Latin Americans

“ Don't Latin Americans have the right to ask, why their elected governments are being opposed and coup leaders supported? Or, why must they constantly be threatened and live in fear?
The people of Africa are hardworking, creative and talented. They can play an important and valuable role in providing for the needs of humanity and contribute to its material and spiritual progress. Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening. ”

“ By virtue of their capital and their adventurers, Germany and the United States are slowly occupying South America; other continents being closed to their ambitions of expansion, it is in the free territory of the New World that they found their colonies. There we find their bankers and merchants, the rude emissaries of these commercial powers. Americans and Germans resemble one another by race and in energy. The Middle West of the United States was peopled by German emigrants ”

“ Hispanic Americans strengthen our bonds with our Latin American neighbors, with whom we share a rich history. We are united with them in hemispheric solidarity, based on a shared commitment to democratic principles. To secure a more prosperous, free Western Hemisphere, we are working to advance and maintain democracy in the region and secure free and fair trade among our regional partners. ”

“ A second factor in the making of the Latin-American is his isolation for three hundred years from the currents of Western economic and political life. Practically all our North American stock of ideas and social sanctions has been developed since the Pilgrims landed in New England. ”

“ A closer examination of the social factors that have dominated the Latin-American world and produced the present composite result on the western hemisphere reveals three decisive factors that have in combination produced our neighbors.
All Latin-America reflects a European background. Nearly all relations of life are defined in European terms. Out of the more or less subconscious inheritance and ideals of European origin arise the sanctions of social relations. Ideals of politics, business, education, home life, social customs, and religion all come from this fountain of associations. ”

“ May South America, while remaining herself, while cultivating, as M. Calderon advises her to cultivate, the American ideal, grow ever more and more hospitable to the literature, the arts, the commerce, and the capital of France. Thereby the great Latin family can only gain in material prosperity and moral authority. ”

“ As the executive officer of the Pan American Union, an international organization maintained in Washington by all the American republics, twenty-one in number, including the United States, for the advancement of commerce, friendship, and peace among them all, it is my lot to realize, possibly better than any one else, the remarkable growth of interest which is being manifested now, not only throughout the United States but in all parts of the world, in the countries of the southern portions of the American continent commonly classed as Latin America. ”

“ In seeking to imitate the United States we should not forget that the civilisation of the peoples of the North presents these symptoms of decadence.
Europe offers the Latin-American democracies what the latter demand of Anglo-Saxon America, which was formed in the school of Europe. We find the practical spirit, industrialism, and political liberty in England; organisation and education in Germany; and in France inventive genius, culture, wealth, great universities, and democracy. From these ruling peoples the new Latin world must indirectly receive the legacy of Western civilisation. ”

“ In the south are twenty leisurely states of unequal civilisation, troubled by anarchy and the colour problem. The prestige of the United States, their imperialism, and their wealth, have cast a shade over the less orderly Latin republics of the south. The title of America seems to be applied solely to the great imperial democracy of the north.
Yet among these American nations are wealthy peoples whose domestic organisation has been greatly improved, such as the Argentine, Brazil, Chili, Peru, Bolivia, and Uruguay. ”

“ We have seen that the Latin American nations have been dowered by Providence with everything that could make a people prosperous and contented, if wisely disposed. In some respects their circumstances are superior to those of Europe and Asia. They have no over-powerful or rapacious neighbours, no chasms of race or religion to divide them, no insensate trade rivalries—things such as in the Old World have wrought such havoc with mankind. ”

“ He implores South America to defend itself against the danger of a Saxon hegemony, to enrich itself by means of European influences, to encourage French and Italian immigration, and to purify its races by an influx of new blood. ”

“ The South American lived a life of danger, like the Florentine of the Renaissance or the Frenchman of the Terror; but presently, in the shadow of military power, wealth was evolved and order established; property became more secure, and existence more tame and normal; it was the advent of industry, commercialism, and peace. ”

“ Instead of dreaming of an impossible fusion the Neo-Latin peoples should conserve the traditions which are proper to them. The development of the European influences which enrich and improve them, the purging of the nation from the stain of miscegenation, and immigration of a kind calculated to form centres of resistance against any possibilities of conquest, are the various aspects of this Latin Americanism. ”

“ Since the world war has battered down the wall with which we sought to separate ourselves from other nations, we have nothing left but to recognize and accept our place in the national neighborhood and do our share to make it decent.
The Latin-American has been at a disadvantage in the character of the continent in which he lives. South America is a land for promoters, organizers of industry, hardy pioneers of production, engineers, planters, and rugged explorers of commercial frontiers. ”

“ Nor is there anything in the type or constitution of the race which inhabits her soil which unfits them for a great destiny. Those who criticise the peoples of Latin-America are usually those who understand them least. ”

“ Between Brazil and Chili, Peru and Chili, Bolivia, Chili, and Peru, or the Argentine, Paraguay, and Bolivia, there are actual currents of commercial exchange, of agricultural products from complementary zones, and therein a basis of union may be found.
Latin America cannot continue to live divided, while her enemies are building up vast federations and enormous empires. Whether in the name of race or commercial interests, of common utility or true independence, the American democracies must form themselves into three or four powerful States. ”

