Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Aflairs by David Sheinin (review)

The Latin Americanist Winter/Spring 2004 Overall, this work is enjoyable and instructive. It is accessible and short enough to lend itself well to undergraduate classes on Latin American history, society, or culture. Fifteen pages of photographs of Reyita and the various generations of her family add to the books appeal. It can be used to discuss any number of themes, including race, gender, class, and politics. Ronald Young Georgia Southern University Sheinin, David. Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism i n InterAmerican Aflairs (Westport, C T Praeger, 2000. Pp. 225. $25.95). In 1826, El Libertudor Simdn Bolivar organized the Congress of Panama with the goal of bringing some measure of unity to the hemisphere. The U.S. received only a late invitation given Bolivar’s keen distrust of his northern neighbor. Those meetings yielded little, but the dream remained. In 1889, the United States hosted the First Conference of American States, where the term “Pan American” first came into common use. Since then, innumerable conferences and gatherings have been held, all imbued with the vague notion of unity. The edited volume “Beyond the Ideal: Pan Americanism in Inter-American Affairs” mines this topic through a collection of fifteen essays, grouped roughly chronologically. The title of the book comes from a comment made by Chilean president Arturo Alessandri at a Pan American conference in 1923. Alessandri exhorted his fellow delegates to go “beyond the ideal” and thus achieve tangible results. Overall, the book suggests that the hemisphere is still waiting. Just defining Pan Americanism is a challenge. As the introductory chapter notes, the term is fluid and ever changing. Joseph Smith reveals that even at the 1889-1890 meetings, the term was left undefined both publicly and in the meetings themselves. With discourse often dominated by the United States, its initial usage at that conference referred primarily to economic cooperation. Only a few years later, however a new US. Congress would seek to overturn all the reciprocal trade agreements signed since 1890, giving Latin Americans a sign of the sometimes rapid changes and shifts in the U.S. government’s notion of hemispheric cooperation . Pan Americanism would later become enmeshed in the Cold War, when under U.S. direction it came to mean “anti-com- Book Reviews 111 munist.” Mark T. Berger arrives at a useful definition, though curiously does so only in an endnote: “a changing set of ideas, institutions, practices, and movements linked explicitly and implicitly to assumptions about a range of common experiences and aspirations held by peoples and governments in the Americas ” (55 fn. 1). As several authors point out, however, Pan Americanism held other meanings when viewed through a more local lens. Albert0 Prieto-Calixto explains how Latin American literature, in particular the poetry of Rub& Dario, reflected a “profound belief in liberty, independence, and self-determination of the peoples of the Americas” (60) that not only stood in contrast to the United States, but directly challenged it. Prieto-Calixto is the only author who directly addresses the issue of how Pan Americanism is distinct from “Pan Hispanism,” which resists the influence of the United States. K. Lynn Stoner discusses how, through the efforts of Latin American women, a Pan American feminist movement also developed in the 1920s and 1930s, which succeeded in creating the Inter-American Commission of Women. And, in a particular well-written chapter, David Sheinin analyzes the way in which environmentalistsorganized in the 1930sand 1940swith the intent of creating hemispheric goals and standards of environmental protection. One of the more interesting themes of the book remains mostly unstated by the authors yet is evident in most of the chapters . That theme is failure. For example, David Barton Castle discusses the role of Leo Stanton Rowe, who was a major figure in inter-American relations (especially as director general of the Pan American Union) in the first half of the twentieth century. He had a missionary zeal and a firm belief in non-intervention . But as Castle admits, these qualities meant that Rowe was increasingly ignored and marginalized by the U.S. government. Richard Salisbury’s analysis of Spain’s efforts to re-establish its economic and political influence after 1898 is also...