Policies and Tendencies in Latin America

HE twenty republics of America occupy an area larger by far than and the United States combined. Young nations, with the sensitiveness born of youth, they are also old lands, with the traditions and customs of long-established societies. They have received a similar European inheritance, which has been profoundly modified in an American environment. Under Spanish and Portuguese rule, they have passed through a similar colonial experience. Except for Portuguese-speaking Brazil and Frenchspeaking Haiti, they share a common language, the language of their mother country, Spain. There are elements of likeness between them also in social structure and economic life, and their political fabric has been compounded of similar strands. For these and other reasons the American republics display, on occasion, a certain community of sentiments, aspirations, and interests. Yet the differences between them are profound. It is not the unity of Western civilization in the Western Hemisphere that is remarkable, but the diversity of its forms. The term Latin America, if it is taken to mean something more than a mere geographical description, is itself misleading. There are no Americans, except perhaps in the sense that a Canadian is an American, and a Frenchman and an Italian are both Europeans. From Brazil, which is larger than the continental United States, to Haiti, which is smaller than Scotland, the twenty republics differ not only in size, but also in wealth, culture, race, and population. They are in different stages of political, economic, and social evolution. Each is increasingly conscious of its separate identity, and though that old isolation from one another which Nature first imposed is now less acute, their historical development has accentuated the great distinctions and disparities between them. It is therefore a dangerous undertaking to essay any generalizations about America as a whole. America is not a whole. It is even less of a whole than Europe, for to the European the word Europe still evokes common traditions and purposes. It still, amidst disorder, stands for an old idea of order

Geography · Latin Americans · Political science · Regional science · International Relations in Latin America · Law

• An Interview with R. A. Humphreys

  R A Humphreys, Rebekah Humphreys et al.•Hispanic American Historical Review•1982

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