BEYOND RACE THE WEST RUSSIA'S FUTURE , DONoGHliE

SUMMER 1990 T~T]H ~ VV ILSON ~UARTERLY ·I·a~81~Ba~sla~IllesSer~ ~ PLtblishedby the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

COVER STORY

LATIN AMERICA 'S INDIAN &UESTION 22 Gterrilla war and teworism in Peru. Environmental debates over Bra- zil's rain forests. In these and other issues vexing nations throughout Latin Alnerica, the Indian question figures crucially. Yet few specialists have addressed it directly. Peter E Klar~n, David Maybury-Lavis, and Richard N. Adams demonstrate its il??povtance to affairs of state in Peru, Brazil, and Central A,nerica. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard points to a hopeful development in Gtlatelnala.

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THE WINNING OF THE WEST RECONSIDERED 70 The frontier still provides Alnericans with myths to live by, even if we are vagllely aware that they are only Inyths. Brian ~2!Dippie shows how far scholars have gone in rewriting the history of the Wild West.

IDEAS

THINKING BEYOND RACE 62 Racisln is not holding black Amen'cans back. But thinking like victims is, Shelby Steels argues. je~

REFLECTIONS DEPARTMENTS HIGH-TECH TANTALUS 102 Editor's Comment 4 The electronic workplace was expected to boostproductivity. Edward Tennerexplains Periodicals 9 why it hasn't. Current Books 86 PORTRAIT OF THE CRITIC 106 DenisDonoghue looks back on his boyhood ResearchReports 138 to tlndevstand hoM, a cr'tic's,nind is fonned. Commentary 141 BACKTO RUSSIA'S FUTURE 114 Cover:Detail from Battle of the Az~ecs and Spaniards by If colnmtlnism won't hold the Soviet Union DiegoRivera (1930), h-om the GrangerCollection. New York. The original painting is pan of a mural at the former together, what will? Nicolai N. Petro describes Palacio de Cortes, now the Museo Quaunahuac, in Cuerna- the ,naking of a neM, Russian federation. vaca.Morelos. Mexico.

1SSN-0363-3276USPS 346670 ala VOL.MV NO.3 Pl~hli\l~edbl ~,luan· (WhlrerJ.April (Spn,l~, I~~(v(Sl~~,l~,lerl, n,ld Or,uher (Auru,,ln)hv dir Woodrou'Wil\o,l htremu~iu,ln(Cr,lrrr for Scllu(ar~-.hdrxed hiell,li~llv.Suh-crip~iorls: o,le ?'ear. 920: r~~a vcnr,. 836. O~~~side U.S.; o,ie vmr. 826.50: ~~l·o peorc. 849. Air,~lnil outside U.S.: o,le yeor, 835: n\'o vear,. 166. SUIRlecopies ~,lniled I~po,l rcyl~e~r: 56; celec~ed hacli i~sl~er: 96, i,lch~di,lg posroge a,ld halldli,lp;ouuidp U.S. n,td posscs~io,li. 67. Srco,ld-cl~ss poc~aRe Paid a~ IY~\III)IRIU)1.D.C.. o)ld Oddili0)11l1))lnjlillR offices. Ed~~orial off~cest 370 L'E,l~,lr Pro~,lr,lodeS.W.. Sui~e 70·1. W~sllb~gro,l, D.C. 20024.All u,lsolic- ited ,,in,ll~rcrip~~shuuld he arco~,lpo,lirdhv a self·addrc·ssed·ru,,lpcd L·,n~plopr.ML·,,ther\: Se,ld cha,lRrsof address u,ld all a~h~criprionco~7r~pu,ldencr I~·irllWilson Ouanerly ~,lnili,ll:Iahel ~o Sl~hsrrihcr Scn·ice. The WilsonQuanerly. PO. Bo~56161. Buuldrr. Culo 80322-6161.(Subscriber hot Ilne: 1-800- 876-8828.)Pos~,,lu\~ec Se,ld all addressrl~o,lyes ~o The WilsonOuanerly. PO. Box56161. Boulder. Culo. 80301. MiL·rOfiB)l copies are ovailablrfro,n U,thar~in~Mirrofil~,ls hlrenlnriullol, 300 North Zceh Road. A,1,1Arhor. Mirllipn~l 48106. U.S.A.,le~~·~s~~,ld di~~rih~~~io,l by Easrml Nm~sDDlribl~lors. Inc., 1130 Cle~~i·lu,ldRoad. Sa,ldtcskv, Ohio 34870. Z~~~~s_~ :: ::::~~~_:~~:~~:i:ii '::D!E~E! IZTI[Q)S

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;i.B[J~W Editor's Comment M(tnccgingDepuIyEdilol-: Editor:Steven James Lagerfeld H. Carman Literary Edirou: Jeffery Paine The modern nation-state has fallen on hard times. Chal- h·oductio,? Assic~~rtnte lenged from above by supranational bodies such as the HenryL. Mortimer,Jr. European Community,it also finds itself fending off the WaiterC0'2'YibL''i'7" Reich,EditoYS: Neil Spitzer; Steven SeniorFraser, demands of ethnic groups and minorities from within. R,,,e,,h,, si,, M.Hunter; Re- Will the nation-state remain a functioning political unit in searcheus:Chris McConnell, Jennifer the decades to come? Past issues of the WQ have tried to Mendelsohn, Emily E. Miller,Jenni- answer that questionby lookingat the supranationalchal bvavia~efe' Ruth, ZdenekDavid L.V. Zimmerman; David; EditorialLi- lenges--not only economically driven alternatives [see Ad,i,,,: MaryB. Bullock, Philip "Europe 1992," WQ, Winter '90] but also the culturally Cook,Robert Darnton, Francis M. inspired transnational alternatives [see "The Islamic Deng,Denis Donoghue, Nathan World," WQ, Autumn '89]. In this issue, we turn to the Glazer,Michael Haltzel, Harry Har- ding, Elizabeth Johns, Michael challenges within. For close to 500 years, Indians through- Lacey, John R. Lampe, Jackson out Latin America have been exploited and ignored; now Lears,Robert Litwak, Frank however, everywhere from Guatemala and El Salvador to McConnell,Richard Morse, Mancur Peru and Brazil,they are assertingtheir rights and claim- Ann0lSO"' Sheffield,Richa'd S.Rorty, Frederick Blair Starr,Ruble, Jo- ing at least a part of ~theirstolen patrimony,The nations of sephTulchin; Sel?ior Editorial Ad- Latin America, our contributors show, will ignore the In- viser:Peter Braestrup. dian question only at their peril. On the other side of the globe, several nationalities within the Soviet Union are P"'blishi'?gDirector: Warren B. Syer clamoringfor greaterindependence. Nicolai Petro ex- Busb?essPLlhlisheY: Assistant:Kathy Read Suzanne Turk plains how renascent Russian nationalism may paradoxi- circltk2tionDirector: Rosalie Bruno cally lead the way to a truly multinational land demo- AdvertisingDir~ctor: Sara Lawrence cratic)federation. The fate of nations--andof other 3s~eL~OM4f~nIPro,,le,?adeS.W. groups competingfor people's loyalties--remainsa major Wrtshi~lglol?,D.C.20024 concern of the WQ and the Wilson Center. (202)287-3000

WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS S117if12SO)lia17I~7StilL(tio~l Btlildi~lg W~Shi)?gfoll, D.C. Charles Blitzer, Director Samuel E Wells, Jr., Deptlty Director Jon Yellin, Associate Director

BOARD OF TRUSTEES William J. Baroody, Jr.. Cl?ainnul? Dwayne O. Andreas, I/icL·Chnini?nn RobertMcC.Adams JamesA.Baker,III TheodoreC.Barreaux JamesH.Billington LauraCavazos LynneV.Cheney BruceCelb GertrudeHimmelfarb MaxM.Kampelman JohnS.Reed LouisW.Sullivan Gov.JohnH.Sununu RobertH.Tuttle DonW.Wilson

THE WILSON COUNCIL Stanley R. Klion, Chctinlznlz Charles E Barber Conrad Cafritz Edward W. Carter Peter B. Clark WilliarT.CooeemanJJ. KennethW.Dam MichaelDiCiacomo HedleyW.Donovan RobertR.Harlin William A. Hewitt James H. Higgins Eric Hotung Donald M. Kendall Christopher Kennan Franklin A. Lindsay Sol M. Linowitz Minoru Makihara Plate MalozemoB Edwin S. Marks C. Peter McColough Martha T. Muse David Packard L. Richardson Preyer Robert L. Raclin Raja W. Sidawi Robert R. Slaughter S. Bruce Smart, Jr.

The Wilson Center has published the Qttarterly since 1976. It also publishes Wilson Center Press books, special reports, and a series of "scholars' guides" designed to help researchers in specific fields, from Soviet studies to film and video, find their way through the vast archival riches of the nation's capital. All this is part of the Wilson Center's special mission as the nation's unusual "living memorial" to the 28th president of the United States. Congress established the Center in 1968 as an international institute for advanced study, "sym- bolizing and strengthening the fruitfUl relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs." The Center opened in 1970 under its own presidentially appointed board of trustees, headed by former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey. Chosen in open annual worldwide competitions, some 50 Fellows at the Center carry out ad- vanced research, write books, and join in discussions with other scholars, public officials, journal ists, business and labor leaders. The Center is housed in the original Smithsonian "castle" on the Mall.Financing comes from both private sources and an annual congressionalappropriation. ·':B~s in London...dinncl- in Paris... ~:~ight ~) to Tokyo. Now: a ~tunningly ~~~ca~ tinlepiecefor p~oplc·whose rr:::"t~~:~~~i~ ~~~~~~.;ll:ii::::: :::~~ every mlnuti·counts.

