Latin America shares the same hemisphere with the United States. However, while the first is still in the quest of its economic development, amid periodical social and political upheavals, the U.S. became the undisputed global leader.
Both began as overseas colonies of European countries. Both were amply endowed with natural resources. Both achieved their independence during the so-called Age of Revolutions, in the late eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In the case of the United States and Spanish America, revolutionary wars were needed to consolidate separation from their respective metropolis. But at this point the similarities stopped.
Why was one so successful while the other got mired in so many problems and limitations? Even if this gigantic gap took shape after independence, the reasons behind it were forged during their respective colonial periods. We have, thus, to dissect their colonial pasts in order to understand why the United States was able to follow a straight line towards economic prosperity, political strength and hegemonic preponderance -with the fundamental obstacle, though, of a bloody civil war- while Latin America remained hindered by endless problems.
Among the differences that marked the colonial histories of the United States and Latin America -and that defined inverted evolutions, once independence was attained- were the following ones: centralization vs. political autonomy; mercantile regulations vs. development of inter-colonial trade; religious impositions vs. religious openness; stratified societies vs. homogenised societies; seigneurial societies vs. work oriented societies. Let us review these differences.
Centralization vs. political autonomy
Centralization was pervasive in the Iberian case, with Spanish America having experienced it for a longer period and with more intensity than Portuguese America. By 1635, 400,000 decrees for the colonies had been issued by the Spanish Crown, which was the equivalent to 2,500 annually since the arrival of Columbus (Véliz, 1980, p. 43). The only line of defense against such centralizing impetus was distance, which allowed for a certain degree of “de facto” autonomy. Within that context, even the smallest of decisions had to be deferred to Spain. Ecclesiastical matters were no exception: “Without the authorization of the King no church, monastery or hospital could be founded, nor could bishoprics or parishes be established. No priest could cross to America without a specific royal permit” (Véliz, 1980, p. 40). Only at the lowest level, represented by the city councils, could creoles (white Americans of European descent) exert direct participation.
In contrast, English colonies in North America enjoyed wide political autonomy. Colonial assemblies, working with a British Governor whose salary they paid, held broad authority over local public goods, property rights, religious freedom and contract enforcement. Over the one hundred years that preceded the Seven Years’ War -held between 1756 and 1763- Britain accepted local political freedom in exchange for the colonists’ acceptance of British rule. During that time, Great Britain gradually gave these assemblies wide autonomy and freedom, which they use to underpin essential political, personal, religious and economic rights.
At the end of such period, colonists were in a very strong position: “Already the thirteen colonies, far from behaving as subordinate to British rule, considered themselves on an equal footing with the mother country. They had their own parliaments and political systems. They elected their own officials. They were English-speaking freemen – much freer, indeed, than many of their peers in Britain, where the upper and middle classes remained dominant, though comparatively small and exclusive. They provided their own defense forces and police” (Harvey, 2001, p. 43). Problems began when Britain won the Seven Years’ War against France.
On the one hand, London had a large debt to pay as a result of the conflict. On the other hand, it acquired a huge empire in the Americas, and the thirteen colonies became much less important within the new broader picture. Britain began pressuring the future United States to finance a portion of the debt. Simultaneously, it could now exercise a more centralized power, not only because it was aiming at empire-wide policies, but because once the threat of France had been removed, the colonies were much more firmly under its control. These created the conditions for America’s war of independence.
As a result, upon Spanish American independence all its institutional structures were beheaded, while North American ones stood on firm grounds. Brazil was a particular case, as it evolved through a bloodless transition from being a Portuguese colony to become an independent empire under the Portuguese Royal dynasty, thus remaining on solid institutional grounds.
Mercantile regulations vs. development of inter-colonial trade
Mercantile regulations imposed by Madrid and Lisbon, worked against the development of intercolonial trade and the creation of a network of ports across the region. Moreover, they close the door to the manufacturing of local goods. Their only interest was transporting the colonies’ bullions and agricultural products to the metropolis. To such an end, they created the so-called fleet system, which governed transatlantic trade. Several consequences followed. First, instead of promoting a wide network of ports across thousands of miles of coast line, Spain just allowed three ports in the Americas to trade directly with the metropolis.
