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DEBUNKING
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN MYTH
By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal
I have just finished reading the testimony of the U. S.
Agency for
International Development to the Congress of the United
States, that
seeks to justify and explain the agency's request for
$24,760,000.00
in American AID funds for the Republic of Honduras, in
Fiscal Year 1997.
My remarks that follow have little or nothing to do with
the
amount of money requested. The amount of money the United
States
government should send to this small, backward and
impoverished country
can only be sensibly determined within a framework that
defines the
American perception of our national obligations toward
this Central
American neighbor. And what the money, in whatever
amount, can
reasonably be expected to accomplish.
With respect to credentials, let me begin by saying that
my
personal involvement in Honduras, began in January, 1967.
Since
then I have been an investor, an alien resident, a land
developer,
and an economic consultant/advisor to the Government of
Honduras.
Although I no longer live in Honduras, I return for a
month or two
almost every year, and I still maintain some modest
investments on
the Honduras island of Roatan.
With an overall perspective of thirty years to draw on, I
consider
myself something of a Central American
"expert." Exceedingly few
North Americans have ever acquired comparable exposure,
hence
conversancy, with this area.
Even American diplomatic appointments to this region
rarely
exceed three, four or - at most - five years. And more
often than
not, the appointees are people who, regardless of how
well-
intentioned - have only limited facility with the Spanish
language,
and little if any experience or knowledge of local
customs and
history. Regardless of official designations, operating
under
limitations of this kind, they can expect to carry the
"foreigner"
label for their entire tour of duty in Honduras.
It need not be this way but, up to now, we have shown no
real
interest in changing our carpetbagger image among the
Central
Americans. The fallout from an almost studied neglect of
our C.A.
"homework," is all around us - and it is not
helpful in establishing
constructive relationships in these unhappy lands.
The average North American has more, and more reliable,
information about the moon than about Central America.
The stylized
view of the isthmus that connects North and South
America, is that of
a handful of postage-stamp-sized countries whose
principle products
are bananas, coffee and recurrent Gilbert & Sullivan
- style revolutions.
The average North American only pays occasional and
fleeting
attention to the area when news reports detail the flight
of yet
another deposed ruler who is fleeing the wrath of a
disenchanted
constituency, in hope of finding a healthier climate well
out of the
reach of those who harbor dark plans if they can lay hold
of him.
In opting for the enhanced safety of political asylum
somewhere else,
these erstwhile latin "strong men" invariably
show a fine sense of
forward planning by taking their families, the family
jewels, and as
much of the national treasury as can be comfortably
loaded aboard the
escape aircraft.
The most universal illusion of all, during the time I was
living and working in Central America, was that under
every
"banana-republic" bush and tree could be found
the restive seeds of
communism; just waiting for the most propitious moment in
which to
burst forth and engulf millions of freedom-loving victims
in the
totalitarian embrace. Or endanger the peace and
tranquillity of the
western world. Or provide the fuse on an international
confrontation
between communism and capitalism.
The collapse and disintegration of the Union of Soviet
Socialist
Republics, and the resulting end of the cold-war has
greatly
diminished this American conception of Central America as
an incubator
of deep-seated communist sentiments. But this is far from
saying that
Americans are willing to fully trust inherent C. A.
socio-political inclinations.
Cuba's steadfast adherence to the now passe' tenets of
Marx and
Lenin keeps us reminded that this alien faith, as it
existed in the
Western Hemisphere, always was essentially a Latin
American
phenomenon. And a great many Americans, with
justification, still
wonder if the communist "worm" in C. A. is
really dead - or just
waiting for another propitious moment.
As for the Central Americans themselves, gringos perceive
them
as endless replications of Juan Valdez - "who goes
up the mountain
each morning..." to pick his serape full of coffee
beans. Then he
comes back down the mountain and spends the rest of the
day with his
sombrero tilted low over his eyes - sleeping until it's
time to go
get some more of those damned coffee beans.
In short, the Central American male is viewed as a
sleepy-eyed
peon, whose unerring response to almost anything will be
a warm grin
and his most ingratiating "Si, Senor." The
caricature only presents
the senoritas as having either guile, grandiloquence or
glands.
There are many Central Americans who do fit the pattern
of
passivity that borders on sleep-walking. But there are
others who
show impressive skills as practitioners of law, finance,
diplomatic
connivery, and all of the foxy devices of international
banditry.
That the Central American smiles a lot should not be
taken as a
sign of either friendship or beneficent intentions. I
have seen
Honduran taxicab drivers smile while they eagerly pursued
a cat or
dog in the street and then ran over it with their
vehicle.
A Central American smiles for his own reasons. You will
likely
never know why - until it's too late to help you.
In a nutshell, our classically warped view of Central
America -
particularly as taken from the north side of the Rio
Grande - is
much too simplistic to serve present and future needs.
