Chile’s triumph challenges American stereotypes

Published 1:26 am Sunday, December 5, 2010

With the people of Chile and much of the rest of the world, I closely followed Octobers dramatic and emotional rescue of 33 Chilean miners.

For me, who had been watching it all along on Univision, the Spanish-language television channel, the rescue was not only a triumph for Chile but a challenge to the host of American cultural prejudices against Latin peoples.

American culture has always been distinctly self-centered, imagining our country as the city on the hill, chosen by God, the beneficiary of a Manifest Destiny from sea to shining sea. I doubt any people of any industrialized nation knows less about other peoples than we do.

At their worst, these attitudes have provided an ideological foundation for military intervention and conquest against the Indians, Hawaii, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq and in the 19th and 20th centuries, tens of other military interventions in Latin America from Mexico to Chile.

There were always excuses: protecting American lives, establishing order, fighting communism, stopping terrorism. Our recent efforts in Haiti come with the baggage of two centuries of interventions, decades of military occupation, and a land stripped of trees not by foolish Haitians but for American dams and plantations.

Today still, Latin America makes our news almost solely for drug cartels, immigration and perhaps Venezuelan President Hugo Chavezs authoritarian antics.

 Jon Stewart of The Daily Show still makes jokes about not drinking the water in Mexico except he, like most Americans, still thinks its true and making jokes out of stereotypes is only funny when most people know they are not true.

I did appreciate CNNs full-time coverage of the rescues final days. Even so, the early coverage was frustrating because they did it the way our news media cover most news as if the world revolved around us. CNN talked mostly about the U.S. drill and driller and NASA. (Honestly, other countries dont all do news that way!)

If I write of these events with the passion of a Latin American, I am proud to do so. I have been in love with Latin American for 50 years, starting with my first Spanish language class. I taught Latin American history for 30 years. I have lived in Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Panama. I have traveled all over the area.

Knowing the real Mexico beyond the borderlands, my wife and I will vacation there this winter for perhaps the 20th or 30th time. And we will drink the water from the public tap as we have since the 1980s.

Once they got a translator in there, CNN coverage improved and Americans learned the engineers were Chilean and the Chilean Navy designed the capsule.

We could see with our own eyes a people and a government whose actions belied every stereotype American culture has of Latin Americans: lazy, untimely, corrupt, disorganized, technologically backward Third World.

Not by half.

Most of all, I loved the Chileans careful planning and the brilliance at every stage of under-predicting when they could achieve a goal. If only the United States had looked half as good in responding to Katrina and the BP oil spill. Or India in preparing for the Commonwealth Games!

Newsweeks recent report on the Worlds Best Countries for Education, Health, Quality of Life, Economic Dynamism and Political Environment lists after the likes of Finland (1), the U.S. (11), Spain (21) and Poland (29) Chile (30), Costa Rica (35), Peru (42), Argentina (46), Mexico (45), Brazil (48), and Cuba (50).

Russian is 51, China 59, India 78, South Africa 82.

World Bank per-person income data are comparable except that wealth (e.g. oil) pushes up some which have not used their wealth to enhance other quality issues Newsweek counts. While Canada is 10 at $37,946, Mexico is 46 and Chile 47, both at over $14,300 per person.

Thats a long way from the likes of Congo at $320. All of those under $1,000 are in Africa. Even Haiti is (or was) at $1,153 and Nicaragua at $2,665.

Latin America is way beyond Third World. Id say, Second World. I dont suppose that facts will soon trump prejudice but perhaps the Chilean triumph will make a dent in our misperceptions.

Ronald Woodbury has a Ph.D. in history and economics. Following a career in college teaching and administration, he and his wife retired to Pendleton where their daughter lives with her husband and four children. He is a member of First Christian Church and volunteers in Elder Mediation for Blue Mountain Mediation.