Thursday, January 30, 2014

Cuba's Castro Adresses Community of Latin American and Carribbean States, Cuba Challenges Latin America to Make Strides on Health, Education - VOA | Venezuelan Leader to Press for Puerto Rican Independence - WSJ: "They are struggling in their own countries and don't have much credibility outside of Venezuela or Argentina..." - Crises Squeeze Two Latin Leaders - WSJ | Argentina on the Brink - NYTimes.com

Cuba's Castro Adresses Community of Latin American and Carribbean States

1 Share
Cuban President Raul Castro has called on leaders of Latin American and Caribbean States to work together on regional problems.Castro spoke Tuesday in Havana at a gathering of all Western Hemisphere nations, except the United States and Canada. He gave the keynote speech as head of the host nation for the summit. The theme for this year's summit is fighting poverty, inequality and hunger. According to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 28...

Cuba Challenges Latin America to Make Strides on Health, Education

1 Share
Video

Latin Americans Pledge to Respect Cuba's Form of Government 

1 Share

Latin American leaders backed the right of all countries in the region to choose their own political systems on Wednesday, a victory for Cuba as the only one-party state in the western hemisphere. Cuba is hosting a summit of 33 countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean states (CELAC), which agreed in a declaration to “fully respect the inalienable right of every state to choose its political system.” Criticizing U.S. antagonism toward Cuba as a Cold War anachronism,...


» Venezuelan Leader to Press for Puerto Rican Independence
27/01/14 17:17 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
mikenova shared this story . Updated Jan. 26, 2014 7:15 p.m. ET It was an obsession for Cuban leader Fidel Castro —freeing Puerto Rico, the self-governing U.S. commonwealth southeast of Cuba, of what he called American colonialism....

WSJ

LATIN AMERICA NEWS
Venezuelan Leader to Press for Puerto Rican Independence
Maduro to Take Up Castro's Cause at Regional Summit

By JUAN FORERO
Updated Jan. 26, 2014 7:15 p.m. ET
It was an obsession for Cuban leader Fidel Castro —freeing Puerto Rico, the self-governing U.S. commonwealth southeast of Cuba, of what he called American colonialism.

"It fit into his world view and criticism of Washington's imperialism in Latin America," said Michael Shifter, president of Washington's Inter-American Dialogue policy group. "But by the late 1980s, this had faded as an issue."

But now, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has built close ties with Mr. Castro and his brother, Cuban President Raúl Castro, says he will take up the cause at the summit of Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Havana on Tuesday. 

"It's an embarrassment that Latin America and the Caribbean in the 21st century still have colonies," he said last week in Caracas. "Let the imperial elites of the U.S. say whatever they want."

But independence for Puerto Rico, which was handed over by Spain after the Spanish-American war, has never gotten much traction. In a 2012 referendum, 61% voted for statehood and only 5% for independence.

Months before that vote, René Pérez Joglar of the popular Puerto Rican band Calle 13 met with Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, to ask for support for the independence movement.

Last week, she alluded to the meeting and said "we will do it."

Mr. Shifter said lobbying by Mr. Maduro and Mrs. Kirchner, though, isn't likely to have much resonance.


"They are struggling in their own countries and don't have much credibility outside of Venezuela or Argentina," he said. "I don't think this will give a major boost to the movement." 

See more: 

» OAS Head Arrives At Regional Summit In Cuba As Observer
28/01/14 18:10 from Latino Voices on HuffingtonPost.com
HAVANA (AP) — The secretary-general of the Organization of American States arrived in Cuba on Monday to attend a regional summit, in an unusual encounter 52 years after Cuba was kicked out of the regional bloc. Jose Miguel Insulza, a Chi...

» Cuba’s Fidel Castro Meets With CELAC Leaders in Havana
28/01/14 13:03 from Caribbean Journal
TweetAbove: Cuba’s Fidel Castro with Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff (Photo: ACN Cuba) By the Caribbean Journal staff Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro held meetings with several of the regional leaders visiting Havana this week for t... 

Cuba’s Fidel Castro Meets With CELAC Leaders in Havana

» Castro: región debe defenderse de transnacionales
28/01/14 12:24 from Metro - Últimas noticias
LA HABANA (AP) — Sin importar si los países de América Latina sean diversos o sus gobiernos de...

