by Barry Rubin
The radical intellectuals and revolutionary activists thought that they had permanently changed how Latin Americans view reality, but in fact their ideological hegemony lasted only about a quarter-century. On the political level, the revolutionaries could not win and-whatever their intentions-only generated more misery and instability. On the economic plane, their proposed solutions did not work. Only in the realm of words, where theories don't have to meet the test of reality, did they continue to ride high.
At the same time, leftist anti-Americans often simply refurbished the old conservative anti-American arguments, based on civilizational complaints rather than Marxist analysis. They spoke of the masses, imperialism, and liberation but, like their European counterparts, their arguments rested on a perspective that was elitist, traditionalist, and culturally conservative. Thus, the Mexican writer Octavio Paz, one of the most articulate of the critics, explained in 1978 that the innate nature of U.S. mass society ensured that its behavior would be a "mix of arrogance and opportunism, blindness and machiavellianism."54
There was, however, an important element highlighted in the antiAmericanism of this period that would have a tremendous impact on that doctrine down to the present day: America as the cause of underdevelopment. The United States was said to dominate the terms of trade, since it could price manufactured goods higher while devaluing the Third World's raw materials. Latin American countries could only develop by breaking this system. This standpoint was promoted by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA) and most notably by the Argentinean economist Raul Prebisch, who headed that institution from 1948 until 1962. A more radical edge was provided in 1966 by a book, The Development of Underdevelopment, by the Marxist economist Andre Gunder Frank, a U.S.-trained refugee from Nazi Germany who taught in many Latin American countries.
Frank's title was a perfect expression of his thesis. Underdevelopment, he claimed, was not the result of archaic social structures, lack of education, low agricultural productivity, reluctance to embrace innovation, political instability, and a score of other such causes. Rather, it was an artificial creation of malevolent imperialists. Just as traditional Marxism argued that overthrowing capitalism would allow rapid progress and the creation of a utopia, the new anti-Americanism made the same claim for getting rid of the United States.
The solution was to be statist economies, high import barriers, and deemphasizing the market by the government setting of prices. This strategy was basically a collection of all the mistakes being made elsewhere in the Third World as well as in the Soviet bloc. Moreover, the money borrowed to finance industrialization and import substitution would be lost in failed schemes and corruption, producing mountainous debts.55
Nevertheless, this belief swept through Latin American universities as unquestionable truth and continues to this day to be accepted by many in academia and the left, though not by Latin American policy makers or the general public. As one critical Venezuelan observer put it in the late 1970s, "There is an almost general belief in Latin America today that the United States has siphoned off the wealth which could have led to the Southern Hemisphere's development [by saying] `They are rich because we are poor; we are poor because they are rich.' "56
The only reason why Latin America was not as developed as the United States, the theory claimed, was because that country has stolen all of its resources. And these same resources were said to be the basis for the success of the United States. As Eduardo Galeano, whose book, The Open Veins of Latin America, was a huge best seller, puts it, "Our wealth has produced our poverty. In the colonial alchemy, gold turns to lead and food to poison.... The North American economy needs Latin American minerals like the lungs need air. "57
Promoting anti-Americanism, then, was an act of self-defense and a necessity. It was an absolutely central and essential doctrine. And this ideology was based not on any specific U.S. policy or intervention but on the supposed essence of the United States itself in both its domestic and international aspects.
At the same time, though, many Latin Americans could not ignore the local causes of their problems and the unworkability of the radicals' proposed solutions. Using another old Latin American theme that often accompanied hostility toward the United States, they understood the need to imitate that country in order to achieve their own success.
By 1977, the reaction against radical anti-Americanism had taken hold. Domestic reform and moderation were a more likely path to democracy, stability, and economic development than a revolution against foreigners based on radical doctrine. The Venezuelan writer Carlos Rangel argued that the left's more useful complaint toward the United States would be to demand that it did more to help Latin American progress rather than blaming America for everything and trying to drive it out of the region.58
What was the true function of anti-Americanism? According to Rangel, it was both an excuse and a useful political tool in the hands of dictators and demagogues. Such scapegoating, Rangel warned, was paralyzing, a way of perpetuating stagnation. If the fault lay completely with the Yankees, there was no need to change one's own society, especially when these arguments were cynically used by repressive governments to conceal their own incompetence and misrule 59
It was a costly mistake, Rangel warned, to refuse to "admit that the reasons for North American success and Latin American failure are to be found in the qualities of North Americans and in the defects of Latin Americans." There was much to be learned from the U.S. example. True, America was an overpowering, often harmful neighbor. Yet it also had saved the continent from European colonialism, shown the way toward modernization and development, and offered a democratic model. Why, when the main damage to Latin America for most of its history had been European influence from Spain, Britain, and France, was there no antagonism toward those countries?
