The United States has more in common with Latin America than most people in North America think or know about. That is what I learned in Chile. Many Americans look at Europe as its kin, but after my first few weeks in Latin America with shared immigrant heritage as settler nations, with the same unresolved issues of massive inequity, latent authoritarian tendencies, non compassionate capitalism, and endemic violent religious/race/class conflict that come with that.
This has really come to roost in the last few months. Seeing police attacking journalists and thinking they can get away with it and wanna-be secret police feels almost karmic in some ways.
Latin American of course, has key differences, the Spanish language heritage as well as societies based more on casta and class. Race is different here, and I don’t want to use North American assumptions as a framework. However, it can’t be denied are the similar dynamics of waves of White settlers, subjugation of indigenous people, slavery, and histories of immigration. Although assimilation and cultural constructions ultimately differ, the lighter the skin spectrum, the better your life outcomes are in South America as it is in North America. Unresolved roles around the church and state and conservative elites willing to bend to authoritarianism for commerce and security exist as well, which is endemic globally. I think specifically about how elite Chileans and Portuguese supported their capitalistic and in case of Chile, explicitly neoliberal dictatorships and the effect neoliberal policies have had in the US.
The connection to the US of course is that a lot of the suffering and torment from Latin American dictatorships came directly at the hands of men like Nixon and Kissinger, hungry to protect capitalism and influence in their backyards. American prosperity is directly and intimately connected to the political and personal lives of our American neighbors, for in the Americas we are connected by our settler births.
A Brazilian friend once told a lot of things turned out differently in the US and Canada was that people came to settle versus people coming to exploit in Latin America. Some of the first Europeans to arrive and settle for reasons of religiosity are something we’re still grappling with today, but I’m not sure it was so different for the Spanish and Portuguese either.
Disturbingly, what I did also take away which might be good for me or maybe not, is that a privileged class will be okay, although living in a perpetual uneasy fear of violence, even as the governments fall apart in the Americas. It’s the case everywhere but perhaps even more pronounced in deeply unequal societies like Chile, Brazil, the United States, South Africa with histories of brutalization, exploitation, and a wide spectrum of skin tones and ethnicities. Indeed, how much COVID-19 seems to be ravaging the Americas uniquely and South Africa might have a direct connection to that past.
So what I learned that month is that the United States of America, really belongs to the Americas for better or worse. The original sins: the subjugations of indigenous people, slavery, and now a caste-like societies we live in are something we have to answer for and atone for if we want to move forward. It ties us to the rest of las Americas.
Bessie Eats 