Latin America and the Caribbean : Landscapes of Inequality
GEOG 188B – Winter 2007
QUOTES FROM LECTURE POWERPOINTS
INTRODUCTION: Landscapes of Inequality
“Latin American countries…have an abundance of the resources necessary to make a country rich. No continent in the world compares with Latin America in the amount of cultivable high-yield soil, or in reserves of timber. List the metals important to industrial development – copper, tin, iron, silver, gold, zinc, lead – all of them and many others, as well as oil and hydroelectric power, are found in great abundance in Latin America . Yet [large percentages] the people of Latin America are desperately poor…” -Leo Huberman
UNIT 1: Indigenous Civilizations & Conquest
“Exiled in their own land, condemned to an external exodus, Latin America ’s native peoples were pushed into the poorest areas – arid mountains, the middle of deserts – as the dominant civilization extended its frontiers. The Indians have suffered, and continue to suffer, the curse of their own wealth; that is the drama of Latin America .” -Eduardo Galeano, in Open Veins of Latin America
“The ancient concept of discovery glosses over the alarming consequence that we inherited a world which began with an unprecedented act of genocide: a landscape without a host.” -George Lamming
“The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.” -David Stannard, in American Holocaust
On 1492: “the two worlds, which were so very different, began on that day to become alike. That trend toward biological homogeneity is one of the most important aspects of the history of life on this planet since the retreat of the continental glaciers.” -Alfred Crosby, in The Colombian Exchange
“Wherever the European had trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.” -Charles Darwin, in The Voyage of the Beagle
“They are so artless and free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts; and whether the thing be of value or of small price, at once they are content with whatever little thing of whatever kind may be given to them.” -Columbus on the Tainos
“Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.” - Columbus
“From the beginning, the Spaniards saw the native Americans as natural slaves, beast of burden, part of the loot. When working them was more economical than treating them somewhat humanely, they worked them to death.” -Hans Koning, His Enterprise : Exploding the Myth
“The Catholic faith and Christian religion, especially in our times shall be exalted, broadened, and spread in every part of the world, salvation shall be sought for all souls, barbarian nations shall be subdued and led back to the faith.” -Papal edict at the time Pope Alexander the 6 th was dividing the world between the Spanish and Portuguese
“One who watched the Caribbean islands from outer space during the years from 1492-1550 or so might have surmised that the object of the game going on there was to replace the people with pigs, dogs, and cattle.” -Alfred Crosby, The Colombian Exchange
“Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel…they [the Spanish conquistadores] have done nothing but torture, murder, harass, afflict torment and destroy them [the native population] with extraordinary, incredible, innovative and previously unheard cruelty...”-Bartolome de las Casas, in A Short History of the Destruction of the Indies
“When the occupation is as long and irreversible as it has been in the Americas , resistance passes through many phases before it is either crushed conclusively or manages to achieve a partial solution to the dilemma of conquest and survival.” -Ronald Wright, in Stolen Continents
“Almost as soon as Mexico fell, Spanish war parties exploded over Mesoamerica…The fame of Cortes and the misery of Europe brought thousands more to ‘New Spain’…There was no such thing as enough” -Ronald Wright, in Stolen Continents
“The sufferings of war were followed by those of defeat; the Mayas of Guatemala entered the long period of resistance, sometimes passive, sometimes armed, that continues to this day.” -Ronald Wright, in Stolen Continents
UNIT 2: Extracting Resources: Colonial Labour Regimes and Expanding Frontiers
“The rape of accumulated treasure was followed by the systematic exploitation of the forced labour of Indians and abducted Africans in the mines.” -Galeano, in Open Viens
“… Mining produced the most spectacular profits in the colonial New World , but the plantations employed more people and, in the end, produced greater wealth .” -Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange
“From the beginning, the Spaniards saw the native Americans as natural slaves, beast of burden, part of the loot. When working them was more economical than treating them somewhat humanely, they worked them to death.” -Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise
“…[the] true purpose was to capture Indians: to draw from their veins the red gold which has always been the mine of that province.” -António Vieira, S.J., 1656 (on the expeditions to enslave natives)
Galeano: “for 3 centuries… no agricultural product had more importance for European commerce than American sugar”
Lima Slave Market (1624): “The buyer’s name will be marked on the cheek or the forehead and they will be work tools on the plantations, fisheries, and mines.” (in Galeano, Trilogy of Fire)
“Livestock provided not only much of the muscle with which exploitation of America was undertaken, but was in itself an important end-product of that exploitation, and a factor spurring Europeans to expand the areas being exploited… The champion European frontiersman of the New World was the cattleman. Again and again, the frontier of European civilization advancing into the interior of the Americas has been that of the cattle industry. This was particularly true in the great grasslands.” -Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange
“The European immediately set about to transform as much of the New World as possible into the Old World . So successful was he that he accomplished what was probably the greatest biological revolution in the Americas since the end of the Pleistocene era.” -Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange
UNIT 3. From Independence and Authoritarian State Building to the Liberal Reformers
Thomas Jefferson on the Haitian Revolution: “[we must] confine the plague to the island”
“The abolition of slavery…[was] a social revolution...[However] it must also be recognized that the revolution did not then complete, and has not yet completed, its full cycle.” –Richard Hart, How Slaves Abolished Slavery
“…the armies of independence ended over-running the power of the state, and abusing it to this very day, from Guatemala to Chile .” -Carlos Fuentes
“‘Underdevelopment’ or distorted development brings a dangerous specialization in raw materials that keeps all our peoples in peril of hunger. We, the underdeveloped, are also the countries of monoculture, of the single product, of the single market. A single product, the uncertain sale of which depends upon a single market that imposes and fixes conditions – that is the great formula of imperialist economic domination.” -Che Guevara in 1961
“…the armies of independence ended over-running the power of the state, and abusing it to this very day, from Guatemala to Chile .” -Carlos Fuentes
"The end of Spanish colonial rule in Mexico was confused, prolonged and bloody." - Robert Kent
Bolivar (on deathbed in 1830): “[South] America is ungovernable.”
had previously predicted: “The US seems destined to torment the Continent in the name of freedom.”
