25. WHY AMERICANS ARE
DISLIKED
THE answer to the question as to why Argentines dislike Americans is a long, sad story of distrust and disillusionment that goes as far back as 1824, when Argentina was the first South American country to recognize the Monroe Doctrine and to seek to base its foreign policy on collaboration with the United States and that doctrine. It includes the unfortunate part played by the United States in depriving Argentina of the Falkland Islands and turning them over to England. It is kept alive today by the presence in Argentina of hundreds of American missionaries who have been sent "to save the heathen."
Argentines hate to face an issue or to call things by their right names and it is almost impossible to get one to discuss with an American the things they do not like about the Yankee. They prefer to deny that there is any such dislike. But occasionally one can be persuaded to admit the truth. Then it transpires that they have a long list of political and commercial grievances and an equally long list of personal dislikes and prejudices. Many of these dislikes are perfectly justified, when the subject is looked at from their viewpoint; others are merely prejudices due to differences in race, education, and customs.
Argentines distrust Americans as being materialistic, imperialistic, hypocritical, overbearing, and insincere, among other things. They do not like the hard drinking and rowdy behavior of Americans in public places. They dislike being discovered by North Americans every ten or fifteen years and then being just as suddenly dropped and forgotten when the little boom which led to their discovery subsides. And above everything else they detest American "good will" junkets. If it were possible for the United States Congress to pass a law prohibiting the use of the words "good will" by anyone going to Argentina, a long step toward real friendship would have been made.
Argentines are inclined to be very conservative and they do not like the free and easy way of American life, and especially the liberty between the sexes as shown in American motion pictures. This is one of several prejudices about which nothing can be done, a prejudice which explains why Argentine men will entertain their American friends in their clubs but never at their homes. Argentines sometimes inquire of Americans in perfectly good faith as to how many wives a man can have in a year in the United States. Some of them actually fear to let their sons and daughters go to the United States to study lest they be shot in one of those hair-raising running fights between G-men and gangsters in Fifth Avenue.
It is complained that American business men often have taken advantage of the good faith of their Argentine customers who expected that Americans also based their trade ethics on the palabra de inglés.(1) It is also complained that American investments in Argentina have not been of a nature to help develop the country but that they have been only in guaranteed government bonds or in enterprises likely to pay quick profits to the American investor without leaving any lasting improvement in the country. In all these cases it is customary to compare American business and investments unfavorably with the British.
One of the bitterest complaints against Americans in Argentina and elsewhere in South America is that we treat them as Indians and "niggers," while the Europeans treat them as equals. Instead of maintaining an intelligent public relations service throughout South America, we appear to take the position that any people who are not of pure white blood are "spicks" and "greasers" and that it would be beneath our dignity to explain ourselves to them. In this attitude, we include Argentina along with the rest of South America. Then we stand by in dignified silence and permit ourselves to be pictured by European propaganda as the "Octopus of the North," waiting our opportunity to gobble up all the southern countries.
It never has seemed worth while, for example, to explain to Argentines why we do not want to import their fresh beef, with the result that many educated, well-read Argentines actually believe that it is because we fear the consumer will be poisoned by eating it. As a result of our superior and completely insincere attitude on this question, it has become an acute phobia with the Argentines and critically threatens continental defense at one of its most vital points. Argentines know that arrangements could be made between the United States and Argentine meat inspection services that would prevent diseased meat from being shipped to the United States. And they know that Americans know it. So they look upon the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the Sanitary Convention between Argentina and the United States as further evidence of American bad faith and a protectionist subterfuge for keeping cheap Argentine meat out of the American market. The Sanitary Convention, signed in 1935, would permit the entry of Argentine meat from regions which had been certified free from foot-and-mouth disease.
