Latin America ...

INTRODUCTION

Increasingly intimate relations between the United States and the countries of Latin America will be one of the striking features of the next few decades. Since the days when these sister republics began their independent existence a century ago, their people and our own have been neighbors to Europe, but strangers to each other. Happily this period of mutual isolation has now come to an end.

The reasons for this separation of a hundred years are not hard to find. The United States was absorbed in its own internal development and gave little thought to other countries, least of all to those with whom it had no necessary association. As an agricultural land it exported surplus raw materials-wheat, corn, meat and cotton-to England, France and Germany, and received in return the best grades of manufactured goods. A rapidly swelling stream of immigration maintained some connection with these older nations across the Atlantic. The diplomacy of the United States was largely limited to problems concerning either Europe or the lands immediately beyond our borders. The large tourist class of today did not exist during most of this period; even the relatively few who went abroad for sightseeing had no desire to visit countries which they regarded as primitive, sparsely settled and racked by constant revolutions. In fact there was nothing which tended to bring the United States and South America into close contact.

Latin America, also, found no common ties during the past century to bind it to this country. Although it was strongly influenced by North American precedents in its revolt against Spain and in the form of its national constitutions the connection between the two sections went no further. Like the United States the rapidly developing republics of the South sent their raw materials to Europe and bought manufactured goods in return. They received hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Latin countries of the old world and borrowed from European bankers the vast sums

which built their railroads, harbors, and attractive capitals. The intellectual life, the school and university systems, social customs, fashions and styles all came from France, Spain or Portugal.

The cords which stretched from this country and from Latin America to the outside world all led to Europe; there were none which bound the two sections together.

This situation is rapidly passing away, for the underlying conditions which caused it are changing. The United States now needs foreign markets in which to sell its surplus manufactures and is entering upon a systematic campaign to take the commercial leadership in Latin America. At the same time it is ceasing to export and coming to import agricultural produce; the past few months shiploads of Argentine beef and corn have been sold in the cities of our Atlantic states. Thus the basis of a new trade relationship is coming into existence the exchange of North American manufactured goods for the raw products of the lands to the South. A similar change has taken place in international finance; the United States has recently become a creditor nation, ready to loan large sums in foreign countries; the billion of dollars invested by our citizens in Mexico during the past two or three decades is an evidence that similar help may be given in the near future to other American republics. The diplomatic policy of the United States, also, is changing as noticeably as its foreign trade and finance. The Monroe Doctrine, which sums up our traditional attitude towards the outside world, has in the past concerned itself chiefly with the behavior of Europe towards the Republics of Latin America; we are now attempting, practically for the first time, to define our own relations with these republics. This Doctrine in its present form, so far as it relates to the Latin American states, is very generally regarded as unsatisfactory; and a redefinition is widely demanded which shall bring about a greater coöperation with the strong, stable states to the south of us. The most immediate single cause, however, which is bringing Latin and Anglo America closer together is the building of the Panama Canal. The seizure of the Canal

Zone advanced the coast line of the United States hundreds of miles towards the center of the Latin American world; while the Canal itself is giving to North and South an object of common and general interest. It is the Canal, probably, and the discussion regarding it, which have aroused the people of this country to a dawning consciousness that there exist in South America strong nations with cultured people, stable governments and attractive cities.

There are many signs of this awakening interest. The magazines are writing of the resources and the charm of South America as if it were a newly discovered land. A rapidly increasing number of books dealing with one or more of these Latin countries are issuing from the press; while one of them, in many ways the best, that by the recent British Ambassador to the United States, James Bryce, has been read by a large proportion of the thoughtful people of this country. The professional stereopticon lecturers have found that the Panama Canal and South America are the most popular subjects to present to the average well-informed audience. The teaching of Spanish, the tongue of every country to the South of us except Brazil, is being rapidly introduced in our high schools and colleges, while a knowledge of this language is being accepted by some of our higher institutions as an equivalent for French or German. Courses also are now being given in the foremost universities upon the history, the civilization and the economic conditions of South America. The diplomatic policy of the United States towards Latin America is being widely discussed. The problem whether the Monroe Doctrine should be continued unchanged, or be modified, or be abandoned, has been a live issue in our newspapers and periodicals; it has been debated in schools, colleges and universities in every part of the country; it has frequently been the topic of city economic clubs; and has been studied from nearly every aspect at three recent conferences of experts. Still another evidence of the increasing interest in Latin America is shown by the large number of tourists who have visited the Panama Canal and South America. So popular is the trip through the cities

of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru, that the travel agencies are making reduced rates and arranging special parties for this route. A succession of Chamber of Commerce delegations also has passed south through Panama the last couple of years-so many of them that they have brought consternation to their hospitable hosts in the thriving South American cities. Finally a number of our foremost public men have recently visited our sister republics, among them being Ex-President Roosevelt and three Secretaries of State, Root, Knox, and Bryan.

Latin America also is coming into closer touch with the United States, as is shown most strikingly by the fact that 436 students from its various republics have spent the past year in our higher institutions of learning.

In matters of commerce and business the United States and Latin America are even now more closely bound together than we generally realize. It is hardly too much to say that the typical well-to-do South American business man, when he rises in the morning, puts on a pair of North American shoes, at the breakfast table reads his daily paper fresh from a North American printing press, in his office sits at a North American desk, dictates to a stenographer who uses a North American typewriter, signs his letters with a North American fountain pen, files his correspondence in North American filing-cases, weighs his goods upon North American scales, keeps his cash account by North American cash registers, and if all this should give him the toothache rushes to a North American dentist.

On the other hand, the coffee which makes our delectable breakfast cup comes from Santos, Brazil. We have just begun to eat Argentine beef, so much of it that by the end of the present year arrangements will have been per ected by which steamers will leave Buenos Aires each week for New York loaded with chilled and frozen beef and mutton. The tires of our automobiles came originally, for the most part, from the forests of the Amazon; while much of the copper used in the electric light wires in our homes and our streets was dug from the exhaustless mines of the Peruvian and Chilean Andes.

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