Will Latin America Finally Have a Real Revolution?

Will Latin America Finally Have a Real Revolution?Latin America in a New World by Abraham F. Lowenthal; Gregory Treverton; A New Momentin the Americas by Robert S. Leiken; Private Solutions to Public Problems: The ChileanExperience by Cristian Larroulet; Neo-Liberalism with a Human Face? The Politics andEconomics of the Chilean Model by David E. Hojman; Cuba's Second Economy: From behind theScenes to Center Stage by Jorge F. Perez-LopezReview by: William RatliffJournal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 157-177Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of MiamiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/166262 .

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Review Essay Will Latin America Finally

Have a Real Revolution?

William Ratliff

Lowenthal, Abraham F. and Gregory Treverton (eds.) LATIN AMERICA IN A NEW WORLD. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. Acro-

nyms, index, 265 pp.; paper.

Leiken, Robert S. (ed.) A NEW MOMENT IN THE AMERICAS. Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center, 1994. 130 pp.; paper.

Larroulet V., Cristian (ed.) PRIVATE SOLUTIONS TO PUBLIC PROB- LEMS: THE CHILEAN EXPERIENCE. Santiago de Chile: Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo, 1993. 290 pp.; paper.

Hojman, David E. NEO-LIBERALISM WITH A HUMAN FACE? THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF THE CHILEAN MODEL (Mono-

graph Series No. 20). Liverpool, England: University of Liverpool, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1995. Appendix, tables, bibli-

ography, 256 pp.; paper.

Perez-L6pez, Jorge F. CUBA'S SECOND ECONOMY: FROM BEHIND THE SCENES TO CENTER STAGE. New Brunswick, NJ: Transac- tion Publishers, 1995. Glossary, bibliography, index, 221 pp.

These books offer broad and specialized commentaries from varied

perspectives on what Venezuelan Beatrice Rangel correctly calls Latin America's "most profound political and economic revolution since Independence" (Leiken: 15). One might even say that this "new moment" is potentially the most profoundly revolutionary period in the

region's history, for never before has the movement toward deep political, economic and social change been so great. Yet, from the

beginning, one is well advised to recall Seymour Martin Lipset's warning

William Ratliff is a Senior Research Fellow and Curator of the Americas Collection at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Most recently, he is coauthor ofJUDICIAL REFORM IN LATIN AMERICA (Hoover, 1995), ARGENTINA'S CAPITALIST REVOLUTION REVISITED (Hoover, 1993) and THE CIVIL WAR IN NICARAGUA (Transaction, 1993), as well as editor of INSIDE THE CUBAN INTE- RIOR MINISTRY (Jamestown Foundation, 1994).

157



158 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

that "a transition to democracy does not, of course, assure its institutionalization or permanence" (Leiken: 1), and the same is true of free market economies.

Lowenthal/Treverton'sLatinAmerica in aNew World and Leiken's A New Moment in the Americas are compilations of papers and talks that strive to cover the waterfront of issues facing Latin America today. The former is the first broadly based analysis of Latin America's relations with non-Latin countries, organizations and issues in the new post-Cold War world, a world marked by the rapid if still uneven expansion of

democracy, free markets and economic interdependence. The latter book is a collection of commentaries, most of which were originally presented at a gathering of Hemispheric cultural and political leaders

just before the Summit of the Americas met in Miami in December 1994. Larroulet's Private Solutions to PublicProblems is a series of essays that

tell, in detail, how Chile carried out revolutionary changes under a dictator after 1973, leading the way into the "new world" years before that new world was even born. Perez-L6pez's Cuba's SecondEconomy, on the other hand, tells how Cuba's decrepit economic system, stifled for decades by an even stronger dictator, is now being prepared for - and, in part, subverted to - the new world by its own second (i.e., underground) "free market" economy.

For decades, revolution in Latin America was largely synonymous with the names and deeds of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, the Ortega brothers, and other so-called Marxist spin-offs around the Hemisphere. Most of these self-professed Marxists knew little about Marx but were much enamored of a combination of Bakuninist activism, whether they knew of the Russian anarchist or not, and Leninist vanguardism. Bertram D. Wolfe put these "Marxists" in perspective several decades ago, when he wrote that Marx's original writings have been

buried under successive layers of commentary and interpretation, popularization, oversimplification and specious rationalization ... [over time taking such forms as] Maoism and such Marxisms of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as Baathism, Nasserism, and Castroism, which, for intellectual purposes, we need not take too seriously, yet whose influence on political acts and political passions may be serious indeed (Wolfe, 1964: xv). Their actions were often serious because they liked to be in charge

of movements or, if possible, to take and keep power of governments by force of arms, and the results were seldom beneficial in even the medium term to any beyond the "new class" of ruling elites.



RATLIFF: WILL ATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE A REAL REVOLUTION? 159

Salvador Allende was a different sort of Marxist when he was elected president of Chile just over a decade into the Castroite period. A perennial Socialist Party politician, he had strong support from the Communist Party while in office, but was just as unsuccessful as the Sandinistas and, in most ways, as Castro in making life better for the nation's people. In political terms, Allende failed mainly because many on his own Unidad Popular (UP) team - especially those the communists called the "ultra-Left" - sabotaged, more than supported, his

policies, drove the country to the brink of chaos, and provoked a

military coup that was supported by the vast majority of the Chilean

people (Ratliff, 1976: 155-188; Constable and Valenzuela, 1991: 15-39; Orrego, 1975; and Politzer, 1989).

