Latin America – ‘Extreme West’ or Part of the ‘Rest’?
By Jan Gustafsson, June 2010.
No one will probably deny that the concept of the ‘West’ is rather fuzzy and that the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion – who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ – tend to vary according to the context, purpose and criteria of its use. While the United States, Canada and Western Europe (another fuzzy and changing concept) seem to be a core part of both common sense and social science’s use of the concept, other regions and countries – as Australia and New Zeeland – have a less secure position within. When it comes to Latin America, things often look even more complicated. While many Latin Americans – and maybe a majority – without much doubt would include themselves in the (in more than one sense) exclusive company of the West, the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere is often implicitly, or even explicitly, excluded by the Northern West (US, Canada and Western Europe) in media, social sciences and common sense discourse.
I do not intend to discuss whether Latin America actually is, or should be considered, part of the West, as such discussion hardly could be anything but idle, depending the results on its very premises, rather the idea is to present some arguments and the hypothesis that (Latin) America historically and currently is a constitutive part of the West (and the transatlantic world), but that it also is a constant border zone, where the West – both as a concept and as an empiric entity – is challenged and contested. I will also argue that modernity (and to some extent, post-modernity) is not a given European phenomenon preceding the constitution of the West and moving from Europe and westwards, but rather something being created as part of the complex process of economic, political and cultural-epistemological phenomena of ‘globalization’ that began with what is often, but not very precisely, called ‘the meeting of two worlds’ and even more often (and less precisely) ‘the discovery of America’, i.e. Columbus’ landing three Spanish ships on a Caribbean island in October 1492.
In a book from 1987, the French sociologist and diplomat, Alain Rouquié, has referred to Latin America as the ‘Far’ or ‘Extreme’ West, and both translations (of the original ‘extrême’) are quite meaningful in this context: Latin America is the part of the West that seems to be far away from the rest of the West – sometimes politically; economically, socially and culturally most of the time – but it is also the part of the West without which the West never would have been the West: Latin America is a key element in the creation and constitution of the West. And furthermore, Latin America can be seen as an ‘extreme’ West for being post-modern before being modern (if ever modern), but also for being, as already proposed, a constant border zone where the West meets the ‘rest’ and where the West is being challenged to the point of a potential negation. Latin America can be seen, thus, as a paradox, but rather than being a paradox by its own means, it is, due to Eurocentric world views and practices. In the following, I will line out very briefly a few major arguments related to history, culture, politics and economy.
During the middle ages, Europe did not have a dominant position in the world, rather it was a relatively peripheral part of a world that was still not united and that did not have one sole center of economic, political or military hegemony. Contrary to some historiography, European hegemony resulted from the ‘discovery’, conquest and exploitation of the Western Hemisphere in the 16th and 17th centuries, rather than being pre-given condition that made such conquest possible. We are, of course, talking about an extremely complex web of relations of cause and effects, but it is important to stress that a hegemonic Europe, the (also hegemonic) West and even more, the transatlantic world are constituted and created in a process taking place over centuries, of which the two mentioned (16th and 17th) are particularly important. The world becomes one world that is, all continents are related, only from 1492, and in this world system Europe –first represented by Spain and, to some extent, Portugal – will be the dominant power.
From an economic point of view, the gold and silver extracted by Spain in the New World (the Indies) is a main condition for the original accumulation of capital and thus, for the development of capitalism, as already pointed out by Marx in ‘The Capital’. Politically and militarily, Spain – and again, to a lesser degree, Portugal – constitutes the first European empire to go beyond Europe and its immediate frontier zone. For the first time, a European power is really global and globally hegemonic. Culturally, Europe becomes, for the first time, an ‘exporter’ of the central elements of culture: language, religion, power systems and political culture (and much more). If we remember that ‘European’ – and thus, to some extent, ‘Western’ – culture was born in, and imported from, (Northern) Africa and the (Middle) East, the nascent European global hegemony through the conquest, colonization and exploitation of the Western Hemisphere implies a radical shift in global relations. European language, religion and culture in general becomes the main, dominant culture of the Western Hemisphere, which – at least until the emancipation wars and constitution of new states from North to South around 1800 – was mainly what later became Latin America, as it was the most populated, developed and Europeanized part of the hemisphere. Finally, from an epistemological point of view, this whole new development is partly the result, but even more the cause and condition for a radical change of the vision of the world and the human being that, together with social, economic and political developments from the late 15ht century and on has been termed modernity. (Latin) America and its discovery, conquest and ‘invention’ is not only a part, or result, of a European modernity – it is central to the very constitution of modernity and thus, of the West.