See more: 

Crises Squeeze Two Latin Leaders

LATIN AMERICA NEWS




Crises Squeeze Two Latin Leaders

Argentina, Venezuela Face Their Most Acute 

Economic Crises in a Decade 

Jan. 26, 2014 7:53 p.m. ET










BUENOS AIRES—The leaders of Argentina and Venezuela were set to attend a conference in Cuba to debate Puerto Rican independence on Tuesday, as their countries faced their most acute economic crises in a decade.
Their trips—coming as currencies plummet and uncertainty about burgeoning economic troubles grow—seemed to underscore for many Argentines and Venezuelans the erratic governance that economists say have left both countries struggling.
The government of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and her Venezuelan counterpart and ally Nicolás Maduro partly devalued their currencies last week, sending shudders across Latin America, and both administrations have blamed conspiracies for their economic woes. Argentina's peso tumbled the most since the country's 2001 default; basic goods in Venezuela are scarce.
On Saturday, Mrs. Kirchner landed in Havana three days before the start of a gathering of Latin American leaders hosted by Cuban President Raúl Castro.
"Fidel invited me to lunch," she said in a statement issued Sunday soon after her meal with the president's brother and co-founder of the Communist state. "Very good food," she told reporters after the meal.
Venezuela's leader, Mr. Maduro, greets supporters Sunday in Caracas. Reuters
Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Maduro have expressed support for the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico's small independence movement. Mr. Maduro said he would propose that the island become the 34th member of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the body of countries meeting in Havana to discuss commercial and diplomatic matters.
"Puerto Rico is not alone in its struggle for identity, for dignity, for independence, for its future," Mr. Maduro, who was expected to arrive in Havana late Sunday night, said in a speech last week.
On the streets of Argentina and Venezuela, many asked what their leaders were doing in Cuba when they were struggling with Latin America's highest rates of inflation and the palpable fear that things could worsen when private investment is veering toward a recovering American economy.
"Cuba?" said Alberto Gómez, an Argentine army retiree. "People are traumatized by the rise of the dollar, but the government isn't talking about this. This is the only government we've had that doesn't listen to people."
Both governments, leaders of a leftist vanguard in Latin America opposed to the Obama administration, still retain a strong base of support.
"My opinion is that several businessmen are trying to weaken the government," said Bruno Pérez, a Buenos Aires sociology student. He was echoing Argentine Economy Minister Axel Kicillof's comments that the vested interests drove the peso down last week.
In Venezuela, the Datanalisis polling firm said in December that Mr. Maduro had just over half of his countrymen's support in a poll that came days after he forced retailers to sell electronics goods at steep discounts to help fight inflation, a popular measure among the poor.
But the same polls showed only 26.5% of respondents believed the government's economic policies were helping the situation (Mr. Maduro blames an "economic war" waged by Washington and Venezuelan capitalists for the troubles).
Mrs. Kirchner, who won a landslide re-election in 2011, has seen her approval rating fall fast in recent weeks, pollsters said. About 75% of those polled by the Buenos Aires pollster Management & Fit just over a week ago thought the economy was headed in the wrong direction, and 66.5% disapproved of her handling of the economy.
Of vital concern, especially to the legions of poor in both countries. is inflation, which was 56.2% in Venezuela and approaching 30% in Argentina, according to economists whose data is used by multilateral lending agencies.
"The president is to blame for what's happening and he's off visiting Fidel," said Jesús Rodriguez, 37, a cabdriver in Venezuela. "We accept the long lines to buy a bag of flour or milk," he said. "We have just stood by as things have gotten worse."
In Argentina, Mrs. Kirchner defended her trip to Cuba amid what she said were rumors that she wouldn't attend for health reasons. In early October, she had undergone surgery to drain a blood clot near her brain. She hasn't elaborated on her health.
"You have to be angry with those who lie, not with those who believe the lies," Mrs. Kirchner said.
Mrs. Kirchner hasn't elaborated over the vague measure her aides announced last week to take pressure off the country's currency: the sale of dollars at the official 8 peso per greenback exchange rate.
Though a loosening of the currency regime, the plan carries major obstacles for Argentines: There will be a stiff 20% surcharge, and businesses are banned from buying.
Carlos Pertierra, 70, a history teacher, said the measures are unlikely to alter Argentina's economic course, mainly because the weaker currency may stoke inflation further.
"I don't see what is they are trying to do," he said. "What I see is that they take aim and point over here, and then they take aim and point over there. The government is like an unpredictable child."
Javier Corrales, an Amherst College professor who writes frequently about Latin America, said that it is possible that, like Mr. Maduro in Venezuela, Mrs. Kirchner sees strengthening ties as beneficial to her cause.
"By choosing to go to Cuba perhaps Argentina is showing precisely how serious they think the crisis is, how much she needs external advice," Mr. Corrales said. "And how much she wants that advice to stay secret."
— Ezequiel Minaya and Kejal Vyas contributed reporting from Caracas.
Write to Taos Turner at taos.turner@wsj.com and Ken Parks at ken.parks@wsj.com

Argentina on the Brink - NYTimes.com

1 Share
More than a decade after it defaulted on its foreign debts, Argentina is again facing a financial crisis caused largely by misguided government policies. The administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner recently devalued the peso and relaxed some capital controls in an effort to preserve the country’s dwindling foreign reserves. The government is hoping that these steps will ease some of the pressure on the currency, which does not float freely against the dollar. But Argentina needs to do a lot more to address inflation and other underlying economic problems that have led investors and ordinary citizens to bet against the peso.
In the years after its painful default in 2002, which wiped out the savings of millions of people, Argentina enjoyed a fast growing economy thanks in part to the booming world demand for soybeans and other commodities the country exports. But Mrs. Kirchner squandered the recovery in recent years by increasing spending on wasteful subsidies and financing the government partly by printing pesos. As a result, inflation has shot up; independent economists estimate that consumer prices jumped 28 percent last year.
Mrs. Kirchner has also hurt the economy by picking fights with private businesses and investors. In recent years, she nationalized an oil company, an airline and pension funds. In 2011, Argentina implemented controls on how many pesos its citizens could convert into dollars, which helped create a black market for currency transactions and undermined confidence in the government’s economic policies. A recent poll showed that three-quarters of the country said the economy was headed in the wrong direction.
Government officials have begun taking some steps to correct past mistakes. The economy minister, Axel Kicillof, has been negotiating compensation for the oil company, YPF, that the government seized in 2012. And Argentina will put out a new inflation index next month to convince the International Monetary Fund to accept its official data again. While those are good first steps, Mrs. Kirchner and her aides will have to take much bolder steps to repair the damage that they have done to the economy in recent years. 

Cuba urges integration in Latin America free of US 

1 Share
A large screen shows Cuba’s President Raul Castro speaking at the opening ceremony of the CELAC Summit in Havana, Cuba on January 28, 2014.
Cuban President Raul Castro has urged cooperation between Latin American and Caribbean nations without the involvement of the United States.
“We should establish a new regional and international cooperation paradigm,” Castro said in Havana on Tuesday in his keynote speech as the head of the host nation for the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC.
CELAC was created on December 3, 2011 in Venezuela’s capital Caracas by the country’s late leader Hugo Chavez to fight US influence in the region.
CELAC consists of 33 countries in the Americas and represents nearly 600 million people. It was believed to be an alternative to the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), founded in 1948, which had allegedly served Washington’s interests rather than those of the region.
The summit is centered on fighting poverty, inequality and hunger. According to the data released by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 28.2 percent of the region’s residents live in poverty and 11.3 percent in extreme poverty.
“In the context of CELAC, we have the possibility to create a model of our own making, adapted to our realities, based on the principles of mutual benefit,” Castro said.
He also censured US economic policies in the region.
“The so-called centers of power do not resign themselves to having lost control over this rich region, nor will they ever renounce attempts to change the course of history in our countries in order to recover the influence they have lost and benefit from their resources,” Castro stated.

Americas Summit Sans United States: Venezuela, Argentina To Push For Puerto Rican Independence

