to the observance or nonobservance of human rights normally generate a great deal of useful debate. Wholesale misrepresentations of the content of Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas and Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus detract from that debate and do a disservice to the readers of the HAHR.
Margaret E. Crahan
Occidental College
Gustavo Anguizola replies:
My review of Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas, edited by Margaret E. Crahan, and Human Rights in the Americas: The Struggle for Consensus, edited by Alfred Hennelly, S. J. and John Langan, S. J. is not overall a negative review, considering the large number of essays with which I had to cope. It was like tiptoeing over a minefield to attempt to find and say something good about some of them within the limited space allotted to me by the Book Review Editor of the HAHR. Some of the essays show very little distinctiveness of outlook or individual flavor; some are an indigestible mass of needless wordage. Despite these reservations, I found the writings of John Weeks, Elizabeth Dore, and Alfred Hennelly in Human Rights in the Americas very illuminating.
However, I suspect that the real sin I committed was to criticize the generalizations of Margaret E. Crahan, who set the tempo and thematic guidance of her book. I have discovered from experience that in many cases editors in their prefaces are much too concerned with their own ideas, and pay perfunctory attention to the essays written by others in the same book.
The editor has closed her eyes to the flaws in the material entrusted to her. Most of the contributors to the symposium openly stated their religions preferences (an unusual occurrence), as did Fathers Langan and Hennelly in their volume. In general, all the writers sought to analyze social change without facing the core of the problem: such institutions as the church and the government often attempt to promote doctrinal experimentations that are no longer novel, but rather archaic because the remedies suggested have been tried before and the patients have died.
Other writers also confused postmodernist social criticism with recent philosophical trends. It should be noted that philosophers borrow heavily from abstract and arcane language in an effort to sustain their analysis and achieve conversion. On the other hand, the role of the historian should be to demonstrate the complexity of problems and examine causes (population explosion, for example), and not to view events, social movements, and trends in the context of America’s and Western Europe’s prosperity, diplomacy, and politics.
I believe I interpreted correctly Crahan’s statement that “the military was prompted to turn out elected officials because of their loss of confidence in civilian government” when I enumerated a number of takeovers by the military since the 1920s. The officers corps in many Latin American nations has risen from the lower classes, thanks to the abdication of their military responsibility by the pleasure-seeking elites; Luis María [sic] Sánchez Cerro in Peru, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Omar Torrijos in Panama, and Luis García Meza in Bolivia are good examples. Although he was elected to office under the monolithic party system of his country, Lázaro Cárdenas comes from the same background as the others, for which reason the Mexicans referred to him as the man who “huele a petate” (has the smell of the palm mat).
Whether a concern with dissent, terrorism, or civil disobedience led the military to take over governments or to control the elections, the trend is clear: many of these coups occurred when economic conditions were not bad in their countries. The military, like their civilian predecessors, amassed fortunes and withdrew from power when economic problems—aggravated by the military’s Shylock syndrome—threatened general ruin. The most recent case: Panama, where the military has “withdrawn” from power after contriving a farcical “election” which installed a civilian of their choice as president.
As for those essays in these books which advocate social reform through religious panaceas, we must point out that the church has tried before, and little positive has happened. Religion per se has failed to quell endemic population pressures (the main culprit of economic malaise); to the contrary, it has aggravated them. We historians must deal objectively with this type of “reformer.” In our time many openly proclaim themselves to be Marxists or Socialists, while others hide behind the watermelon syndrome (green outside-red inside), as we are witnessing in Nicaragua today.
The editors of these works state that “studies of factors contributing to the observance or non-observance of human rights nominally generate a great deal of useful debate.” This was precisely my intention, but unfortunately Crahan was looking for someone who would rubber stamp the torrent of disquisitions and misconceptions so hastily put together in these two books. These disquisitions and misconceptions might well mislead a lethargic reader, and precisely prevent what Crahan said was intended: “a useful debate.” It is evident that Crahan’s accusation of misrepresentation in reviewing these volumes is self-induced.
