The Americanistas

Today, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s book: The Open Veins of Latin America, a book that’s one of Chávez’s favorites and he often quotes from. I wonder if Obama will flip through it, at least. It’s definitely a classic of 1960s-style leftist scholarship, forcefully written, a kind of encyclopedic account of how Europe and the United States treated Latin America as a big commodity piñata to be plundered at will. And how the United States and Europe (especially the English) manipulated the region’s politics and wielded a big stick in order to whack at will at this piñata.

If a bit outdated and too willing to turn a blind eye to Latin America’s own faults, the book is still worth reading. At the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, Obama criticized Latin Americans for being too willing to point the finger north whenever they need an explanation for their problems, so that flaw in the book would probably not agree with the States’ first black president. Here’s a sample few sentences:

“In these lands we are not experiencing the primitive infancy of capitalism, but its vicious senility. Underdevelopment isn’t a stage of development, but its consequence…underdevelopment arises from external development, and continues to feed it.”

In other words, Latin America’s underdevelopment subsidizes rich countries’ overdevelopment. I think that recent dramatic reductions in poverty in Brazil and Mexico show that whatever the history of plunder, it’s not beyond Latin American governments to act against inequality and poverty. When they take decisive action to reduce economic inequality (with cash reward programs like Bolsa Familia in Brazil and Oportunidades in Mexico), it is possible for capitalism and social democracies to develop side by side. It’s too bad so much of the Summit of the Americas spotlight has been gobbled up by the thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba, and the warm handshakes exchanged between Obama and Chávez. Not that this diplomatic dance isn’t interesting, but if Obama were to point to these social welfare programs as models for how Latin America can move forward without divisiveness or class polarization, then other governments might emulate these programs, which redistribute wealth with accountability and transparency. To receive payments under these programs families in Mexico and Brazil must keep their children enrolled in school and take them for regular health checks and immunizations.