1Prof. John H. Coatsworth is a specialist of Latin American history and the actual Provost of Columbia University. He is the author or editor of eight books and many scholarly articles on Latin American economic and international history. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals including the American Historical Review, the Journal of Economic History, and the Hispanic American Historical Review and as well as social science and history journals published in Britain, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Peru, and Spain. He is a former president of the American Historical Association and Latin American Studies Association. His academics posts have included visiting professorships at El Colegio de México, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National University of Buenos Aires, the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and the Instituto Ortega y Gassett in Madrid. Show 2This interview was done in New York City in November 2013. The first part concerns the period of revolutions of independences in the early 19th century. The second deals with the Latin-American history of the 19th century while the third tackles the 20th century. In each part Prof. Coatsworth was asked questions which would either concern the problems, the tendencies and the new steps regarding contemporary Latin American history. 3Latin America — 19th Century — 20 Century — International relations —Economy—Politics First part: the revolutions of independence4Where does your interest for Latin American History come from? 5How could you explain the beginning of the independentist movements in Latin America? 6Certainly, that was the case after the Tupac Amaru Rebellion in the Andes. It took nearly four years to defeat, but the imperial victory left no doubt about Spain’s capacity to impose high costs in blood and treasure on the rebels. But when the Napoleonic invasions of Spain and Portugal, created circumstances that called into question the empires’ capacity to defeat defectors, one of the pillars of the colonial regime collapsed. Fernando VII’s efforts to restore the imperial deterrent to revolt almost worked, but the defection of his own military ended Spanish rule in most of the Americas. Portugal did not even make a credible effort to forestall Brazil’s independence. 7The second pillar of the colonial regime was the relationship between Spanish authority and the colonial elites. The colonial compact between Spain and the elites in each colonial was a crucial part of the imperial deterrent. In exchange for a considerable degree of relative autonomy and a certain amount of tax revenue, Spain extended its protection to colonial elites who feared revolt from the populations of slave and indigenous people below them. After 1808, both parts of the deterrent began to collapse at the same time. If Spain could not punish those who wanted autonomy or even independence, then it certainly lacked the power to protect elites from the underlying population, When Spain and Portugal lost the capacity to punish defectors or to protect colonial elites, as they did after 1808, independence became a possibility for the first time. 8What kind of relations could you establish between the 18th century and the revolutions of Independence? 9What was the economic impact of the revolutions of independence? 10The Franco Spanish historian François-Xavier Guerra argues that the Latin American independences were not the result of former nationalist movements, but that they were their point of departure. Guerra mentioned that the independences were the results of chance and of the crisis of the Hispanic empire after the arrival of the armies of Bonaparte in the Iberian Peninsula. What do you think of those statements? Second part: the 19th century11When does the 19th century in Latin America begin and when does it end? 12To which event could you associate the end of the 19th century in Latin America? 13Do you believe that the First World War is relevant to identify the end of 19th century? 14What kind of characteristics had the State, the Economy and the Society of 19th century in Latin America? 15What important changes happened in the economical structure of the Latin American countries in the 19th century? Could you say something about some countries that would represent a general trend in the region? 16The term ‘liberal’, that you used, is at the heart of different historiographical debates. What do you refer to when you speak of ‘liberal reforms’? 17In your opinion, what issues and what chronologies would allow to study the international relations between Central America and the United States in the 19th century? 18Another way is to look at your question is by examining how the United States defined its strategic interests in the region. At the beginning of the 19th century United States was quite weak and relied principally on the British fleet to protect its commerce, though the United States competed with the British throughout Latin America for markets and influence. That British American competition ended towards the end of the 19th century, when the British for strategic reasons decided that Latin America was less important than Europe and that their partnership with the United States which was developing very rapidly could not be sacrificed for any Latin American interest as long as the United States left British colonies in the Caribbean alone. 19So every time that the United States pressed its competition with the British, in the Caribbean for example, the British ceded to US concerns in order to preserve a relationship which they saw as of some future strategic interest. The first change is the shift from territorial to economic expansion, and the second is from competition with the United Kingdom to collaboration, but collaboration based on the British recognition of the United States as the dominant power in the Caribbean. 20Do you think that the American foreign policy concerning Mexico and Central America have the same characteristics? I ask you this question, because one could believe that a passage trough Nicaragua and Panama, as it was considered at that time, could have changed the US Foreign policy towards Central America. 