In this comparatively brief, scholarly account Mark Gilderhus provides the first relatively comprehensive analysis of the Latin American policies of the administration of Woodrow Wilson. It falls short of being a full account of the administration’s presence in Latin America by choosing not to deal with the Caribbean or Central America, concentrating instead on Mexico and the major countries of South America. Such an approach is entirely legitimate, but it requires more explanation than is provided here. Nonetheless, by tracing the diplomatic, political, and economic aspects of the inter-American relationship before and after World War I, Gilderhus comes closer than previous authors to providing a volume that complements Joseph Tulchin’s Aftermath of War.
Gilderhus presents the Wilsonian vision of United States-Latin American relations as consistently oriented toward the effort to create a Pan American international order, by treaty, comparable to Wilson’s larger international effort with the League of Nations. To Wilson, regional integration would promote trade and investment in the hemisphere, encourage regional cooperation for mutual security, and reduce the need for the unilateral U.S. police actions in Latin America that had gained ubiquitous enmity for the United States in the previous two decades. Gilderhus demonstrates that although Wilson clearly sought to stabilize relations with Latin America, he had no hesitation in seeking to maintain U.S. hegemony within the relationship. Competition from the A.B.C. countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile), especially from Argentina under the leadership of foreign minister Honorio Pueyrredón, was to be opposed, as much as the threat to U.S. interests of revolutionary nationalism in Mexico, and European competition, especially from Britain and Germany, for trade and investment.
Wilson’s desires for a Pan American treaty were frustrated, however, not only by Latin American reticence to be drawn into formal association with the United States, but also by the diversion of energies into the mobilization for World War I. Although no formal agreements thus emerged by the end of the war, the war did serve to consolidate U.S. economic and diplomatic power in the hemisphere: the United States displaced Britain as the world’s major exporter, and the prewar Federal Reserve Act paved the way for the legalized expansion of U.S. branch banks in Latin America, providing the credit facilities for the development of trade and direct investment in the expansive decade of the 1920s.
Gilderhus further provides an effective analysis of the contributions to U. S.-Latin American relations of several key figures in the Wilson years, including Wilson’s first secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, and Bryan’s successor Robert Lansing; Henry Fletcher, variously minister and ambassador to Chile and ambassador to Mexico; and Leo S. Rowe and John Barrett of the Pan American Union. The analysis is most insightful in its treatment of Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson’s adviser, ambassador-at-large, and alter ego. More than previous authors, Gilderhus recognizes the importance of House to Wilson’s Latin American policies, but he also recognizes the serious limitations in House’s understanding of Latin America, shortcomings which included a tinge of racism and a naive faith in republican institutions. Gilderhus makes an effective case that the Wilson administration was a critical one in shaping the broad features of contemporary U.S.-Latin American relations, but that it contributed to the less positive and successful, as well as to the more progressive side of U.S. diplomacy.