However, Allende's fundamental problem, even if he had had the full support of the UP, was that his objective was essentially the same

stillborn, statist socialism of the more violence-oriented "Marxist" Left in general. Those who managed to take power for a significant period of time in Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua set up state-dominated, bureaucratic regimes that were not only repressive, as have been, to varying degrees, the East and Southeast Asian "tigers" (or "dragons") of recent

decades, but hopeless economic fiascos as well, which the Asians

distinctly are not. Castro, the Ortegas, and Allende all adopted economic schemes that were inherently flawed and then clinched the fate of their countries by, to one degree or another, denying all those who thought differently - and, often, more correctly - any voice in the discussion of government policy, much less in policymaking.

Many events and forces precipitated the "new moment" and the "new world." In the broadest terms, there were the no longer deniable

examples of what hasn't worked and also examples of what has worked around the Hemisphere and world. As for the former, in the mid- and

late-1980s, reality caught up with the Soviet bloc: the evidence was irrefutable that single-centered states which squash private initiative and free markets are not only repressive but, in economic matters, are flat out wrong if improving the livelihood of the people counts for

anything more than propaganda. One of the main reasons was that, for all Marxism's protestations of scientific validity, in practice it was the antithesis of science for it simply denied facts that failed to fortify the faith. This aspect of Marxism - and the vested interests of the new class - had a devastating impact on the countries under communist control even as it was having a slightly less obvious, but equally negative, impact on many academics and analysts around/the world via the dependency




movement and other less pervasive fads. Such a fraud could not be sustained forever in running a country, and Soviet bloc governments collapsed; while the more clever Asian communists opted to save their "socialism" by embracing capitalism, a policy Fidel Castro has flirted with to a limited degree.

For decades, many Latin Americans considered Cuba, to one extent or another, as a model for national development. More recently, however, even many of Castro's admirers have come to realize that the Cuban leader has, at the very least, failed as a ruler; some acknowledge that he has manipulated the Cuban people in pursuit of his own personal goals for domestic and international power and influence. In the words of Juan Antonio Rodriguez Menier, a founding member of the government and, for 28 years, an official in Cuba's Interior Ministry,

Fidel has survived because he is a shrewd street-fighter. All of his decisions - political, economic, andpersonal - are made with the goals of maintaining his personal power and pursuing his private, anti-Yankee vendetta, regardless of how these decisions might affect the welfare of his countrymen (Rodriguez, 1994c).

What is more, on many occasions Fidel has deliberately made economic decisions he knew would weaken the economy just so the people, who did not know any better, would not prosper and thus would feel they had to rely on his 'wise leadership' to survive (Rodriguez, 1994b: 7).

His quick willingness to sacrifice even his closest personal col-

leagues was obvious in 1989, when the victims were the highly celebrated General Arnaldo Ochoa, executed on trumped-up drug charges, Interior Minister Jose Abrantes, one of Castro's closest col-

leagues for decades, who was thrown into prison after Ochoa's arrest

and, predictably, died there, and much of the First Level of the Interior

Ministry (Rodriguez and Ratliff, 1994: 2, 19, 22, 53). Now that the Somozas and Duvaliers are gone, Castro's dictatorship - with brother Raul the designated heir apparent - is the only family dynasty remain-

ing in Latin America.

During the late 1960s, in his early heyday as an international activist, Fidel Castro hailed the waves (olas) of socialism he saw rolling over the Hemisphere, even as his own brand of "socialism" was

destroying the relatively productive (in 1959 Latin American terms), if

unevenly distributed, economy he had seized in Cuba. However, since the mid-1980s in particular, the waves of the free market churned up by Augusto Pinochet's economic earthquake in Chile, and by people and



RATLIF: WILL IATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE A RAL REVOLUTON? 161

events around the world, have rolled over Castro, and Fidel himself has had to undertake at least haphazard economic reforms along lines he has

spent his life condemning. At the end of 1995, he even visited China - whose chief reformer, Deng Xiaoping, he had contemptuously dismissed as a "numbskull," "brazen," "neo-fascist" and "infinitely dangerous" (Ratliff, 1990:211). His objective in visiting China was to see what he could learn from the Chinese about maintaining political power during a period of economic change (Ratliff, 1996). This is almost as ironic as finding one of the founders of the dependency movement, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, serving as president of Brazil and imple- menting just the kinds of free market policies he spent his career

deploring as the bane of the Latin American people, or the life-long Peronist populist, Carlos Menem, guiding a capitalist revolution in

Argentina (Ratliff and Fontaine, 1990 and 1993).

In addition to the collapse of the "socialist" model represented by the "communist" world, including Cuba (despite the personal survival of Fidel Castro), the negative examples included the historic failures of mercantilist policies in Latin America - in most cases what Argentine Manuel Mora yAraujo refers to as the region's "past failures," which are a major preoccupation of leaders today (Leiken: 24). The roots of these "past failures" go back for decades. In most cases, Latin America had

nothing like the Soviet bloc's repression or same level of economic ruination (Ramirez, 1994: 82-83), in large part because the Hemisphere's

systems were not so closed to outside ideas and contacts, and most countries had some experience with political parties, private invest-

ment, free markets, and the rule of law never permitted in the communist world.