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Music.Jean-PlerreMy Love Rampal-- Rosslnl:Marriner. Overtures.Academy of SI JaschaDecca Maslers(Vol.l).Helle(r--Ths Davl.--TaronloThe Artistry ol AndrewSymphony ForBsch--PreluderOrgan. Vol. 1 8 Played Fugues (C8S Masler) 383349 Marfin·in·the·Fields Prokoliev.Shostakovich, 8 Chamber Chorus by AnthonyNewman ; Haydn:Piano Sonatas (A"9el) 378695 Brahms.Tchaikovsky. etc. (Fan(areiPloAiie)359801 ililewporl~iassc)356741 33.38. 58. 60. EmanuelAx Tchaikavsky:Symphony iMCACass~csi374·009 Mendelssohn:Violin Tchaikovsky:The (CBSMas:er) 383·331 NO·4; Romeo8 Juliel Beethoven:Symphonies Concerto;Saint-Seens: NutcrackerPrevin. Royal Kat(aAnd Marlelle Abbado.Chicago Sym. Nos 18 6. Noninglon. Inlr 8 Rondo Capriccioso: Philharmonic Labeque--Bernstein: (C9S Masteri 378679 LondonClassical Players Massenet: Meditation (Angelj 3559411395947 West Side Story Far Two John Wtlliams--The (Angel) 373985 NadjaSalerno-Sonnen- Revel: La Valse: Pianos and Percussion. Great GuitarConcertos Slbelius: ValseTriste: be'9 (Angel) 366·872 Rapsodie Espagnale: Handel:Water Music e'CiCES Masler) 383·323 (CESMaster 3786381398535i Finlandia;etc. Eerglund. Canadian Brass--Each: Pavane;etc Previn.Royal Marriner.Academy ol PhilOrch (Angei) 373·621 Art01 The Fugue PhiliAngeii 355·172 Elgar:Enigma Varia· C,ptand:Appalachian (CBSMaster i 356740 Vladimir Horowitl, Piano St Martin-in-lhe-Fields lions:Pomp i Circum· Spring(complele): John P.ndres Segovia, Guitar-- --FavorifeEncores (Angcl) 401·638 stanceMarches Andrew Henry: Letter From Home; MyFavoriteWorks (The (CBSMasierj 355·164 Canadian Brass--English Davis.Philharmonia Or Segavia Collection. Vol 3) RenaissanceMusic (CBSMaster i 376·905 (Anqei)etc.Slalkin. SI Lauis373563Sym. (MCAClas5cP) 366·344 VladimirHorowi12-- (CBSMazier i 403·402 Mo2art:Piano Concert as Chopin: 4 Scherras: Beethoven:Symphony (CBSMaster iFavoriteChopin 355·156 GreatOpera Choruses. (CBSNos 9.Master) 21.Murray Perahia MarurkasEmanuel Ax NO9 (Choral)Norringian. RichardHickox. Landon 376822 (CDSMasie~) 372·466 LondonClassical Players Beethoven. Bruch: Violin Symphonyand Chorus Ravel: Boiera:Rapsodie (Angei 365·619 Concerlos. Isaac Stern (h(CAClasscsj 404·210 Espagnale:Ma Mere Bach:Brandenberg (CBSMaster i 353·177 COyeThomas.London Cancerlos: etc Ransom Placido Domingo--A Tchaikovsky:Piano Yo-YoMa--Great Cello Sym.(CBSMaster )376 772 Wilson.Gerald Schwarz. LoveVntil the End of Time Chopin:Piano Concerto Cancerlos Nos 1 8 3 Cancertos iCBSMaster) LA Chamber Orch. ICES) 365·262 Na 1 MurrayPerahia: Gavrilov:Ashkena2y. 401·6041391607 (Angeli 372·3671392·365 VladimirFeltsman-- ZubinMehla. NY Phil Berlin Philharmonic American "Live" Debut (CBS Master i 352·955 (Anilclj 402·529 Beethoven:No.3 (Eraica) SymphonyNorring· BerlinLotteLenya-Kurt8 American TheatreWeill: ICDSMaster 365·2541395251i Paul O.Delte--Robin IsTo Debussy: AfternoonO1A ton. LandonClassical ".."... Songs (CESMaster i Verdi: Requiem Muti. The GreenwoodGone Faun:others Batiz. Sym Players(Ange) 382·754 371·138 Pavarolti:Chorus g Orch. Elilabelhan Lute Music Orch. State of Mexico Gershwln: American In of Teatro Alla Scala (Nonesucoj 361·758 ilviuilcmas!e~si 402255 Berlioz: SymphonieFan· Paris: Cuban Overlure: (Angei) 365·2471395·244 Gilbert 8 Sullivan: High· R. Strauss 8 Britten: lastique Norrington. etc. Slalkin.SI. LouisSym. lights from "The Mikado'~ Sonalasfor Cello i Piano. LandonClassical Players (Aogei) 371·095 ConcerloB'ahms:Double Isaac Stern. Yo- EnglishNational Opera Yo-YoMa. Emmanuel Ax (Angei) 382·747 JohnWilliams--The y,Ma:Abbado. Chicago (MCACasscsj 359·968 (CBSMasler) 402.180 GreatSopranos 01 Dvo'ak:Symphony No 9 Ba'oqueAlbum Sym.(CESMasleri367·250 KiriTe Kanawa Sings Midori-PaganiniCaprices OurTime(~ngei)381335 (NewWorld); American (CBSMaster) 369769 French Impresslons-- Gershwin(Angel)359745 (CBSMasler) 389791 Suile Pesekand Royai Tartelier and English Andre Watts Plays Llsxt GreatTenors 01 Our LiverpoolPhilharmonic B ChamberOrch play music Album i. Six Grand Eludes TwoBelling: PianosSonatas Claude FarBol· TimeiAnge i 381319 iVirginClasscai383·182 ofDebussy. Faure, etc. After Paganini; plus much ling and EmanuelAx Handal: Highlights RBchmanlnofl:Piano iVrginCasscsi 376004 more (Angel) 352·575 (CBSE/lasler) 388546 From..The Messiah.. Co"cerlo No 3: Rhapsody Puccini: MadamaButter- Holst:The Planets. A. Llszt:Piano Sonata: A·Davis. Toronlo Sym O"Feltsman:Theme Mehta.01 Paganini, Israel fly.Scolto. Domingo. etc: Davis,Toronto Sym. 3 Peliarca Sonnets: more. 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(CBSMas(ei) 386607 Dances.Opp. 468 72. iMuscmasleis)377465 Easier Over: Mehta.Israel Nadja Salerno·Sonnen· PhilipGlass: Solo Piano Maalel.Beriio Philharm Phil.(CBS Masler) 371021 ~~Bh~DBWaart.Minnesota iCBSi 386581 (Angei) 379·248 PianoSchumsnn, Concerlas.Grleg: Murray Claude Belling: Bolling.s (A"Selj 400·135 Dinner Classics--The Perahia: Sir CalinDavis Greatest Hits Brahms: Piano Cancerlo VienneseAlbum Portrait ol Wynton and Bavarian Radio Orch. (CBS) 369·751 No.l Peter Serkin; ICESMaster) 386·508 MB'Balls(CBS Masier) Brahms: 3 Sonatas For Robert Shaw. Atlanta Molert:Symphony No.41 373·555 (CESMaster i 377440 Violin 8 Piano. Anne· Sym.(ProArlei 363127 (Jupiter):No.l.K136.i)iyertimento Mull. Beriin Me"delesohn:Symphony AnthonyBeelhaven:Newmsn-- Four Great SophieMuller. Alexis Weis· Beethoven: Complete No.4 (Ilalian):Overture Sonalas(Newporl Classlci Se"berg(Angei)369·157 SonatasFor Piano 8 Cella. Phil.(An~el) 386·465 8 IncidentalMusic to 376046 Molart:fine Kleine Yo·YoMa. 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ssch: Goidberg Brahms:Symphony No 1 Tchaikovsky:Suites From RichardStrauss: fin ShowBoat--Broadway VariationsGlenn Gould Tennstedl,London Phil The Ballets:Swan Lake g Heldenieben:more, Shaw Album McGlinn. II i'ill (CBSMasler) 343.251 (Angel) 332·668 Sleeping Beauty Mull. Thomas. LondonSym cond iangel) 402·586 1LI\IY Tchai~ovsky:1812 Over: Bllet: Carmen and PhiladelphiaOrch iCSS Master) 376780 Puccini's Greatest Hits. IIIIX MarcheSlave: etc. Orawa. CArlesienneSuites 1 8 2 (A"S'1) 334650 JohnAdams: Fearful TeKanawa. Pavarolti. C BerlinPhii(Angel) 343·244 O2awa.Orch Nat~lDe Mahler:Symphony No 4 Symmelries:The Wound Marton.Carieras. Tucker Chopin: FourBallades; France(Angei) 331595 KathleenBattle. Soprano: D'esser Orch St Luke's (CBSMaster) 405811 SonataNo. 2 Andrei Prakofiev:Peter 8 The Lo'inMaazel. 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------·------~------~ POLITICS gr GOVERNMERTT irhe Next Crusade? "ForA NewEquality" by MickeyKaus, in TlzeNe~c, RepLlblic (May 7, 1990), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

More and more Democrats these days ism, protectionism, "flexible" production, seem to be resuming an old war cry: Soak profit-sharing. One of the major causes of the rich! Soak the rich! increasing inequality, he says, is the grow- Kaus, an editor of the New Reptlblic, ing link between pay, on the one hand, says that the chant sends shivers down his and job skillsand knowledge:The workers spine. Not because he is a Republican,not in yesterday'sfactory were all paid roughly (presumably)because he is rich, but be- the same wage, because it didn't matter cause a revival of the politics of redistribu- much if one could, for example, tighten a tion, which he calls Money Liberalism, bolt better than another. In the computer "would condemn the Democrats to a futile age, however, differences matter, and they and often incoherent struggle against the are reflected in wages. basic forces of our economy." Instead of engaging in futile efforts to There is no doubt, he says, that income eliminate inequality, Kaus argues, Demo- inequality is rising. One study shows that crats should "try to restrict the sphere in between 1973 and 1987, the share of na- which money matters, to prevent the in- tional income claimed by Americans in come inequality inevitably generated by the bottom fifth of the population dropped capitalism from translating into invidious from 5.6 percent to 4.3 percent; the share social distinctions." Civic Liberalism, as he claimed by those in the top "quintile" rose calls it, tries to replace the principle of the from 41.4 to 43.9 percent. But it is a delu- marketplace (i.e., rich beats poor) with the sion, Kaus maintains, to think that these principle of equal citizenship. changes were caused by the Reagan tax How is that to be done? By aiding or ex- cuts of the 1980s, or that they can be re- panding components of the public sphere versed by heavier levies on the rich. The in order to "induce rich and poor actually richest 10 percent of American families to rub shoulders as equals": public enjoyed a $16,000increase in after-taxin- schools,mandatory national service,parks come between 1980 and 1988, but only and playgrounds, communal day-care cen- about $1,200 came from tax cuts, ters, national health insurance, and the Moreover, Kaus says, Democrats can no like. The revival of the public sphere, he longer even count on the political logic of says, cannot be complete until the under- Money Liberalism--that the poorest 51 class problem is solved. And because ad- percent of the population will vote against herence to the work ethic is the sine qtla the richest 49 percent. non of equal citizenship, he favors manda- The forces that have increased eco- tory jobs for welfare recipients. nomic inequality, he continues, have also The great liberal task of the 1990s, Kaus undercut a variety of Democratic nos- believes, is "not to equalize money, but to trums: job training programs, trade union- put money in its place."

wa SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

The Odd Origilzs "The First Straw: A Study of the Origins of Election Polls" by Tom W. Smith, in P2tblic Opinio,2 Qrtuvreu!v (Spring 1990), Univ. of Polling of Chicago Press, 5801 S. Ellis, Chicago, I11. 60637. The origins of American political opinion to the Electoral College by popular vote; polls are generally traced to 1936, when by 1824, 18 of 24 did so.) Finally, the old Alf Landon faced Franklin Roosevelt in "undemocratic" system of nominating one of the most lopsided "contests" in candidates for the White House by con- American history. Three pollsters (George gressional caucus had fallen into disre- Gallup, Elmo Roper, and Archibald pute. Yet no alternative had emerged. Crossley) rose to the not-very-difficult task Like their late 20th-century counter- of predicting the winner. In fact, says parts, the candidates of the 1820s began Smith, a University of Chicago polling spe- campaigning for the next election almost cialist, the real origins of the survey go as soon as the last one was over. By 1824, back to the election of 1824, one of the the pack included such notables as Gen- closest in American history. eral Andrew Jackson, Speaker of the It was a time of great turmoil in Ameri- House Henry Clay, Secretary of State John can politics. The demise of the Federalist Quincy Adams, Secretary of War John C. Party as a national force by 1820 had Calhoun, and Secretary of the Treasury caused the collapse of the first American William Harris Crawford. "party system." The reigning Democratic- Under such chaotic conditions, old Republican Party's "Virginia Dynasty" methods of gauging political sentiment-- (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and chiefly, consulting political "insiders"--no James Monroe) was about to come to an longer seemed adequate. Straw polls end; Monroe would not run for a third emerged as the best substitute.Apparently, term. In 1824,therefore, the nation faced Smith says, they grew out of the hybrid its first seriously contested election to be rally-conventions that political activists decided largely by popular vote. (In 1800, launched as substitutes for the old nomi- only five of 16 states chose their delegates nating caucuses. Before long, any public

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"A Foot Race" was the title of this 1824 cartoon. Each figure in the crowd has a symbolic meaning: The man on the Ieft with the stovepipe hat, for example, stands for the West.

WQ SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

gathering became fair game for a poll. In rather accurately foretold local results. Pennsylvania, one political aficionado kept The ultimate irony is that popular opin- a record of how many toasts were made to ion finally counted for little in 1824. Jack- each candidate at a Fourth of July celebra- son, the hero of New Orleans, won a plu- tion. Newspapers began reporting such re- rality of the popular vote but fell short of a suits. By early October of 1824, the Star majority in the Electoral College. The elec- and North Caro2ina Gazette had collected tion was decided by the House of Repre- poll results from 155 different meetings. sentatives, which chose John Quincy Ad- Surprisingly, Smith says, the straw polls ams to be the sixth U.S. president.

Budget Magic? "Line-Item Veto: Where Is Thy Sting?" by John R. Carter and David Schap, in Journal of Economic Perspectives (Spring 1990), 1313 21st Ave. So., Ste. 809, Nashville, Tenn. 37212. In politics, old panaceas don't die or fade the average was two item-vetoes annually. away. They just keep hanging on. Perhaps in exasperation, Carter and Such is the case of the line-item veto. Schap take the hunt for the elusive line- First employed by the Confederacy, the item-veto effect.further afield. If it is worth presidential line-item veto has been pro- anything, they speculate, the veto should posed in more than 150 bills introduced in enhance the authority of governors. And Congress since 1876. President George that would be reflected in other ways, such Bush, like his predecessor, frequently pro- as better chances of reelection or eleva- claims it the nation's fiscal elixir. tion to the U.S. Senate. But statistical tests The remarkable thing, as Carter and of these and four other indicators reveal Schap, both economists at College of the no impact. Holy Cross, peevishly note, is that gover- Theoretically, the authors say, the line- nors in 33 states already possess the line- item veto may keep state expenditures item veto, and although scholars have down by forcing legislators to tailor pro- sliced and diced the data from these states posals to avoid rejection. However, there every which way, no signs of budget magic is very little evidence that this happens. have been detected. As long ago as 1950, The line-item veto, they write, "need not Frank W Prescott reported that governors cause, and apparently has not caused, the armed with line-item veto power rarely kind of sweeping changes either feared or even used it, and during the early 1980s, favored by so many policy analysts."

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE

Soviet GauZZism? "Inventingthe SovietNational Interest" by StephenSestano- vich, in The National Interest (Summer 1990), 1112 16th St. N.W, Washington, D.C. 20036. Meeting with his staff in July 1988, Soviet What sounds mundane to Western ears Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze an- was revolutionary in Moscow, says Sestan- nounced a revolutionary change in policy, ovich, of the Center for Strategic and In- Mikhail Gorbachev had just revealed his ternational Studies. For decades, Soviet plan to create a new legislature and thus to leaders had used the "national interest" as begin the redistribution of power within a term of contempt; Soviet foreign policy the Soviet Union. Now, Shevardnadze said, was guided by the need to advance the in- Soviet foreign policy would be reoriented ternational class struggle. as well. Henceforth, it would be guided by After he came to power in 1985, a new concept, the "national interest." Gorbachev spoke of a new foreign policy

wa SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

based on "common human values." But Aleksandr Yakovlevtold Deu Spiegel last no thorough reassessment of policy was year: "It is beyond my comprehension required. Sestanovich writes: "The lan- why one power should want to be more guage of'interest,' by contrast, provided a important than another." framework in which unilateral Soviet ac- A second result of the debate over the tions--even unilateral concessions-- national interest is a new pluralism in poli- might make sense." Such concessions cymaking. As disenchantment with the came quickly,beginning with Gorbachev's past deepens, the militaryis losingits dom- December 1988 announcement of troop inant role. cutbacks in Europe. Finally,the Soviets are more willing to That is only one sign of the astonishing defer to international opinion. As Shevard- "minimalism" that Sestanovich sees nadze said in 1988: "We cannot simply sweeping Soviet foreign-policy thinking. pretend that the norms and ideas of Thus, Andrei Kozyrev, a top Foreign Minis- ... civilized conduct in the world commu- try offcial, wrote recently: "Our country nity do not concern us. If you want to be has no interests justifying the use of mili- accepted in it, you have to observe them." tary resources outside the borders of the But Moscow is not going to withdraw socialist community." Politburo member into an isolationist shell. The question, Sestanovich says, is how will it define the national interest to make "a better fit with Still Crazy After AZI the needsof a post-imperialmedium These Years power." The challenge,he says, is parallel to the one France confronted after World Noted in National Review (June 11, War II, and perhaps the answer will be 1990): similar to the one provided by Charles de Gaulle. What would Soviet Gaullism UNESCO... has named Ho Chi Minh mean? Maintenance of a limited nuclear Man of the Centtlry, "the symbo2 of the commonstrt~ggles ofpeople for peace, na- deterrent;establishment of "specialrela- tional independence,democracy, and so- tionships" with other European nations cia2 progress." (especially Germany); and a "residual role" in the Third World.

