Campbell – The Culture of Liberty in the Americas
The Philadelphia Society
Regional Meeting in San Antonio, Texas
October 10-12, 2008
The
Culture of Liberty in the Americas
William
F. Campbell
Secretary of The Philadelphia Society
Why
Americans Do Not Understand Latin America
Perhaps because Latin America is so geographically close to
the U.S., but so different in terms of its Medieval and Baroque cultural
inheritance, we have a difficult time in understanding the simple fact that for
a long time during the16-17th centuries, the New Spain and the New
Portugal were culturally and economically superior to the New England North
American colonies.
The vast expanses of Catholic Latin America could easily
have merged with the immense territories of a Roman Catholic Canada in a way
that would have created a very different picture for what became the United
States.
The United States is indebted to Europe for many of its
core beliefs, but American culture still is unique.
Things happened here that couldn’t be explained by simply being a part
of Europe. In the same way, Latin
America forged its own unique culture, or, more truthfully, cultures in ways
that differ from Europe. This was
true even before the Independence movements of the 1800s.
Most Americans have a great deal of difficulty relating to
Baroque extravagance, whether it is southern Bavaria, Austria, or Latin America.
The question of the originality of Latin American culture is a debated
one, but Christopher Dawson eloquently wrote about the fact that Latin American
culture is not a slavish copy or imitation of European prototypes:
“Nowhere are the vitality and fecundity of the Baroque
culture better displayed than in Mexico and South America, where there was a
rich flowering of regional types of art and architecture, some of which show
considerable indigenous Indian influence. This
power of Baroque culture to assimilate alien influences is one of its
characteristic features, and distinguishes it sharply from the culture and
artistic style of the Anglo-American area.
The sheer volume of material achievement of the Spanish Baroque culture
in America is extraordinary: dozens of cathedrals, hundreds of monasteries,
thousands of parish churches, many of them richly adorned with sculpture,
painting and metal work. All this
artistic activity is the expression of a great cultural effort which also had
its intellectual and religious aspects, as for example, in the foundation of
universities and the lives of the great missionaries and saints.” (Christopher
Dawson, The Dividing of Christendom, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965, pp.
201-202)
Another reason for misunderstanding between the U.S. and
Latin America is the long-lasting impact of anti-Spanish propaganda sketched by
Philip Wayne Powell in his compelling book, Tree of Hate, published by
Basic Books in 1971. The “Black
Legend” has intruded on a better understanding of Latin American culture.
Utopian and Apocalyptic Traditions: Indigenous
To understand the sources of collectivist thought in Latin
America, it is necessary to go as far back as an examination of the indigenous
peoples of Latin America, the so-called Indians and their cultures.
The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico were the sources of
totalitarian states long before Columbus and the Conquistadors landed on Latin
American soil.
A full treatment of the Incas of Peru can be found in Louis
Baudin’s A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru (New York: D. Van
Nostrand Company, Inc., 1961, Foreword by Ludwig von Mises, originally published
in France, 1928).
Alvaro Vargas Llosa squeezes as much individualism as he
can from Latin American traditions, including the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas in
that order, in a fine article, “The Individualist Legacy in Latin America”
in The Independent Review, Winter 2004:
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=9&articleID=17
Utopian and Apocalyptic Traditions: Imported
From the very beginning, European expansion and exploration
were grounded in the European medieval traditions of the Spanish Reconquista and
the spirit of the Crusades against the Muslims. Christopher Columbus’ New
World was firmly rooted in apocalyptic ideas stemming from the Franciscans and
Joachim of Flora. Columbus had
millennial expectations of finding the New World and the new Eden in his
voyages. The gold and silver that
Columbus hoped to find in the New World would be used to fight another Crusade
against the Muslims to take back the New Jerusalem.
One of Columbus’ accompanying ships in his fourth voyage
was named Santiago. Santiago
Matamoros or Saint James the moor killer has accompanied the Conquistadors to
the New World. Cortez’ men when
fighting the Tabascans who greatly outnumbered the Spanish had a vision of St.