Nevertheless, a lot was the same. On a somewhat less disastrous, but telling, level, economic systems collapsed in Latin America as well, largely because they simply didn't produce for most people. Added to the inherent flaws of domestic policy were the oil crisis and, more

broadly, the economic slump of the "lost decade" of the 1980s. The

consequence was, in the words of Albert Fishlow:

Put directly and simply, capitalism has triumphed. What remains are important differences in direction and style - for example between European, Japanese and American variants - but socialism is dead (Lowenthal/Treverton: 65).

And Andrew Hurrell emphasizes that "recent shifts in economic

policy" have

significant domestic roots - in the discrediting and failure of previous development policies built around import substitution, in



162 JOURNAL OF INTERAMEICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

which wide-ranging subsidy programs and extensive direct state involvement in industry played a major role; in the increased recognition of the need for effective stabilization and, most impor- tantly, in the analytically distinct but temporally interconnected fiscal, political, and institutional crises of the state (Lowenthal and Treverton: 174).

The most uncompromising attack yet written on the mistaken trajectory of Latin American (though not only Latin American) thinking and policies over the decades is the Manual del perfecto idiota latinoamericano by three of the Hemisphere's top analysts: one Colombian, one Cuban, and one Peruvian (Mendoza, Montaner, and Vargas Llosa, 1996). The critique - dedicated to, and in the spirit of, the late Venezuelan Carlos Rangel - is introduced by Mario Vargas Losa, the father of the Peruvian co-author, who calls the volume "belligerent and

polemical," which is, if anything, an understatement. At the same time, he continues, it is "the most serious book in the world" because it confronts, head-on, the "intellectual underdevelopment" that, in so many ways, led so many Latin Americans to blame all their problems on someone else (usually the United States) and, thus, to fail to confront and resolve these problems for the good of the people in the Hemi-

sphere. Former Sandinista Defense Minister Humberto Ortega proudly, but seemingly unknowingly, plunks himself in this broad "intellectually underdeveloped" category by remarking, in the early 1990s, on the "mechanical and schematic" use of "old Marxist manuals" by Nicara- guan revolutionaries in the past. He portrays this as a positive thing for the time, even though he recognizes that, in the present "convulsed world," revolutionaries must be more "practical" (Ortega, 1993: 178), seemingly oblivious of the fact that being more practical in 1979 would have saved about 50,000 lives.1

The positive examples of what works much better, despite some serious imperfections, include the countries of the developed world, the modernizing nations of East and Southeast Asia, and, to the still almost intolerable discomfort of many, the economic success of General Augusto Pinochet's Chile. Finally, on the positive side, in every country of the Hemisphere there were essentially free markets in operation (even if often harassed by all sorts of illiberal governments). Without the production of these parallel, underground, or illegal economies, first studied in great detail in Peru by Hernando de Soto, the economies of many countries would have collapsed altogether and earlier.

History and experience sometimes teach practical lessons, and it is now commonplace to note that crises sometimes precipitate basic



RATLIFF: WILL LATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE AEAL REVOLUTION? 163

change (e.g., Boeker, 1993: 3-12). But there are still major differences of

opinion as to precisely what history has to teach about what systems, including what kind of change they brought or prevented. For example, a former vice-president of the Sandinistas, Sergio Ramirez, says that:

The problems regarding poverty and marginalization have not been solved by liberalism in over two centuries. There is no reason to believe that neoliberalism will achieve this now ... From the perspective of underprivileged countries, such as those of Latin America, neoliberalism... is now obsolete, as obsolete as the model of real socialism over which it sings its victory (Leiken: 65).

This writer is far harsher in his description of the "brutal transplant of the market economy" when writing for a Spanish-speaking audience

(Ramirez, 1994: 83, 96ff.). Ruben Zamora, for many years a spokesman for the Salvadoran guerrillas of the Frente Farabundo Martf de Liberaci6n Nacional (FMLN) and others, through the Frente Democrdtico Revolucionario (FDN), makes much the same argument, calling neoliberalism a "destroyer of dreams" for the poor,

since it undercuts the basis on which people's dreams of a better life rest - state social services - and it puts people face to face with a life of scarcity, without horizon or hope ("Foreword" to Rosen and McFadyen, 1995: 10).

Hope certainly is critical during a period of transformation, but, without the possibility of success, hope is a fraud, and the kinds of statism Zamora proposes have an unbroken record of failure - for all but the elites, of Left or Right, who control and/or cooperate with the state.

Manuel F. Ayau, the founder of Francisco Marroquin University in

Guatemala, notes that, while capitalism (or liberalism) brought development in Anglo-Saxon countries, "mercantilism thrived in Latin America under the false designation of capitalism" (Ayau, 1996). The assertion that liberalism has been tried for so long and failed is what Mario Vargas Llosa has rightly called "one of the most widely accepted myths about Latin America" ("Foreword" to de Soto, 1989: xiv). As Vargas Llosa

argues (and de Soto shows in much detail), what critics calls the "liberalism" of the past, that contributed so much to the impoverish- ment of so many Latin Americans was, in fact and as Ayau pointed out, really mercantilism. Vargas Llosa defines mercantilism as "a bureaucra- tized and law-ridden state that regards the redistribution of wealth as more important than the production of wealth." And "redistribution," he says, means, in large part

the concession of monopolies or favored status to a small elite that depends on the state and on which the state is itself dependent (in de Soto, 1989: xiv.).




