Disappointed with American Historians

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Clarissa

August 1, 2012

So I’m reading Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop and I’m already getting frustrated. The subtitle of the book is “Latin America, the US, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.” Note that Latin America comes first in the title. In the book, however, it’s not to be found anywhere. It’s all the US all the time. We discover very minute details of what was happening in the US and what the US did, said or planned. The Latin Americans don’t make an appearance. Some extremely obscure insignificant folks in the US get quoted all the time. The quotes from Latin Americans aren’t there.

As you read the book you get a feeling that Latin Americans are not actual human beings with thoughts, actions, interests and will of their own. They are just things that, according to Grandin, the US handled badly.

I wanted to read about the history of Latin America. It is a history heavily influenced by the US but it’s still a history of, first and foremost, Latin Americans.

It’s funny how often people confuse this US-centric approach with progressive thinking. They believe that blaming the US for everything that ever happened under the sun is somehow less offensive to the world than praising it for everything. American historians don’t seem to realize that the history of humanity and the history of the USA are not the same thing.

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6 responses to “Disappointed with American Historians”

Culture club

August 1, 2012

This was a version of events promoted by the despotic governments around the third world. They portrayed themselves as the innocent victims of American imperialism, and blamed all their failures on the Americans.

The surprising thing is that the Left bought into this narrative wholesale. This is not to say the USA via the CIA didn’t have a finger in the pot in Latin America. Of course they did, but they were an agent among many others.

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1. kennethuil
  
  August 1, 2012
  
  Including the Soviets, I believe
  
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2. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 1, 2012
  
  This is EXACTLY what I believe, too. It’s great to see that the very first comment in the thread is the one that agrees with my position. I’ve been starting to feel that I’m a voice clamoring in the desert.
  
  “This is not to say the USA via the CIA didn’t have a finger in the pot in Latin America. Of course they did, but they were an agent among many others.”
  
  – Yes. And I would really like to hear about those others.
  
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  1. Culture club
    
    August 1, 2012
    
    Each country had its own correlation of forces. In some Latin American countries the Catholic Church was a power, active and negative force as the CIA was. There were also the industrial interests who invariably aligned with whatever puppet was backed by Washington in the coup d’etat du jour.
    
    Then there was an ineffective opposition controlled directly from Moscow, which wouldn’t allow them any degree of independence or adaptation to the local conditions. This was the basis of an old joke about the Kremlin ordering Castro to snow plow the streets La Havana during the Winter.
    
    For example, the Church had been quite effective of scaring people away from the hammer and sickle logo, yet the Soviet Union refused permission to the local communist parties to remove the logo. The Mexican communist party after much begging was allowed to change the name from PCM (Partido Comunista Mexicano) to PSUM (Partido Socialista Unificado de Mexico) whose name was allowed only because this was the official Spanish translation of the Moscow-sanctioned Polish United Workers Party.
    
    Another player was an immature intellectual class, which was happy to take orders from Moscow and parrot whatever line came from there (with some notable exceptions, including at one time Fidel Castro, hard as it might be to believe given his actions later in life). The few intellectuals who dare to plot their own path were labeled as traitors and ostracized e.g. Octavio Paz.
    
    In most countries in Latin America the left preached to each other, rather than to the people and the few times that came to power it dissolved in internecine battles (Arbenz, Allende) which made the CIA goal to overthrow their governments all that much easier.
    
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Z

August 2, 2012

I have noticed it is hard to be retained in many history departments in US if you do not have a US centric point of view on the world and a very patriotic version of history (e.g. Lat Am is US handled badly, etc.). Many do not understand that the rest of the world really is rest of world, or that US is not all middle class white male historians, for that matter.

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sugs

August 2, 2012

Thanks Clarissa and thanks Z you are both so right. We citizens of the rest of the world definitely have our own history, thanks very much!

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