The German "One-and-a-hal~Cheers for German Unification" byJosef Joffe. Shadow ln00CZf~nlnenln~y(June1990), 165 E. 56rh St., New York, N.Y.

Just as every silver lining has its dark land iiber alles when the Berlin Wall was cloud, so the end of the Cold War has its breached last November 9, he notes, were ominous aspect: the reunification of Ger- actually singing Einigkeit uMd Recht und many. One German-Jewish journalist wor- Freiheit (Unity, Justice, Freedom). ried recently that the new Germany "may Joffe'slarger point is that in Germany,as become a strange and eerie place--per- in the rest of the industrializedworld, old- haps even the source of a new wave of fashioned nationalism, the "murderous en- darknessspreading over the earth." ergy" that drove European history be- Joffe, the foreign editor of the Siid- tween 1789 and 1945, isn't what it used to deutscheZeittlng newspaper in Munich,of- be." No longer do these nations go to war ferspartial reassurance. "Anybody reason- on the strengthof a cry like "Gottstrafe ing forward from past disaster will be hard England" (MayGod Punish England).That put to make the indictment stick," he energy has been extinguished by the mem- writes. The West German legislators who ory of two world wars that left 70 million were reported to have burst into Detltsch- dead and by the knowledge that national wa SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

hubris in the nuclear age can be tantamount to na-d~S 2"~-":~ItatrZ~Y~~-sr tional suicide. ~-~as During the 19th and early 20thcei~turies, Joffe contin- Ea~t ues, nationalism took an es- I~,bteJ~'"~ ~erP~Bd%` pecially violent course in ~I~~F~Li·rma~m'tbn" Germany, because eco- ~n Thed'j~e,44WhO;5'f~msr ~gg BC~ nomic.modernizationwas trueMBljYIS~jl~L~L3~Vem~'~mp~e ~F~o~L~uH~d not accompaniedby de- mocratization. A natural ,de/lerde6c~tml4~'~8,~.'~~/2 ar'~nkm~·A-~'SUe ~J`·: substitute for democracy Mr In ~edrL~esht~e~ was nationalism, "that won- i~m nersra/ln,o~~i/erd: waEl ~o~n~n~par~-5f~n, a ma- ~v·a~-L~s~Ger?m~YI~~ a Mars~al~vl .F~-o~ar ~yld drous'politicalgood' which ~c·.me~7,,aM'acgr~ls/fions~csrvedanMBA f~M"NA~2 is never scarce and which ~imj" ~t,~s. MrGermanyLe i~a~e~~u~sa bestowspsychic equality on ~;S~8ntc~csj,~~~,brjder~e 42! prom~en~a~:jd~Srw~l;/d~ibmi~~tionmlY~'~'~- Ilrat~na/~al~~w~o rich and poor, on masters and servants alike." Fur- A U·S. cartoonist found the reunification of Gemtany a laughing thermore, historical cir- maffer.Few Europeans take the prospective marriage so lightly. cumstances encouraged ex- treme nationalism. The Second Reich West Germany. American dominance (1871-1919) was a latecomer to the Great within the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- Powers and often excluded; the Third tion provided "a power greater than all of Reich (1933-45) was the product of na- [the WesternEuropean powers] that could tional humiliation and economic disaster. ensure each against the perils of coopera- None of these historical parallels apply, tion." All of this is now dissolving, and Eu- Joffe maintains. And West Germany today ropean rivalries are bound to revive.Joffe is in some ways more democratic than suggeststhat competitionwill be peaceful: France and Britain, which are, among "The battle lines are drawn in the balance- other things, far more centralized than the of-payments ledgers, and the accounts are Federal Republic. settled with ECU's (the European Commu- But Joffe's optimism is qualified. One of nity internal currency), not with blood and the historical conditions that no longer ap- iron." Still, he gives only "even odds, no plies to Germany, after all, is the stable more" that Germany will not become "a postwar order that shaped today's benign strange and eerie place."

"War and Culture, a Case Study: The Enlightenment and the The Dirty Wars of Conduct of the British Army in America, 1755-1871" by Arm- The Enlighteliment strong Starkey, in War and Society (May 1990). Univ. of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, Campbell, ACT 2600. Australia. "Gentlemen of the French Guards, fire century interlude of "civilized" warfare first!" This famous invitation was issued by sandwiched between the bitter religious CaptainLord CharlesHay as Britishtroops wars of the 16th and 17th centuries and advanced on the French at the battle of the devastating nationalist crusades that Fontenoy in 1745.Not to be outdone, the began with Napoleon. These images of French declined. "One wonders," remarks genteel Enlightenment warfare, Starkey Starkey, a historian at Adelphi University, contends, are vastly exaggerated. Even "how the killing began." Hay's invitationat Fontenoywas in all like- Such instances of battlefield gallantry lihood only a ploy: The army that received have helped create a picture of an 18th- fire first then faced an enemy whose weap-

wa SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

ons were unloaded. Starkey writes. During the American Revolution, con- The conduct of European armies was trary to popular myth, Americans seldom much worse elsewhere. The French re- engaged in guerrilla warfare; Congress spondedto the mid-18thcentury war for even adopted the British Articles of War. Corsican independence with a scorched The combatants(including the French) earth policy.In 1745,the Britishbrutally signed agreements on rules of conduct. suppressed the Scottish Highland rebels, But violations were frequent. In 1778, a whom they considered savages. Britishofficer went so far as to suggestthat Restraint, when it was exercised, owed "Philadelphiashould be burned and New little to the Ei~lightenment,Starkey says. Jersey and New England laid waste"; the Many of the 3,000-4,000 British officers Britishdid plundertowns along the coasts who served in the colonieswere young of Connecticutand Virginiato deprive the aristocrats who had purchased their com- Americansof supplies.Banastre Tarleton's missions.They had no formalmilitary edu- infamous British Legion slaughtered cation;at best, their schoolingin Enlight- [more than 100] Americans who tried to enment principles of warfare might be surrender at Waxhaw, North Carolina. readings from Stephen Payne Adye. And "Major General Charles Grey's savage even if these young officers read Adye, nighttime surprise attacks against Ameri- Starkey adds, they found appeals not to can forces demonstrated that the British reason and rationality but to ancient no- army could be resourceful and ruthless," tions of honor and chivalry.

ECONOMICS, LABOR gr BUSINESS

Globaloney? "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" by Michael E. Porter, in Harvard BtlsiMess Review (March-April 1990), Boston. Mass. 02163.

"In a world of increasinglyglobal compe- parative advantage developed two centu- tition, nations have become more, not less ries ago by classical economists Adam important." Smith and David Ricardo. This theory That's right, insists Porter, a professor at holds that the cost and distribution of the the Harvard BusinessSchool, more impor- factors of production--such as labor, land, tant. Prevailing wisdom in corporate natural resources, and capital--are the America tends toward the opposite con- key determinants of international trade. elusion:hioving factories to countrieswith Eachkind of productis exportedfrom the the lowest wages and interest rates, as well nations that are best endowed with the fac- as strategic mergers and alliances in pur- tors needed to produce it. Thus, steel suit of lower costs, are much in vogue. might come from the nations with the best Meanwhile, Washington is foolishly trying sources of coal and iron. to enhanceU.S. "competitiveness" abroad Porter believes that this theory no by easingcompetition at home (through longerapplies: "In the sophisticatedindus- such policiesas the relaxationof antitrust tries that form the backboneof any ad- laws), trying to manage exchangerates, vancedeconomy, a nationdoes not inherit and tinkeringwith trade policy. but insteadcreates the mostimportant fac- Ultimately,Porter maintains, these mis- tors of production--such as skilledhuman taken efforts spring from an outdated view resources or a scientific base." He calls of how the worldeconomy works. That thisthe theoryof competitiveadvantage. conception is based on the theory of com- In Porter's view, the nation is a "home wa SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

Disorganizing Labor A Stlwe)t of Recent Articles

The perplexing; decline of American orga- dinates; eight percent of the managers who nized labor continues unabated. From a let an organizing drive begin were fired by peak of 34.7 percent of the nonfarm their superiors, and 10 percent of the man- workforce in 1954, union membership agers who let the union win an election plummeted to 27.4 percent in 1970 and to were fired. 12.9 percent in 1988. Scholars now take se Members of the second school say that all riously the possibility that American labor of this is essentially irrelevant. Broadly cate- unions could ultimately go the way of the gorized as conservatives, these scholars in- Model T sist that structural changes in the economy Predictably, research into the causes of have undermined the unions. Of the record, this astonishing decline has tended to be- they might even suggest that organized labor come polarized along political lines. Two in the postindustrial world is archaic. distinct theories have emerged. Why has the decline of American unions One school of thought, led by Harvard been so severe? "Structural changes in labor economist Richard B. Freeman, holds that markets began sooner, proceeded more rap- the experience of American labor is unique: idly, and their scope was more extensive in All of the Western industrialized nations the U.S. than in Canada and Western Eu- have suffered severe economic dislocations, rope," Rutgers economist Leo Troy argues such as large job losses in the heavily union- in Jotlmal of Labor Research (Spring 1990). ized manufacturing sector, but only Ameri- By the mid-1950s, half of all jobs in the can unions have declined. In a series of United States were in the service sector, but books, monographs, and essays, and most as late as 1985, 53 percent of West Germa- recently in an article in Indtlstrial and Labor ny's workers and 50 percent of Italy's were Relnliolzs Revietv (April 1990), co-authored still employed in the heavily unionized with the University of Minnesota's Morris M. goods-producing sector. Kleiner, Freeman has argued that the plight Moreover, Troy contends, the apparent of American unions is largely the result of good health of unions in Canada and West- vastly increased employer opposition to ern Europe is partly a mirage. Eliminatethe union organizing drives--and, implicitly, of union members from their much larger, faulty government policies that abet it. highly unionized public sectors, and the Evidence of stiff, even bitter, corporate re- same fundamental economic forces can be sistance to unions, a marked contrast to the seen at work undercutting unions. Between general labor-management truce of the 1975and 1985,union membershipdropped 1950s and '60s, is plentiful. Nearly half the from 46 percent of the "market sector" in firms in one business group in 1983 de- Italy to 39 percent; from 30 percent in West dared that being nonunion was their major Germany to 28 percent; from 26 percent in labor-relations goal; 41 percent of those fac- Canada to 21 percent. In the United States ing union organizingdrives in a 1986survey during those years, membership dropped said they had hired union-bustingconsul- from 26 percent to 15 percent. Asthe United tants; official complaints of unfair labor States goes, Troy says, so will its Atlantic practices in union elections before the Na- partners. tional Labor Relations Board have soared; in If that is true, museum status cannot be about one-third of the firms that were union- far away. As Gary N. Chaison and Dileep G. ized during the early 1980s, management re- Dhavale, both of Clark University, write in fused to sign a collective contract, "effec- Indtlstrinl and Labor Relations Revie~dl(April tively reversing the election results." 1990), in part because corporate resistance Freeman and Kleiner find that firms with has been so strong: (unions are defeated in the lowest wages and worst working condi- more than half of all organizing drives), la- tions are most likelyto dig in againsta union bor has reduced its organizingefforts by half organizing drive. The most effective anti- since the late 1970s. That and other negative union tactic, they say, is hard-nosed opposi trends suggest that organized labor's slide tion by foremen and mid-level supervisors, will not end until it claims only two percent Top executives keep the heat on their subor- of American workers as members.

WQ SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

base" where "the essential competitive ad- seems to provide a natural rationale for vantages of the enterprise are created and massive government intervention in the sustained. It is where a company's strategy economy, but he favors a restrained, is set, where the core product and process though not laissez-faire, role for govern- technology is created and maintained, and ment. He suggests that Washington could where the most productive jobs and most usefully help launch industrial research advanced skills are located." He believes and otherwise create specialized resources that there are four determinants of com- that yield competitive advantages, but petitiveness, which he calls the "diamond overall he wants government to encourage of national advantage": factor conditions; U.S. business to compete more at home so domestic demand for the company's prod- that it can become more competitive over- uct; the presence of supporting industries; seas. Governments, he writes, "cannot cre- and "firm strategy, structure, and rivalry." ate competitive industries; only companies Porter's emphasis on national qualities can do that."

