Enrique Krauze: Castro's Demise Won't Erase U.S. Legacy

Latin America’s romantic attachment to the idea of revolution began in Cuba and achieved its greatest strength there. And it may well come to an end there.

 

The Spanish-American War of 1898 (Theodore Roosevelt’s “splendid little war”) was a major chapter in the American assertion of “manifest destiny,” which claimed the U.S.’s right to determine governments and policies for its Latin- American neighbors. Throughout the Spanish-speaking world, in Latin America and Spain itself, the conflict was experienced as an historical tragedy.

 

For much of the 19th century, Latin America’s liberal elites had viewed the U.S. as their model and political inspiration. After the defeat of Spain, and the stripping of almost all the vestiges of its empire, the liberals and their local enemies, the Catholic and conservative elites, found one common theme of agreement: They now favored a new continental nationalism that was explicitly anti-American.

 

A Uruguayan intellectual, Jose Enrique Rodo, wrote an essay called “Ariel” (with its metaphors inspired by Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest”) in which he formulated the opposition between the Anglo-Saxon world and Latin America as a conflict of civilizations. The U.S. was “Caliban” (barbarous, greedy, materialist), unsuccessfully intent on dominating Latin America, which was depicted as “Ariel” (civilized, spiritual and inherently superior.

 

‘Iron Claws’

 

Nicaragua’s Ruben Dario, the greatest Latin-American poet of the time, wrote “Ode to Roosevelt” in the early 1900s, warning the American president that “a thousand cubs have issued from the Spanish lion” and labeling U.S. domination as a matter of “iron claws.”

 

Dario’s prophecy was fulfilled in 1959...