The answer, Rangel suggested, was that Latin America views itself as an extension of European culture. Since America was considered to be so inferior, its success must be attributed to exploitation and evil ac- tions.60 But, by the same token, Latin Americans were frustrated "since we cannot explain satisfactorily why we have been unable to capitalize on the advantages we have over the Third World." Everyone thus resents their "failure to reach the level of the United States."61
No country was more tempted by this attractive yet poisonous view than Mexico, which always viewed itself as victim number one of U.S. perfidy. And yet, aside from the war of 1848, how much harm had the United States actually done to Mexico? Certainly far less than the accusers would have it and than virtually every Mexican seemed to believe.
While U.S. and Mexican interests differed on various issues, the United States had no deliberate intention of harming or dominating Mexico. In the twentieth century, there were few American interventions in Mexico's internal affairs. One would never guess this from the tone of Mexican politics. In March 1975, President Luis Echeverria Alvarez visited the Autonomous University of Mexico. In revenge for past government attacks on students, several hundred demonstrated and threw stones at him. Police opened fire, killing several of them. Mexico's president justified this response by saying that they were naive youngsters manipulated by the CIA.62 In the mid-i98os, Mexican officials and newspapers even accused the United States of stealing rain by diverting hurricanes from Mexican shores and thus contributing to the country's worst drought in twenty years.61
The crown jewel of Mexican anti-Americanism is the National Museum of Interventions, opened in i98i. But though Spanish colonialism had lasted 300 years, the focus is mainly on the depredations, real or imagined, of the United States. American hostility is portrayed as a constant. After all, in the exhibit on the Monroe Doctrine, Mexico's first ambassador to the United States, Jose Manuel Zozaya, is quoted as saying, "The arrogance of those republicans does not allow them to see us as equals but as inferiors. With time they will become our sworn ene- mies."64 The relationship is portrayed as an immutable enmity, one for which the ups and downs of policy were merely punctu
ation marks.
Thus, too, in 1987 the Mexican historian Gaston Garcia Cantu claimed, "From the end of the eighteenth century through 1918, there were 285 invasions, incidents of intimidation, challenges, bombardments of ports and [theft] of territory.... No people in the world have had their territory, wealth, and security as plundered by anybody as Mexico has by the United States."65
Young Mexicans, wrote Jorge Castaneda, "learn almost as soon as they can read [that] the United States has always had designs on our country, either through direct territorial ambition or by seeking to influence our affairs to make Mexico more amenable to American interests and wishes. "66
Consequently, in a 1986 poll, Mexicans considered American business, government, and media as all allied to promote U.S. control over Mex- ico.67 "Even the modern Mexican middle classes continue to harbor deep feelings of resentment and anger against the United States," explained Castaneda. "Their penchant for American lifestyles and products should not be mistaken for an ebbing of traditional suspicion and hostility toward the United States."68
Yet while such attitudes would be more understandable if coming from, say, El Salvador or Guatemala, they had little to do with the reality of U.S.-Mexico relations, which had involved few confrontations for many decades. Rather, such feelings stemmed more from a hurt pride at being so behind a more advanced, powerful neighbor, and a resulting ultrasensitivity to imagined slights.
The Mexican media was aware that its job was to find more items for this list, no matter how twisted or sensational. Journalists know that a report with an anti-American angle has a better chance of making the front page. Obscure Americans are quoted if their remarks can be portrayed as anti-Mexican or threatening future problems in the relationship, while Mexican officials or academics are pressed to criticize U.S. deeds or statements.69
Partly through the clever use of the anti-American card, Mexico's ruling-and appropriately named, Party of the Institutionalized Revolution-stayed in power for more than eight decades, a world record. The country suffered under a statist and corrupt system justified by the need to keep American control at bay. In the 1970s and 198os, four straight Mexican presidents failed to improve relations with the United States due to their personal resentment as they, in Castaneda's words, picked fights with the Yankees "over innumerable major and minor issues, resorting to traditional, nationalistic postures and maneuvers, and listening to veteran intellectual, diplomatic or political establishment `gringo bashing.' "
Believing that relations were inevitably going to be bad because Washington was determined to weaken and dominate Mexico became a selffulfilling, self-victimizing policy. By purveying this fear, Mexican intellectuals and leaders were themselves making their country more feeble by putting the emphasis on foreign guilt rather than on the kinds of reforms that Mexico needed in order to modernize itself. Equally, any proposed changes could be denounced as imitations of the hated United States or the kinds of policies that Washington wanted Mexico to follow.
While this explained why the leaders fanned anti-American sentiments, Castaneda suggested that the people embraced these feelings because the two countries were so unequal in power, had such a complex history of relations, and had such different interests that "if one problem is solved, another will surface."70 And yet anti-Americanism was also a shield behind which Mexicans believed they had to stand because otherwise they felt defenseless and feared that their national identity might be overwhelmed and their sovereignty lost.71 Unable to compete, they had to wage combat; but unable to win such a competition, the struggle had to be limited to angry words.