As a result, for example, products from Rio de la Plata, present day Buenos Aires, had to travel one thousand miles overland to the habilitated port in Peru instead of using Rio de la Plata, a natural port. In the case of Portugal, until 1766 it just allowed the ports of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. Meanwhile, direct trade between the colonies was forbidden as everything had to pass through the metropolis, while manufacturing was also forbidden in them.
British North America, on the contrary, not only promoted the creation of numerous ports, but allowed them to compete for trade. This permitted a dense economic expansion within the colonies, while providing them with invaluable commercial experience. Moreover, as a result of a system of economic specialization, shipyards, sawmills, flour mills, lumber yards or tanneries emerged in the New England colonies, while textiles, shipbuilding, beer production or iron works appeared in the Middle colonies. In other words, industrialization was sow. Meanwhile, Southern colonies within the future U.S. specialized in raw materials that included tobacco, indigo, furs, rice, corn or vegetables.
As a result, when independence arrived, the thirteen colonies were not only economically integrated within a complementary trading system, but the expansion of its manufacturing base was on a strong footing. This allowed the emerging nation to position itself as an early participant of the Industrial Revolution. Latin American new countries, on the contrary, had no economic links among themselves and only knew how to export its raw materials.
Religious impositions vs. religious openness
There was a struggle in Europe between those wanting to modernize Christianism and those wanting to Christianise modernity. Spain and Portugal opted for the latter, and dragged with them their American colonies (Zea, 1976, p. 33). Inquisition was brought to the Iberian colonies but, as converted Jews and moors were not allowed to pass to the Americas, its main role was to control religious or moral deviations, and free thinking. Indeed: “Because the domains of the Spanish monarchs comprised a species of theocracy with Church and State working in tandem, the Spanish Inquisition was as much an adjunct of the Crown as it was of the Church. It functioned as an instrument not only of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, but of royal policy as well” (Baigent and Leigh, 2000, p. 63). In other words, the Inquisition’s role transcended that of an instrument of Catholic orthodoxy to become a sort of secret police.
In the Anglo-Saxon North, competition for attracting colonists also meant that there was a broad spectrum of different religious denominations where to choose from. Virginia was Anglican, Maryland was Catholic, Pennsylvania was Quaker, Massachusetts was Calvinist, Georgia was Baptist, Rhode Island and Connecticut were liberal Calvinists. And so on. In other words, colonists wanting to make a new life for themselves and their families could choose from a whole array of religious alternatives. Moreover, the start of English colonization arose from the search for religious freedom: “Spain did not allow its religious heterodox to go to the colonies as it feared that they could contaminate them. England, more realistically, thought that the heterodox was the perfect exportation product” (Maurois, 1972, p. 33).
As a result, in the emerging U.S. freedom of religion led to freedom of thought, whereas in Latin America the opposite happened.
Stratified societies vs. homogenized societies
Iberian America colonies were highly urbanized and, concurrently, deeply stratified. The former was more pronounced in the case of Spanish American ones. Urbanization is a relevant consideration, as cities are by definition much more stratified places than rural societies. In 1800, Mexico City had 137,000 inhabitants; Habana 80,000; Lima 64,000; Buenos Aires 55,000; Caracas 42,000. And so on (Carmagnani, 2004, pp. 99, 100). Iberian American societies were pyramidal structures, composed of several levels.
At their base were the African slaves followed an echelon higher by the Indians. Further up were the several variables of racial mix, each of which was duly stratified. The mixture of Indian and African was beneath that of African and white, which in turn was topped by that of Indian and white. Further up, were the “criollos” in Hispanic America or “mazombos” in Brazil, who were American born whites. Finally, at the top, were the Peninsular: Spanish or Portuguese. Every member of this pyramid had its role in society. Except for the Peninsular, each was circumscribed to lesser or higher limitations. Urban environments made these distinctions much more visible, imposing a rigid code that had to be followed.