Does Humane "Worker Interdependence and Output: The Hawthorne Studies Reevaluated" by Stephen R. G. Jones, in American Sociological Management Matter? Review (~pril1990), 1722 N st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20036. Almost any undergraduate who has taken That is just one of the more curious find- an introductory social science course dur- ings that came out of the landmark study ing the last 50 years has heard of the fam- of worker productivity in Western Elec- ous Hawthorne Effect: The very knowl- tric's Hawthorne telephone equipment edge that researchers are studying them manufacturing plant in Chicago during the causes people to change the way they be- late 1920s and early '30s. The Hawthorne have. researchers began with the simple notion that varying the intensity of the lighting in the Haw- thorne plant might alter the workers' productivity. By the 1930s. however, they were convinced that they had made a revolutionary discovery: The quality of human relationships- among workers, and be- tween workers and their su- pervisors-is the most im- portant factor influencing performance on the job. As Jones, an economist at Canada's McMaster Univer- sity, observes, that was no small matter. The Haw- thorne results "changed many ways of thinking about the labor process" in and out of the academic world; it also provided the The Hawthorne plant's relay assembly test room during the late foundation for new 1920s. For five years, measuring, devices in the chutes tracked the subspecialties in the devel- women's output, while researchers analyzed their relationships. oping "science" of manage-

SUMMER 1990 16 PERIODICALS

To the Victors Goes the Sleep Darkness reigns in the executive suites of each day than does his American counter- major Japanese corporations after 6 P.M., part. Moreover, the American CEO spends al- while subordinates' lights burn late into the most as much of his day in meetings as does night. Just the opposite is true in US. cor- the CEO in Japan-the country where so porations, three Japanese researchers were many decisions are made through astonished to discover. Their findings are nemawashi, the time-consuming process of summarized by Wallace H. Oftutt, Jr., in consensus-building. Perhaps most surprising, Across the Board (April 1990). U.S. and Japanese CEOs spend about the same amount of time entertaining guests af- Do Japanese CEOs work harder than Ameri- ter work. . . . In both Japan and the United can CEOs? You might expect them to, based States, executives spend an average of 6.3 on the enormous success of Japanese cor- hours per day in meetings.. . . The Japanese porations and the many stories we hear CEOs found that [meetings with subordi- about how hard everyone in Japan works. nates] produced information most useful for But. . . the typical Japanese CEO, in spite of work-scheduling and new product develop- considerably longer commuting time, sleeps ment, while Americans gained knowledge on average one hour and 15 minutes longer that was most useful for personnel manage- and has nearly an hour more private time ment and evaluation. ment: human relations, organizational was a mirage. development, and organizational design. Jones's essay is the latest installment in a The subject seemed closed until 1978, running battle that has been going on when Richard Franke and James Kaul since 1978. Jones argues that his own took another look at the Hawthorne data. complex statistical manipulations of the They argued that the original researchers, data from the Hawthorne plant's relay as- lacking sophisticated statistical tech- sembly test room between 1927 and 1932, niques, had blundered: When they could where five women worked, show that "in- not find reasons for changes in worker terdependence" was crucial after all. "The output in their reams of data, they had sim- human relations approach to industrial so- ply attributed changes to "soft" human-re- ciology," he maintains, "is not contro- lations factors. In fact, Franke and Kaul verted by the original Hawthorne data said, a new analysis of the numbers from which it began." showed that virtually all of the changes in Still, embarrassing questions remain. output could be explained by external fat= Why must the original findings be tors, such as workers' fear of losing their "proved half a century after they were in- jobs as the Depression deepened after corporated into the foundation of social 1929, and by plain old-fashioned discipline science? Why did social scientists accept imposed by management. They even sug- for so long conclusions that were actually gested that the famed Hawthorne Effect based on the absence of evidence?

SOCIETY

"The Aging of America: Impact on Health Care ~osts"by ~d- The Old-Age Crisis ward L. Schneider and Jack M. Guralnik, in Journal of the American Medical Association (May 2, 1990), 535 N. Dearborn St., Chicago, 111. 60610. Somewhere in America on January 1, his or her 85th birthday. Quite possibly in 203 1, the first baby boomer will celebrate a nursing home.

WQ SUMMER 1990 Those two facts ought to sound an alarm the future, since Washington picks up only in a nation already bearing monumental part of the tab for the care of the elderly. health-care costs, write Schneider and For example, it pays only 40 percent of the Guralnik, researchers at the University of cost of nursing-home care. In 1986, 1.8 Southern California and the National Insti- million people over age 65 were living in tute on Aging, respectively. These costs nursing homes, at a total cost of $31 bil- grew nearly twice as fast as inflation be- lion. (Those over 85 accounted for 45 per- tween 1976 and 1987, reaching $500 bil- cent of the nursing-home patients but lion, or l l percent of the gross national more than half the costs.) By 2040, the product. number of elderly nursing-home patients Much of the increase is the result of the could grow to between 3.6 and 5.9 million, "aging of the aged": The over-85 age group more than half of them over 85. The bill: is already the fastest-growing segment of $84 to $189 billion. the population. The U.S. Census Bureau's Many remedies have been proposed for highest (but most credible) estimate is that the rising costs. Some specialists favor the over-85 group will grow from 3 million cost-containment measures; others, such today to 8.6 million by the year 2020 and as former Governor Richard Lamm of Col- to 17.8 million by 2040. By then, there will orado, have even proposed limiting medi- be more than a million Americans aged cal care to the relief of suffering after an 100 or older. individual has lived out a "natural" life Simple demographic projections show span of perhaps 80 years. But Schneider with stark clarity what may be in store for and Guralnik argue that medical research, the United States. In 1985, for example, which has done so much to lengthen lives, the budget for Medicare (federal health in- can now be redirected to improve their surance for the aged) was $72 billion. But quality. Today, for every dollar spent on Medicare outlays increase "substantially" the care of victims of Alzheimer's disease, with age, from $2,017 annually for those less than a penny is spent on research into aged 65 to 74 to $3,215 for those aged 85 its causes. By attacking Alzheimer's and and above. By 2040, therefore, Medicare other debilitating maladies of the elderly, could rise to between $147 and $2 12 bil- such as arthritis and Parkinson's disease, lion, depending on the demographic as- we could reduce future health-care costs sumptions used. and make many lives already sure to be That provides only a partial snapshot of longer happier as well.

"Head Start Enters Adulthood" by Constance Hold, in Science The Charmed Life (March 23, 1990), 1333 H St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. Of Head Start

It may be one of the great success stories lives of poor children could raise their IQs of modem American politics: A liberal so- and "inoculate" them against the depreda- cial program launched 25 years ago as part tions of their environment. But that hope of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great began to crumble as early as 1969, when a Society gains such popularity that a con- study showed that children's preschool servative Republican, President George gains evaporated by the time they reached Bush, asks Congress to increase its $1.4 the third or fourth grade-a finding since billion budget by 28 percent. And to top it confirmed by other studies. all off, writes Hold, a Science reporter, Today, Head Start's advocates maintain there is hardly a shred of proof that Head that the program serves as a bridge to the Start does what most people think it does. world of the school, giving poor children a The original idea behind~eadStart was valuable introduction to middle-class cul- that a brief intervention very early in the ture: "Many have never seen a book, give

WQ SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

one-word answers to questions, and have intervention itself is vital. In the future, she limited vocabularies." Other advocates says, the top priority will be to figure out claim that Head Start children gain moti- what causes the "fadeout" that erases the vation and self-esteem that carries through gains of Head Start graduates. their school years. The first claim is In the meantime, however, there are backed by most social-science researchers, plenty of reasons why unlikely people like Hold reports; evidence for the second George Bush support Head Start. It pro- comes chiefly from a dubious 1984 study. vides health care for poor children; it also Much of the confusion over Head Start's puts some of their parents to work and effects stems from bad research; "early-in- gets them involved in their children's edu- tervention" studies are relatively new and cation. And more than most federal social are highly politicized. Hold says that re- programs, Head Start is run by poor peo- searchers are finally beginning to over- ple themselves. These are no small virtues; come some of these handicaps. Some are they are also a far cry from the utopian even beginning to wonder whether early hopes of the Great Society.

"Prosperous Blacks in the South, 1790-1880" by Loren Two Black Elites Schweninger, in The American Historical Review (Feb. 1990), 400 A St. S.E.,Washington, D.C.20003.

Hard as it may be to believe, the South be- prosperous blacks held themselves aloof fore the Civil War was home to more than from their less fortunate counterparts, a few well-to-do free blacks. In fact, writes Schweninger adds, forming "small, tightly Schweninger, a historian at the University knit social and cultural clans, linking their of North Carolina, Greensboro, the ante- families through intermarriage." bellum South gave rise to two fairly dis- The story was much different in Vir- tinct black elites. ginia, Kentucky, and the other states of the To compound the irony, the wealthiest Upper South, where four out five of the blacks lived in the Deep South. There, es- South's free blacks lived. Few were plant- pecially in southern Louisiana, where ers. Only one family in 14 owned slaves. French and Spanish customs prevailed, a Fewer black families prospered: One out number of white men left substantial in- of 73 families had accumulated real estate heritances to the black women who had worth $2,000 or more by 1860 compared been their sexual partners or to their mu- to one out of 10 in the Deep South. latto children, creating several hundred Women, who constituted more than a landowning black families by the early third of the black aristocracy in the Deep 19th century. South, were a much smaller part of the In many respects, these prosperous Upper South elite. Finally, free blacks in blacks were not very different from their the Upper South were neither clannish nor white neighbors. One out of four free acceptable to whites, who scorned them as black families owned slaves, Schweninger "indolent" and "depraved." reports, and the freedmen were not Apparently, these qualities served them known as especially humane masters. well, because during the decade before the Whites did not feel threatened by the black Civil War the wealth of well-to-do blacks in elite. In 1822, Edwin C. Holland, a leading the Upper South began to increase faster South Carolina editor, wrote: "So far as we than that of their Deep South counterparts. are acquainted with their temper and dis- Their numbers tripled, from 213 to 619, position of their feelings [they] abhor the their average real-estate holdings grew to idea of association with blacks in any en- $4,099, and a few truly wealthy free blacks terprise that may have for its object the emerged in the cities, such as Baltimore revolution of their condition." Indeed, caterer Henry Jakes, North Carolina mer-

WQ SUMMER 1990 PERIODICALS

chant-farmer Hardy Bell, and St. Louis to- former slaves, and viewing the formerly bacconist William Deaderick. dominant class with suspicion and skepti- The Civil War ruined many of the Deep cism," Schweninger writes, "they could South's prosperous blacks, just as it did more easily build on their past experiences many white plantation owners. The Upper during the postwar era to advance not only South's black elite prospered. "More self- their own cause but the cause of freedmen confident, able to mix more easily with as well."

PRESS & TELEVISION

The Atom Bomb "The Office of Censorship's Attempt to Control Press Coverage of the Atomic Bomb During World War 11" by Patrick S. And the Press Washbum, in Journalism Monographs (~pril1990), 1621 COL . lege St., Univ. of S.C., Columbia, S.C. 29208-0251. A month after the first atomic bomb fell on tarily) to avoid all mention even of the Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Gen. H. H. element uranium. Almost immediately. Arnold of the Army Air Force wrote a problems appeared. On Halloween D& glowing letter to the head of the U.S. Office for example, the Washington Post ran a of Censorship thanking him for suppress- lighthearted feature story which began: "A ing "any mention" of the new weapon in young fellow who has been studying much the press until it was used. Arnold wrote of his life on the matter of blowing up na- that it "shall go down in history as the best- tions with an atom would like to get a kept secret of any war." wage increase from the War Labor What is interesting, notes Washburn, a Board." In December, the Cleveland Press professor of journalism at Ohio University, published a vague story about the "Forbid- is not the fact that Arnold was wrong but den City" at Los Alamos, New Mexico. why he was wrong. Despite the patriotic In some cases, Washburn says, editors cooperation of newspaper, magazine, and simply were not aware of the guidelines; in radio editors, there were dozens of refer- others, they did not think that the rules ap- ences to atomic energy and weaponry in plied to their story. Other leaks slipped the press during World War 11. through because of carelessness, often the Until 1943, even the Office of Censor-- result of wartime labor shortages. On

ship was kept in the dark about atomic re- more than one occasion., public officials search. In June, it asked editors (volun- themselves were responsible for uninten- SUPERMAN

This 1945 "Superman" comic strip was the most bizarre breach of wartime secrecy. Censors complained, but it took seven more strips to extricate Superman from the atomic theme.

WQ SUMMER 1990 20 PERIODICALS

tional "busts" of the secrecy code. During cludes, the story of the atom bomb re- a Pentagon press briefing in 1944, Brig. mained "reasonably quiet." He believes Gen. Frederick H. Smith, Jr., told report- that much of the credit belongs to Byron ers that the Germans were probably work- Price, the ex-newsman who directed the ing on an "atomic explosive," and re- Office of Censorshin. Price resisted the marked that he was "not long-haired army's call to impose a total news black- enough to know exactly where we stand in out on atomic (and other) news, opting in- working on atomic explosive force, but I stead for a voluntary approach. Total cen- believe there are many technical difficul- sorship, he insisted, would have pushed ties to overcome." By the time Smith's the press into open revolt. The success of blunder was discovered, the story had al- his policies, Washburn concludes, proved ready gone out over the news wires. that government and a free press can co- Despite leaks like this, Washburn con- operate in times of grave national peril.

"The Media's One and Only Freedom Story" by Lawrence Missing the Weschler, in Columbia Journalism Review (March-April 1990), Freedom Beat 700 Journalism ~idg.,Columbia Univ., New York, N.Y. 10027, and "Eastern Europe: The Story the Media Missed" by Vladimir Tismaneanu in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March 1990), 6042 S. Kimbark, Chicago, 111. 60637.

"A remarkable upwelling of democratic money, explanations he dismisses. Latin spirit occurred simultaneously on two America deserves coverage not only on its continents. Can you name the second own merits, he argues, but because "the one?" sorts of economic dilemmas Eastern Euro- If you can't, writes Weschler, a staff re- peans seem likely to face in the decades porter for the New Yorker, it is because the ahead as they attempt the transition to a U.S. news media virtually ignored the re- wide-open free market. . . are precisely the emergence of democracy in Latin America sort that Latin Americans have been strug- last year. During a two-week period in De- gling with." cember 1989, Chile and Brazil held their And, apparently, editors and TV news first free presidential elections in 16 and producers deserve no congratulations for 25 years, respectively, but you might not their coverage of Eastern Europe, either. have known about these landmark events Tismaneanu, a resident scholar at Phila- if you relied on Dan Rather for your news. delphia's Foreign Policy Research Insti- He never mentioned the election in Brazil, tute, contends that they even got that story the world's sixth most populous nation, wrong. During the last four years, he ob- and he brieflv mentioned Chile once. in a serves. "Eastern Europe has been domi- reference that was dropped from the 'west nated by these two processes: the dramatic Coast edition of the CBS Evening News. loss of authority and credibility of the rul- Meanwhile, CBS managed to find time for ing elites. . . and the rise of a parallel civil three reports from Bulgaria. society in which patterns of conduct are This is only the most extreme case of ne- different from, and even opposed to, the glect that Weschler discovered in his sur- official sanctioned code of social success. vey of the nation's major news media. But The Western mass media reported the even the best performer, Time, did poorly: story incompletely. They observed and It had only 6.65 pages of Latin American even analyzed the rise of civil society with- coverage between November 6, 1989 and out naming it or identifying it as the single January 1, 1990, versus 98 pages devoted most important challenge to the commu- to Eastern Europe. nist status quo. It is one thing to report on The news executives Weschler inter- the trial of the Jazz Section in Prague and viewed pleaded lack of time, space, and another to present it as part of the authori- Periodicals continues on page 125 Throughout Latin America today, Indians find themselves embroiled in a wide range of national controversies, from radical politics in Peru to environmental disputes in Brazil. Yet, as New York Times journalist Alan Riding once noted, Latin American scholarship has offered little systematic study of these Indians-of their place in post-Columbian history or of their condition in the present. The Indians, for their part, have become increasingly assertive. Last year, on Ecuador's Colum- bus Day, representatives of nine Indian nations gathered in Quito to demand a native version of New-World history. Here, our contributors provide just that. Through their perspectives, the approaching Columbus quincentennial takes on a different meaning: the 500th year of Indian resistance.

