In Their Own Best Interest: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans

Abstract

Just when we thought we had read enough about U.S.–Latin American relations, along comes Lars Schoultz to show us that there is so much more to know. One of the leading scholars on the topic, Schoultz has contributed outstanding book-length studies, including Beneath the United States (1998) to the historiography. In Their Own Best Interest is yet another demonstration of his brilliant analytical skills. Schoultz turns the ethnologist's gaze to study the “native” point of view, and his natives are U.S. policy makers who, he claims, have tried for more than a century to “uplift” or improve their neighbors to the South—an attitude that Schoultz aptly labels “shouldering the Rich Man's Burden” (p. 7). Of course, he is correct in stating that Latin America historically has been a proving ground of U.S. altruism, always and inextricably paired with self-interest. The process of uplift has a long history, as Schoultz convincingly demonstrates. The ideas underlying the practice were discussed as early as in the middle of the nineteenth century, based on a perception of Latin American failure, which U.S. American policy makers had developed even earlier, after the American Revolution. For Schoultz, the real story begins in 1898 with Cuba serving as guinea pig. The period of dollar diplomacy followed, under a president who excelled in his lack of empathy, but the “wretched politicians” in the South still did not show an intent to accept the plans for improvement that their northern neighbors offered, more often than not at gunpoint (p. 69). This changed only gradually under Franklin D. Rooosevelt's Good Neighbor policy. For Schoultz the Great Depression and World War II were important watersheds in the project of Latin American improvement. The Cold War, then, gave the policy a new meaning because it became a central element in the fight against communism in the region. However, as the case of Cuba so obviously showed—to the surprise of many politicians in Washington—gratitude for U.S.-style altruism was not to be expected. By the end of the Cold War, the Latin American project had lost its appeal for uplifters, only to regain momentum with the post–Cold War concentration on the improvement of governance in the region—according to Schoultz a move backward to the Progressive Era.