The United
States and Canada in particular, have legitimate
interests in this
part of the western neighborhood. They also have some
clear
responsibilities that need to be approached within the
framework of
a more settled and pragmatic policy structure than has
adorned our
undertakings in these enclaves in the past. As a
beginning, it's
time for a major updating of our Central American
imagery.
As we near the end of the Twentieth Century, it's
difficult to see
much in the way of potentials for either good or evil in
the
socio-economic milieu.
Central American influences don't extend far beyond their
own
borders. This, because the Central American nations -
individually
or collectively - just don't function well enough to get
much of
anything done. It's hard to imagine people mounting, or
effectively
assisting in, a well-conceived political or military
conspiracy, when
they demonstrably can't even organize a telephone or
postal system
that will function.
It stretches credulity to the breaking point to project
small,
poverty-ridden countries like these in the roles of
international
trouble-makers. Especially when they manage to keep
themselves fully
occupied with internecine squabbles that seemingly go on
forever.
The bottom line is that none of the industrialized
nations take the
Central American nations very seriously. They are easy to
ignore,
but should not be.
The importance of Central America, and it is important,
is not so
much related to what earth-shaking events that are going
on here, as
it is to things that are not happening, and should. Or
things that
have been started and then aborted for sheer lack of
ability,
industry, or cooperative inclination on the part of
private interests,
government leadership, or both.
If one is sufficiently naive to accept the pleadings of a
small
but noisy cadre of Latin American advocates, among whom
the U. S.
Agency for International Development and its
philosophical
constituency is a highly audible component, all this part
of the
world needs is ever-larger infusions of money, machinery,
and -
especially - patience.
The AID Congressional testimony to which reference was
made
earlier, repeats this refrain in what seems like every
other
paragraph of their presentation.
Keep the money coming!
This message is unchanged since Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's
"Good Neighbor Policy." It was only slightly
recast by John F.
Kennedy's "Alianza del Progresso." The
veritable mountain of money
that has been poured into Central America since the end
of World
War-II, has enriched a long list of national and local
politicians,
but it hasn't really changed much else.
Still, our Agency for International Development and their
camp-followers have never changed their basic message.
"Keep the
money coming," they tell us, and it will surely in
due course make
the Central American countryside bloom with industry and
the adobe
hamlets come vibrantly alive with commerce. The land is
here, they
say, and the labor is here. All that remains is to
provide the
financial muscle - the capital - to wed these resources
from which
all wealth springs.
And they are as wrong as they can be.
The land is here to be sure. Millions of acres of it,
lying as
fallow today as it was two-thousand years ago. The only
thing that
has changed in that time span is that centuries of
slash-and-burn
mini-agriculture has vastly depleted the fertility of the
soil that
has been - and still is - essentially used to grow
mini-garden plots,
instead of the bountiful, beautiful, valuable, commercial
crops of
which it is capable.
The climate for an incredible agricultural cornucopia is
also
here. The flaw in the case relates to the labor
reservoir.
Central America has vast numbers of people but, as we get
ready
for Century XXI, "people" is not the same thing
as "labor." In
Honduras, for example, given the benefit of every doubt,
sixty per-
cent of the adult population is illiterate. Not just
academically
illiterate; functionally illiterate. They can neither
read a
sentence nor write one - in any language!
In view of this hard fact, the Central American
population is
mainly comprised of "people" that have no
potential for fitting into
a contemporary work force. Before they can do so, they
will have
to be taught absolutely everything they need to know:
Start from
Square-One!
The prospects for providing this crucial training are
dismal,
indeed. Specific figures for Central America are not made
available
by the governments involved, but Mexican data offers a
useful guide.
In Mexico, less than 5% of the currently functioning
primary
grade-school teachers are certificated from any
teacher-training
institution. If this was situation (1993 data) in
comparatively
advanced Mexico, we can only guess at how much worse it
was/is on the
much more educationally backward Central American
isthmus.
In the 1997 AID testimony, it is said that now 70% of
Honduras
youngsters graduate from the sixth grade. However, the
next
educational stage, "colegio," (that can be
roughly equated with
Junior High School) only has physical and instructional
facilities to
accommodate one-third of these primary school graduates.
In the area we are looking at, thanks to Roman Catholic
persuasion
and copulatory awkwardness, the baby-boom is perennial.
Floods and
infestations of insects may lay waste to entire harvests
in any given
year, but the procreative activity always brings off a
bumper crop.
Without basic education and preparation for involvement
in some
aspect of modern agriculture or industry, what role can
these
unfortunates be expected to fill in productive processes?
What can
these marginals possibly be expected to contribute to the
Herculean
task of pulling themselves up to a point of economic
self-sufficiency -
on the way to attaining functional equality with the
industrialized
world?