One of the most serious political stumbling blocks on the path to better understanding is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which Argentines believe was aimed directly at them. We have ignored Argentina and the other South American nations ever since our own Civil War because they have been difficult to get to and because they have not attained an economic status comparable to our own. It has required another world war and the threat of a Nazi invasion of South America to awaken us to the necessity of reviewing our economic and cultural relations with the twenty countries south of us, each one of which could have been made a strong pillar in the American democratic structure during the twenty years following the First World War. Argentina is the one country in South America with which we should have established a close and continuing friendship long ago. It would be difficult to find two other countries whose origins and whose social and economic development have been as closely parallel as those of Argentina and the United States or whose common interests offer greater opportunity for co-operation.
Although Argentina has chosen in recent years to assume a cantankerous attitude of non-co-operation and opposition to the United States, truth compels the confession that the fault is very largely our own. Argentina merely has been stubborn about accepting our sudden new bid for friendship after many years of neglect. Argentina is not yet convinced that this desire for friendship is not being inspired by our self-interest rather than by any real interest in Argentina and its problems.
Alberdi laid the basis for United States influence in Argentine politics and institutions nearly a hundred years ago when he caused the Argentine Constitution to be patterned on that of the United States. Sarmiento laid the foundation for American influence and co-operation in education by taking a large group of American schoolteachers to Argentina to organize the schools, especially the normal schools. But we were too busy with our own internal problems to take any interest in Argentina's.
We were not yet ready to expand or to send our capital abroad. Great Britain profited by this preparation for American influence: it invested capital in Argentina, became a heavy purchaser of Argentine products, and assumed the role in Argentine affairs that the United States could have had.
Argentina fulfilled Europe's need for somewhere to send its excess population. It had excellent climate, fertile soil, and a white population. Italy and Spain had no colonies and the German colonies in Africa were unsuitable. So settlers were sent to Argentina by the hundreds of thousands and there was a convenient division of labor and industry. Argentina began producing foodstuffs for Europe, and Europe produced manufactured goods for Argentina. The Argentines found that they could get along very well without the United States and we did not care particularly.
Europe's economic influence led naturally to political and cultural influence. The thousands of Spaniards who went to Argentina after the war in Cuba spread anti-American ideas. Washington's policy in the Caribbean caused many refugees to flee to Buenos Aires. Most of them were writers and they were all anti-United States. When Argentines grew rich after 1900 they went to London and Paris and were deeply impressed by the British aristocracy. France made determined efforts to spread its cultural influence in Argentina and succeeded magnificently. The United States sent nothing, and it probably was natural that the Argentines should come to believe that the United States had nothing to offer.
During and after the First World War, Argentina turned in desperation to the United States for the goods which it could no longer get from Europe. The experience was unfortunate, to express it in the mildest possible terms. New York was full of so-called export firms that had sprung up overnight. They took orders for anything they could get, requiring the buyer to pay cash in advance because they had no financial backing or credit of their own. The goods they shipped to Argentina bore little resemblance to the samples on which they had obtained the orders. They paid no attention to the buyers' instructions regarding packing, shipping, and the consular and other documents required by Argentine customs regulations. One Buenos Aires firm, on opening its cases, found that it had paid in advance for a large shipment of second-hand silk stockings that had been mended and ironed.
Argentine business men were not interested in the American explanation that most of this trouble was not the fault of American business, since the orders had been given to fly-by-night concerns or individuals most of whom were not Americans at all. The Argentines knew only that they had paid good American dollars through American banks to concerns having American addresses and they considered that American trade ethics were at fault. The American Chamber of Commerce in Buenos Aires did magnificent work in arbitrating more than a thousand of these cases. But when the boom petered out and prices began to fall and the Argentine buyers refused to accept delivery on a falling market, Americans denounced them in obscene language as pikers and crooks and washed their hands of the Argentine market. When several of the South American republics which had been overloaded with American loans began to default on their annual payments, American bankers and business men abandoned South America to its fate. Argentina suffered along with the rest in spite of having religiously kept up its payments through all its political and economic troubles. Perhaps it is only natural that Argentina should remain cool toward a renewal of American overtures of friendship.
