Books in Brief

The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States, by Carlos Rangel (Harcourt Brace, 302 pp., $11.95). The Western Hemisphere’s biggest cop-out is the Latin Americans’ contention that they remain poor, badly educated, and ill-governed because the wicked North Americans want it that way. Or, more recently, because the wicked North American capitalists want it that way; for, since Fidel Castro was permitted to survive and become the vassal of the USSR, Marxism has become the new opium of the intellectuals. All of this has been pointed out before—by this reviewer, among others— but never before by a Latin American. As a Venezuelan diplomat educated in the United States, Carlos Rangel saw the best (and worst) of both worlds; but unlike others who had a similar background, he came out of it with his eyes open and the courage to speak clearly. First there was the myth of the noble savage; then the myth that the Latins had a “superior culture” which would prevail (no one explained how) over North American “materialism.” The heroes of the Independence, Miranda and Bolivar, saw through this myth, but their insights were hastily buried under mountains of rhetoric and commemorative sculpture. Rangel is especially good at exposing the myths of the Puerto Rican independentistas—spun within a protective cocoon of North American affluence and good government—and of uniquely democratic Chile, undone because one naïve Marxist thought nine million lambs would acquiesce in their own slaughter. Should this book ever be distributed, and digested, from Mexico to Argentina, Latin America might solve its own problems and surprise the world. But probably that is too much to hope.

SELDEN RODMAN

Featured Tags

The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States, by Carlos Rangel (Harcourt Brace, 302 pp., $11.95). The Western Hemisphere’s biggest cop-out is the Latin Americans’ contention that they remain poor, badly educated, and ill-governed because the wicked North Americans want it that way. Or, more recently, because the wicked North American capitalists want it that way; for, since Fidel Castro was permitted to survive and become the vassal of the USSR, Marxism has become the new opium of the intellectuals. All of this has been pointed out before—by this reviewer, among others— but never before by a Latin American. As a Venezuelan diplomat educated in the United States, Carlos Rangel saw the best (and worst) of both worlds; but unlike others who had a similar background, he came out of it with his eyes open and the courage to speak clearly. First there was the myth of the noble savage; then the myth that the Latins had a “superior culture” which would prevail (no one explained how) over North American “materialism.” The heroes of the Independence, Miranda and Bolivar, saw through this myth, but their insights were hastily buried under mountains of rhetoric and commemorative sculpture. Rangel is especially good at exposing the myths of the Puerto Rican independentistas—spun within a protective cocoon of North American affluence and good government—and of uniquely democratic Chile, undone because one naïve Marxist thought nine million lambs would acquiesce in their own slaughter. Should this book ever be distributed, and digested, from Mexico to Argentina, Latin America might solve its own problems and surprise the world. But probably that is too much to hope.

SELDEN RODMAN