James and St. Peter on horseback. The
son of Hernando Cortez, Don Martin Cortez was the Comendador of the Military
Order of St. James. John Eidsmoe, Columbus
& Cortez, Conquerors for Christ (New Leaf Press, 1992)
The eschatological and millenarian background to Columbus
and the Twelve Apostles (Franciscan missionaries) is laid out in a brilliant and
beautifully illustrated book by Jaime Lara, City, Temple, Stage:
Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (Notre
Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004).
Christopher Columbus’ Book of Prophecies
demonstrates his apocalyptic vision: “According to this calculation, only one
hundred and fifty years are lacking forÖthe end of the world.
I believe that the Lord is hastening these things.
This evidence is the fact that the Gospel must now be proclaimed to so
many lands in such a short time. The
Abbot Joachim, a Calabrian, said that the restorer of the House of Mount Zion
would come out of Spain.” (Lara, p. 59)
Their influence was strengthened by the misunderstandings
of Christian missionaries, particularly the Franciscans and Jesuits.
The Franciscans who came in the early 16th century were
equally dominated by millennial expectations.
The influence of the radical Franciscans who eschewed private property
was extremely important.
Juan de Zum·rraga (1468 ñ1548) was both a Franciscan
prelate and the first bishop of Mexico. His
annotated copy of More’s Utopia
is still available to be read.
He established the first college library and established schools to teach
the indigenous boys Latin and the liberal arts.
The secular clergy was not far behind in the establishment
of actual utopian communities. Don
Vasco de Quiroga (1470-1565) is the most well known of the community builders.
As the first Bishop of Michoacan from 1538, he created villages to gather
together the scattered Indians. He
was inspired by Thomas More’s Utopia.
Combined with the vision of the indigenous Indians as
innocent and simple, “he would elevate the life of the aborigines to a degree
of virtue and humanity impossible amid the ambition, pride, and malice of
society in Europe.” (C.H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America, New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963, p. 179)
He wrote the Council of the Indies in 1531, “There are so
many Indians that they are like the stars of the sky and drops of water in the
sea, without number. Their manner
of living is chaos and confusion, and there is no way of putting them in order
or promoting good Christian life, eliminating drunkenness, idolatry, and other
evils, unless they can be placed together in well-ordered communities.
They now live scattered around without the direction or cooperation of
civic life.” (James A. Magner, Men of Mexico Milwaukee: Bruce
Publishing Company, 1943, p. 120)
Religious and liturgical ideas dominated the colonists’
ideas of architecture and town planning. It
should never be forgotten that the education of the ordinary person was grounded
in liturgy and not formal lectures at universities.
In the 17th century, the Jesuits were the main
importers of collectivist ideas. Drawing
perhaps on the collectivism of the Incas, the Jesuits continued to eschew
private property in the name of a utopian vision.
The collectivist inspiration for the Jesuits in creating the Reductions
of Paraguay has been attributed to several influences including Tomasso
Campanella’s City
of the Sun. FÈlix
Luna captured the collectivist nature of the Reductions quite well: “I have
sometimes thought that towards the middle of the seventeenth century the Jesuits
must have said to themselves something like ëWe no longer have anything to do
in Europe. That civilization is
corrupted by profit, greed, and cruelty. Let
us find a place to try out a completely different kind of civilization, one in
which the spirit of profit does not exist, where people work for each others’
benefit and nobody has any money because they have no need for it; somewhere
people can live as brother and sisters.’
From a certain point of view the regime in Jesuit towns can, economically
speaking, be described as socialist. No
one possessed anything of their own other than basic household items and
everybody’s needs were met by the community ëfrom each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs.'” FÈlix Luna, A Short History
of the Argentinians, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 2000, pp. 29-30)
Although the impact of the Franciscans and Jesuits leaned
on the side of collectivism, the Dominican orders had a different impact in
terms of the importance of natural rights, attitudes toward work and poverty,
and collectivist traditions. The
complicated Spanish political culture of the 15th-17th
centuries added to the already complicated mix.