Argentines still remember that the United States sent a naval squadron of three cruisers to Buenos Aires in an effort to break Argentine neutrality after the United States entered World War I, and while the majority of Argentines were in favor of the objective sought by the squadron they looked upon its visit as a demonstration of American imperialism and big-stick politics.
For more than two years President Wilson had been sending notes to the South American governments explaining why it was imperative that all the American nations remain strictly neutral while Europe fought.(2) This policy coincided with that of President Irigoyen and he strongly supported it. Then the United States entered the war and asked the South American republics to accompany her. Most of them did. Irigoyen refused, in spite of a congressional resolution asking the government to break off diplomatic relations with Germany and Austria. The United States sent a squadron on a propaganda tour to Brazil and the River Plate, under the command of Rear Admiral Caperton. Most of the sailors were young high school boys from Washington and Oregon. They went on their best behavior and made an excellent impression in Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, where they were enthusiastically welcomed and lavishly entertained.
Irigoyen played dumb when the American embassy insinuated that it would be considered a friendly gesture if the Argentine government would invite the American warships to visit Buenos Aires. As the date approached for the departure of the squadron from Montevideo, the embassy again brought up the subject of an invitation to visit Buenos Aires. It had been announced that the squadron was on its way to the Pacific. Finally Irigoyen, with rather poor grace, sent Admiral Caperton a cablegram inviting him to call at Bahia Blanca on his way to the Pacific.(3) Caperton could play dumb as well as Irigoyen. He sent a cablegram accepting with pleasure the President's kind invitation to visit Buenos Aires, weighed anchors, and started up the river. Under international law, the American warships could remain only twenty-four hours in the neutral port of Buenos Aires, so the reporters' first question to the admiral was how long he expected to stay. He replied that the squadron would remain ten days, and it did. Irigoyen was inclined to be anti-American after that and had a great deal to do with the anti-American stand taken by the Argentine delegation to the Pan-American Conference at Havana in 1928, even though he was not President at the time.
The underlying reason for Argentina's constant opposition to the United States at Pan-American conferences and its refusal to co-operate in the general Pan-American effort is the jealousy of Washington's leadership in continental affairs. Argentina is interested in co-operation only when the initiative arises in Buenos Aires. Her only field for economic and political expansion is Latin America, and the United States, not Argentina, dominates in Latin America. Argentines feel that if it were not for the United States the other countries of South America would look to the Argentine Republic for leadership. This is highly debatable, however, as all the other republics distrust Argentina's imperialistic designs in South America more than they distrust the United States. But that does not prevent Argentina from believing that it could be the leader if the United States did not stand in the way. Argentina lost whatever prestige it had as a leader in South American affairs as a result of the obstructionist attitude at the Lima, Havana, and Rio de Janeiro conferences, yet Argentines blame the United States rather than their own government for this situation.
Since the second Pan-American Conference at Mexico City in 1902, the American nations have signed eighty-four treaties and conventions. (None was signed at the first conference in Washington in 1890.) Of these eighty-four measures for Pan-American co-operation, Argentina had ratified only seven up to January 1, 1942. Bolivia had ratified eight. The average for the other nineteen governments was forty. It is interesting to note that Argentina lost no time in ratifying the convention providing for joint administration by the Pan-American governments of any European colonies or possessions in the Western Hemisphere which the United States might find it necessary or desirable to occupy.
The Argentine delegation at the Havana conference of ministers of foreign affairs in 1940 stubbornly opposed this convention, but finally signed it when they became convinced that the United States was determined to be the sole judge of the military expediency involved in occupying European possessions for the sake of hemispheric defense. By hurriedly ratifying this convention, Argentina expected to qualify for a voice in the administration of any European possession which might be occupied by American troops. On January 1, 1942, Argentina had not ratified any of the eleven conventions drawn up at the Conference for the Maintenance of Peace which met at Buenos Aires in 1936 to lay the foundations for hemispheric defense.