Taking up a cause long championed by former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro plans to take up the cause of Puerto Rican independence during his stop at the summit of Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Havana on Tuesday.
"It's an embarrassment that Latin America and the Caribbean in the 21st century still have colonies," he said last week in Caracas, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Let the imperial elites of the U.S. say whatever they want."
Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United states following the 1898 Spanish-American War and while the idea of an independent Puerto Rican state has never gained significant support on the island – in a 2012 referendum, just five percent voted for independence compared to 61 percent voting for statehood – the cause has been taken up by many Latin American leaders and activists.
After being asked by a member of the popular Puerto Rican reggaeton group Calle 13 for her support, Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said she would voice her favor for independence at this week’s CELAC meeting. Some analysts, however, don’t see the support of either Maduro or Fernández de Kirchner as lending much credence to the independence movement.
"They are struggling in their own countries and don't have much credibility outside of Venezuela or Argentina," Michael Shifter, president of Washington's Inter-American Dialogue policy group, told the Journal. "I don't think this will give a major boost to the movement."
Foreign ministers from 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations met Monday in the Cuban capital for the summit of Western Hemisphere countries minus the United States and Canada.
Along with Puerto Rican independence, topics of discussion included the cultivation of traditional crops like quinoa, historical disputes such as Argentina's claim to the British-controlled Falkland Islands and initiatives like promoting literacy in the region.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez says he was "deeply pleased" and the talks were characterized by an "extraordinary and permanent spirit of solution."
The secretary-general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, arrived later in the day after being invited to attend as an observer — an unusual encounter 52 years after Cuba was kicked out of the regional bloc.
Insulza's chief of staff, Hugo Zela, said the OAS has no record of a secretary-general visiting Cuba.
The OAS was formed in 1948. In 2009 it ended Cuba's suspension, but Havana said it was not interested in rejoining a group it accuses of obeying Washington's interests.
"The celebration of this summit ... in Havana demonstrates Cuba's importance in the process of Latin American and Caribbean integration," Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said. "Only with Cuba will our region be complete."
Also in town as an observer was U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Islanders gathered around him Monday as he toured the colonial old quarter with City Historian Eusebio Leal, who oversees the restoration of the neighborhood. Ban also stopped into a barber shop for a haircut and clapped along with singing schoolchildren.
The United Nations Development Program and other U.N. agencies "are working very closely to help the Cuban government and people to preserve this area," Ban said.
He later met with President Raúl Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro, the island's most visible advocate for LGBT and women's rights as the head of the National Center for Sex Education.
"I would like to take this opportunity to symbolically give the secretary-general of the United Nations my personal commitment and that of (her sex education center) to join his campaign to end violence against women and girls," Mariela Castro said.
Some heads of state arrived early and squeezed other activities into their agenda.
Rousseff and Raul Castro presided over a ceremony launching a new port built with Brazilian financing.
The Argentine presidency released photographs of Fernández de Kirchner's lunchtime encounter the previous day with retired leader Fidel Castro and his longtime companion, Dalia Soto del Valle. Fernández also published them on her official Twitter account.


"We talked about everything, but above all a symbol of the meeting of all Latin America and the Caribbean in Havana. ... Yes, of course we talked about Hugo too. A lot. Indelible memories," her Twitter feed said.
The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died of cancer last March, was a driving force behind the formation of the CELAC in 2011. He and others envisioned it as an alternative to the OAS for addressing regional concerns free of Washington's influence.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Obispo arecibeño confirma acusación de índole sexual - ENDia

Obispo arecibeño confirma acusación de índole sexual

1 Share
Alega se trata de una venganza en su contra. Vídeo
El obispo de Arecibo, monseñor Daniel Fernández Torres, confirmó este martes en la mañana que existe una acusación en su contra de índole sexual que es investigada por el Vaticano, pero alegó que los hechos imputados "son falsos" y que surgen por venganza.
“Estoy consciente que como obispo, he tomado decisiones difíciles, en unión a la Iglesia universal, que pueden levantar reacciones incómodas e, incluso, despertar enemistades entre las personas a quienes les resulte dura la verdad. Obviamente, se trata de una venganza por motivo de las decisiones que he tenido que tomar desde el momento en que asumí la dirección de la Diócesis, donde la situación que encontré no fue la más favorable, como ya ustedes conocen, y esta venganza es parte de ese lastre. Jamás imaginé que las cosas pudieran llegar hasta el punto de la calumnia y de la vil mentira, pero sé que si al mismo Jesucristo lo crucificaron y lo humillaron por ser Él mismo la Verdad, el escarnio es parte de los seguidores de Cristo”, detalló en declaraciones escritas.
Obispo de Arecibo dice que denuncias son motivadas por venganzas
Las declaraciones surgieron media hora después de que la emisora radial NotiUno emitiera una entrevista con la abogada Agnes Poventud, en la que confirmó que su cliente realizó una querella contra el religioso ante Congregación de la Doctrina de la Fe de la Santa Sede. No detalló, sin embargo, si se trataba de un caso de acoso sexual o actos lascivos contra el hombre cuando era menor de edad.
“Existe una denuncia, es correcto, que está siendo investigada por la Congregación de la Doctrina de la Fe de la Santa Sede. Actualmente, esta investigación está en curso”, indicó la abogada.
 Tras hacerse pública la denuncia, el obispo Fernández Torres calificó como lamentables las acusaciones.
 “Tengo mi conciencia tranquila, pues sé que la acusación es falsa. Le pido a los fieles sus oraciones para que el Señor me dé la fortaleza para soportar todo lo que Él, en su divina providencia, ha permitido y que pronto la verdad salga a la luz”, puntualizó el obispo.
 Esta no es la primera vez que el nombre del obispo sale a relucir en medio de acusaciones de pederastía en la Iglesia Católica, aunque sí es la primera vez que se le implica personalmente.
El pasado año, su nombre resonó en la investigación que se realizaba en República Dominicana contra el exnuncio Joséf Wesolowski, por prostituir a menores. Se alegó que el obispo era amigo del que fuera representante del Vaticano para el vecino país y para Puerto Rico. Además, se imputaba que en la Diócesis de Arecibo había sobre 10 casos de abuso sexual que también eran investigados por la Santa Sede.
Tags