How, then is it possible that such a constitutional region of the West, of the Atlantic world and of modernity seems to be deemed to a position of, at least partial exteriority, exclusion and even inferiority with respect to the rest of the West? First of all, there is the obvious observation that this whole process by no means took place on equal terms, and these unequal terms persisted through colonial and post-colonial relations, that were something more than economic dependence and a peripheral situation, and affected the very perception of Latin America in European or ‘Western’ (non-Latin American) social imaginary.
This whole story, and discussion, however, is too well-known, but also too complex and too controversial to be explored further in this context. But I will go to another, probably less discussed point of Latin America’s position in (or outside) the West: Latin America as the ‘far’ and ‘extreme’ West due to its position as a frontier zone. Above, I have said that Spain’s colonization of (the Southern part of) the Western Hemisphere constituted the first and, by the way, most comprehensive export of European culture to another part of the world. Language, religion and (political and other) culture were imposed – to the extent it was possible – on a whole ‘new’ world that became Spanish speaking and Catholic. But major regions of this new world were rather densely populated and had their own developed cultures, languages, religion and traditions that came into (a mostly violent) contact with the conquering Spaniards. Therefore, the whole region (or most of it) became an intense contact, or frontier zone in which Europe was constantly met by its ‘other’ (in the cultural and philosophical sense of the term), whose presence and otherness not only challenged, but also defined Europe and European self-perception in a continuous process of mirrors and images reflecting each others. And, although interculturality, transculturality and multiculturality are rules, rather than exceptions in world history, colonial Spanish America probably can be seen as one of the most radically multicultural and multiracial societies known, to the point of having institutionalized more than sixteen ethno-racial categories – the so-called ‘castas’ – and having differential laws for different ethnic groups (including specific rights and specific duties for the Indigenous populations). This is the reason why Spanish America has been called the ‘first post-modern’ society. That this multicultural reality was not first and foremost a question of recognition of rights based on difference, but a huge system of economic, political and cultural power relations of unequal terms – or, said more roughly, a system of crude exploitation of the non-white population – cannot surprise anyone, but this fact should not shadow the other, equally important fact: Latin America was, and to some extent is, the most important and radical frontier and contact zone of the West. It is so, first because the most prolonged and intense contact between European and non-European cultures took place here and, secondly, because this contact was not only inter- and multicultural, but also transcultural, giving birth to new cultures, nations and races. As just said, more than sixteen racial combinations were institutionalized in colonial Spanish America and, still today, many regions of Latin America are not biracial or triracial, but rather multiracial. It is not just a question of being ‘black’ or ‘white’ or ‘indigenous’, but of the various shades of dark or pale. Again, the argument here is not racism does not exist in Latin America, it does, but in a far more complex and subtle version than the ones based on closed ideas of race. What I intend to argue is that Latin America, as a frontier zone, constitutes an ‘extreme’ and very multi- and transcultural part of the West.
The conclusion, for now, is that Latin America is very much a part of the West. It is based generally on Western (European) culture (including language and religion), its economy is very integrated with the rest of the West (especially due to integration in the Western Hemisphere) and its political systems and cultures are more similar to, and integrated with, the West than the ‘rest’. But, at the same time Latin America is part of the ‘rest’ and excluded from the West. It is part of the Third and post-colonial world. During most of the 19th and 20th century (with some important moments of exception) the Latin American economies have been sub-developed and peripheral, the whole region has been considered, by the US, a zone of interest and subject to intervention and, in most European countries (with the partial exception of Spain and Portugal) there has been a tendency to consider Latin America as ‘exotic’ and not too relevant in economic, political and cultural terms. This game of paradoxes is, as argued, very much the result of the paradox of history: Latin America is a condition the development of modernity and of the West, but this development took place in a system of unequal power relations. Latin America is, thus, the ‘far’ and ‘extreme’ West that is part of the ‘rest’.
