patrick iber

Greg Grandin has a big new book about the history of the Americas, which I have reviewed for The New Republic. Greg can be such a great writer, and he has an ability to weave together histories of North and South America like few can. But I’m afraid that I found the book somewhat frustrating, and one of the main reasons is that it falls into what I think is an overly simple Latin America good, USA bad framework that understates the complexity of both regions. I absolutely agree with Greg that one of the main goals of politics should be to ensure that social, economic, and political rights grow together. But I’m afraid that to do that you have to take seriously the problem of authoritarianism on the left, which his framework really doesn’t.

…the book’s story is too tidy to make room for challenging questions. The biggest problem comes from trying to stuff every left-wing government into the “social-democratic” bag, until that bag is full to bursting. Doing this occludes the problem of left-wing authoritarianism and brings the book in for a very bumpy landing.

It would complicate his story, for example, to say that Mexico’s President Cárdenas, the hero of the oil nationalization of 1938, was also an architect of the country’s authoritarian political system. So Mexico simply becomes authoritarian in later chapters, without anyone in particular having made it happen. Grandin says little about the case of Cuba, which, after its revolution in 1959, extended social rights to its population while reserving political ones for its party elite. The problem of left authoritarianism can’t simply be ignored. Social rights and political rights don’t always advance together, and the project of carrying both forward is difficult. When Allende was elected in 1970, the social-democratic diplomat Hernán Santa Cruz wrote to him, offering support but warning, with a Chilean idiom: “Otra cosa es con guitarra.” Literally “It’s something else with guitar,” the phrase refers to the idea that it is easy to critique a musician, and harder to perform yourself. It is one thing to speak critically of a politician, and quite another to exercise power.