Corn can be planted with a sharp stick, but the
agronomists at
Purdue University don't recommend it. Crops can be
transported in
ox-carts or on the backs of burros, but such archaic
methods won't
contribute much to the steady upgrading of a moribund
economic system.
These are the kinds of problems that wait to be solved in
Honduras and her sister countries. They are not being
solved at
anything like a reasonable rate for lack of another,
absolutely
critical resource: Management.
It makes no sense to build a plant unless there is a
management
cadre available to run it. Likewise, it makes no sense to
attempt
to create an economic illusion by great infusions of
money and capital
goods, until there is sufficient business acumen and
leadership - and
middle echelon skills - available to handle the business
of business,
itself.
This is what is really lacking in the Central American
scene that this
reporter has been observing close-up for three decades.
Moreover,
until this void is filled, all of the dollars in
Christendom will do
little more than help to maintain the sorry status-quo.
The
disheartening waste, tragi-comic failures and utter
absence of
anything even faintly resembling a sense of creative
urgency will
continue just as long as the wealthy nations are willing
to bankroll
it. But money alone will change nothing but the balances
in the bank
accounts of avaricious and totally corrupt politicians.
In the meantime, Juan Valdez will continue to pick his
coffee beans one
at a time, by hand. Those above him in the
socio-political hierarchy
will fight to preserve their perquisites and their
legislatively-
bestowed "impunity" from laws that apply to
everyone else! The
administrative hierarchy will covet the symbolic
rubber-stamps that
mark them as paper-processors of some degree of
importance.
Those at the policy-levels of government will continue to
sing the
anthems of economic development, and calibrate their
success on the
basis of how many millions or billions of dollars they
can get for
their annual performances: In matching-funds,
grants-in-aid, soft
loans and the rest of the international mendicant's
contrivances to
get his hands into the rich nations' purses.
But regardless of how productive those pleas for cash
might
prove to be, it won't basically change anything. The
trouble is too
far buried in the structure to be treatable by mere
addition of
money - regardless of how open-handed the
well-intentioned benefactors
choose to be.
The old financier, J. P. Morgan, perhaps stated it best
when he
was once invited to join a syndicate that planned to
build a railroad
in one of the banana republics. The old money wizard
quizzed the
other principals closely about the project: Its cost,
projected
returns, management, etc., and then declined to
participate. When
asked why he would choose to pass up such a great
opportunity, he
thoughtfully scratched the side of his huge, bulbous,
purple nose
and replied:
"I have no confidence in your undertaking, because I
have no
confidence in the businessmen of that country. I expect
to see big
things happen in Central America, but only when we begin
exporting
some of our young men to those places to manage our
projects. But
until management is there, my money will not be!"
Had government leadership in the United States of America
heeded
this kind of advice a generation ago, the situation in
Central
America would be much different than it is today.
Instead, our
national policy toward this region is largely unchanged
from the
approach that Franklin Roosevelt fashioned under the
canopy of his
"Good Neighbor Policy."
This unfortunate notion essentially called for
patronizing
Central America as one might indulge small, somewhat
mentally
deprived children. As long as they were "nice,"
the goodies kept
coming in the form of non-repayable loans, grants,
technological
missions, and a variety of other direct and indirect
"payoffs" for
good behavior.
When they were "bad," punishment was meted out
in the form of
loan refusals and the general drying up of the fountain
from which
all manner of blessings flowed. Even at their best,
programs such
as those fostered by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman,
Eisenhower,
Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan, vis-a-vis the Central American
isthmus,
have never penetrated much further into the social
structure than a
shower penetrates into the sun-baked Central American
plains.
Disbursements were - and are- usually made on a myopic
government-to-government basis that allows - indeed,
anticipates -
an economically ridiculous amount of administrative
"slippage"
between stated intentions and pragmatic applications.
Whatever of
the moneys that are not immediately diverted to the
private pockets
of the political rulers and their coterie of familiars,
is largely
wasted in poorly engineered, jerry-built projects that
hardly make
a dent in the social and economic problems that the funds
are
ostensibly meant to alleviate.
Everyone with even the most modest insight into Central
America
knows these things. But the knowledge has never been
bothersome
enough to trigger major changes in the procedures
employed in the
disadvantaged and backward region.
Central America is a frustrating assortment of problems.
the
majority of which, we - the United States of America -
have created.
Or if we have not created them, we have certainly
perpetuated them.
In view of this fact, perhaps we shouldn't be too
critical of our
banana republic cousins. Maybe they are doing the very
best they can.
If so, then we must shoulder much of the blame for their
sorry
results. They can't, in all fairness, be held responsible
for not
knowing things we have never seen fit to teach them.
Lorenzo Dee Belveal, Author
Copyright © 1997 Lorenzo Dee
Belveal
All Rights Reserved
Guadalajara, Jalisco, MEXICO
Send mail to
[_esteban@goodfelloweb.com} with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 1997
Last modified:
March 11, 2004
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