It is what Leiken has in mind when he remarks on

bureaucratic and mercantile states which siphoned wealth ex- tracted from productive sectors to 'caudillos' claiming to represent various sectors of society (Leiken: x). Thus the conclusion that today's neoliberal reforms are just "more

of the same" not only is completely wrong about the past, it is

destructively misleading vis-&-vis the present and future: it obfuscates the real issues of what kinds of economic systems do (and don't) promote broad economic opportunity and growth. We can note this fundamental flaw in their observations while agreeing with Ramirez on the dangers of the "acritical importation of models" (Leiken: 63).

This points to the desperate need for serious, truly scholarly studies of Latin American history, strategies of development, and other matters related to change today. Even in Chile during the late 1960s and

early 1970s, when anyone could say anything he wanted to about

anything and usually did, the proposals of those who were later to become known as the "Chicago Boys" (i.e., economic advisers trained at University of Chicago) were not considered to be sufficiently serious to require rejection. The Chicago Boys had no influence whatsoever on Eduardo Frei's Christian Democracy or Allende's socialism; it took a

military dictator to force people's minds open on economics, though Pinochet himself knew nothing about economics except that the

policies of Frei and Allende had been disasters. The result is that the

superiority of Chile's post-Pinochet, economic situation to that in other Latin American countries can no longer be denied.

This effective exclusion of "politically incorrect" interpretations of economic reality for so long in Chile was in line with the thinking that then prevailed in many quarters at that time, and later, of academics in Latin America, Europe and the United States, to officials of the United Nations and US government - the latter demonstrated by Washington's choice of Frei's state-oriented "Revolution in Liberty" during the late 1960s as its model for Latin America. Even non-Marxist and anti-Marxist Latin American leaders, epitomized decades ago by Juan Peron in Argen- tina, set their sights on unattainable goals, generally fell for (and relished) the delusions of scapegoating, and so institutionalized their follies as to

guarantee the passing on of their failures to future generations.

For at least two decades, this politically correct (PC) perspective and practice also played a major role and, in some respects, even dominated several academic disciplines in the United States, to the detriment of the scholarly search for truth and sound policy. In The



RATLIFF: WILL ATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE A REAL REVOLUTION? 165

Dependency Movement (Packenham, 1992), the most important book

published in recent years on LatinAmerican and developmental studies, Robert Packenham has given us the only serious overall analysis of the

impact of the dependency movement as a whole - sometimes fruitful, but very often harmful - on Latin American studies and policies; it is the

only carefully documented critique of how scholarly standards in the United States during those years were often eagerly sacrificed on the altar of political advocacy. Typically, when things didn't work in Latin America (and so often they did not), someone else was found to blame, usually the United States - a tendency that prevailed for a long time

given the presumption of intellectual respectability that dependency "scholarship" bestowed upon this view. While it is true that some of the US policies towards Latin America proved to be unfortunate, the

dependency and related movements in Latin America have been, to large degree, simply scapegoating and, whenever possible, cut out those who questioned their basic, and wrong, premises. Ramirez, Zamora, and many who played this game in the United States fall, with Humberto Ortega, into what Mendoza, Montaner, and Vargas Llosa call the camp of "idiots."

Today Marxism, as a serious approach to solving the problems of the peoples of the world, is dead, but that doesn't mean it and its fallout are gone. Todd Gitlin puts the problem this way:

Marxism today is generally understood to be bankrupt, although radical movements continue to write bad checks on an overdrawn account (Leiken: 52).

The inclination to tap overdrawn accounts is made more likely by another phenomenon noted by Gitlin: granting the "grim absurdity of statist socialism," he correctly adds that "the implosion of Marxism- Leninism has not erased extravagant intentions from the world" (Leiken: 52). For example, in recentyears, some claims for so-called neoliberalism have been so extravagant - not usually by those who understand how markets work but by their propagandists, which includes most politicians - as to guarantee frustration when reforms do not bring instant miracles. Extravagant claims were the hallmark of the US debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during the late- Bush and early-Clinton administrations, where "sucking sound" non- sense was almost equalled by the overblown promises made by NAFTA's noisiest proponents. In Mexico, predictable complications of reforms were exacerbated in 1994 by unpredictable political assassinations and the peso crisis, causing some, on both sides of the US-Mexican border,



166 JOURNAL OF NTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

who had originally supported free trade more as propagandists than out of conviction, to back off and become opportunistic critics - and then to transfer their lost faith in Mexico to many other Latin American

countries, and to the developing world in general. To be sure, some

changes can come fairly quickly, such as the reduction (or even virtual elimination) of inflation, but other improvements are much slower to

arrive, more painful in the process and, under negative conditions, probably impossible.

Not only can frustration result from the failure to attain unrealistic

expectations, but also from the very process of reversing the mistakes of the past, for setting right what is wrong can exact a serious "social cost" in the present. Whereas the bill for this "cost" should be sent to those who created the old parasitical institutions in the first place, it is often charged to the reformers, though the blame is more often thus shifted by those with vested interests in the old system than by the poor of the countries. Indeed, Mora y Araujo correctly notes the "massive

acceptance of orthodox economic policies" and the fact that "economic

orthodoxy now helps to win elections and, in many cases, buttresses

political support among the least privileged social sectors" (Leiken: 24; Ratliff and Fontaine, 1993).

