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PARTISAN
I~EVIEW
Nothung - can be made to serve. We change less than we think; there
are very few transformations in history that result in truly overwhelming
change. There was a French R.evolution , but the day-to-day existence of
the immense majority of the French people changed on ly marginally
from what it had been during the previous century. The changes were
significant, but the continuities were even more so. This certainly applies
to Latin America, where the continuiti es have proved vastly more telling
than the changes . Notwithstanding revolutions, civil wars, and economic
depressions, the proportion of persons bearing recognizable names that
place them in the upper strata of society is higher, say, in Colombia and
Chile, than anywhere else in the Western world.
I agree with you that this is so, but my main interest is with the dis–
continuities that, it seems
to
me, are surfacing everywhere in the region
and may suggest that we are on the threshold of a momentous process of
change. The most important, I think, is the mass conversion of working–
class Catholics to evangelical Protestantism. This is without precedent in
the Catholic world; it is certainly the largest number of conversions to
Protestantism since the Reformation, and it marks a decisive departure
from a unifying centralist tradition that acquired its definitive character
from the Spanish Counter-Reformation. It is possible that what Latin
American converts are embracing today is a form of "cargo cu lt. " They
are unlikely to be converting because having reread Luther or Calvin,
they found their explanations more plausible than those offered by
Balmes or Maritain. It is far more likely that they feel that they are em–
bracing an austere and economically rewarding system of belief linked
functionally with modern industrial prosperity, and distant from the per–
sistent failures of the political activism and terrorist violence associated
with the teachings of the Catholic theologians of liberation.
Yes, thank you for bringing up the point made in my Chapter
Seven, on the crucial role of the United States. This is very helpful. You
may have noticed that in his otherwise encouraging review, Professor
J.
H. Elliott, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, missed
this aspect altogether. The book is not about us, Spanish - speaking
hedgehogs, but mainly about you, the English-speaking foxes of indus–
trial modernity. This, I thought, was abundantly reflected in the title,
but Professor Elliott missed it. With respect to this, I shou ld say that I
am puzzled that my attempt also appears to have failed to move the dis–
cussion of Latin America out of its traditional academic ghetto of "Latin
American Studies," and on to the wider stage, precisely by comparing
the Spanish- and the English-speaking peoples. Of course the Industrial
R.evolution is not over. The evidence for this is overwhelmin g. Today
there are more human beings, in absolute as well as in relative terms,
