In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America since 1945
  • Abraham F. Lowenthal
Alan McPherson , Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America since 1945. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006. 207 pp. $45.00.

Alan McPherson's Intimate Ties and Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America since 1945 is explicitly "aimed at students and at a general public who wish to understand the importance of . . . [U.S.–Latin American] relations, and hopefully to move the inevitable growth of hemispheric interdependence in a more positive direction" (p. 15). The book makes a useful contribution on the first of these aims, insofar as this can be achieved in a text of just 145 pages, with another 30 pages of well-edited brief excerpts from relevant documents. McPherson describes the growing economic, demographic, social, and cultural connections over the past 60 years between the [End Page 119] United States and the Latin American and Caribbean societies to the south and contends that these transnational connections have fundamentally changed both the nature of U.S.–Latin American relations and, with some time lag, the dominant paradigms for discussing those relations.

As McPherson suggests, the traditional literature on U.S.–Latin American relations has mainly discussed U.S. domination of the region through a variety of government policies and instruments, including periodic military interventions and covert operations, as well as pervasive political and economic influence. Inter-American relations have primarily been considered in terms of conflict between U.S. hegemonic ambitions and Latin American resistance to U.S. control. State actions and policies, rather than societal connections, have been the chief focus.

McPherson himself relies largely on a conventional approach in narrating the history of U.S.–Latin American relations from 1945 to 1990 in four chronologically arranged chapters. He emphasizes the anti-Communist orientation of U.S. policies and Latin American opposition to the interventionism of the United States as Latin Americans challenged U.S. dominance in a variety of ways and settings. His treatment tends to exaggerate the role of the United States and to underestimate Latin America's own social and political dynamics. MacPherson asserts, for example, that U.S. military training "created political Frankenstein monsters, 'bureaucratic authoritarian' regimes that were not tied to a charismatic dictator but were self-perpetuating machines of repression and corruption" (p. 59).

McPherson argues that the Cold War obscured a change in the underlying nature of inter-American relations that had actually been accelerating since the end of World War II: growing interdependence, asymmetric but nonetheless real, between Latin America and the Caribbean on the one hand and the United States on the other. This interdependence has involved expanded trade and investment, exploding migration, vastly increased two-way cultural influence, and ever closer connections between civil societies and citizens throughout the Americas. Massive migration from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean after the 1965 immigration reforms in the United States, and the rapidly increasing flows of immigation since 1990, have reshaped inter-American relations by changing the culture, cuisine, economics, and politics of significant regions of the United States as well as of a number of its neighbors.

MacPherson contends that the closer connections and transnational integration have enabled non-governmental actors of diverse types, including advocacy groups of various kinds, to become more active and influential in shaping U.S.–Latin American relations. As a result, these relations have become more complex and multifaceted. Increasing intimacy has produced elements of partnership and cooperation as well as of conflict.

None of these insights about contemporary inter-American relations is particularly new. Similar themes have been advanced in a number of books and essays over the past twenty years, many of them emphasizing the "intermestic" nature of U.S.–Latin American relations, combining the features of domestic and international affairs. But McPherson offers a concise and up-to-date account, accessibly presented. Students will no doubt find this a valuable introduction. [End Page 120]

McPherson seems much more familiar with U.S. society and policies than with Latin America. For instance, he refers broadly to "bureaucratic authoritarian regimes" without appearing to understand the specialized meaning of Guillermo O'Donnell...

pdf

Share