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Frank Worley-Lopez: Puerto Rico’s Problems Are About More Than Money

Puerto Rico’s Problems Are About More Than Money

Frank Worley-Lopez
My mother always used to say “money doesn’t buy happiness.” My response was as sharp as my bad attitude: “I’d rather be rich and unhappy, than poor and unhappy.” Well, I didn’t get rich, and I’m still working on the happiness bit.
In many ways that conversation with my mother reminds me a lot of Puerto Rico. The island receives more than US$20 billion a year in federal funds, with the largest portion of that going toward payments and services for individuals like Nutritional Assistance, Social Security, and housing. The island has a Gross Domestic Product of about $100 billion a year. Not to mention the great scenery, warm Caribbean waters, and great weather — except when the occasional hurricane strikes.
The Puerto Rican flag flies at a rally in Old San Juan Source: akim-puertorico.
The Puerto Rican flag flies at a rally in Old San Juan Source: akim-puertorico.
So why then, with all of that money, is it in such a mess?
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has $70 billion in debt outstanding (with nearly $30 billion more in underfunded pensions); half the population is on public assistance; it has a 14 percent unemployment rate; and roughly 900 murders occur every year. They face the very real possibility of their credit rating being downgraded to junk status, and the debt load per citizen is estimated to be 10 times that of any other state and thousands of residents (mostly professionals) are leaving the island each year for greener pastures in the good old U.S. of A.
What happened?
The answer is complicated, but I’ll try to simplify it for this article.
Money for Nothing
It’s said that nothing in life is free, but in Puerto Rico’s case the residents pay no federal income tax on earnings in Puerto Rico. The “help” that came from the federal government made it easier for many to live off of government assistance than to work.
While a student in seventh grade in a small school in Naguabo, located on the island’s eastern tip, I spoke with classmates about my plans for the future: college, career, and service to the country.
One of my classmates angrily responded, “Why would you go through all of that? The government pays for everything.” Some of my other classmates looked at me with disdain while shaking their collective heads.
“So you plan to just live on welfare when you grow up?” I asked incredulously.
“Of course! It’s so much easier than all of those things you talked about.”
The conversation, which occurred around 1980, never left my memory. Checking back as a young man in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I found that in fact many of the people I had gone to school with had followed their aspiration and were living on government assistance programs. Not all of them, however, chose to follow that path.
Some went on to college; some worked; others simply died.
One of my classmates, “Alfred,” became a heavy drug user. Eventually he quit drugs and found religion (maybe not in that order), and only a short time after becoming clean was hit by a car and killed while walking home from church. The word on the street was that he had been hit on purpose by some of his former drug buddies who didn’t like that he had tried to change his life for the better.
In the back of my head I keep a list — list that Alfred is on — along with another half a dozen people who I have known who have been killed because of drugs or related activities. One friend was gunned down by mistake. A mob hit man confused him with his target, kidnapped him, took him to the top of a building, shot him in the back of the head, and dropped his body over the side. Upon realizing his mistake, the hit man found his original target and did the same to him.
Another was gunned down in his driveway, in front of his children — another at a toll booth.
Drugs, the Drug War, and Dirty Cops
More than 1,100 murders on an island of 3.6 million people that is a 100 miles long and 30 miles wide: that is the drug war in a nutshell. From cocaine to crack to crystal meth, the island has it all. Anything you could want to destroy yourself with, while having a really, really, good time. An estimated $3 billion in illegal drugs are sold each year on the island. That amount of money drives an enormous organized crime movement and leads to corruption at all levels of government, especially at the local police level.
Local drug dealers, taking a page from Al Capone’s book, offer services to housing project residents in exchange for their loyalty — or at least non-interference. Crossing the local dealer, or his boss, is a death sentence, and it is enforced mercilessly. Puerto Rico does not have a death sentence, so criminals and residents fear other criminals and kingpins more than they do the police.
Source: Huffington Post
Source: Huffington Post.
Corrupt police and local officials are the norm.  The law only seems to matter when police need to raise revenue, and it usually only matters for motorists. In fairness, if you’ve ever driven in Puerto Rico, a lot of people deserve those tickets. Petty theft is beyond epidemic, so high in fact that many (including myself) stop reporting crimes after the first few go unresolved. A recent visitor to Vieques Island, off of Puerto Rico’s east coast, told me his car rental company had told him to leave the vehicle unlocked since “the thieves were going to get in anyway,” and they don’t like having to replace windows.
Really Bad Politics and Politicians
If you’ve ever been to Louisiana, and some other locations, you know that there are corrupt politicians. Politicians in Puerto Rico, however, make Louisiana politicians look like amateurs. From somehow mismanaging a $100 billion economy and $20 billion in federal funds into a $70 billion debt, to allegations of taking money from drug dealers, to allegations of prior knowledge of the daring escape of a drug lord from a maximum security prison, Puerto Rico politicians have earned their bad reputation. The senator allegedly involved in the escape case was removed over allegations of tax evasion, but he was never convicted of anything and denied any wrongdoing. A report from that year shows he wasn’t the only one who was in trouble.
Corruption allegations against politicians and officials have continued to the present day, and Puerto Rico leads the entire United States for public corruption cases. Not everyone is corrupt, and not everyone is on the public dole, but the corrupt politicians and police represent an important moral crisis in Puerto Rico. Further, all of this occurs with a backdrop of perpetual status politics and the question of whether the island should remain a commonwealth, become independent, or become the 51st state.
There are of course solutions to all of these problems, few of which will be found in government itself. Perhaps instead of offering a solution this time, I’ll ask you the reader to offer your own in the comment box below. What would you do? How would you fix this?