WQ SUMMER 1990 22 by Peter F. Klarkn

he Real Life of Alejandro annually) puts it in the same unenviable Mayta (1986), Mario Vargas league with Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Llosa's fictional portrait of Since 1987, when President Alan Garcia a Peruvian revolutionary, Perez's two-year-old economic recovery captures in its opening program ended in a disastrous nationaliza- pages the desperate poverty tion of the banks and other financial institu- that has become commonplace throughout tions, the economy has tumbled into a vir- the South American nation. The narrator of tual free fall. National output has dropped the novel, a writer himself, is out for an by more than 25 percent (per capita), while early morning jog through his neighbor- inflation has reached the proportions of a hood when he comes across "stray kids, fiscal disaster-by one recent reckoning, stray men, and stray women along with the the annual rate exceeds 3,000 percent. The stray dogs, all painstakingly digging Peruvian worker lucky enough to hold a through the trash looking for something to job now earns less in real terms than he did eat, something to sell, something to wear. in 1965. The spectacle of misery was once limited The economic disaster has jeopardized exclusively to the slums, then it spread Peru's fragile 10-year-old democracy-the downtown, and now it is the common longest spell of uninterrupted civilian rule property of the whole city, even the exclu- since 1895-19 14. But it has also been, in an sive residential neighborhoods-Mira- ironic way, its salvation. According to the flores, Barranco, San Isidro. If you live in New York Times, the army was deterred Lima, you can get used to misery and from staging a coup against Garcia's para- grime, you can go crazy, or you can blow lyzed government in part because the gen- your brains out." erals were "intimidated by the prospect of Or, if you happen to be Vargas ~losa, taking over" the chaotic country. you can make a bid for your country's pres- A greater threat to Peru's future is the idency-an unsuccessful bid, as it turned growth of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining out. The disappointed novelist will doubt- Path) guerrilla movement. Since Sendero less find it small consolation that the win- launched its "People's War" a decade ago, ner of the June election, Alberto Fujimori, 18,000 Peruvians have died, most of them faces an all-but-impossible task. innocent civilians killed by the guerrillas or Even by Latin American standards, Peru the army. Last year alone the death toll was today is a deeply troubled country. For a 3,198. quarter of a century, its economy has stag- Ultraradical is the only word to describe nated as a result of chronic government Sendero's ideological pedigree. Its doc- mismanagement and corruption, and de- trines, as propounded by its founder, clining world demand for its top exports- Abimael Guzman Reynoso, are Maoist. Guz- copper, oil, industrial metals, and fishmeal. man, in the words of journalist Gustavo Its rapid population growth (2.5 percent Gorriti, "considers Mao's Cultural Revolu-

WQ SUMMER 1990 23 THE INDIAN QUESTION

tion to be humankind's most splendid mo- Sendero has established in the Andes' Up- ment, except that it wasn't radical enough." per Huallaga Valley, some 250 miles north- In its murderous fanaticism, Sendero bears east of Lima. From this subtropical region a frightening resemblance to Pol Pot's on the eastern slope of the Andes comes Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But in many half of the world's supply of coca paste, the ways, Sendero is a familiar Peruvian phe- thick greenish compound of mashed coca nomenon. Like other political groups leaves and kerosene that is the basis of co- throughout Peruvian history, it has cyni- caine. Sendero has entrenched itself in the cally exploited what might be called the In- valley by providing protection against the dian question. authorities-including US.-sponsored drug Sendero was born in the remote depart- eradication programs-to the roughly ment of Ayacucho in the southern ~ndean 70,000 peasant farmers who grow coca. highlands-an area LiimGos disdainfully The guerrillas collect perhaps $30 million refer to as "la mancha iizdia," or the "In- annually in "taxes" from the Colombian dian stain." Ayacucho is a place of incred- drug traffickers who control Peru's coca ible isolation and poverty. Its residents are trade. That frees Sendero of the need for mostly monolingual Quechua speakers; il- foreign support and makes it probably the literacy is 68.5 percent. The infant mortality wealthiest guerrilla movement in modem rate (12.8 percent) is the highest in the history-so wealthy that it reportedly is world, and life expectancy, at only 5 1 years, able to pay its 5,000-7,000 fighters a regu- among the lowest. Arriving at the local uni- lar salary. versity during the early 1960s, Guzman But Sendero probably would not exist gradually developed his unique brand of were it not for events that took place four agrarian communism and attracted a de- centuries ago (and Guzman's shrewd ability voted coterie of students, many of them to exploit them). The enormous gulf that members of the first generation of Indians the brutal 16th-century Spanish conquest to attend the university. These followers be- opened between victors and vanquished re- came the nucleus of Sendero, spreading mains a dominant fact of life in contempo- the theories of the man who proclaimed rary Peru. The Spanish created a society in himself-after Marx, Lenin, and Mao-the which a tiny ruling class, the conq~{ista- Fourth Sword of Marxism. dores, and later their creole descendants, In recent years the movement has came utterly to dominate Peru's Indian, spread to some of Peru's more important mestizo, and black majority. regions, including Lima itself. There it has found converts among the poverty-stricken rancisco Pizarro arrived in northern Indian and mestizo inhabitants of the Peru late in 1531 with only 150 men, wretched pueblos jovenes (young towns) excited by tales of the Inca's great that have sprung up around the city. But in wealth and bent on repeating the pattern of many ways more threatening to the Peru- conquest and plunder that was becoming vian state is the dominant presence that practically routine in the New World. The - Peter E Klarhn is professor of history and international affairs and director of the Latin American Studies Program at George Washington University. Born in Summit, New Jersey, he received a B.A. (1960) from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. (1968) from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo (1973) and co-editor of Promise of Development: Theories of Change in Latin America (1986). Klarin is currently writing a new history of Peru for Oxford University Press.

WQ SUMMER 1990 24 THE INDIAN QUESTION

Inca never seemed to appre- ciate the threat they faced. And their empire, stretching some 3,000 miles from present-day Chile to Ecua- dor, was embroiled in a civil The great Inca uprising war between the two sons of that began in Cuzco in 1536 ~vasthe most serious the late emperor. The Inca challenge to the authority Empire was in fact little of the Spanish colonizers. more than 100 years old at The drawing comes from the time; the Inca were only Felipe G~iai7zhnPoina da Ayala's Nueva cor6nica y the most recent unifiers of buen gobierno (c. 1600). the centuries-old Andean civilizations. When Pizarro insisted on an audience with Atahual- lpa, the prince who had gained the upper hand in the civil war, the Inca leader arrived amid thousands of his subjects, were not caused by the Indians, who had at borne on a golden throne. To the Inca, of no time dared to attack the formidable course, the Spanish seemed the exotics. "To strangers." our Indian eyes," wrote Felipe GuamAn Pizarro captured Atahuallpa and held Poma de Ayala, the author of a later chroni- him for a tremendous ransom, then exe- cle, "the Spaniards looked as if they were cuted him after it was paid. In November shrouded like corpses. Their faces were 1533, with an army of 5,000 Indian allies, covered with wool, leaving only the eyes the Spaniards marched on the Incas' visible, and the caps which they wore re- mountain capital at Cuzco and easily pre- sembled little red pots on top of their vailed. After an epic battle three years later, heads." in which the Indians rebelled and almost GuamAn Poma says the Spaniards de- retook Cuzco, the Spanish consolidated manded that Atahuallpa renounce his gods their hold over the former Inca Empire. and accept a treaty with Spain. He refused. Within 70 years, the Indian population had "The Spaniards began to fire their muskets suffered a complete demographic collapse, and charged upon the Indians, killing them dropping from nine million to only one like ants. At the sound of the explosions and million. Famine, culture shock, and system- the jingle of bells on the horses' harnesses, atic exploitation made the Indians particu- the shock of arms and the whole amazing larly vulnerable to the lethal epidemics of novelty of their attackers' appearance, the smallpox, measles, and other new diseases Indians were terror-stricken. They were the Spaniards brought to the New World. desperate to escape from being trampled That was not the end of the Andean peo- by the horses and in their headlong flight a ples' demoralization. The Spaniards plun- lot of them were crushed to death." dered their cities and temples and then, es- GuamAn Poma goes on to say that count- pecially after the discovery in 1545 of the less Indians died, compared to only five of great silver mines at Potosi (in what is now the Spaniards, "and these few casualties Bolivia), virtually enslaved them. Peru, as

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historian Fredrick B. Pike writes, became "Spain's great treasure house in South America." Like the Spaniards who conquered the Maya and Aztecs to the north, Pizarro and his successors installed themselves as the new overlords of the existing society-a so- ciety they altered in many ways to suit their own needs. The result was the develop- ment of what scholars call a "dualistic" so- ciety. This "dualism" continues to manifest itself in virtually every aspect of Peruvian life. It begins geographically, with the dra- Indians from Peru and other Spanish colonies matic contrast between the coast and the were forced to work the silver mines of Potosi. sierra. The desert coastal strip, which is only 11 miles wide in places but stretches some 1,400 miles along the Pacific, is the ole elite remained loyal to the crown. It historic center of Hispanic power. The An- took Latin America's Venezuelan-born lib- des, which rise in three parallel ranges to erator, Simon Bolivar, to drive the Spanish the east, culminating in jagged, snow-cov- from Peru in 1824. But long after Peruvian ered volcanic peaks more than 15,000 feet independence, Lima retained its Spanish tall, are the domain of the Indians who re- and pseudocosmopolitan flavor. During the sisted Hispanization and bore the brunt of 1960s, one observer wrote of Lima's privi- the colonial order. leged class that "scores could boast of be- The arid coast, with Lima at its center, is ing at home in London, Paris, Rome, New the site of Peru's modem, capitalist sector. York, Washington, or San Francisco, and at Here are the export-oriented sugar and cot- the same time admit to being total strang- ton haciendas, strung along three dozen ers to that part of their native country lush river valleys that lie like green ribbons which lay appreciably beyond the immedi- across the coastal desert. (Peru's coast re- ate confines of the capital and a handful of ceives less annual rainfall than does the Sa- other coastal cities." Not for nothing has hara.) Here too are most of Peru's auto and Lima been called "a city searching for a textile plants, fishmeal factories, and oil re- country." fineries: Seventy percent of Peru's manu- facturing capacity can be found in and ince World War 11, however, Lima around Lima. has been transformed by Peru's sec- When Pizarro founded Lima in 1535 as ond demographic revolution. Long a the seat of Spain's most important viceroy- city whose pride greatly exceeded its popu- alty in the New World, he aimed to reorient lation, it has been bloated during the past trade, commerce, and power away from few decades by an influx of Indians and the Andes and toward imperial Spain and mestizos from the interior. By 1961 it had Europe. Lima became the jewel of Spanish grown to 1.5 million; today it is an unman- South America, with a tradition of looking ageable metropolis of almost seven million. toward Madrid. Even when Latin America About the size of Chicago, it now claims was swept by independence movements nearly a third of Peru's population. Overall, during the early 19th century, Lima's cre- the coast is now home to about 60 percent

WQ SUMMER 1990 THE INDIAN QUESTION

of the population, reversing the propor- tudes in order to cultivate crops that could tions that had prevailed for centuries. only be grown in certain climatic niches. Beyond Lima and the coastal strip lies As anthropologist John Murra has shown, another, largely Indian, world. One could the Indians thus managed to overcome the almost say several other worlds, so great is obstacles thrown up by nature and to pro- the variation in climate and terrain as the vide themselves with a rich and varied diet. land rises away from the coast. It is here in Directly above the coastal strip, in the the Andean highlands that the bulk of the foothills of the Andes, is a sparsely inhab- country's rural people, the 8.2 million Que- ited terrain that climbs to perhaps 7,500 chua-speaking and 250,000 Aymara-speak- feet. Above that is a pleasant temperate ing Indians and mestizos, eke out a marginal living. Inevitably, the long dom- inance of the coast has con- tributed greatly to the un- derdevelopment of the interior. Only about five per- cent of the sierra is arable, while about a quarter is marginal pastureland where cows, sheep, llamas, and vi- cunas can be grazed. As a re- sult of the conquest, these lands that once fed the Inca Empire were long ago beset by chronic low productivity. Peru today suffers periodic food shortages, forcing it to spend precious foreign ex- change to import food, even the indigenous potato, in or- der to feed its swollen coastal cities. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Inca and their predecessors laced the mountainsides with intricate terraces and irrigation sys- tems that still awe visitors today. Through a sophisti- cated system of agricultural production and exchange that scholars call "vertical archipelagos," each Inca The Indians of Peru today make up about 45 percent of the na- tion's population. Once concentrated in tlie highland regions, thq community, or ayllu, have been moving to the coastal cities in large numbers since worked land at different alti- 1945. Major tribes and their locations appear above.

