The Second Century: U.S.--Latin American Relations since 1889 (review)

It is a privilege to devote an entire career to the study of one historical theme. Mark Gilderhus has studied and interpreted the subtleties of one hundred years of U.S.-Latin American relations between 1898 and 1989 for decades. Certainly, it takes years to offer such a nuanced interpretation of a geographical interaction so complex that it is rivaled only by that between Poland, Russia and the West, and China and its neighbors.

This important book offers insights from three vantage points. First, it can be read as a survey text for new and advanced students of U.S.-Latin American relations. Beginning with the Spanish-American war it takes readers through a splendid survey of hemispheric, political interactions until the end of the Cold War. The great clarity of the writing style makes the book an ideal class text. Gilderhus makes the tour through one century digestable by building his narrative around the most important, and often controversial, forms of U.S.-Latin American encounters. Chapter one revolves around the focus of "expansion and empire." Chapter two looks at U.S. reactions to Latin American revolutionary politics of the 1920s. After investigating the eras of Depression and the Good Neighbor in chapter three, Gilderhus moves into the Cold War and chronicles capitalist expansion into Latin America after 1945. Chapter five discusses the 1959 Cuban revolution and its aftermath. The book concludes with a historical sketch of the years following 1989 which, according to Gilderhus, question the limits of U.S. hegemony.

Gilderhus pursues a second vantage point by tracing the enormous scope of scholarly interpretations during the previous decades. This almost historiographical tour tells as much about the development of the field of Latin American history as it does about hemispheric relations. Thus, Gilderhus pays homage to much-neglected revisionists and dissenting voices from North and South America. Their alternative paradigms favored different relations only to become victims of political fashions or unexpected historical developments.

A third reading offers a long overdue reexamination of the disparity between ideal and reality of the belabored concept of the "Western Hemisphere." This concept briefly moved into reality for the first time during World War II, only to disintegrate quickly under the pressure of Latin American nationalism and U.S. policies towards southern neighbors that lacked historical perspective, and that sometimes were overtly hostile or were not policy at all. Gilderhus's book is a reminder how pained, for all sides involved, was the path toward NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and the announced Free Trade Zone of the Americas. Economic interdependence after 1945 did not overcome culturally paranoid or habitually suspicious interactions. The ugly secret of the "Western Hemisphere" remains that it was born out of expediency during World War II and the subsequent political-economic needs of elites in all countries. It did not come out of popular affection and certainly not out of a genuine desire to move toward creating one hemisphere. Spanish, Native American, and U.S. popular cultures remain reluctant to surrender the beloved stereotype that the two continents represent the proverbial "Other." As the third century of U.S.-Latin American-Canadian relations is beginning, economics continue to chip away at this mutually shared, century-old stereotype.