21Do you believe that both Mexican and American memories of the 19th century have currently some importance in the bilateral relations of these two nations? 22You used the term ‘Mexican-American war’, but there are a lot of papers in the US historiography that employs the term ‘Mexican war’. Do you believe that these two terms represent different conceptions of the war and of the responsibility of these countries in the beginning of the war? 23How does WWI affect the Latin American history? 24What are the most significant tendencies and problems of the American historiography concerning Latin America in the 19th century? 25One of the most interesting trends is the transformation of Latin American economic historiography in the last twenty years or so. When I first became an historian we knew very little about the 19th century in Latin American economic history. We had virtually no numbers. Now we have a great deal more empirical investigation that has filled out a picture of the region and the region’s economy over the course of the 19th century that is quite fundamentally different from what I was taught as a graduate student many years ago. 26In your opinion, what would be the next issues to focus on regarding political, economic and international history in order to better know the Latin American 19th century? 27I think the most important change that will occur over the next decade, will be the discovery of new records, of new archives, of new sources, which up until now have not been accessible or which have been imperfectly accessible. I am very impressed by the number of national archives that are becoming better organized, the amount of digitalized historical records that are now available even on line. One of the trends is going to be much greater access to primary source materials than has been the case in the past and to new materials that we haven’t had before. And even new kinds of evidence that we hadn’t been able to use or even to think about using in the past. I can give you one example: we’re learning a lot about living standards in Latin America from records that are becoming available that provide data on the average heights of Latin Americans, how tall they grew, and what we are learning comes both from records of colonial militias and national armies that recorded the height of their recruits and from the skeleton remains in the cemeteries and burial sites all over the region. Historians are discovering a great deal about variations in living standards with some quite surprising results. This is an example of a new kind of evidence that has just only become available and that is providing a whole set of insights into an area of research that we weren’t able to address adequately in the past. The 20th century in Latin America28When does the 20th century in Latin America begin and when does it end? 29Do you believe the US participation in the Cuban independence transformed the perception that the Latin American governments had of the United States? 30Do you believe, that one could argue that the US-Mexican war and the Spanish-Cuban war were more important in the Latin American governments’ perception of the US foreign policy than the message addressed by President Monroe to the American Congress in 1823? 31In the years that followed, the behavior of the United States in the Caribbean and in Central America and especially the addition of what was called at the time the Roosevelt corollary stating that the United States reserved for itself right to intervene in the internal affairs of any country that got into difficulties with its external creditors, produced a negative reaction in Latin American countries that was so strong that during the 1962 October missiles crisis, the President of the United States ordered the diplomatic services of this country not to mention the Monroe Doctrine at all in any statements concerning the American policy towards Cuba, despite the fact that the Congress of the United States passed a resolution insisting that they do so. 32How could you describe the populist movements in Latin America and what is the legacy that they left in the politics of the region? 33Finally, if you think of populism as the tendency of some Latin American governments to spend more money than tax revenues provide, or tolerate high rates of inflation, —and you can find examples of this on the left and on the right—, then I think Populism has generally proved to be both damaging and unsustainable
34In a recent publication on Latin American history, José Maria Del Pozo argues that populism is a caudillismo1 adapted to the mass society. What is your opinion concerning this statement? 35How could you characterize the Mexican populism in regard to the other Latin American populisms? 36During the Cardenas period Mexico carried out a massive redistribution of titles to land, some in the form of cooperatives others in individual plots. What was unique about Mexican populism was that it involved a the redistribution of real assets to a much larger number of people than benefited from populist regimes in other parts of Latin America, which, for the most part, were confined to urban populations. In the case of Mexico there were concessions to trade unions of the kind that you find elsewhere in Latin America, but it’s the rural Populism of Mexico that defines it as so much different than most of the rest of the region. 37And what about the Argentinean populism? 38What was the international position of the Latin American countries at the beginning of the Cold War? 39In 1993 you published an article entitled Pax(norte)Americana: Latin America after the Cold war. Could you explain us what means Pax(norte)Americana? 40How did the United States display this hegemony in Latin America? 41What are the most recent developments of US historiography about the 20th century in Latin America? 42In your opinion what gaps in Latin American historiography should be treated? Page 2
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