However, the old Leftist critiques come in other guises as well.

They are sometimes constructive though, for some, the antagonisms of the past still show through with sufficient frequency as to complicate dialogue itself. One example is the perpetration of old myths that poison discussions of basic issues, like Ramirez's remark regarding the 200

years of liberalism. Beginning with a false premise, Ramirez nonetheless tried to be constructive by speaking of

using the market as an efficient tool for achieving economic transformation, generating wealth that will benefit all of society according to the laws of a new equity (Leiken: 64).

Though this strategy for bringing on the "new equity" is not

explained, "using" the economy can be problematical and could easily tilt a new system back to an only slightly modified version of earlier failures. Nonetheless, if future discussions are conducted with open minds and good will, people from both sides of the erstwhile Cold War

might move together toward promoting a better life for the vast

majority, perhaps in the direction discussed by Michael Novak in his The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (Novak, 1982).

The Mexican political scientist, Jorge Castafieda, has gone farther than anyone else in trying to understand what suddenly happened to



RATLIFF: WILLATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVEA REAL REVOLUION? 167

the Left and what can be done to save, and utilize, what he considers the best that it had to offer. He begins his Utopia Unarmed with a dramatic statement about the collapse of the socialist bloc:

The United States and capitalism have won ... Democracy, free- market economics, and pro-American outpourings of sentiment and policy dot the landscape of a region where, until recently, Left- Right confrontation and the potential for social revolution and progressive reform were widespread. He continues, particularly in the final pages of his book, with

suggestions as to how greater social justice might come from free market reforms, challenging his colleagues on the Left to craft "an

endogenous Latin American paradigm loosely based on the European andJapanese schemes in the post-Cold War" (Castaieda, 1993: 3,443).

Though Castaiieda's proposals on Latin American development are constructive, they are far from being broadly accepted by the Left.

However, his comments on social revolution and progressive reform raise another basic issue and are paralleled by Ramirez's equally mislead-

ing conclusions on the alleged obsolescence of neoliberalism for

"underprivileged countries." Both clearly put Marxists (or former Marx- ists who are still Marxists at heart?) on the side of the downtrodden of the earth by, and in varying degrees, preempting virtue and compassion and contrasting it to the implied (or stated) indifferent grasping of neo- liberals. Thus, by repeatedly arrogating virtue only to themselves, they (and others before them) have managed to convince many around the world that what they say is actually true. It isn't. The assertion is wrong on two basic counts: it misrepresents Marxism, and it misrepresents neoliberalism, both in a very self-serving ways.

While it is certainly true that Leftists haveproclaimed themselves defenders of "the people" (or even that they are the people) and

champions of social revolution and progressive reform to benefit the

masses, the fact is that, in reality, Leftists have never come even close to living up to the level of their claims.2 Indeed, when they have had the

power to enact their programs, they have accomplished little at best, while, most of the time, they have made life far worse for "the people" than it had been before. The entire history of communism, which dominated so much of the 20th century, is proof of this. What is more, the abysmal performances of these Marxist reformers and systems (political, economic and social) suggest that the main reason Leftists elsewhere have done less harm is because they had less power.




For decades, others have suggested that neoliberalism patterned to Latin American conditions would bring more social revolution and

progressive reform than anything the Left has ever achieved or will achieve. However, for better or worse, few in the neoliberal camp carry banners proclaiming that neoliberalism is the people's ideology, even

though an occasional book, while critical at times of certain aspects of the neoliberal experience, may nonetheless recognize clearly its productive potential: viz., "the Latin cat may actually become a healthy Asian tiger" (Hojman, 1995: 252); and the comment byMichel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that Peru

may yet become a "South American jaguar" (LARR-Andean, 1996). True neoliberalism will do far more than mercantilism has ever tried to do, or

done, in the two centuries that Ramirez wrongly states liberalism was in power - if the reforms today are not coopted by neomercantilists or

demagogues of whatever orientation.

Given geopolitical realities, any transition to more workable

systems in Latin America will necessitate working relationships among at least the major countries of the Hemisphere. Many in post-Cold War Latin America are open to a new, more productive relationship with the United States, which is a critical issue for obvious reasons, while having historically understandable reservations, and some legitimate criti-

cisms, of US policy in the region. These range from Argentina's Presi- dent Carlos Menem and Peru's President Alberto Fujimori to - in some

ways - Ramirez and Castafieda. Among analysts, Castafieda has more

experience with Washington than most, and he touches on many of the

political and economic components of US relations with Latin America

(Lowenthal/Treverton: 28-52). Despite this level of insight, however, he falls into one of the Leftist traps of reading too much foresight, and even plotting, into US policy toward the southern portions of the

Hemisphere. There is not a vast conspiracy to dominate in the post-Cold War period, using drugs and immigration as replacements for the Soviet

threat, as Castafieda (Lowenthal: 33-37) and others suggest. The simple fact is that, in the past and for the foreseeable future, the very size and economic strength of the United States means that it will inevitably dominate much of what happens in the Western Hemisphere even

when, as is often the case, Washington is paying only marginal attention to the region at most.

