The United States and Latin America: Myths and Stereotypes of Civilization and Nature

Abstract

* Preface *1. Nature and Its Enigmatic Images in American Lore * Nature in One of Its Manifestations: An Evil to Be Conquered, Reformed, and Exploited * The Mythology of Regeneration in Nature * The Myth of Nature as Beneficent Goddess * Nature Within, Nature Without, and Phenomena of Projection * Worlds Within, Worlds Without, and Myths of Reconciling Opposites * Latin America Assumes Its Place in America's Fusion-of-Opposites Mythology *2. Wild People in Wild Lands: Early American Views of Latin Americans * Stereotyping the Other: An Overview of Nature-and-Civilization Images * Nineteenth-Century American Stereotyping of the Latin Other * Sex and Alcohol, and Latin American * Anger and Passion, Rebelliousness and Anarchy: More Symptoms of Latin American Primitiveness * Economic Failure and Latin American Primitiveness * Religious Primitivism and Latin American Retardation *3. Latin Americans and Indians: Ambiguous Perceptions of an Alleged Connection * Latin Americans: Potential Saviors of an Unfulfilled Civilization? * Stereotypes of the Good Indian * The Bad Indian and the Merging of Indian and Latin American Stereotypes * Indians, Latin Americans, and Massacres * The Civilized and the Wild, and Myths of Death and Regeneration * Latin Resentment of American Prejudices * Frontier Mythology and the Poisoning of Hemispheric Relations *4. Our Frontier and Theirs: American Perceptions of Latin American Backwardness * Iberian and Anglo Approaches to World Frontiers: Underlying Differences? * Frontier Experiences and Pejorative Comparisons: The United States and Latin America * Gospel, Glory, and Gold, and Iberian Frontiers * Waves of Frontier Settlement in America, and the Missing Waves in Latin America * Cowboys and Vaqueros and Comparative Frontier Experiences * Indians and Comparative American-Latin American Frontier Perspectives * African Americans, Palenques, and Quilombos, and Frontier Differences * Comparative Frontiers: Our Racial Purity, Their Mestizaje * Positive and Ambiguous Perceptions of Mestizaje among Americans *5. America in the Age cf the Imperialism * The Alleged End of the American Frontier * The American Quest for Frontiers * Soft and/or Hard Inducements to U.S. Penetration of the Latin American Frontier * The Uplift of Colonials * The Indian Background to Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century U.S. Latin American Policy * Immigrants, Indians, and Latins: The American Quest to Control the Other * American Racism Intensifies Contempt for the Other * Racism, Imperialism, and American Fairs * Americans at Fairs: The Midway, the White Way, or Both Ways? *6. From Arielism to Modernism: Hemispheric Visions in the Age of Roosevelt and Wilson * Arielism, North and South of the Border * Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Hemispheric Visions * Racism, Once More, as an Issue in Internal and External Colonialism * Modernism's Revolt against Modernity *7. The Twenties: Normalcy, Counterculture, and Clashing Perceptions of Latin America * American Breaks in Two * Communism as the Sparks American Divisiveness * Questers after Frontiers: The Reemergence of a Counterculture * Counterculture and the Cult of the Natural * Exploring the African American Frontier in the 1920s * Exploring America's Indian and Hispanic Frontiers in the 1920s * Latin America's Lure as an Alternative and Complement to American Civilization * Variations on Arielism Challenged by Waldo Frank's Variations on Modernism * Waldo Frank, Franz Boas, and the Background to the Good Neighbor Policy *8. The Quest for Equilibrium with Nature: The Good Neighbor Policy, 1933-1945 * The Failure of Uplift * Cultural Pluralism Abets the Rejection of Uplift * The Deal and the Quest to Live More Respectfully with Nature * Goodwill toward Latin America: Counterculture Values Enter the Establishment * Goodwill toward Latin America: American Music, Classical and Popular * Spanish Republicans Eclipse the Attraction of Latin American Revolutionaries * The Late Good Neighbor Policy: Normalcy Triumphs over Utopianism * Might-Have-Beens in Hemispheric Relations Yield to Old, and New, Realities *9. America's Postwar Generation: Variations on Old Themes * Civilization Cleansed, Civilization Triumphant * Civilization Threatened * Classical and Popular Music and the Reemergence of an Adversary Culture * The Counterculture, the Establishment, and John F. Kennedy's Frontier * Third Worldism and the Issues of Cuba, Vietnam, and Nicaragua * The Advent of a Generation *10. Change and Permanence in Myths and Stereotypes: Civilization and Nature toward Century's End * The Balance Shifts in Civilization's War on Nature * A New History Begins as a Century Ends * Latin America in the Context of Changing American Perceptions of the Natural World * Embourgeoisement: The Counterculture's Loss of Illusions about Latin America * Latin America: Still in a State of Nature? * The State of Nature Spreads to America * Drugs and the Struggle of Civilization with Nature * The Latin Americanization of America * Popular Music and Life for the Cult of the Natural * Rock Music and the Displacement of External by the Internal Primitive * In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See * Notes * Index