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band, where maize, vegetables, and fruits The Spaniards were greatly impressed can be grown. Here the Inca built Cuzco, by the Incas' accomplishments. "Few na- Cajamarca, and their other principle cities. tions had a better government," wrote Pe- Above this relatively populated strip are dro Cieza de k6n, one of the earliest Euro- several others, all increasingly inhospitable, pean chroniclers. "One of the things most ranging from the Suni, where the Inca cul- to be envied. . . is how well they knew how tivated potatoes and other tubers unique to to conquer such vast lands.. . and bring the Andes, to the vast wind-blasted Alti- them to the flourishing state in which the plc1170, a fngid world of grassy tablelands Spaniards found them." But the Spaniards where shepherds still herd llama, alpaca, wasted little time on admiration. Their goal and vicuna. The eastern slope of the Andes from the beginning was to harness the In- and the lowlands beyond host other worlds; dian population to mine silver, gold, and the eastern slope is also the source of the mercury and to work, along with African Amazon. Thus, a mere 400 miles due east slaves, the haciendas and plantations. For of its desert coast, Peru culminates in vast the traditional tubers, maize, and fruits of and still largely uncharted Amazonian rain the Andean farm system, the Spanish were forests inhabited by scores of smaller In- determined to substitute their own prod- dian groups, ucts: wine, grains, and meat. They used whatever elements of the Andean political, social, and economic superstructure that served their purposes, and unhesitatingly modified or discarded those that did not. Thus, the Spaniards retained some of the Indian nobility (kuracas) to serve as in- termediaries between themselves and the Indian peasantry. These Hispanized Indians were gradually assimilated into the impe- rial system and rewarded by the crown with certain rights and privileges usually accorded only to the Iberian aristocracy: the right to own large landed estates, to wear the garb of a Spanish gentleman, to bear arms, to own horses, and to educate their children at elite schools. But the Spaniards completely rede- signed the Inca mita system, transforming a rotational labor tax for the building of roads and other public works into a form of virtual slave labor in the Andean mines. They substituted a new monetary economy for one that was based on the Incaic con- cept of reciprocity and redistribution. (Goods and. services paid as taxes to the Inca state were returned to the communi- A conquistador on horse triumphs over his In- ties in the form of gifts and other pay- dian adver.saiy. (from Guainhn Poina) ments.) And they seized many of the best

WQ SUMMER 1990 28 THE INDIAN QUESTION

- -- -- lands for themselves, leaving Peru with a Pizarro's takeover. Manco Capac, the pup- legacy of one of the most unequal land- pet emperor whom Pizarro installed on the holding arrangements in Latin America. Inca throne, turned against the Spaniards Before General Juan Velasco Alvarado's and laid seige to Cuzco and other cities. radical agrarian reform of the early 1970s, The Spaniards and their Indian allies held 69 percent of Peru's privately held land was out, and Manco Capac retreated into the made up of parcels of 1,000 hectares (2,471 remote mountains northwest of Cuzco, acres) or more. Velasco's land redistribu- where he established a new Inca state at tion program reduced the figure to a still Vilcabamba. It was not until 1572 that the considerable 42 percent. Spanish finally captured and beheaded his The Spaniards' exploitation of Peru's successor, Tfipac Amaru, ostensibly the last rich highland mineral deposits left quite a Inca emperor. Yet the myth of Inkarri, a different legacy. During the 20th century, as leader who would rise to avenge the con- world demand for Peru's silver and copper quest, soon took root throughout the old grew, the old mining towns expanded. The empire, inspiring many peasant rebellions conversion of Indian peasants into miners over the centuries.* and city dwellers also introduced Hispanic Almost from the earliest colonial times, customs and practices. And this, combined Indian rebellions have been tangled up with racial mixing, created an ever-growing with power struggles among the rulers. mestizo population that would have vast so- This was the case, for example, during the cial and political implications for Peru. To- great outbreak of Indian rebellions in the day, only 45 percent of Peru's population is Andes throughout the 18th century. The Indian; 37 percent is mestizo; 12 percent is rebel leaders were, in the main, Hispanized white; and 6 percent is black. Indian kuracas, most notably Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, a direct descendent of the ome scholars have argued that the In- Inca royal family. In 1780, angered by the dians remained passive in the face of Spaniards' endless brutality, he took the their brutal subjugation. But as histo- name Tfipac Amaru I1 and raised an army rians Steve Stem has shown, this is an exag- of more than 100,000 peasants to fight the gerated view. To survive, the Indians did colonial authorities. Before his defeat in have to adapt to Spanish domination, and 178 1-he was publicly drawn and quar- to postcolonial rule after Peru became in- tered in the main square of Cuzco as a dependent in 1824. As often as not, how- warning to other rebels-his movement ever, they found ways of asserting their in- had attracted dissident mestizos and even terests. During the colonial period, for creoles. The dream of Inca revival corre- example, Madrid built limited protections sponded with their desire for independence for Indians into the legal system, recogniz- from the despised Spanish overlords. ing that collapsing Indian demographics A century later, a similar Indian uprising posed a threat to its new empire. But many 'One version of the story was recorded by a Peruvian an- Indian leaders then shrewdly used the legal thropologist in Ayacucho in 1981: "Inkam' was born to a system to establish their historic rights to savage woman but begotten by the Sun. Having grown up, he shut up the wind and tied his father the Sun. He did so to the land. make the time and the day last longer so that he could do Litigation did not always suffice, of what he wanted. He then founded the city of Cuzco. But the Spanish 'Inca' seized the Inkam, his equal, and nobody course, and Andean history is full of desper- knows where he put him. People say that only his cut-off ate Indian peasant uprisings. The first re- head is left but that it is growing from inside, growing to- wards his feet. Once his body has become complete, Inkam' volt occurred in 1536, only a few years after will return."

WQ SUMMER 1990 THE INDIAN QUESTION

doctorate in philosophy in 1960 from the University of San Augustin in his native Arequipa, Peru's second largest city. After gradua- tion, he joined the Educa- tion Program at the vener- able National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho. In 1988, in his only published interview, Guzman declared that these years in Ayacucho "served to open my eyes to the [plight] of the [Andean] A School for Terrorism. Members of the Shining Path lecture re- peasantry." The young, char- cruits at a training camp in the coca-growing highland jungle. ismatic GuzmAn preached a mixture of Marxist-Lenin- occurred in the northern Peruvian high- ism, Maoism, and the ideas of Jose Carlos lands, led by a respected Indian kuraca Mariategui, an ardent early nationalist and named Atusparia. In 1885, he allied himself Indianist who founded the highly influen- with the popular caudillo (military leader) tial journal Amauta and the Peruvian Com- Andres CAceres. A creole and a hero of the munist Party. (It is from Mariategui's writ- popular resistance to the Chilean occupa- ings that Guzman took the name Shining tion during the War of the Pacific (1879- Path for his party.) GuzmAn saw Peru, as 84), CAceres hoped that the Indians who Mao had seen China, as a semi-feudal coun- had helped fight the Chileans would now try ruled solely for the benefit of a tiny elite. help him overthow Peru's government. But In 1980, emulating Mao's successful Atusparia's rebellion was brutally crushed strategy, Guzmhn launched the revolution's that year. Chceres, on the other hand, was second stage: armed struggle. Ultimately, elected to Peru's presidency in 1886. - his goal is to take over the countryside, Seeking support of the Indian masses, then encircle and invade the cities. Sendero leaders today are not so very dif- ferent from those creole rebels of the past. t has been said that Guzmhn's emphasis They are mainly university-educated mesti- on Peru's semi-feudal character and his zos of the urban middle and lower-middle I comparisons with pre-revolutionary class, with relatively recent ties to the coun- China are obsolete. Peru, critics point out, tryside and an Indian past. They seek to is no longer an agrarian peasant society but harness the grievances of the Indian pro- a predominantly urban and industrializing letariat and dispossessed peasants to their one. They are right, of course, except in own political agenda. Yet their appeal is es- failing to point out that Peru is also now pecially strong on university campuses fast becoming a mestizo country. And the throughout the country, particularly among mestizos, who once denied their Indian past students of similar background who see lit- in order to fit a more Hispanized notion of tle hope of economic security in the future. Peruvian identity, are increasingly disposed Sendero founder GuzmAn obtained a to embrace it. Historian Jorge Basadre calls

WQ SUMMER 1990 30 THE INDIAN QUESTION

this "the most fundamental THE OTHER PERU event in 20th-century Peru- In 1983, eight Lima journalists were killed by Andean Indi- vian life: the growth and en- ans who mistook them for Sendero guerrillas. Mario Varga.7 richment of the image of the Llosa, investigating the massacre, learned about a very dif- Indian." ferent Peru from the one he knew. This change took politi- When our commission's hearing in Uchuraccay was over, cal shape during General and, overwhelmed by what we had seen and heard-the Juan Velasco Alvarado's graves of the reporters were still open-we were getting populist military regime of ready to return to Ayacucho, a tiny woman from the com- 1968-75. Velasco, himself a munity suddenly began to dance. She was quietly singing a song whose words we could not understand. She was an mestizo, made Tfipac Amaru Indian as tiny as a child, but she had the wrinkled face of a 11, the 18th-century rebel In- very old woman, and the scarred cheeks and swollen lips of dian nobleman, a symbol of those who live exposed to the cold of the uplands. She was national identity. Inaugurat- barefoot, and wore several brightly colored skirts and a hat with ribbons, and as she sang and danced she tapped us ing his land reform program gently on the legs with brambles. Was she saying goodbye in 1969, Velasco quoted the to us in an ancient ritual? Was she cursing us because we rebel's vow, "Peasant, the belonged to the strangers-Senderistas, "reporters," landlord will eat no more sinchis-who had brought new reasons for anguish and fear to their lives? Was she exorcising us? from your poverty!" (More For several weeks, I had been living in a state of extraor- recently, the name has been dinary tension as I interviewed soldiers, politicians, police- appropriated by a small Cu- men, peasants, and reporters and reviewed dispatches, evi- ban-oriented guerrilla dence and legal testimony, trying to establish what had happened. At night, I would often stay awake, attempting to movement in Peru, which determine the truth of the testimony and the hypotheses, or calls itself Thpac Amaru.) I had nightmares in which the certainties of the day be- He elevated Quechua, the came enigmas again. And as the story of the eight joumal- tongue of a third of Peru's ists unfolded-I had known two of them, and had been with Amador Garcia just two days before his trip to Ayacu- people, to the status of an of- cho-it seemed that another, even more terrible story ficial language, equal to about my own country was being revealed. But at no time Spanish. By pushing had I felt as much sorrow as in Uchuraccay on that late through agrarian and other afternoon, with its threatening clouds, watching the tiny woman who danced and tapped us with brambles, and who reforms, he sought to bridge seemed to come from a Peru different from the one I live the old Andean dualism. in, an ancient, archaic Peru that has survived in these sa- "For the first time," recalls cred mountains despite centuries of isolation and adversity. Peruvian sociologist Jose Al- varado, "nonwhites began to feel Peruvian." mestizo underclass of Lima and the other In practice, however, Velasco's reforms cities. During the past two decades the did much more for the coast than for the great desborde popular (overflowing of the impoverished highlands. And all hope for masses), as the anthropologist Jose Matos improvement seemed gone after Velasco Mar calls it, has radically redrawn the eth- was overthrown in 1975 by more conserva- nic and social map of the country. Even as tive officers. Ayacucho proved to be fertile the Indian majority gradually gives way to a ground for Guman's efforts. new mestizo one, Peru's towns and cities, But while Sendero has capitalized on particularly Lima, are becoming increas- the Indian question, its larger message is ingly "Indianized as more and more mi- aimed at the increasingly impoverished grants arrive from the Andes.

WQ SUMMER 1990 3 1 THE INDIAN QUESTION

In this sense, there is no longer any real hoped to win support with his plan to de- Indian question. The great divide between regulate the economy and move Peru creoles and Indians, reinforced for centu- closer to true free-market capitalism. ries by the distinctions between town and But most of the "informutes" were also country and between coast and highland, is part of the economically disenfranchised disappearing. Out of this social upheaval, Indian and mestizo populations who had Peru is forging a new identity. Some of its earlier benefited from Velasco's reforms outlines can perhaps be discerned in the (including consumer subsidies and import enormous growth in recent years of the so- restrictions) and from his effort to forge a called "informal" or illegal sector of the more inclusive national identity. In a coun- economy. As economist Hernando de Soto try so historically polarized by the Indian wrote in 1986 in El Otro Sendero (The question, it was soon widely perceived that Other Path), a best seller in Latin America, Vargas Llosa-with his privileged back- the explosion of the informal sector is a re- ground, his international success, and his sponse to creole efforts to keep the peas- ties to the old families-represented the ants from the cities. "Quite simply," he same "white" creole elites that had domi- writes, "Peru's legal institutions had been nated the country in the past. developed over the years to meet the needs and bolster the privileges of certain domi- ence the stunning rise of Alberto nant groups in the cities and to isolate the Fujimori, the second-generation peasants geographically in rural areas." H Japanese-Peruvian "rocket" who The creole elite made it next to impossi- came from nowhere to challenge Vargas ble for newcomers legally to build a home, Llosa in the closing weeks of the first-round get a job, or start a business. There was election. Like Vargas Llosa, Fujimori played even a proposal in the national legislature to the informutes. But his vague, center-left during the 1940s to require visitors from program emphasized gradualness, a safer the countryside to obtain a passport before path to economic reform, he argued, than entering Lima. As a result, de Soto esti- Vargas Llosa's "shock" therapy. Further mates, half of Lima's citizens live in infor- distinguishing himself from Vargas Llosa, mal housing and half of the country's popu- Fujimori made sure that middle-class mesti- lation is employed in the informal sector.- zos were prominent members of his entou- Informal organizations now build roads, rage: When he announced his candidacy sewage systems, and marketplaces; they on television, his two mestizo vice presiden- provide 80 percent of the mass transit ser- tial running mates stood conspicuously at vice in the capital city. "The real remedy for his side. Voters did not miss the message. violence and poverty," de Soto argues, "is The presidential race thus revived the to recognize the property and labor of oldest conflicts of Peruvian history. But the those whom formality today excludes." victory of Fujimori in the June 10 run-off Both the informal sector and the issue could become a minor historical footnote if of race played an important role in the he does nothing to address the legacies of presidential elections of 1990. The New the conquest. It would be a bitter irony in- Right, led by Vargas Llosa, used de Soto's deed if the ultimate winner of Peru's most ideas as the basis for an alliance with small- recent election turned out to be Sendero scale "underground" entrepreneurs. He Luminoso.