Frank Worley-LopezFrank Worley-Lopez
Worley-Lopez is one of the two founders of the original Libertarian Party of Puerto Rico and its first state chairman. He is the author of A Puerto Rican Manifesto (Un Manifiesto Puertorriqueño) and a former Radio and TV host and Puerto Rican Senate aide. Follow him @FrankWorleyPR

History Notes: "THERE was something a bit grudging about America’s conquest of Puerto Rico in 1898... America is a country founded on a unique set of ideas, and most of them do not come from imperial Spain. Hispanics will play an ever-larger role in shaping America. Centuries of proximity and shared history are bound to strengthen this. But modern America does not belong to any one race or culture: that is its genius."

The making of America: March of history

1 Share
Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States. By Felipe Fernández-Armesto. W.W. Norton; 416 pages; $27.95. Buy from Amazon.com
THERE was something a bit grudging about America’s conquest of Puerto Rico in 1898, after a short war with Spain. The “so-called white” inhabitants, the first American military governor sniffed, looked as if they had “Indian blood”. A commander of the defeated Spanish forces was just as contemptuous. Locals went from being “fervently Spanish” to “enthusiastically American” in 24 hours.
Both sides missed the import of the moment, argues a new Hispanic history of the United States, the very title of which, “Our America”, sounds like a challenge to a fight. The rising superpower had just seized a colony far older than any English settlement on the North American mainland. The island of Puerto Rico became Spanish in 1508, almost a century before English buccaneer-adventurers splashed ashore at Jamestown in Virginia. Not only that, but settlements like Jamestown—a fortified trading-post, built explicitly for profit—had been founded in conscious imitation of Spanish colonial practices in the Americas, says the author, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a British academic based at Notre Dame University in Indiana.
The book takes aim at the founding myths of America that run exclusively from east to west. Those myths begin with ocean-crossings by pious, liberty-loving Englishmen. They dwell on the miracle of the Revolutionary War, in which bewigged patriots defeated vastly larger British forces. The myths end with wagon-trains rumbling across the Prairies and railways cutting through the Rockies, opening a continent to such Anglo-American virtues as rugged individualism and the plain- spoken certainties of the common law.
The book sets out to show how such tales ignore a parallel history of America that runs from south to north, embraces different values and has—for unbroken centuries—spoken Spanish. With startling facts and jaw-dropping tales of courage and depravity, the author triumphantly rescues Hispanic America from obscurity.
Spanish conquistadors brought horses to the Great Plains as early as 1540, showing native Americans in present-day Kansas how horsemen with spears could kill 500 buffalo in a fortnight. By 1630 a Franciscan mission in New Mexico claimed to have baptised 86,000 Indians in one summer. To repel French, British and Russian rivals, Spain built forts from Florida to the north-western coasts of what is today British Columbia. Catholic missions ran vast cattle ranches and planted California’s first citrus groves and vines. It was not just the French who helped George Washington’s armies defeat the British crown. Spanish forces harried the redcoats from Florida to Michigan, the book records, while Spanish gold bankrolled the siege at Yorktown (the newly founded town of Los Angeles, a continent away, sent $15 for the war effort).
