Suchergebnisse

In 1929 the British scholar, Cecil Jane, published his classic,Liberty and Despotism in Spanish America. In it he wrote:The War of Independence was neither anti-Spanish nor non- Spanish. It was not the outcome of the spread of ideas recently imported from Europe or of some sudden awakening of political life, produced by the reception of eighteenth-century philosophic theories or by such events as the successful revolt of the English colonies in North America and the French Revolution [Jane, 1966: 81].Instead, Jane (1966: 79) argued that the War of Independence was an attempt to realize the most deeply felt ideals, "which were derived not from any external sources, but from the very hearts of the people." Similarly he argued that the political conceptions of Spanish Americans were (and continued to be) Spanish, not Anglo-Saxon, and he strongly suggested that the example of the British North Americans exerted little if any influence on the Spanish Americans of the nineteenth century. Jane (1966: 111-112, 168-172) also attacked with thinly veiled contempt the idea that the salvation of Latin America lay in emulating England or the United States.

When Dwight Morrow's appointment as Ambassador to Mexico was announced in September 1927, a Mexican newspaper commented: 'After Morrow come the marines.' To some contemporary observers this may have seemed to present a logical progression of events, but in reality the Morrow appointment was a distinct move in the opposite direction. Top level Mexican officials knew this since they had been involved for several years in negotiations with Thomas W. Lamont of the International Committee of Bankers on Mexico. Lamont and Morrow were colleagues in J. P. Morgan & Co. and close friends. Lamont regularly supplied Morrow with information about the activities of the International Committee, and during 1926 Morrow began to work closely with Lamont on the Mexican question.

The International Bankers Committee on Mexico has been generally ignored by American diplomatic historians, and those who have mentioned it have missed the basic significance of its organization and operation. The writer of the leading text dealing with the Latin American policy of the United States devotes less than a paragraph to the Committee and says, "The United States did not even demand arbitration. It left the bondholders to their own representations to the Mexican Government." This statement can be compared to a description of an iceberg which deals only with that part showing above the surface of the water. The heart of this presentation will be the analysis of that part of the Committee's activities which lay beneath the surface—a study in the interaction of government, business, and revolution. The basic thesis involved is that the Committee was an unofficial instrument of the United States government, as it attempted to influence certain aspects of the Mexican Revolution.

The policy of the United States. toward social and economic revolutions in Latin America is a subject of wide U. S. concern. The rumblings of discontent in this area, coupled with the current crisis in Cuban- American relations, have stimulated the writing of numerous articles and books. In order to grasp some understanding of the current situation, however, it is necessary to place the subject in its historical perspective. This in itself will not automatically furnish any solutions, but perhaps it will give some coherence to a complex subject which has its roots in the past development of United States foreign policy.