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by David Maybury-Lewis

he Indians of Brazil have and destroying their homes. The miners been much in the news have polluted the rivers, driven away game, lately. In the summer of and brought disease and starvation to the 1988, Kayapo from the Yanomamo. The rising death toll-about northern state of Para sat 10 percent of the 10,000 Yanomamo have for several weeks in the an- perished during the last two years-has techambersT of parliament while delegates stirred angry protests both in Brazil and drafted the new constitution of Brazil. They abroad. In October 1989, a federal court in were there, in tribal paint and feathers, to Brasilia confirmed the rights of the urge the delegates to guarantee Indian Yanomamo to all of their traditional terri- rights. In March 1989, the same Kayapo In- tory, and it called on the federal govern- dians played host to a week-long Indian ment to remove the miners from summit meeting at Altarnira in the heart of Yanomamo land. The government dragged the Amazon to protest the building of dams its feet, pleading that it had no power to that would flood their lands. The meeting enforce the ruling. Recently, Brazil's new was packed with other Indians, their sup- president, Fernando Collor de Mello, or- porters, and the international press. Partly dered the destruction of 100 dirt airstrips to because of the Kayapo's efforts, the World restrict access to the region, but the order Bank and several foreign commercial has not yet been carried out. At the same banks withdrew their support for the dam- time, he pledged to balance the Indians' building project. needs with those of non-Indians. It remains More recent subjects of media attention to be seen how this balancing act will be have been the Yanomamo, an indigenous accomplished. people who live It is surprising in along Brazil's border some ways that the with Venezuela. Indian question has Thanks to the new become such a sensi- roads and airstrips tive political issue in that have been built Brazil-indeed, one in the area as part of that authorities now Brazil's extensive treat as a matter of Northern Headwa- national security. ters project, launched Brazil's estimated in 1985, more than 250,000 Indians 45,000 gold miners make up less than have poured into one percent of the nation's population. Yanomamo territory, Assembled outside the Brazilian Congress last driving some Indians September, Indians from 76 tribes protested They are scattered out of their villages unregulated mining on Yanomamo territory. throughout the more

WQ SUMMER 1990 33 THE INDIAN QUESTION

remote regions of a country that is larger fend their settlements not only against the than the United States (minus Alaska) and Indians but also against rival Europeans, noted for its impenetrable jungles and vast particularly the French and the Dutch. (The wilderness. The sensitivity is all the more French and the Portuguese struggled for puzzling in light of the marginal role that close to 150 years for control of Guanabara Indians have played throughout Brazilian Bay, across whose waters the cities of Rio history. Even when the first Portuguese ex- de Janeiro and Niter& now stand.) plorers arrived in 1500, they found none of the large settled populations that their n Brazil, as elsewhere in the New Spanish counterparts came across-and World, the Europeans enlisted Indians quickly subjugated-in Central America I as allies, enslaving them when their and the Andes. help was no longer needed. The Indians, of The Portuguese were in fact relatively course, fought hard to avoid slavery, and slow to colonize their South American ter- when they were defeated, as they invariably ritory. Portugal, unlike Britain, had no were, they tried to withdraw into the wil- large surplus population to send to the New derness. But not even their remoteness World. (During the 16th century, it had could fully protect them. By the 17th cen- only one million inhabitants.) Moreover, tury, as the demand for labor on the coastal Vasco da Gama had recently discovered the sugar plantations grew, the Portuguese had sea route to the East Indies around the become accomplished slavers. Their expe- Cape of Good Hope, and the Portuguese ditions, called bandeiras (from the word were intent on exploiting their empire in meaning flag, or a detachment of armed Africa and Asia, where they dominated the men), penetrated the most inhospitable re- trade in low-volume, luxury commodities gions in search of Indians. The poorer colo- such as silks, ivory, and spices. Brazil's nists, especially those from S5o Paulo in the sparsely populated jungles offered no simi- south, became notorious bandeirantes, who lar prizes, no obvious opportunities for embarked on grueling slaving expeditions rapid enrichment. Indeed, it was only by that lasted as long as four years. "These accident that, in 1500, Pedro hares Cabral Portuguese do and suffer incomparably landed in Brazil and claimed it for Portu- more to win the bodies of the Indians for gal; he had been bound for the Orient when their service than I do to win their souls for a storm blew him off course. heaven," a Spanish Jesuit remarked. In addition to seeming a relatively unat- The Portuguese kings of the 17th cen- tractive colony, Brazil was difficult for the tury displayed considerable ambivalence Portuguese to hold onto, even though the about the enslavement of Indians. At times, Indians received the settlers peaceably they were persuaded that it would be wiser enough at first. In return for metal tools, to educate them into being loyal subjects of the natives cut and supplied the hardwood the crown. Such a policy, they believed, logs of reddish brazilwood from which the would help solve the problem of holding colony took its name. But Indian wars soon and peopling the vast territories. And as the erupted, and by the middle of the 16th cen- Jesuits constantly reminded the kings, it tury, the Portuguese were fighting to de- would also be the Christian thing to do.

David Maybury-Lewis, a former Wilson Center Fellow, is professor of anthropology at Harvard. He received a B.A. (1952) from Cambridge University and a D.Phil. (1960) from Oxford University. His many books include The Savage and the Innocent (1965), Akwe-Shavante Society (1967), Dialectical Societies (1 979), and The Attraction of Opposites (1989).

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Father Antonio Vieira was the most vigorous 17th- century champion of the Je- suit strategy. His role was similar to that of the more famous Bartolome de Las Casas, the Spanish priest who had become Bishop of the Indies a century earlier. Vieira could also be as in- consistent as Las Casas, who campaigned against the en- slavement of Indians while condoning- that of blacks. Vieira, for his Part, fdmi- Portuguese bandeirantes (expeditionaries) of the 17th century nated against Indian slavery, went into the jungles of Brazil to enslave Indians. Here, a group of even as he dispatched mis- bandeirantes meets stiff resistance from Botoc~~dowarriors. sionaries to accompany offi- cial slaving expeditions. And he continued expel the Jesuits from Portugal and its colo- to lure Indians into mission villages long nies in 1759 than to persist in the effort to after he knew that doing so made them abolish slavery. By then a system of forced easy prey for slave-hunters. Both Las Casas labor had replaced outright slavery, leaving and Vieira were caught in the same di- the Indians no better off. lemma, one that neither the Spanish nor At the end of the 18th century, Indians the Portuguese monarchs could solve: were, in any case, increasingly irrelevant to Christian concern for the rights of the Indi- the life of the colony. For one thing, very ans ran counter to the interests of the colo- few survived. Compared with roughly two- nists. No one, not even the kings of Spain and-a-half million Indians at the beginning or Portugal, was powerful enough to force of the colonial period/ there remained his far-flung subjects to abandon slavery. only about 100,000 at the time Brazil Thus, even the Marquis of Pombal, POF- gained its independence from Portugal in tugal's virtual dictator for many years un- 1822-a small proportion of the country's der King Jose I (1750-77), was unable to two million population. In addition to their prevail when he appointed his own step- decimation by disease, maltreatment, and brother governor of ~aranhiioin northern warfare, ~ndianshad been replaced by Brazil in 175 1. The new governor arrived blacks as the major source of labor. Hun- with orders to enforce a 1748 ban on slav- dreds of thousands of African slaves toiled ery, but before long he was making the variously on the sugar plantations of north- same arguments that the colonists had al- eastern Brazil (supporting an economy that ways made. The Jesuits, he said, were abus- resembled that of the antebellum Deep ing their power over the Indians. "They South in the United States), in the gold started with general virtue and religious mines of central Brazil, and, later, on the zeal," he wrote, "but have ended in the 'Precise calculations are impossible, but estimates range abominable vice of avarice." Pombal, who from four or five million at the time of the Portuguese arrival had his Own quarrel With the church at to less than one million. John Hemming's figure of two-and- a-half million, cited in Red Gold (1978), seems a reasonable, home, finally found it more convenient to middle-range estimate.

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These skirmishes attracted international at- tention when Czech anthropologist VojtEch FriE, who had collected artifacts in the area for the Berlin and Hamburg museums, ad- dressed the 1908 meeting of the Interna- tional Congress of Americanists in Vienna. He reported that colonists in Brazil were hiring bugreiros (Indian killers) to rid the land of natives. Fric described these bugreiros as "human hyenas" who attacked Indian villages by night and slaughtered their inhabitants. His revelations were ex- tremely embarrassing to the government of President Afonso Pena, which was trying to recruit immigrants and didn't want pro- spective settlers from Germany to think Candido M. Rondon (1865-1 958), they might be moving to a savage frontier. first head of Brazil's Indian Service. The issue quickly became a matter of national debate. Professor Herrnann von coffee plantations farther south. Ihering, a German-Brazilian scientist who By this time, those Indians who re- headed the prestigious Paulista Museum in mained could be found only in remote re- the city of S5o Paulo, defended the settlers. gions or on the frontiers of settlement. For- They were the vanguard of civilization, he tunately for these survivors, there was no argued, and the Indians would have to give expansionary push westward, such as took way before them. The Indian cause was place during the 19th century in the United taken up by a young army officer and engi- States. In Brazil, the non-Indian population neer named Candido Mariano Rondon. clung mainly to the coastal regions, com- municating by sea or by means of a few f partly Indian descent, Rondon great rivers: the Amazon, the S5o Fran- was a religious positivist who fol- cisco, or the Parana. All of the capitals of- lowed the scientific creed of the major states, save one (Belo Horizonte Auguste Comte and believed in the brother- in Minas Gerais), were port cities. Most hood of man. During the 1890s, while lay- 19th-century explorations into the heart of ing telegraph lines in the central states of the country were undertaken by European Goih and Mato Grosso, Rondon had gone scientists, including Charles Darwin and Al- out of his way to befriend the Indians. Be- fred Wallace. Brazilians turned their backs cause of the success of his missions and of on the interior, leaving the Indians in rela- his efforts to make peace with the redoubt- tive peace. able Bororo Indians, Colonel Rondon was But not for long. The Indian question given command of a major project in 1906. became a national issue once again in the He and his men were to lay a telegraph line early 20th century, when German immi- across Mato Grosso and a huge, unexplored grants who were beginning to open up new area of Amazonian jungle (now called Ron- farmland in the southern states of Paran6 donia).to the frontiers of Peru and Bolivia. and Santa Catarina came into conflict with One night, after having been shot at several Indians who claimed the land as their own. times by Nambikuara Indians who re-

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mained invisible in the forest-the colo- die; nor did they kill. Their expedition was nel's carbine and saddle, hit by several ar- a success, and Rondon returned to Rio de rows, are now museum pieces-Rondon Janeiro a hero. gave his nervous men a famous order that Rondon's triumph lent credence to his later became the motto of Brazil's Indian view that Indians, if treated fairly, could be Service: "Die, if need be, but never kill." made into useful citizens. His arguments Fortunately, Rondon and his men did not were taken up by intellectuals in Rio, then

The approximately 250,000 Indians of Brazil make up less than one percent of the nation's total population. There are about 180 indigenous tribes, some of which are located above.

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the nation's capital, as well as by scientists garch from the cattle-ranching plains in at the National Museum. The racist severity Brazil's far south, seized control of the gov- of the policy advocated by von Ihering and ernment in 1930 and set about creating a the Europeans stood in marked contrast to more powerful central government, enact- what Brazilians proudly considered their ing a wide range of social legislation, and own more characteristic kindness and will- encouraging new industries and agricul- ingness to compromise. Educated opinion tural diversity. One part of Vargas's mod- rallied to Rondon's side. In 1910, the Bra- ernization program was the opening up of zilian legislature, dominated by landowners the west, but he did not pursue it very ener- with little interest in what happened at or getically. It didn't matter. A spontaneous beyond the frontier, passed extraordinarily westward movement was already under- liberal legislation guaranteeing Indians way, building momentum during the next rights to their lands and their customs. In 30 years. This movement received a strong 191 1, the Service for the Protection of the boost in 1960, when the nation's capital Indians (SPI) was created, with Rondon as was transferred from Rio de Janeiro to the its head. Predictably underfunded, the SPI new city of Brasilia, in the sparsely popu- was unable to protect all of Brazil's Indians, lated highlands of central Brazil. The but this was not a great problem at first: controversial new capital was established The Indians' remoteness was still their best by President Juscelino Kubitschek, himself protection. a native of Minas Gerais, Brazil's only ma- jor inland state. Kubitschek hoped that the he creation of the SPI seemed to be capital would help open up the interior, a popular vindication of Rondon's and it did. Brasilia was soon connected by principles-that Indians were not good roads to the coast and also to Bel6m irremediably savage, that they had certain at the mouth of the Amazon. For the first rights which should be protected, and that time in the nation's history, the north, the they should be helped to become useful cit- center, and the southeast were linked by izens of the republic. But in fact, most Bra- easy overland routes. zilians still thought like von Ihering. Why, When the military seized power in 1964, then, did Rondon's views prevail in 1910? it stepped up road construction, intending His charisma was not the only reason. In to move beyond central Brazil and open up the early 20th century, many educated ~ra: the far west and the Amazonian regions. zilians were embarrassed by their nation's The uninhibited development programs backwardness and by the central govern- pushed by the generals during their 20-year ment's inability to control the rural oli- rule had a disastrous effect on the Indi- garchs. They were eager for modernization ans-so disastrous that Brazil suddenly and a stronger, more united nation. found itself facing charges of genocide Rondon's notion of nation-building was from the international community. The both modem and Brazilian. The SPI, a fed- Brazilian authorities were shocked. How eral agency, would help bring even the could a country that protected its Indians most remote inhabitants of Brazil into the in the tradition of Rondon be thought guilty nation, although at this early stage, nation- of such a crime? building included no expansionist schemes The SPI found itself in a dilemma. If it for the settlement and development of the tried to defend the rights of the Indians, it western regions. would be accused of impeding develop- That changed. Getfilio Vargas, an oli- ment in the form of cattle ranching, log-

