Forgotten Continent (Book Review)

"Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul". By Michael Reid. Yale University Press, c2008, #0300116160, 384 pages, $29.95.

One of several new Latin American treatises featured in the popular press; this work has been singled out on world news, popular radio, and feature magazines (Time, Newsweek, etc.). Unlike the work of Andres Oppenheimer, this massive volume is not always interesting, challenging, or even pragmatic - and it often tries your patience. While the overall thesis is, of course, interesting, that does not mean the road to it will command your attention. Though the book has been well-reviewed in many sources, it is a slow, effortful read. In the end is has the feel of a book that was a decade in the making (it is impeccably documented, no doubt - the last 80 pages are glossary, footnotes and index), will be a footnote in every other serious book written on the region for the next 25 years, but does not lend all that much to the current debate; and, it simply takes Reid too long to get past the chronologies and get to the subtitles, that all-important soul battle.

Of particular interest are Reid's conclusions regarding democracy and natural resources. Many works tout the failure and general uselessness of democracy in Latin America. For Reid, however, quite the opposite is true, as he views the Latin world as a sound test case for vibrant democracy - for democracies that have and are chipping away at the most tragic of social problems, often in the most tragic of places. Per resources, Reid is one of the few recent book-length writers to repeatedly emphasize that one or two-resource economies often misguide their country, and that their godsend (per Venezuela's oil, etc.) can just as easily be a curse (blinds them to doing or building much of anything else) for real social change and economic advancement. He views Chavez as a threat to democratic progress in other Latin American democracies, not a savior to stagnating economies; he does this not because Chavez is a socialist, but because his personality and populism, not his politics, drives the party - and that such things always undermine democracy. Political failure at an even larger level (and Reid apparently believes the democratic system itself can prevent this or is the single greatest barrier to it) would result in some states more or less self-destructing, with political corruption at levels far higher than ever seen before, a measurable part of the populace resorting to massive emigration (north to the U.S.), and/or an increasing reliance on the drug trade.

The conclusion ("The Loneliness of Latin America") is the most interesting section, though many readers might have given up on the work before they got there. Reid believes that now that these Latin countries have generations of democracy behind them (just 30 years ago all but 4 of the countries were under a dictatorship) they are prepared for some level of assistance and/or membership with countries in Europe or, preferably, the U.S. In this regard, without this the current vacuum will ultimately be filled by China, which would not advance any country in terms of press freedoms, democratic reforms, human rights, environmental concerns, and/or currency and trade issues. Red is not so much an apologist for the political right as he is die-hard believer in democratic capitalism (the two things are not one and the same). The condescending attitude or image of irrelevance that has been so prominent from both thinkers on the political left and right has not served well the interests of world stability, democracy, human rights, prosperity, and especially not the peoples of the Latin world - and that is to everyone's loss, Reid maintains (and he justly criticizes both sides). This is not a work about a technical failure of democracy (this is not a work about voter fraud, etc.), but about those brought to power via the process, and how they might failed their supporters. Reid doesn't view Chavez and Morales as bad for their respective countries because they are socialist (though as a capitalist he obviously cannot view these as good things), but because they do not have experience nor the sorts of ideas that could make it work well. He believes they were elected, not because of their political ideas, but out of populist desperation; they are a dangerous trend because desperate populism often fails, and while Chavez has oil money, leaders in neighboring countries have nothing to fall back on when their talk fails to produce the promised results.

Reid believes the U.S. should be going well beyond what Bill Clinton had started in 1994 (he organized the first Summit of the Americas, per his free trade goals that ultimately didn't pan out on a continent level); that the U.S. should be helping build stronger and stronger democratic institutions, and building states capable of economic growth and social improvement via free trade. Had an editor forced him to rewrite the concluding chapters into independent essays to be published elsewhere, it could easily have been great reading. But, as is, it is work to make it through the nearly 400 pages, most of which are not "news" to the average informed reader. This is essentially a history text promoted as if it were much more than that - but it isn't, at least not frequently enough. The work is objective in the sense that the publication, "The Economist", is objective. This book, in may ways, could have been subtitled, "The Economist Looks at the Latin World" (Reid is the "Americas Editor" for that periodical).

A question that goes unasked and unanswered in the parade of recent books on the future of Latin America is whether or not other non-Latin countries have a vested interest in Latin American countries remaining reasonably safe, free-election basket cases, willing so sell off natural resources and while maintaining an elaborate, competing network of free-trade zones, bent on exporting only the cheapest labor to be found in that part of the world. Both Reid (and Oppenheimer; see above) seem to assume that almost everyone (or at least almost every administration) wants every country to succeed - and that competing leaders and/or theorists just haven't yet found a way to make that happen. While thought experiments are incredibly useful per what could be done, they might be equally useful in analyzing motives and needs, and it is not obvious that every country (certainly not wealthy European countries or the U.S.) automatically has in mind the best interest of all other countries. A secondary criticism is the idea that "Latin America" is united by factors other than locale, religion, and language. Much of South America is very different from most of Central America, and using the phrase "Latin world" to encompass it all, helps erase certain differences that are worth remembering, perhaps even emphasizing.