THE NEW WORLD OF THE GOTHIC FOX
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modern or most industrial city or nation; one certainly does not go to a
system that declares itself to be beyond the evils of capitalism. One goes
to where one can be safe - pure and simple.
These are not small matters. These concerns are not simply
metaphorical or casual narrative sentences. There are policy implications
in human decisions at the bottom no less than at the top. It is estimated
that under Mussolini fewer than one thousand political prisoners were
killed. Of course, many were incarcerated; fascists made life for the
opposition unpleasant and unhappy. But compared with Berlin under
Hitler, or Moscow under Stalin, the record of misery is infinitely less
onerous. This supports the idea that culture is a variable unto itself, and
cannot be reduced to economy. I sense that Claudio is of two minds on
this issue: he wants to emphasize the Anglo-American social system as a
culture; but in linking it to industrial capitalism and beyond, he is also
pointing to Latin America and saying: do thou likewise.
Today, the Latin American countries have developed a different
political tradition, in which political enemies can go into exile rather
than be annihilated.
It
is a tradition of violence at some level but
relatively mild in terms of ultimate taking of lives. The line between
Spain, Portugal and Italy in the European world and Mexico, Brazil and
Argentina in the New World should be dealt with in a more nuanced
manner. We are talking in relative terms. I am not saying there were not
"disappeared" people in Buenos Aires in 1978 and 1983; I realize that
the Cuban prisons are filled to the limit; I understand well the awful
nature of even mild tyrannies. But on overview, if we look back at the
century now drawing to a close, there has to be a recognition of a
choice of evils, no less than a selection of goods. This is true for political
systems no less than for cultural traditions and economic formations.
Although Claudio's book does indicate the differences among the
countries of Latin America: between Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and
Mexico on the one hand, and let us say, Panama, Peru and Bolivia on
the other, we need to look more closely at why such micro differences
matter in the macro management of societies. The gap in levels of
development at the start of the twentieth century between Argentina
and the United States was far narrower than it is at the close of the
century. Why should this be the case? Part of the answer may reside in
the celebration of traditionalism over modernism. But this is only a
partial explanation. We are not dealing simply with backwardness as
such, or Latinism as such, or cultural styles as such. We are dealing with
differences of economic potential among Latin American countries - in
contrast to Brazil, which is a twenty-first century dynamo, Haiti is a
nineteenth-century basket case. We can't talk about this in 1994 without