The truth is that, though the United States seems (and is) very large when viewed from the south, most politicians in Washington, including the president and most others in the United States, take very little notice



RATLFF: WILL LATIN AMECA FINALLY HAVE A REAL REVOLUTION? 169

of Latin America at all (aside from Mexico or when there is a "momen-

tary" crisis). They tend to look either East or West or nowhere. Thus, US actions toward, and in, Latin America are more often improvised, compromised afterthoughts that are inconsistent in their execution, rather than seriously planned policy, much less a conspiracy. The Brazilian HelioJaguaribe notes, correctly, that (1) the United States, for its own good and that of the Hemisphere, needs "a new good-neighbor policy," and that (2) George Bush's Enterprise of the Americas not only provided a context for economic trends in the region but was also "attractive for both sides of the Americas" (Lowenthal/Treverton: 57, 59). But even Castaiieda warns that "After so many years of worrying about excessive US involvement in the region, Latin America may soon suffer from US indifference" (Lowenthal: 47). The Clinton administration and the 1995 Republican-dominated Congress have already con- firmed Castaieda's prediction, due, at least in part, to the events of 1994-95 in Mexico. Protectionist and punitive policies with respect to

trade, immigration, and other issues are on their way back in Washing- ton, casting a long shadow over what is still the most promising period in Hemispheric relations. Indeed, in spite of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the recently inaugurated World Trade

Organization (WTO), the Clinton administration is almost constantly threatening some country or other, in all parts of the world, with trade sanctions. What is more, the little interest that the Clinton administration has evinced in the region has often been misdirected, as demonstrated by the amount of time devoted to the embargo and invasion of Haiti, which the president said, at one point, was taking half his day. If that time had been spent working more constructively to expanding free trade with the entire Hemisphere, hundreds of millions could have benefitted.

Sometimes, however, the comments of Castaiieda and Jaguaribe seem to reflect criticism of US actions (past, present, and projected into the future) that are more Leftist reflexes than rational and which need either to be discussed until understood by both sides, or dropped for the sake of future cooperation. For example, Jaguaribe remarks on

the current US propensity for maximizing those international advan- tages that it can gain at very low cost or at the expense of weaker partners ... Episodes such as the invasions of Grenada and Panama and, what is worse, their domestic celebration as national feats are indications of this propensity (Lowenthal/Treverton: 56-57).



170 JOURNAL OF NTERMERICAN SUDIES AND WORLD AAIRS

Castanieda comments that

the dissolution of any significant counterweight to US conduct in international affairs was inevitably perceived as a contributing factor to the new US flaunting of "might over right" (Lowenthal/ Treverton: 39).

Much can be (and has been) written in response to these charges and the propensity of those in the United States and others to celebrate "victories" abroad; I will limit my comments to one point. Does

Jaguaribe recall that the people of two other nations celebrated the US interventions much more than did those of the United States? Those

people were: Grenadians and Panamanians. Do the people living in Latin American countries have the freedom to choose contrary to the wishes of Jaguaribe and their neighbors? Mention the Sandinistas

during the late-1970s and 1980s and Leftists say: "Yes, they should have been free to carry out whatever policies they thought were in their national interests, but the US made war on them when they tried" - a matter I will return to below. But Panamanians and Grenadians? Latin America's knee-jerk reactions to these two US actions were critical

despite the fact that those of the vast majority of the Grenadian and Panamanian people - those most directly involved - ranged from

supportive to ecstatic.

Also, some in Latin America still try to blame the United States for

having incited any opposition that may have arisen in the past against Leftist governments they admired, from Allende's in Chile to that of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, as if significant levels of genuine indigenous opposition to "socialism" were, by definition, impossible. Indeed, that is just it: domestic opposition to socialism in its various forms, by any but "fascists" and the hopelessly deceived, is inconceivable, by definition. Evidence to the contrary is inadmissible. For example, one of the most common charges of recent years is that, during the 1980s, the conflict in Nicaragua was simply a "proxy war" by the United States, as Castafieda (Lowenthal/Treverton: esp. 37, 31) and many others have

put it. This charge continues despite ample evidence that it was a

genuine civil war brought on by the policies of the Sandinistas themselves. A longtime, high-level spokesman for the Sandinista For-

eign Ministry, Alejandro Bendafa, wrote that peasant discontent with Sandinista policies came "before either the sharpening of the war or the crisis of the economy," continuing:

the Contra army grew beyond the North Americans' own expectations, not because of sophisticated recruitment campaigns in the countryside, but at first mainly from the impact on the peasant



RATLIFF: WILL LATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE A REAL REVOLUHION? 171

landholder of the policies, limitations and errors ofSandinismo.... It was Sandinismo [that] fertilized the ground for the integration of thousands of peasants into the counter-revolutionary army (Bendania, 1991: 258, 13, 38, 258).

Roger Miranda, who was a top aide to Humberto Ortega during the Contra war, entitled his co-authored book on the decade The Civil War in Nicaragua (Miranda and Ratliff, 1993). Civil war. Many observers, including an increasing number of Nicaraguans from all kinds of

backgrounds, peasants in particular, discovered that the Sandinistas were no better than Somoza. Their colorful way of putting it included the common saying: "la misma mierda, solamente las moscas son

diferente" (the same shit, only the flies are different). They tried in various ways, including warfare, to get rid of them.

