24
PARTISAN REVIEW
kets out in the world for our products, so that we can attract technol–
ogy and capital and ideas from all over the world to help us develop our
resources and create the employment we so urgently need. In this new
cultural climate, many concede that the "regional integration of Latin
America" never worked because it was always weighted down with a
spirit of nationalism.
It
was an effort to integrate in defense against the
rest of the world, the famous "imperialists." And yet even with a marked
deck, no one played cleanly. Everybody wanted to take advantage of in–
tegration for himself. Now, when it finally seems that the supreme
political value, common sense, is taking hold over growing numbers of
Latin Americans on many levels, integration is being understood in a
more modern way: as unification for the purpose of achieving together
and as soon as possible the integration of Latin America with the rest of
the world. Interjecting ourselves into the world, with an awareness of
possibilities, challenges, and markets, is the main tool that poor and
backward countries like ours have for ceasing to be that way and
becoming modern, that is, prosperous and truly free, since freedom with
poverty is freedom that is stunted and imperiled.
Ending nationalism, which has bloodied and divided us, at whose
dictates we have squandered huge resourcess on arming ourselves one
against the other, is the
sine qua non
of our development and modern–
ization. These same resources could have served in the fight against the
real enemies of any nation - not its neighbors, but hunger, ignorance,
and backwardness. We must not revert to nationalism, used by bad gov–
ernments to conciliate or silence opposition, blackmailing by the asser–
tion that "the nation is threatened by foreign enemies" and artificially
creating a "national unity." We need to work faithfully to overcome
distrust and reticence on both sides - resolving problems harmoniously
when they arise - and to succeed through collaboration and diverse ex–
changes. In this way, as is beginning to occur in Europe and other parts
of the world, borders will weaken and dissolve under the beneficient
force of friendship, common interest, and shared consciousness; those
perseverent demons that have left us so far behind compared to more
prosperous areas of the world will be killed off. Fortunately, there are
more and more Latin Americans who differentiate clearly between
"nationalism" and "patriotism." Despite what Doctor Johnson said in his
witticism about scoundrels, patriotism is altruistic, generous, legitimate, a
feeling of love for the land in which one .was born and where the bones
of one's dead are buried, ethical and sentimental within the system of
cultural, geographical, and historical references that frame each individual
destiny. But even patriotism, with everything in it that is beautiful and
noble, cannot be obligatory, as the esteemed and personal experiences of
