The Soul of Latin America: The Cultural and Political Tradition (review)

In The Soul of Latin America, Howard J. Wiarda attempts to understand the political tradition of this region, searching for roots of its difference from the United States. To achieve this, the author reaches back to the foundation of Latin American civilization and stresses the importance of differences in culture, economies, class structure, and institutions. He avoids monocausal explanations and considers the integration of politics with other social formations. Through this comparative method, he points out that while the legal tradition, democracy, liberalism, and pluralism are characteristic of the United States, Latin America is distinguished by a feudal heritage, medieval and neoscholastic traditions, corporativism, and centralism.

The author reviews ideologies of European origin and their reception in Latin America, where they were added onto this Latin American tradition, until we arrive at the present-day democratic transition. The ideologies considered include the role of liberalism in the independence movements and the constitutional forms and representative structures adopted by the founding fathers. He analyzes the struggle between reform and tradition that was part of the positivist movement of the middle of the nineteenth century, underscoring the role of strong caudillos and oligarchic regimes that lent political stability and economic growth to the region. He also discusses American intervention in Central America and the Caribbean, including the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Nationalism has deep roots in Latin America, and its manifestation is exemplified in the work of José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, and the Hispanismo movement. The author analyzes Latin America's response to U.S. hegemony under the appearance of leftist nationalism. He explores Marxism, indigenismo, and the APRA as antecedents to this leftist democracy, finally arriving at the Cuban Revolution. Corporativism, another politico-cultural characteristic of the region (and the Iberian Peninsula), is a theme that the author explores throughout the book.

Wiarda labels the period from 1930 to 1980 as one of "Conflictive Society." The ideologies of this period explain the processes of political and religious change that terminate with the bureaucratic authoritarian and corporative regimes and that removed the military from power. This allowed a timid advance of democracy led by civil society. Political transitions in Spain and Portugal give context to these ideas. By 2000, only Cuba remained outside of the process of democratization. For the author, democracy in Latin America was neither the result of a gradual and universal political process, nor part of Samuel P. Huntington's "Third Wave" of democratization; rather, it was a response on the part of elites to the particular conditions of the 1970s and 1980s. This allows him to speak of a democracy modified by adjectives and to maintain a skeptic posture with regard to the future.

Wiarda's clear style and measured elegance enrich his explanation of political-ideological acts. As a political scientist, he believes that Latin America's political ideas and culture find their fullest dimension within a broader vision of culture. His careful selection of examples demonstrates neatly these distinct political processes and allows a general vision, without falling into a proliferation of names and data what would distort the text.

The bibliography serves to orient newcomers to the field and the general public. The specialist will also notice in Wiarda's reflections and in his study of various occurrences, the value of the crucial business he undertakes. The text is an example of those studies of political ideas that explain the trajectories followed by the "two Americas," corroborating the old saying that one cannot respect that which one does not know.

This type of book is the result of a life's worth of research, teaching, and reading. The scope of the task explains the delay in its appearance, written in the rich tradition of American academia, where we might recall the valuable work of Miguel Jorrín, John...