Argentina has well-defined imperialistic aspirations in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and believes that the United States is preventing her from establishing her hegemony over these neighboring countries which at one time belonged to the Viceroyalty of the River Plate. There is a large school of thought in Argentina which favors the absorption into the Argentine domain of all the territory which formerly was ruled by the Spanish viceroy at Buenos Aires. United States predominance in Pan-American affairs is a serious barrier to the realization of this dream.(4)
Argentina exercises an economic control over Paraguay that is much more inclusive than any control the United States ever has exercised in any of the Caribbean countries. Every pound of merchandise entering or leaving Paraguay has to pay tribute either to the Argentine government direct or to Argentine transportation companies. Argentines were furious when the Export-Import Bank made a loan to Paraguay for road construction and Paraguay began building its long-dreamed-of road toward Brazil, by which it hopes eventually to escape at least part of its economic dependence on Argentina. Paraguay previously had planned to buy two American steamboats to carry its produce and imports between Asuncion and Buenos Aires, but had to abandon the project when the Argentine government ruled that the steamboats could not touch at any Argentine river ports because they would be competing with the two Argentine shipping companies which have a monopoly of the traffic on the Parana and Paraguay rivers.
In Bolivia, Argentina has undertaken to finance the construction of a railroad from Yacuiba on the Argentine frontier to Santa Cruz de la Sierra and to let Bolivia repay the loan in petroleum. It also has lent Bolivia 500,000 pesos to finance the drilling of oil wells in the region to be traversed by the railroad. It is expected that the railroad will cost at least 100,000,000 pesos ($24,000,000). Argentina is lending the money at 3 per cent a year, which is considerably less than she has to pay for the money she borrows herself. This arrangement has been denounced by some of the leading Argentine newspapers, especially La Prensa, as a violation of Bolivian sovereignty that is filled with dangerous possibilities.
Ezequiel Ramos Mexia, who was Argentine minister of public works when a similar project was under discussion during Figueroa Alcorta's administration (1906-10), said in his Memoirs, published in 1936, that he knew of only one other case where one government had undertaken to build a railroad into the territory of a neighboring country and that was the Russian railroad into Manchuria which caused the subsequent war between Russia and Japan. "This project means," he wrote, the "dissimulated conquest of Bolivia or a subordination of Bolivia's sovereignty that is unworthy of Argentina."
But aside from Argentina's political jealousy of Washington's position in South America there are a large number of pernicious American influences constantly at work against a closer understanding with the Argentine people. Argentines have tried repeatedly to like Americans and American goods. We, not they, are responsible for the undercurrent of prejudice which they now feel toward us. Argentines charge that Americans do not deal with them on a man-to-man, face-to-face basis, but that we insist on regarding all South Americans as younger brothers who need our frequent advice and occasional chastisement. They strongly resent the popular American cartoons which show Uncle Sam as a big masculine personality and the South Americans as pygmies wearing Mexican hats. Often, Uncle Sam has two of them by the scruff of the neck, bumping their heads together. Argentines particularly resent the mental attitude of Americans which makes these cartoons popular. They argue that if we are the educated, cultured people we pretend to be, we should know that South American culture is equal to our own. In Argentina the general average of culture and good manners is considerably higher than the general average in the United States. Argentines also charge, probably correctly, that Americans are much too patronizing in their efforts to be friendly. And they insist, perhaps not unreasonably, that Americans who go to Argentina on business should learn to speak Spanish, just as we require people to speak English when they want to do business with us.
Argentines are a proud people with a rich heritage of tradition and culture. Friendship means more to them than anything else, but we never seem to have time to cultivate their friendship and it cannot be bought. They want no favors from us; they want only to be treated as equals. They want economic co-operation, but not to be put on "relief" by means of loans. Personality plays a very important part in business relations in Argentina and the average Argentine would much prefer to do business with a man who is simpático, even if his prices and conditions are not always the most attractive. The Germans have learned better than any other foreigners how to make themselves simpático to the Argentines. Americans all too frequently are inclined to be brusque and hurried and much too obviously intent on closing the deal rather than making a permanent friend of the customer.