“ Moreover, South America has had its fair share of apologists. Virtually every country publishes at intervals a luxurious volume of self-praise that resembles in its point of view the year-book of a high school or college class. Trade journals are constantly painting things South American in the rosiest of colors. It has been the traditional policy of certain branches of our government to cultivate Latin-American friendship by a myopic disregard of all the shadows in the picture. ”

“ So, too, those who are to direct the destinies of the country must think out what our relations are to be with Latin America. In the past some statesman, a Richelieu or a Bismarck, had a policy and led his nation to it by devious paths of indirection. But now that each citizen is a king, he must have a policy for his realm. Are our republican neighbors to the south to be increasingly recognized as under our protection and direction? ”

“ Extension work, in which newly fledged Latin American believers were participating, had, moreover, been initiated, and was being vigorously carried out, in the Republics of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Panama and Costa Rica ”

“ After many weeks of association with the distinguished men who control the affairs of the South American republics, after much observation of the widely different countries I have visited, it is with the greatest satisfaction that I find, in reviewing the new records of my mind, that the impressions with which I came to South America have been confirmed—the impression that there is a new day dawning, a new day of industry, of enterprise, of prosperity, of wider liberty, of more perfect justice among the people of the southern continent. ”

“ We cannot mark its progress by days or by years or by generations; but marking the changes by the centuries mankind advances steadily from brute force, from the rule of selfishness and greed toward respect for human rights, toward desire for human happiness, toward the rule of law and the rule of love among men. My own country has become great materially because it has felt the influence of that majestic progress of civilization. South America is becoming great materially because it, too, is feeling the influence that is making humanity more human. ”

“ The rapidly increasing interest of our people in all matters pertaining to South America, and the eagerness now manifested to see closer trade-relations established between the United States and the various republics of Latin America, seemed to justify this course. ”

“ One nation to-day is almost as far from such a philosophy as another, although to-morrow might see the turning of a page which should disclose its beginnings. In this evolving book of life the Latin American Republics have their opportunity, as far as the possible exercise of principle goes, with all other nations.
The problem for these nations is to bring on their own culture, avoiding, if possible, the errors of Europe and the United States: that is, avoiding the factors of industrial unrest and economic waste that have accompanied progress. ”

“ The moral unity of South America would contribute to the realisation of such an ideal. A new Anglo-Saxon continent running from Alaska {399} to Cape Horn, built on the ruins of twenty Spanish republics, would be the presage of a final decadence. In the struggles of hundreds of years' duration between the Latin States and the barbarians, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between the French genius and the Teutonic spirit, between the Renaissance and the Reformation, the Latins would have lost the last battle.
America is a laboratory of free peoples. ”

“ They have their faults and weaknesses, as have the government and the people of the United States; but they have a great many virtues and numerous favorable features which are too often overlooked by the critics who have not studied Latin America from a sympathetic standpoint. ”

“ The greater results of the closer fellowship of North and South America will be registered in the realms of mind and spirit. Trade balances and stock dividends there will be, but back of and beyond these will rise the new American spirit, uniting the finest courtesy and artistic temperament of the Latin with the practical initiative and efficient vigor of the blend of blood in the United States. There is no gulf, great or small, fixed between the two races. Each has something that the other needs, and close fellowship will result in new race sympathy and mutual advantage. ”

“ It has been, and it is yet, the vehement desire of your country to bring into closer ties, as far as possible, its political and commercial relations with the Latin American countries. The similarity of traditions and institutions, the vicinity and continuity of their territories, and the vast field of commercial expansion which they offer, fully justify that natural, legitimate desire, which is also mutually beneficial ”

“ The foundations of unity: religion, language, and similarity of development—Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Africa presents this moral unity in the same degree as Latin America—The future groupings of the peoples: Central America, the Confederation of the Antilles, Greater Colombia, the Confederation of the Pacific, and the Confederation of La Plata—Political and economical aspects of these unions—The last attempts at federation in Central America—The Bolivian Congress—The A.B.C.—the union of the Argentine, Brazil, and Chili. ”

“ The extraordinary material development of territories rescued from their Mexican slavery under clericalism and raised into the dignity of our American statehood, allowing them all their natural advantages for development, is an index of what the world may witness in the redemption of other Latin American republics. ”

“ Many of us have not yet discovered that there be any Latin-American. Some one lives south of the line, of course, but that fact has made little impression on our minds. In our mental geography the American world shades off into a hazy and troubled region southward about which we have known little and cared less. Our geographical studies have helped us but little. It is possible to know every physical fact about a country without knowing the hearts of the people.
It is an anomaly that we know less about our Latin neighbors than we do of Europe or Asia. ”

“ Latin America is a territory whose wealth and population are growing. There is an increasing class demanding the things of luxury and necessity which Europe and North America produce, and which Japan produces—for it will be unwise to leave these sharp-witted traders of Asia out of our survey. The Latin American peoples are plastic and emotional, imitative, pleasure-loving, fond of personal adornment. They are emerging from the poverty and austerity of the influence of the Colonial period. ”