The 16 essays comprising the expanded third edition of this familiar reader advance the thesis that anyone hoping to fathom Latin America must approach it through study of the region’s unique cultural heritage, a heritage bequeathed by Iberian conquistadores bearing the attitudes and values of late medieval Roman Catholic Europe. Chief among the determinants of Latin America’s distinct tradition, argue Howard Wiarda and several of his fellow essayists, is the Latin American people’s inclination toward sociopolitical arrangements that are hierarchical, corporative, and centrist in character.
Six of the scholars whose essays appear here figure among the foremost proponents of what is often termed the “cultural” interpretation of Latin American civilization. In addition to Wiarda (three essays), they include Richard Morse and Glen Dealy (two essays each), Claudio Veliz, Fredrick Pike, and Charles Anderson. The engagé quality of their writing is suggested in Wiarda’s question, posed in the volume’s introduction: “Can it be . . . that the Latin American nations, with their organic, unitary, and patrimonialist conception of the proper ordering of state and society, will in the long run prove to have coped better with the wrenching crisis of modernization than the United States, with its secular, divisive, fragmented interest-group pluralism?” (p. 20). The other six contributors, not so closely associated with the cultural approach, are Charles Wagley, Donald Worcester, Daniel Levine, Lawrence Graham, John Martz and David Myers, and Peter H. Smith.
This volume’s strength lies in its frank espousal of the cultural model of Latin American history and politics. Thus it is a useful teaching tool, standing as it does in counterpoise to collections whose essayists perceive the region in terms of the cultural interpretation’s two chief competing paradigms: liberal developmentalism and Marxist class analysis. The volume’s principal weakness concerns the older essays, of which certain passages have not worn well with time. For example, Fredrick Pike informs us, “it is still not clear whether [Castro’s revolution] will set an example or remain an exception” (p. 169). Donald Worcester warns that when Latin America changes, “the transformation will be revolutionary, uncontrollable, and unpredictable” (p. 29). Glen Dealy asserts, “private investment in the area is now and probably will continue to be subject to scorn, outrage, and, given the chance, expropriation” (pp. 52-53).
Passages such as these date otherwise worthy essays, lending them a slightly anachronistic quality. Judicious editing would have addressed the problem. This complaint notwithstanding, Howard Wiarda and Westview Press are to be congratulated for keeping this useful reading collection in print.