Unlike most of the other foreigners who go to Argentina, the American does not look upon the country as a new home. To him it is a place to put over a business deal, make a profit, and get out. If he is sent to Buenos Aires as manager of a business, his principal interest usually is to outsell his competitors and use the Argentine post as a stepping stone to a higher one. As a rule, he lives in a tight community within the American colony and mixes even less than the Briton with the people of the country. Usually he is too busy making and spending money to give any time to learning Spanish. There are many Americans in Buenos Aires who have lived there for ten years or longer and still cannot speak Spanish. The Germans, on the other hand, trained young men to speak Spanish and Portuguese and sent them to Argentina and other South American countries to live among the people, marry South American girls, and learn South American politics and psychology. These German representatives catered to the Argentine market and complied with Argentine preferences and even idiosyncrasies in packaging, colors, etc. They put Spanish names and trade-marks on their products, many of which were lower-priced imitations of American goods. The American selling policy all too often was "take it or leave it." The Argentines frequently left it, and bought the inferior German product offered by a salesman who had "sold" himself before showing his samples.
Argentines are inclined to resent the high salaries earned by Americans and the ostentation of their wealth. There are several American business men in Buenos Aires whose salaries equal that of the Argentine President, while most Americans in secondary positions earn more than the managers of Argentine businesses. These Americans undoubtedly earn their salaries and are worth to their firms all that they are paid. Their mistake lies in their tendency to lord it over the Argentines among whom they live and work, thus aggravating the Argentines' already existent inferiority complex.
There will have to be some kind of control, either voluntary or governmental, over the American motion picture films that are sent to Argentina before there can be any real friendship between the two countries. Every time Hollywood tries to depict Argentine life on the screen, the Argentine distributor either has to prevent the picture from being shown or there are riots in protest against the gross misrepresentation of everything Argentine that appears in the film. Argentina has a highly developed motion picture industry of its own and seems to be perfectly justified in its demand that Hollywood devote its activities to depicting life and customs in the United States and leave the interpretation of Argentine life to Buenos Aires.
But of all the pernicious American influences which are working permanently against a better understanding between the people of the United States and those of Argentina, the worst undoubtedly is the American missionary. A directory published by one of the missionary organizations in Buenos Aires shows that there are nearly 400 foreign missionaries and their wives in Argentina, not counting the Salvation Army. Most of these missionaries are Americans and are supported by the boards of foreign missions of religious sects in the United States. But they do not go into the hot Chaco to carry the gospel to the Indians, or into the cold wastes of Tierra del Fuego to preach to the rapidly disappearing Fuegians, or into the lonely, windswept regions of Patagonia. They settle down in the large cities of Argentina or their attractive suburbs and devote themselves exclusively to trying to persuade Christian communicants to renounce the sect they already are in and join the one represented by the missionary.
This is not missionary work; it is proselytizing in its worst form. Considered from a purely religious viewpoint, these so-called missionaries do more harm than good, because they take away from their "converts" the elaborate ritual of the faith in which they have been raised and give them no equivalent in return for it. Experience has shown that a very large number of these so-called converts, having had doubt sown in their hearts, soon begin to doubt the new faith as well, and wind up by becoming unbelievers altogether.
But there is a far more serious aspect of this question as far as our relations with Argentina are concerned, and that is that the activities of these American missionaries very naturally arouse the enmity of the Catholic Church, against which they are directed, with the result that it has become the most formidable single vehicle for anti-American propaganda and for sowing suspicion and dislike of everything American. The Catholic Church is one of the most efficient organizations in all South America; it is heavily subsidized by nearly all the South American governments, including the Argentine, and its ramifications extend into the tiniest villages and remotest towns. Both it and the Church of England carry on real missionary work in the less civilized districts of Argentina, in Patagonia and the Chaco district bordering on Bolivia and Paraguay. The proselytizing activities of the North Americans are viewed as unfair competition, and as long as it continues it will keep alive a highly efficient agency for opposing every American effort to get in closer touch with the Argentines.
