America, América, Greg Grandin's new history of the "New World," traces the history of both Anglo-America and Latin America together, instead of as separate histories. What would we learn, Grandin suggests, if we were to understand the forces that shaped the United States (and Canada) alongside the forces that shaped the rest of the Americas, from Mexico down to the tip of Patagonia? Should we understand the Spanish and English processes of colonizing the Americas as separate and distinct, or do they share certain important qualities that continue to tie their successor states together?
First of all, I appreciated the way that Grandin laid out the differences between English and Spanish colonization in ways that I have sensed but not been able to articulate. As Grandin describes it, as horrible and violent as the Spanish were--and they were very violent--Spanish colonial society identified a place for the Indigenous in its hierarchy, at the bottom, whereas English and later American colonies conceived of Indigenous people as outside the political order, thus needing to be either ignored or eliminated. You can trace a direct line from this distinction to the idea of mestizaje that dominates the self-conception of Mexico, in contrast with the reservation-and-sovereignty model of the United States. I was also very interested to read about how Spanish colonial society birthed the New World's first civil rights movement, spearheaded by Bartolome Las Casas and other Dominican priests. I had long heard of Las Casas as a kind of contrast to Columbus, and proof that it was possible even at the time to conceive of Indigenous rights, but I had no idea how powerful or influential, or, truly, courageous, he really was.
Las Casas' conception of Indigenous, even equal rights, were later picked up on by social reformers in the colonial Americas, like Marti and Bolivar. America, América does an amazing job showing how ideas of liberty and social change were shared by revolutionaries and thinkers on both sides of the Anglo-Latin divide--the book even opens by focusing on Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan who fought in the American Revolutionary War. In the crucible of the revolutionary 18th and 19th centuries, it was possible for people on both sides to imagine a transcontinental republic that would stand in opposition to the old ways of European monarchy. Sometimes that looked like Americans imagining a United States that encompassed Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, but sometimes it looked like a "Pan-American" republic that would be for all people. It's hard, reading America, América, to shake the idea that it was Miranda, Bolivar, and Marti who best epitomized the "Sons of Liberty" that we imagine in guys like George Washington.
Such Pan-Americanism failed to prosper in the United States, but it seems to never have really died in Latin America. In the latter portion of the book, Grandin describes how Latin America acted as a counterweight to the United States, birthing International Law and ideas of non-intervention and collaboration that would come to define 20th century. Grandin never quite spells it out, but it's easy to read a direct line from Las Casas to Bolivar to the Pan-Americans of the 20th century, who time and again did their best to force the United States to come to to the bargaining table and submit to treaties of peace and collaboration. Grandin puts heavy emphasis on a series of Pan-American conferences in the early 20th century that found brief success with Wilson and FDR, but later reaction produced the American-backed right-wing dictatorships of Pinochet, Somoza, and countless others.
One thing I liked best about America, América: Grandin skips over the stuff he thinks we already knows. The Cuban revolution, for example, gets basically skipped over as a footnote. Instead, we're treated to the story of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the Colombian socialist leader whose strange assassination (reminiscent, in its breeding of conspiracy theories, of JFK's) set off a violent reaction called El Bogotazo. I, of course, had never heard of that. Grandin does this again and again, treating lightly things he thinks his audience may know a little about already--the Civil War, the Republic of Texas, etc.--to focus on the things we don't. It's a bold strategy that asks a lot of his audience, but I thought it really made the book worth reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment