South of the Border

One problem North Americans have in dealing with their neighbors to the south is grasping how very different the countries of Latin America are from the North, and also how diverse these countries are within themselves. To start with, we must bear in mind that the major civilizations of the Western Hemisphere sprang from two very different cultural strains, the British and the Iberian. (The Virgin Queen, after all, did not have very much in common with Philip II, any more than John Stuart Mill did with Juan Donoso Cortes, or Thomas Gainsborough with Francisco Goya.) And in Latin America a third strain complicates the situation even further: the Indian element, temperamentally very different from the Spanish.

Consider, for example, the murder rates in various Hispanic countries. As of 1967, Spain, with only one murder for every million inhabitants, held the “negative” world record. On the other end of the spectrum were Mexico with 193, Colombia with 254, Nicaragua with 293, and pre-civil-war El Salvador with 319 murders per one million inhabitants, the opposite, “positive” world record. These statistics tell us what a human life means in these countries, and they point up the importance of the cultural differences between the people of Spain and of her former colonies, who after all share the same language and religion.

EK

About the Author

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Featured Tags

One problem North Americans have in dealing with their neighbors to the south is grasping how very different the countries of Latin America are from the North, and also how diverse these countries are within themselves. To start with, we must bear in mind that the major civilizations of the Western Hemisphere sprang from two very different cultural strains, the British and the Iberian. (The Virgin Queen, after all, did not have very much in common with Philip II, any more than John Stuart Mill did with Juan Donoso Cortes, or Thomas Gainsborough with Francisco Goya.) And in Latin America a third strain complicates the situation even further: the Indian element, temperamentally very different from the Spanish.

Consider, for example, the murder rates in various Hispanic countries. As of 1967, Spain, with only one murder for every million inhabitants, held the “negative” world record. On the other end of the spectrum were Mexico with 193, Colombia with 254, Nicaragua with 293, and pre-civil-war El Salvador with 319 murders per one million inhabitants, the opposite, “positive” world record. These statistics tell us what a human life means in these countries, and they point up the importance of the cultural differences between the people of Spain and of her former colonies, who after all share the same language and religion.