To be sure, the US government officially supported the conflict, off and on, for what rising and falling majorities in Washington perceived as US interests, and some of its policies - such as mining the harbors - were not only stupid and counterproductive but, ironically, benefitted only the Sandinistas. That does not detract from the fact that there was widespread popular opposition to the Sandinistas and their

policies from the very beginning, which spread rapidly quite irrespec- tive of US support. Do these critics of US policy consider the war against Somoza as a Costa Rican, or Venezuelan, or Cuban "proxy" war because those countries provided aid to the Sandinistas? No, and it wasn't; but neither did the United States create the later, broad opposition to the Sandinistas (Kagan, 1996: 148-54; Miranda and Ratliff: 231-35).

Fortunately for inter-American relations and the well-being of most Americans of all nations throughout the Hemisphere, more and more analysts in Latin America and abroad are recognizing that, though the United States may sometimes implement policies which are at variance with the perceived interests of Latin Americans (and of the United States itself), it is far more common for the interests of the United States and Latin America to overlap than otherwise. What is more, increasing numbers of Latin Americans and others are recognizing that the Latin Americans themselves are chiefly responsible for their own

past and future, and that only by recognizing, and accepting, this

responsibility, will they be able to develop and secure their independence in the future, as several authors, like Alberto van Klaveren, Osvaldo Hurtado and Jesus Silva Herzog have noted (Lowenthal/ Treverton: 101, 222, 236), along with the authors of Perfecto Idiota. Some of this "responsibility" is as much institutional as individual.




Leiken performs a real service by reprinting the article by Octavio Paz which appeared in a 1979 issue of The New Yorker Magazine, in which Mexico's most revered intellectual notes the institutional barriers to substantial change in Latin America:

Though Spanish-American civilization is to be admired on many counts, it reminds one of a structure of great solidity - at once convent, fortress, and palace - built to last, not to change. In the long run, that construction became a confine, a prison (Leiken: 78).

Ramirez also notes historical, institutional impediments to change, though he seems to date them, incorrectly, to the independence period (Leiken: 65); while Peru's President Fujimori has drawn special attention to the need to overcome the entrenched power of elites in order to carry out policies that benefit the Peruvian people as a whole

(Fujimori, 1996).

Contributors to both the Lowenthal/Treverton and the Leiken volumes raise many other critical questions. For example, the former

focuses, in particular, on brief, but often highly informative, histories of Latin America's relations with the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, China and their own neighbors. At the very beginning, Lowenthal and Treverton ask one of the critical questions that ties Washington to the entire region: "Whether the United States will lead a bold Hemispheric adjustment to changed circumstances or whether it will revert, instead, to policies that are protectionist, restrictionist, punitive and unilateral"

(p. 9); and recent policies by the Clinton administration and Republican- dominated Congress suggest there will be much of the latter. In a discussion of regionalism, Hurrell adds that

it is ultimately the response of Washington that will be the most important single factor in determining how far and how fast hemispheric regionalism is likely to proceed.

While he notes that US interest has grown, he then adds, correctly, that

even in the economic field, the southward expansion of free trade arrangements is likely to remain somewhat patchy and ad hoc and to take place over a lengthy period of time (Lowenthal/Treverton: 185, 187). This suggests that, ultimately, the foundations of reform in Latin

America must be within individual countries and depend on relations

among the Latin American countries themselves.

Leiken's collection raises many critical, and sometimes still contro-

versial, issues. For example, Orlando Patterson writes eloquently on the

challenges, but also the enormous vitality, of cultural and other interac-



RATLIF: WILL LATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE A REAL REVOLUTION? 173

tions in America, concluding that, though "ecumenical America is no

utopia," it is "the world's first truly global culture" (Leiken: 105). Patterson concludes with a point that Leiken says was shared by most of the seminar's participants:

One of the important new things about the moment is the idea of a non-ethnically defined state based on citizenship and rights. That the states of this hemisphere are embracing. And that's new (Leiken: xvii).

The most negative participant at the Leiken conference with

respect to the United States and change in the Hemisphere was Richard

Rodriguez, who introduces himself as a "naysayer" who will sound a "sour note in the midst of all your talk about a 'new moment in the Americas'" (Leiken: 121); it is not clear why he is the only person to have two articles in the book. At the same time, Rangel, Mora y Araujo and several others remark on the desperate need for legal reform to provide a framework for the citizenship Patterson mentions and other critical facets of modern society (Leiken: 19, 23; also Buscaglia, Dakolias and

Ratliff, 1995).

Larroulet and colleagues offer an inside view of a revolutionary reform program that worked. The main positive effect produced by excluding the future Chicago Boys from assuming an immediately productive economic role in Chile during the late 1960s and early 1970S was that their isolation allowed them to organize their thoughts and draw up the "brick." This was the comprehensive plan for economic reform that was augmented, and implemented, during the years follow-

ing the military's overthrow of Allende (in 1973), and which created the

economy that is now the envy of every other country in Latin America. Chile's reforms came in the face of chaotic national conditions in 1973 and its subsequent international isolation which, according to Roberto

Kelly (head of the Office of National Planning, ODEPLAN, during the

early years of the Pinochet regime), forced the Chilean reformers to

press ahead because they had to succeed on their own or live, forever

after, with the chaos inherited from the Allende period (Kelly, 1992). Not only did these changes come before the fall of Soviet-style socialism, but also before such conservatives as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald

Reagan arrived in office.