The opposite happened in the British North American colonies where, in 1770, just 3.8 percent of its population lived in cities. Of them, just five had more than eight thousand inhabitants (Maurois, 1972, p. 79). In a predominantly rural environment, in which manual labor prevailed, there was lesser room for social distinctions. Moreover, by simply walking West colonists could liberate themselves from any glimpse of the class system. North American colonies, exception made of the Southern ones, conformed much more egalitarian societies.
As the Indian population was kept at bay, living in separate spheres, white settlers only diverged in their respective economic status. By definition, Protestants were a highly homogenized lot with Calvinists representing the extreme: Austere, industrious and disciplined. More particularly, America meant for the great majority of colonists the promise of a new life, away from the class system that prevailed in the Old World.
As a result, while the Northern U.S. became an homogeneous society, a rigid class system prevailed in the emerging Latin American countries.
Seigneurial societies vs. work oriented societies
“Conquerors wanted to be ‘hidalgos’, gentry. Being a ‘hidalgo’ meant not having to work, but making others work for you. It meant obtaining glory in war so that you could be rewarded with lands and workforce. Land as a war recompense became one of the basis of economic power in Spanish America just as it had been in Medieval Spain” (Fuentes, 1992, p. 139). Gentry enjoys life and takes care of expanding riches by making land productive through the workforce at its disposal. In Iberian America, Indian and black hands made such a workforce.
At the end, a vicious circle in which nobody wanted to work conformed to the basis of the productive process. Conquerors and their descendants felt entitled, as gentry, to have someone else working for them. The Indian and the African slave were forced to work against their will for the benefit of their overlord or owner. Hence, the work ethic developed in colonial Iberian America became extremely fragile to say the least.
In the Anglo-Saxon colonies of the North, exceptions made of the Southern ones which replicated many of the aforementioned patterns, work was a fundamental part of the social tissue. As an essentially Protestant society, and further to its submission to God, the only thing that really moved the internal fibers of the settlers was work and, by extension, acquiring wealth. But why aiming for wealth amid an austerity that denied enjoyment to life? Here, predestination entered in the scene: according to Calvinists, Lutherans or Baptists, mankind is born with salvation or damnation adhered to their beings. And, if nothing can be done to change what has already been preordained, material success can be interpreted as a sign of divine favor and, hence, of eternal salvation. This explains the anxiety in the search for material success.
Moreover, manual work, contrary to the Iberian notion of “hidalguía”, or the French one of “derogance”, did not imply the loss of social status in the Anglo-Saxon North. Much to the contrary, hard work in all its forms was an expression of social discipline and industriousness. Prevailing against hardships, through personal effort, was a sign of good citizenship and by extension of social recognition.
As a result, while the work ethic in the North was essentially based in a compulsion toward success, that of the Latin South saw work as an imposition or something to be done by others.
Conclusion
Once independence was attained on both sides of the hemisphere, the previous five considerations, as seen, led to very important consequences. The new countries’ future had been defined, to a large extent, in their colonial times.
References
Baigent, M and Leigh, R. (2000). The Inquisition. London: Penguin Books.
Carmagnani, M. (2004). El Otro Occidente. México: Colegio de México/Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Harvey, R. (2000). A Few Bloody Noses. London: John Murray.
Fuentes, C. (1992). El Espejo Enterrado. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Maurois, A. (1972). Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores.
Véliz, C. (1980). The Centralist Tradition of Latin America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zea, L. (1976). El Pensamiento Latinoamericano. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.
Author: Alfredo Toro Hardy, PhD – Retired Venezuelan career diplomat, scholar and author. Former Ambassador to the U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil, Ireland, Chile and Singapore. Author or co-author of thirty-six books on international affairs. Former Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Princeton and Brasilia universities. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and a member of the Review Panel of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
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