Utopian
and Apocalyptic Traditions: Contemporary
In breaking with Spain and Portugal in the 19th
centuries, Latin America vacillated between American and French prototypes of
political order that continue to this day.
The French Revolution prototype culminated with the Communist revolutions
of Fidel Castro and his many admirers in Latin America.
The Wars of Independence ended the further creative
development of the Baroque civilization. Christopher
Dawson has argued: “The revolt of Latin America put an end to this transfusion
of cultural energy, and equally disastrous was the dissolution of the religious
Orders, especially the Jesuits. Moreover
this culture was still living and productive on the eve of its downfall.
Alike in Mexico and Portuguese Brazil some of the most original art and
architecture belongs to the closing decades of the colonial epoch.
And it was the latest Baroque, some of it as late as the 19th
century, which Spanish missionaries brought northwards into Florida, Texas, New
Mexico and California.” (Dividing, p. 203)
For a succinct treatment of Baroque culture in the scheme
of western civilization, I refer you to an article by Christopher Dawson, “The
European Revolution” from the May 1954 issue of The Catholic World.
http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=143
After the Wars of Independence, the descent from the peninsulares
(born in Spain) to the criollos (born of Spanish stock in the New
World) to mestizos (mixed Spanish and Indian blood) seemed to be
correlated with the ascent of tyranny and collectivism.
In Mexico the Creole Iturbide (1821) was followed by the mestizo
Santa Anna, who in turn was followed by Benito Ju·rez, a full-blooded
Zapotec Indian. Benito
Mussolini’s first name was in honor of Benito Ju·rez.
Most Americans are familiar with the revolutionary Emiliano
Zapata through the Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn movie, Viva Zapata.
He was a community organizer in rebellion against Porfirio D”az who
ruled Mexico from 1876-1910. Pancho
Villa (1877-1923) is known and lionized by many movies.
In Mexico today the chief opponent of Felipe CalderÛn is LÛpez
Obrador who is a champion of the indigenous people of Mexico.
In 1996 he appeared on national TV drenched in blood following
confrontations with police force for blocking Pemex oil wells to defend the
rights of local indigenous people impacted by pollution.
Bolivia’s Evo Morales claims to be the reincarnation of T˙pac
Katari, the 18th century Aymara rebel named after two previous rebels
against Spanish control who were executed by the authorities.
Ironically, the Aymara were part of a group which had been conquered by
the Aztecs. Claiming to represent a
wide swathe of territory from southern Mexico to the Peruvian Andes, Morales is
fighting against both colonial and post-colonial republican rule.
Ernesto Che Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928 and was
one of the key leaders of the 1959 Cuban revolution that overthrew dictator
Batista. A true internationalist he
exported revolution to other countries and fomented revolutionary activity in
the Congo. When he was in Bolivia
leading an uprising against the CIA, he was caught, executed on October
9, 1967 and instantly became a martyr.
Bolivian President Evo Morales continues to pay tribute to Che:
“Who could ever consider themselves to be his successor? It is
impossible to eclipse the live of Che. Nobody could do that. One could consider
themselves the successor of Che only if they give their life for humanity. While
we are still alive, we could never consider ourselves the successors of Che.”
One can find a full-length treatment of Che in Alvaro
Vargas Llosa’s, The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty.
There is also a good brief article on Che Guevara as the Patron Saint of
Warfare by William Ratliff:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/13849247.html
Most Americans are familiar with Fidel Castro so it is not
necessary to describe Cuba, even though it is the mother lode of collectivism
and tyranny in Latin America.
In Paraguay a Liberation Theology candidate for President,
“The Most Rev. Fernando Lugo, 56, former Catholic bishop of the diocese of San
Pedro, in northern Paraguay, was suspended a divinis by the Vatican. He is an
enthusiastic supporter of liberation theology and a leading candidate for
president of Paraguay in the upcoming elections of April 20.” For full column
outlining his vague “socialism of the twenty-first century”:
http://www.hacer.org:80/current/Parag026.php