Private Solutions to Public Problems, edited by Larroulet, con- tains a selection of articles by those who participated in Chile's revolution that go beyond praise for growth and fiscal stability to describe the macroeconomic policies adopted in the fields of social security, health



174 JOURNAL OF INTEIRMERICAN STUDIES AND WORID AFAiRS

care, education, local government, electrical energy, telecommunica- tions and transportation. Hernan Buchi, a prime mover of Chilean reform during the 1980s, says the Chilean revolution was accomplished through "a series of measures undertaken in a decentralized fashion by a variety of actors, including workers and businessmen." While the state defined the "rules of the game," the objective was to enable individuals and companies to "develop and maximize their creativity in ways which will benefit society" (Larroulet: 3). In the words of Larroulet, the most

important steps taken included

the privatization of companies or areas of activity, the introduction of incentives into the market, an environment which fosters participation and promotes private investment ... (p. 7).

David Hojman's edited volume, Neo-liberalism with a Human Face?, consists of 12 essays that range in subject matter from economic

issues, to party politics, to women in the new Chile. Although this book is much more critical of many aspects of the new Chile than that of Larroulet (which has a different purpose), it concludes that - due to the different contributions made by the "Chicago Boys" on the one hand, and the Christian Democrats (who succeeded them in power) on the other - the neoliberal revolution has been successful, by and large. The main thesis of the chapter by Markos Mamalakis is that "the Chilean success story of the Pinochet liberal paradigm is the result of mesoeconomic policies that eliminated sectoral conflicts prevalent before." Patricio Silva comes to a similar conclusion: i.e., that social

inequalities are no longer approached in extreme ideologized terms but, rather, from the "perspective of modernization," adding that "the

principle of social justice has been integrated with the goals of economic efficiency and political stability." And editor Hojman concludes:

Most of the political and economic conditions are highly favorable. ... The policies being designed and implemented are mostly the appropriate ones. Any policy mistakes are likely to be corrected, some of them swiftly, others eventually. The road is full of dangers, but the rewards at the end of it are splendid (Hojman, 1995: 252, 133, 129).

Finally, there is the main holdout of the Western Hemisphere, the aging barbudo who pledges "socialism or death," even as most Cubans and others have come to realize that the two are one and the same. In Cuba's Second Economy, Jorge Perez-L6pez explains how the waste- land of Fidel Castro's formal socialist economy has increasingly forced the Cuban people into that "set of under-the-table, unrecorded, and largely illegal activities that go on daily in socialist Cuba that permit



RATLIFF: WILL LATIN AMERICA FINALLY HAVE A REAL REVOLUTION? 175

ordinary citizens to eke out a living" (p. 1). Because this is a difficult

phenomenon to study by its very nature, Perez-L6pez accomplishes a

tourdeforce in describing the component parts of this second economy, measuring what role these parts have played in the past and are playing at present. Even though Castro has repeatedly crushed at least portions of this second economy, he has tried more recently to incorporate at least some of it into the government's strategy. The author's effort to

explain the role of the second economy in Cuba's economic transition is particularly valuable because it shows how, even in Cuba, the black market and other unofficial economic activities can become central to the nation's, and the people's, survival; they may even open the door to a very different, and more prosperous, future when Cuba escapes from the death of Fidel's socialism.

The varied perspectives presented in these books date almost

entirely from the "new moment" in Latin American history. Yet, even in this new period, there are contrasting and contradictory perspectives and analyses which are represented in these volumes. This means that the commentaries here reflect the real world offruitful discussion rather than a Latin chorus of people all singing the same song - despite Rodriguez's claim that his is the only voice singing out of tune - as was so common in past gatherings dealing with Latin America. Though a bit more ideology clouded some discussions than one might have wished, Leiken's conclusion to A New Moment in the Americas sums up what most of us hope will be the spirit of the future in US-Latin American contacts:

The hope was expressed that our own conversation can be a metaphor for emerging hemispheric relations: a place where all are heard and are free to agree or disagree, where no single point of view governs, in which differences are settled by persuasion not coercion, or, if not settled, left to be discussed on another occasion (Leiken: xx).




NOTES

1. When giving an award to a US military attache in Managua (anuary 1992), Humberto Ortega said, correctly, that, if relations with the United States are "closer" in the 1990s, "there won't be one more death in the future, much less 50,000," alluding to the losses in the civil war of the 1980s. Ironically and

tragically, the first 50,000 need not have died either if the Sandinistas had believed, and acted, on this understanding in July 1979 and subsequently (see Ortega, 1993: 207; Miranda and Ratliff, 1993: 153-63, 281).

2. The absurdity of this claim to be the people was illustrated in a headline in the Chilean Communist Party-controlled paper Puro Chile (6 March 1973) during the Allende government. When a substantial majority of the people voted against Allende, they (55%) were classified as "mummies." The paper proclaimed: "El Pueblo: 43%; Los Momios: 55%.

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Will Latin America Finally Have a Real Revolution?