Gustavo Anguizola
University of Texas at Arlington
To the Editor: November 1, 1985
In her review of my The Taming of Fidel Castro (August 1985), Rhoda Rabkin wrote: “In 1953, he [Halperin] left the United States after the United States Attorney General accused him of belonging to the Communist Party and of passing secrets to Soviet agents. In Moscow . . ..” A reader could infer that I made a hasty departure for Moscow, presumably with the police in hot pursuit. The attorney general’s pronouncement was, of course, somewhat removed from normal legal procedure, not uncommon in those days. I was not indicted, much less convicted, of any criminal act. But it did result, in just a few hours, in my being suspended (and eventually fired) from my teaching post. My wife and I left Boston six weeks later, driving to Mexico City where we were both employed for five years. My appointment as a research associate at the USSR Academy of Sciences began in early 1959.
Sincerely,
Maurice Halperin
Emeritus Professor
Simon Fraser University
(Ed. note: Neither Rhoda Rabkin in her review nor HAHR meant to imply that Prof. Halperin had been guilty “of any criminal act.” Lest anyone draw an improper conclusion, however, we are happy to include this note of amplification.)
To the Editor: November 7, 1985
Cuban expatriate Luis Aguilar of Georgetown University reviewed my book, Marxist Thought in Latin America, but neglected to mention the following themes of the book.
The volume, written from a nonsectarian socialist perspective, illustrates how Marxist thought entered Latin America, and how it has been used by 55 thinkers representing ten countries. It interprets the political and social ideas of these individuals who call themselves Marxists (but who often represent diverse branches of the philosophy), and examines their views on class struggle, power, and the state. The book demonstrates the relationships of Marxism to other philosophies and to populist and reform movements; comments on the compatibility of individual liberty and central authority; indicates how the rise of antielites has reflected a consciousness of problems requiring new political solutions; and notes to what extent Latin American Marxists have contributed to political and social change. The book shows how some of the region’s socialists have analyzed underdevelopment and imperialism, and illustrates why organized labor and Socialist and Communist parties have generally failed to become strong institutions. It also explores the radical traditions out of which grew contemporary Liberation Theology and Third World Marxism.
My contention that “no book of this kind has ever been written” was not intended to diminish Aguilar’s edited work on Latin American Marxism, which I approved for the press. I disagree with his views, but I believe that they deserve consideration.
I respect historians who do not share my worldview, and hope that we can all agree on ethical book reviewing procedures. Reviewers should emphasize what books contain, not what authors choose to omit or what reviewers would like included. Without accusing Professor Aguilar, whose mind I cannot read, but with an eye to curtailing McCarthyism and the anti-intellectual tendencies of cold war pikers, especially those who mask their narrowmindedness behind liberal facades. I appeal to all to refrain from writing reviews designed primarily to keep potential readers away from ideas which the reviewer finds threatening.
Even though we all write from ideological viewpoints, we can retain our scholarly integrity by disclosing when our objections to another’s work emanate primarily from philosophical differences. For over two decades, I have reviewed books for the HAHR, and have noted when my ideology differed radically from that of an author. (An editor once deleted my statement to that effect without my permission.) On occasion, I have submitted a review and asked the editor not to print it if it appeared unfair. 1 have also declined to review books by authors whose previous works I have reviewed, or with whom I have had professional conflicts. HAHR readers, editors, and authors might be better served if all reviewers used similar discretion.
Sheldon B. Liss
University of Akron
To the Editor: December 1, 1985
In my review of Professor Liss’s book, I praised his effort in dealing with a difficult subject, and I explained why I found his book “disappointing.”
Liss, who is apparently gifted with a very sensitive ego. responds with arguments “ad personam” which go from the amusing—my academic rank is nonexistent; I am only “of Georgetown”—, to the absurd. A short book review has been transformed into a conspiracy of McCarthyism and cold war pikes, designed to keep potential readers away from Liss’s ideas.
Without any intention of teaching Liss some of the lessons which we, his colleagues, know quite well, I would like to remind him that we are all fallible and that too much self-esteem is not the best counselor. There is no need to praise one’s own book as dazzlingly unique, or to consider every criticism as a result of a sordid conspiracy. Usually, when facing criticism, superficial writers try to downgrade the critics; serious writers try to improve their works. I hope that in the future Liss will choose the second option.
Luis E. Aguilar