“It is unavoidable that the remainder of the continent should be ours.” -John Quincy Adams, 1821
“The Spanish colonies’ economic structure was born subordinated to the external market and was thus centralized around the export sector, where profit and power were concentrated.” -Galeano
“Today, the US is practically sovereign on this continent.” - US Secretary of State, 1895
“I helped make Mexico , especially Tampico , safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.” -Smedley Butler, speech in 1933
“I was a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” -Smedley Butler, in War is a Racket
(Smedley Butler was awarded 2 Congressional Medals of Honor, and was one of the most decorated Major Generals in the history of the US Marine Corps.)
UNITS 4 and 5: Land and Inequality, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
“…no country in this Hemisphere can go its own way beyond the limits approved of by Washington . You can go as far to the right as much as you want, you can only be, at worst, a respected authoritarian. You cannot go – even if democratically elected – too much to the left, for you then become a dangerous totalitarian.” -Carlos Fuentes
“The official Mexico of frock-coated gentlemen olympically ignored the real Mexico whose poverty fed their splendour.” -Galeano
“God and the people are the source of my power. I have twice been given the power. I have taken it, and damn it, I will keep it.” -Papa Doc Duvalier
“ Subversion was defined as anything which threatened the status quo – trade unionism, troublesome priests, peasant movements, socialist politics, or student protest…human rights and rule of law become redundant, clearing way for the atrocities, disappearances, and bloodshed which followed.” -Duncan Green
“Our only crime consisted of decreeing our laws and applying them to all without exception. Our crime is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the UFC…Our crime is our patriotic wish to advance, to progress, to win economic independence to match our political independence. We are condemned because we have given our peasant population land and rights.” -Jacobo Arbenz (1954)
“The cry for land is, without a doubt, the loudest, most dramatic and the most desperate sound in Guatemala .” -Pastoral Letter of the Guatemalan Bishops (1988)
“Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende…we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.” -US ambassador to Chile (1970)
UNITS 6 and 7: Responses to Uneven Development: From the ISI Model to Neoliberalism
“‘Underdevelopment’ or distorted development brings a dangerous specialization in raw materials that keeps all our peoples in peril of hunger. We, the underdeveloped, are also the countries of monoculture, of the single product, of the single market. A single product, the uncertain sale of which depends upon a single market that imposes and fixes conditions – that is the great formula of imperialist economic domination.” –Che Guevara in 1961
“In his eyes [Guevara’s], the twin evils in Latin America were the native oligarchies and the U.S.” -Jon Anderson, in Che, p. 52.
“the well-being of our dominating classes – dominating inwardly, dominated from outside – is the curse of our multitudes condemned to exist as beast of burden…Adding insult to injury, they [the elites] squander in sterile ostentation and luxury, and in unproductive investments…” -Galeano
“…megacities in Latin America mirror the trend toward exclusion of the vast majority of the population, as well as ever-increasing concentration of power and riches in the hands of a few. Roads from rural areas to the cities now often end in endemic poverty, unemployment and social decay.” -Alan Gilbert
“…a vast gulf separates [the middle class] from the poor masses of the slums. The middle-class enclaves are often little more than islands of ‘modernity’ in vast surrounding expanses of poverty.” -Duncan Green
on structural adjustment:
“Money that could have been invested in health, education, and housing has instead been transferred to wealthy bankers.” – former World Bank official
“…throughout Latin America, the 1980s deepened the canyons and elevated the peaks of the world’s most extreme social topography.” -Mike Davis
“increasing material wealth without equivalent social distribution [under ISI approaches]…gave way to a decrease in wealth and a decrease in justice.” – Carlos Fuentes
UNIT 8: Tropical Deforestation and the Case of the Amazon
“…Amazon’s indigenous peoples have paid a high price for the region’s economic exploitation and incorporation into Brazilian national life.” – Robert Kent
“The economic history of the Amazon was built from beginning to end on slavery of one sort or another. Every time a ball of smoked latex changed hands as it moved downstream, its value increased. Close to the export docks, where the risk was lowest, the profits were greatest, and astronomical fortunes were made.” – Andrew Revkin, The Burning Season
[the Amazon] ‘the biodiversity capital of the world’ -E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life
UNIT 9: The Search for Alternatives, New Social Movements, and Contemporary Politics
“For the optimists, the Indians are on the way back. Many in the Andes are convinced that the pachakut’i, literally the balance upheaval that legends and oral history have prophesied for centuries, has finally arrived, heralding an Indian cultural and political renaissance which will transform Latin America. They point to the resurgence in Indian identity and organization as evidence.” –Duncan Green
“Another World is Possible!” Zapatista saying
"We're here to change our history... we're taking over" -Evo Morales (2006), Bolivia 's first indigenous president