Before these missionary organizations can operate in Argentina they must incorporate themselves, just like any other business, and have their statutes approved by the government. These statutes almost invariably set forth that the purpose of the organization is "to save the heathen and bring Christianity to them." (The phrase is copied from the papers filed by one of the newcomers "in the field.") The opinion of Americans that is thus engendered in the minds of Argentine government officials can best be judged by the opinion that would be engendered by the filing of such statutes in the Department of Justice at Washington by some organization of foreign missionaries setting themselves up in the United States.
One hundred and thirty-six of these American missionaries live and work in the city of Buenos Aires and its suburbs. One American board of foreign missions sent a mission to Argentina as recently as 1927 and soon had twenty-six American missionaries at work "in the field." Five other American missionary organizations have established themselves in Argentina since 1900, three having been incorporated in 1906, one in 1908, and one in 1918. The mere presence of these American missionaries is an insult to the Argentine people.
Another basic cause of misunderstanding is that Argentines and Americans do not know each other better. It is obviously difficult to understand people we have never met. The remedy, of course, lies in more personal contacts, and the best way to achieve this is through the wholesale exchange of students, professors, and newspapermen. China's close friendship for the United States is directly traceable to the influence of the hundreds of students who were taken to the United States after the Boxer Rebellion and to the fact that many of these former students now occupy important posts in the Chinese government or are married to men who do. Likewise, Argentina's leaning toward Europe is traceable to the fact that many of the men who are guiding the country's destinies spent their impressionable years as students in Europe, not in the United States.
The whole problem is big and complicated, largely because for so many years we were too busy to bother about Argentina. Yet there is nothing in our relationship with Argentina and the Argentine people which could not be put on a perfectly satisfactory basis if the proper thought and effort were devoted to it. But it is a matter for thought and effort by individual American citizens even more than by the Washington government. Because, whether he is aware of it or not, every American who goes to Argentina is an unofficial ambassador whose attitude and actions have far more effect on Argentine thought than do those of the official ambassador.
(Source: John W. White, Argentina: The Life Story of a Nation, New York: The Viking Press, 1942, chapter 25, pages 257-268. Footnotes added to the original text.)
1. "Palabra de inglés" means "word of an Englishman." To convince an incredulous or skeptical conversation partner, an Argentine would say:--- "I give you my palabra de inglés".
2. This story was repeated. The United States being under their Neutrality Act, Argentina could not persuade it to declare war against Germany in 1939, and so the Argentine remained neutral, much to the advantage of Britain. When the US finally did enter the war, it demanded "hemispheric solidarity" and attacked the Argentine because of its continued neutrality, attempted to obtain a "régime change," and continued its attacks after the War, with the result that the anti-American Perón was elected with a large majority.
3. The choice of Bahia Blanca was arguably done in good grace, for there is where the Argentine had its largest naval base, one of which they were very proud and where Admiral Caperton would have found the largest number of like-minded officers.
4. Elsewhere one finds a more positive view of this. The Rt. Hon. Lord St. Davids, Chairman of the Buenos Ayres and Pacific Railway Company, at his company's annual general meeting held in London, England, November 4, 1913, said: "I observe the tendency that is going on to-day— you see it in the newspapers—for the United States of America to exercise pressure— I do not say rightly or wrongly; I am not interfering with anybody else's business, but the undoubted tendency of the United States of America is to exercise pressure on the Spanish American Republics. What does that mean in the long run? It means they will be bound together, forced to bind themselves together by outside pressure, just as our own colonies in Australia have been forced to bind themselves together by the existence of the strength of the Japanese Navy in the Pacific. The same thing will have the same effect in South America, and, looking ahead, I can see the Argentine Republic at the centre of a great confederacy, probably much in the same position in South America that the United States is in North America—the centre of a great confederacy, perhaps even the most important member of all the Latin-speaking countries in the world. (Hear, hear.)" J. W. Philipps, the Lord and later Viscount, was on the boards of several Anglo-Argentine as well as Mexican and other South-American railways.