Often, too, as in Europe, anti-Americanism was more the sport of intellectuals and opportunistic politicians than the sentiment of the masses. Polls conducted during the 199os showed that 87 percent of Hondurans, 84 percent of Guatemalans, 83 percent of Salvadorans, 73 percent of Bolivians, 70 percent of Peruvians, 65 percent of Mexicans (though 55 percent said the U.S. government had too much influence there) '72 57 percent of Colombians, and 55 percent of Venezuelans held favorable views of the United States. This was despite the fact that in a 1995 poll, majorities-for example, 8o percent in Panama and 71 percent in Colombia-thought the United States would demand that it get its way in any dispute.73
In general, the late i98os and afterward saw a major decline of antiAmericanism in Latin America. The radical solutions had not worked and, however one portrays them, the American model with its culture and material wealth seemed closer and more attractive. The Cold War's decline also reduced U.S. intervention in the region and even transformed it into support for democracy as perceptions of a Communist threat receded. The number of Latin American dictatorships fell until, ironically, only Cuba remained firmly in that category.
Free-market economic ideas challenged the radical dependency theories. In addition, a declining status for intellectuals and the discrediting of the panaceas offered by the left-in Latin America as in Europe, the main purveyors of anti-Americanism-also undercut that argument's popularity. With the growth of mass media, consumerism, and the hope of better living standards, Latin America became more like the United States or at least openly aspired to that goal.
One of the countries that prospered most of all was Chile, which had been a victim of American intervention in the 1970s. While Le Monde in September 2003 featured a cartoon that showed a plane crashing into a World Trade Center labeled Chile-implying that it had been U.S. support for a coup there in 1973, almost thirty years earlier, that was responsible for the September ii attack-there was very little antiAmericanism in Chile itself. As shown by the polls cited above, even in countries like Panama and Nicaragua-which had also suffered direct U.S. interventions-anti-Americanism was low.
Aside from political shifts and rethinking, cultural changes also contributed to a decline in anti-Americanism. Historically, the United States was viewed as an alien, non-Spanish-speaking culture. Now, material from the United States was increasingly offered in the Spanish language, produced by recent Latin American immigrants with the flavor of that region, from such stations as Telemundo and Univision (based in Miami), as well as CNN in Spanish.
The growing population of Latin American immigrants in America from every country in the hemisphere is another factor. Many people now knew others living in the United States and find it easier to get firsthand, more accurate information on that country. Members of the elite may own homes in the United States or at least visit there frequently. They also know that the United States is the most likely place to find investment, technology, and educational opportunities or aid. Poorer people may hope to go there themselves.
Anti-Americanism had a lasting place in Latin American political culture for a variety of "local" structural and ideological reasons that transcended any current U.S. policy toward the region. As happened elsewhere, its causes had as much or more to do with the problems and nature of those societies than it did with the United States itself. Even when these attitudes were related to U.S. policies, attitudes toward the United States were reflected through the lens of a particular self-image and worldview with a long tradition. As the Mexican writer Octavio Paz admitted, the United States was simultaneously "the enemy of our identity and the secret model of what we wanted to be" but were unable to become.74
COLD WAR AND COCA-COLA
Equally, despite all the hatred generated against the United States, it had arguably done little to injure any other state in the world, at least outside of Latin America. European anti-Americanism at this point, until at least 1945, was clearly based not on policy but on a view of the United States as having an inferior civilization, society, and culture.
But gradually the old anti-American nightmare of a powerful United States that was playing a strong international role began to appear as more than a fantasy. A major U.S. role in World War I seemed, ironically, only to increase anti-Americanism in France, the country that American forces had fought and died to free. The new Soviet Union claimed that the United States was t
he ultimate capitalist power and its inevitable enemy. The same could be said for German attitudes, which had far more to do with Nazism's self-conception and goals than with any anger over the conflict with the United States during World War I.
By the late 1940s, though, the U.S. role in the world was finally developing along the lines that both pro- and anti-Americans had begun predicting as early as the 179os. By 1945, the United States was now either the world's most important country or, at least, one of two superpowers. That transformation had an enormous impact on anti-Americanism. While the traditional criticisms remained consistent, their importance increased alongside that of the target country. Now that the United States was so active in the world, its specific deeds or policies abroad could be cited as proofs of its bad nature, intentions, and actions.
For the first time in history, too, anti-Americanism really mattered in the world. Being so big was an incorrigible offense to many, especially since the United States was usurping Europe's role. As the British historian Arnold Toynbee put it regarding America, "The giant's sheer size is always getting the giant into trouble with people of normal stature."'
A growing American cultural and economic power made the alleged danger all the more immediate and threatening. Now it was possible to think that the United States might be a model for the rest of the world. For others, when U.S. positions conflicted with those of their own country or faction, the ready-made anti-American thesis could be pulled off the shelf as explanation or weapon.