Spanish rule was often pretty sketchy. One 18th-century frontier governor was a friendly Apache chief, while Spain’s agent in the Upper Missouri was a mystic from Wales, hunting for the Welsh-speaking descendants of a prince who, myth had it, crossed the Atlantic to escape the English 600 years earlier. Colonial bosses, soldiers and missionaries were not kindly men: Indians, in particular, died in large numbers from disease, exploitation and armed conflict. But the book makes a case that a rough-hewn paternalist pragmatism mostly prevailed in Hispanic America. Slavery was shunned (and in 1821 outlawed by newly-independent Mexico). Spanish officials treated slavery as a crime, and worse as a mistake: far easier to buy off natives with axes, copper kettles, food and dependence-inducing rum.
The author paints a harsher picture of English-speaking America, from the first moments after the revolution. A sort of madness for land and expansion gripped the Yankees and English-speakers of the South, buttressed by “scientific” race theories that placed white Anglo-Americans over supposedly brutish Indians, Spaniards and those of mixed race. American settlers flooded California and Texas, grabbing land with the help of corrupt lawyers, broken treaty-promises, “popular tribunals” that were little more than judicial lynch-mobs, and, when all else failed, force. The war of Texan independence involved much daring, but was also explicitly motivated by the desire to escape Mexico’s laws against slavery: Anglo settlers were anxious to import black slaves to pick cotton. The spectacle appalled such observers as John Quincy Adams, with the former president sorrowing that Texas joined the union tainted by two crimes, slavery and “robbery of Mexico”.
More than a century of unblushing, institutionalised racism followed, involving everything from segregated schools to guestworker schemes that left Mexicans at the mercy of exploitative bosses. Hard economic times triggered race riots and mass deportations.
Still Hispanics kept coming, most recently breaking out of urban and suburban strongholds to establish communities in small towns and rural counties in almost every state. A quarter of all American children are now from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. That prompts the book to two conclusions. The first—that a “second Hispanic colonisation” is under way—is essentially a bit of wordplay. The second—that “the United States is and has to be a Latin American country”—leads the author into a muddle. He offers a digression about the Protestant work ethic, and why that is a fiction behind which lurks anti-Catholic prejudice. He asks why, if the government in Washington is supposedly more democratic than the military dictatorships that blighted South America for so long, American troops have at times been used to break strikes or escort black children into Arkansas schools.
These final digressions are a shame: a quest for equivalence that is really an attempt to refute anti-Hispanic condescension. But the effort is not needed. The history of Hispanic North America is already fascinating, as the book shows. Yet—to be clear—it was also a story of the peripheries, not least for the Spanish empire itself. America is a country founded on a unique set of ideas, and most of them do not come from imperial Spain.
Hispanics will play an ever-larger role in shaping America. Centuries of proximity and shared history are bound to strengthen this. But modern America does not belong to any one race or culture: that is its genius.
Read the whole story

· · · · ·

The making of America - The Economist

1 Share

The making of America
The Economist
THERE was something a bit grudging about America's conquest of Puerto Rico in 1898, after a short war with Spain. The “so-called white” inhabitants, the first American military governor sniffed, looked as if they had “Indian blood”. A commander of the...