Calderón was a Peruvian diplomat and writer. Here he criticizes U.S. policy, as
well as US businesses, for exploiting Latin Americans. He also warns of the dangers of
cultural imperialism.
Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United
States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre, there to found a republic of
rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba,
under cover of the Platt Amendment, to maintain order in the interior; in Santo Domingo,
to support the civilising revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in
Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political
and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras the loans
concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new
slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons to defend
the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquility: such are the means
employed. The New York American announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass
the finances of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago merchants and
Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the Argentine. The United States offer
millions for the purpose of converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London
during the last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a monopoly of
credit. It has even been announced, although the news hardly appears probable, that a
North American syndicate wished to buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the
English tongue is the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and the
possible acquisition of the Galapagos Island in the Pacific, are fresh manifestations of
imperialistic progress....
Warnings, advice, distrust, invasion of capital, plans of financial hegemony all these
justify the anxiety of the southern peoples.... Neither irony nor grace nor scepticism,
gifts of the old civilizations, can make way against the plebeian brutality, the excessive
optimism, the violent individualism of the [North American] people.
All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the multitude of primary
schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult of the average citizen, the transatlantic
M. Homais, and the tyranny of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which
is devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the primitive type of
the redskin, which has already been noted by close observers, is threatening the proud
democracy. From the excessive tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from
the perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial struggle, anarchy and
violence will be born in the future. In a hundred years men will seek in vain for the
"American soul," the "genius of America," elsewhere than in the
undisciplined force or the violence which ignores moral laws....
Essential points of difference separate the two Americas. Differences of language and
therefore of spirit; the difference between Spanish Catholicism and multiform
Protestantism of the Anglo-Saxons; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of
the State natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as in their race, we find
fundamental antagonism; the evolution of the North is slow and obedient to the lessons of
time , to the influences of custom; the history of the southern peoples is full of
revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection.
Source:
From Francisco Garcia Calderón: Latin America: Its Rise and Progress (London:
T. F. Unwin, 1913), pp.392-393.
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© Paul Halsall, July 1998