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ging, agribusiness, and min- ing. The views of the military government were made quite clear. Range1 Reis, the minister of the in- terior, went so far as to say that cattle were the bandei- rantes of the 1970s. Mean- while, the government's development strategies stim- ulated a growing hunger for land throughout Brazil. The landless poor started to flock to the frontiers, and In- dians soon found them- selves facing outsiders who wanted either to uproot them Or exterminate A Franciscan wzissionary supervising the work of Indians. The en- them. graving is by Joiio Mauricio Rugendas, who travelled throughout The government was Brazil during the early 19th century. certainly never in favor of killing Indians, but it took no steps to pro- of slavery in 1888. The Indians, nearly a tect them from the predictable effects of century later, were not slaves. So what, In- unbridled frontier expansion. The SPI, dians began to wonder, were they being caught in the middle, was at best ineffec- emancipated from? tual. At worst, it was complicitous. Increas- It was soon clear that the government ingly, it tried to instill an entrepreneurial intended to free them from the tutelage of spirit in its posts, using Indian labor or the FUNAI and indeed from their very identity natural resources on Indian lands to make as Indians. FUNAI was urged to "civilize" a profit for the Service (or for individual the Indians as quickly as possible so that members of it). Some of its officials ac- they would no longer have any reason to cepted bribes or were persuaded to con- claim special protection (and so that spire with the invading frontiersmen. FUNAI itself could go out of business). But When these scandals were revealed in the Indians were not interested in this kind 1967, the government dissolved the service of rapid assimilation. They were fighting for that Rondon had created and replaced it their lives in some parts of Brazil (along the with the National Indian Foundation route of Rondon's first expedition to the (FUNAI). None of the guilty agents of the northwest, for example, as well as in the old service served time in jail, however, and Amazonian regions); and everywhere they FUNAI soon faced the same dilemma that were struggling for their land and customs. its predecessor had. They pointed out that their rights were In 1975, Interior Minister Reis launched guaranteed under Brazilian law and that a campaign for the "emancipation" of the FUNAI was supposed to protect them. In Indians, presenting it as the equivalent of December 1978, Indian representatives black emancipation. But the emancipation from 13 tribes in seven states wrote to Pres- of the blacks came about with the abolition ident (and General) Ernesto Geisel:

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We are not impressed by the pronounce- such a severe burden on the poor, espe- ments made in the press by the minister of the interior or the president of FUNAI in cially those in rural areas. defense of emancipation. Only we, as vic- In 1985, when the civilian administra- tims of that policy, can make an honest tion of President Jose Sarney took over appraisal of what this emancipation means. If fine speech could solve our from the military, the need to veil debates problems, we would not be in a situation disappeared, but the Indian question did today so distant from what the Indian Stat- not. To the contrary, it became the subject ute was to have protected. We say the emancipation sought by the minister of of even stormier debate, largely because the interior will cause the detribalization the Indians and their demands highlight of indigenous communities, and conse- many of the unresolved issues in modem quently will destroy them individually and collectively. For the Indian must live in his Brazilian politics. own communities, with full liberty of cul- tural tradition and freedom to possess the his was made abundantly clear in land. an unusual series of articles carried for a full week in 1987 on the front The government's policies also aroused page of Brazil's major newspaper, the opposition among non-Indians. The Indi- Estado de Siio Paulo. The articles appeared ans, scattered as they were, started to orga- while delegates were meeting in Brasilia to nize in their own defense; deputations of draft a new constitution. Collectively titled chiefs were frequently seen in Brasilia, "The Conspiracy against Brazil," they were coming to put their case directly to the au- intended to discourage delegates from thorities. They were supported by the heeding the demands of pro-Indian groups. Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), an These groups wanted the constitution to de- arm of the Catholic Church, by pro-Indian clare Brazil a multi-ethnic nation, with In- organizations largely started by anthropolo- dian lands and customs guaranteed. Their gists, and by the National Association for opponents argued that Brazil was a melting the Support of the Indians, whose chapters pot, a society that welcomed people from started springing up in major cities, includ- other cultures, provided that they were will- ing P6rto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, and Siio ing to assimilate into the mainstream. Paulo. The plight of the Indians soon at- The articles in the Estado alleged that tracted international attention. In 1979, a the pro-Indian advocates were conspiring World Bank report noted the Indians' "in- against Brazil while pretending to defend creasingly precarious position"; its observa- the rights of indigenous peoples. They were tion that "diseases transmitted by the new guilty on three counts: First, by calling for a settlers have decimated whole tribes" was multi-ethnic Brazil, the pro-Indian groups not the only one that seemed to echo back were dividing the nation. Second, they over four centuries of history. were in league with foreign churches in an The pro-Indian movement gathered mo- effort to internationalize the Amazon. And mentum during the period known as the third, they were working covertly with for- abertura (opening), which began in 1977 eign mining companies, for if they suc- when Geisel announced his intention to re- ceeded in preventing Brazilian mining turn the country gradually to civilian rule. companies from exploiting minerals on In- In the Brazilian press, discussion of the dian lands, Brazil would be forced to buy pressure on Indians became a kind of pre- minerals from abroad. Outraged, the Catho- text, or cover, for discussing the military's lic Church took legal action against the development program, which had placed Estado and showed that its allegations were

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based on reports that were partially or mis- leadingly quoted, and in some cases actu- ally forged. Nonetheless, the campaign of vilification put the proponents of Indian rights on the defensive. In May 1988, the constitutional conven- tion voted not to declare Brazil a multi-eth- nic society. It also refused to provide Indian lands with protection against mining inter- ests, although it did limit the circumstances under which these lands could be mined. Yanomamo Indians, a Stone Age people, parade At the same time, somewhat contradicto- with their spears during a tribal feast. rily, the rights of Indians to their lands and customs were written into the constitution, grazing lands. These are precisely the peo- and FUNAI's "emancipation" policy was ple who have been assisted in Brazil by gov- excluded. ernment subsidies and by the government's As a result of these decisions, Brazil's willingness to look the other way when Indians find themselves in a curious state of they do violence to Indians and to the rural constitutional limbo. Their right to their poor. But this is neither the only nor the customs is guaranteed, but it is unclear best way to pursue development. Other how they are to maintain their way of life in possible strategies would encourage or at a nation which officially insists that it is a least accommodate people such as rubber- melting pot. Moreover, the partial constitu- tappers, smallholders, and indigenous pro- tional victories for the Indian cause have ducers. Indians throughout the Americas done little to mitigate the violence that con- have shown that they can adapt to market tinues to be done to them. forces and still maintain their own cultures, Brazilian schoolbooks glorify the as, for example, the Hopi have done in the bandeirantes who built the nation, glossing United States and the Xavante and the over their slaving activities by asserting that Kayapo are doing in Brazil. The latter are the work of Indians (and later of blacks) now beginning to market fruits and other was necessary for the economy of the col- forest products that they have grown on ony. Similarly, elimination of the Indians in their own lands. The Indians' way of doing more recent times is justified in the name things may even suggest better local strate- of civilization. The official policy of gies for economic development than those successive administrations, both military that have been so disastrously followed in and civilian, is that assimilation is the Bra- recent decades. Scientists have only re- zilian way. Furthermore, so this official cently begun to discover the true value of rationalization goes, Indians who cling to agricultural and forestry techniques that their own way of life "stand in the way of the Amazonian Indians have used for cen- development." turies. Darrell Posey, an anthropologist who To be sure, the last justification depends worked among the Kayapo, found that on a very narrow definition of develop- these practices offer "thousands of ways of ment. Protected Indian lands do get in the making the living forest more valuable than way of land grabbers and speculators, of ra- the destroyed forest." pacious mining interests, and of ranchers The supposed requirements of that who wish to turn vast tracts of territory into "development" in whose name Indians and

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others are threatened with impoverishment sign. As a result, important decisions con- are, then, merely a fiction. But the powers cerning Indian affairs have been taken out that be continue to exploit this fiction. of the hands of FUNAI and are now rou- Even though the grandiose develop- tinely made by the nation's security coun- ment policies pursued for so many years by cil. This is justified on the grounds that In- the military have thrown the nation into an dian questions are frontier questions, but economic and social crisis, Brazil's leaders that is not the main reason. continue to point to the Amazon and other regions of the far west as the solution. Ac- razil today is engaged in intense na- cording to their vision, Brazil taps the re- tional introspection. Its citizens are sources of its hinterland and colonizes the reflecting on the bitter experiences frontier with people drawn from the pov- of the recent past, on the dire present situa- erty-stricken masses. tion, and on the prospects for the future. But the reality so far has failed to live up They are aware that the people have paid a to the dream. The resources have not been high price for the development that was im- as abundant as was hoped, and the process posed on them. They resent the fact that of extracting them has involved continuing they are now being dunned by rich coun- violence against the inhabitants and the tries to repay huge debts (now totalling environment itself. The damage to the $1 14.6 billion) that were incurred by dicta- Amazonian ecosystem has provoked a tors over whom they had no control, for worldwide outcry, which in turn has money spent on they know not what. aroused Brazilian nationalism. Brazilians But Brazilians are not just arguing resent being told that the Amazon is a about their economic future. They are re- global resource-President Sarney even thinking their constitution and their politi- called this kind of insistence a form of cal institutions. Most of all, they are reflect- "colonialism." The Brazilian military sees ing on what it means to be Brazilian and on such international concern as a thinly what kind of a nation they want theirs to be. veiled attack on Brazilian sovereignty. It At the moment, social justice is high on the pushed through the Northern Headwaters list of popular concerns, and while the Indi- program in 1985 in order to secure the ans are not the only ones who suffer, their Amazonian frontiers for Brazil and to en- plight is the most dramatic reminder of courage settlement. how the weak are mistreated. That is why The military, which retains considerable the military and the other powerful sup- influence even within the present adminis- porters of the development policies of the tration, is not about to let considerations of past 25 years consider the Indian question Indian rights interfere with its grand de- a matter of national security.

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RAD ON 0

by Richard N.Adams

etween 1979 and 1984, the began to cast their eyes upon the coastal government of Guatemala lands of eastern Nicaragua as a frontier for added a particularly tragic development; they regarded the some chapter to this century's 80,000 Miskito Indians who inhabited this chronicle of "civilized" bru- sweltering lowland as a vast proletariat, tality. In the name of quell- long exploited by rapacious foreign "cap- ing a leftist insurgency movement in the italists," beginning with English bucca- northern departments of the nation, the neers and loggers in the 17th and 18th cen- successive military regimes of General Lu- turies. The Sandinistas assumed that these cas Garcia and General Rios Montt directed Indians-a mixed-race people, in fact, a campaign of mass terror against the na- thanks to their intermingling with black tion's Indian population-a campaign so slaves whom a shipwreck had deposited on bloody that it recalled the worst atrocities the coast in the 1640s-would go along of the 16th-century Spanish conquistadores, with their plans for land reform and even Paramilitary death squads targeted dissent- tolerate relocation when necessary. ers, real or imagined, while the army de- The Miskito, however, had other ideas. stroyed more than 400 vil- lages, in some cases killing all of their inhabitants. Am- nesty International de- scribed this holocaust as a "government policy of po- litical murder." The death toll ran into the tens of thou- sands-by some estimates as high as 80,000-while two to four times that num- ber of Indians fled to neigh- boring Mexico.

At roughly. . the same time, in nearby Nicaragua, another conflict between a national government and a large Indian population erupted-but with a far dif- ferent outcome. Shortly af- Vasco Nufiez de Balboa, the first Spaniard to cross the Panama- ter taking power in 1979, nian isthmus (in 1513), is shown here unleashing his hounds upon the Sandinista coinandantes a group of hapless Indians.

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Prizing their semi-isolation from the rest of ences between the northern and southeast- the country, they cherished a tradition of ern Indian cultures. relative independence from Managua. Far In the north, the Spanish conquerors from embracing the Sandinista cause, the who marched down from Mexico encoun- Indians felt threatened by it. Distrust and tered a complex assortment of "high cul- misunderstanding only intensified as the tures," principally the Indian kingdoms of, Miskito question became an issue in the or related to, the Maya. The land of the Nicaraguan civil war. During the early and "high cultures," called Mesoamerica by ar- mid-1980s, as many as 20,000 Miskito fled chaeologists, extended from central Mexico to Honduras. Some joined the anti-Sandi- and the Yucatan Peninsula into that part of nista "contras." But the Sandinistas, rather the upper Central American isthmus that than launching a bloody crusade, began ne- today includes Guatemala, El Salvador, Be- gotiations with the Miskito and other lize, and western portions of Nicaragua and coastal Indians. By 1989, Managua had Honduras. granted the Miskito a measure of local au- The societies that flourished here tonomy and agreed to guarantee their tended to be large, concentrated, and rights in the national constitution. highly organized. Most had clearly delin- To a large extent, of course, these two eated social classes-nobles, artisans, mer- episodes are bound up with contemporary chants, plebes, and slaves-and were run national politics. One reason Guatemala's by strong central governments. In addition generals pursued their anti-guerrilla cam- to creating markets and extensive trade net- paign so aggressively was to rid the north- works, the Maya-related peoples possessed ern departments of Indians who might a hieroglyphic form of writing and were make claims on the oil reserves recently highly accomplished in art, astronomy, discovered there. The Miskito controversy mathematics, and architecture. Bishop was aggravated by power struggles within Diego de Landa, an early Spanish mission- the ruling Sandinista party, specifically by ary, remarked on the "grandeur and the the increasing domination of the junta by beauty" of Mayan buildings, "for they are the Marxist Daniel Ortega. so many in number and so are the parts of But these episodes-and particularly the country where they are found, and so their resolutions-are also rooted in Cen- well built in their fashion that it fills one tral American history, in a long tradition of with astonishment." government-Indian relations that first took shape during the 16th century, when the ut Mesoamerica is only one part of Spanish conquered this narrow strip of the Central America. To the southeast, New World. This history alone explains below an imaginary line that begins why the conquest tradition survived in one at the Peninsula de Nicoya on Costa Rica's part of Central America while it largely dis- uppermost coast and runs northward on a appeared in the other. It is a story shaped somewhat irregular course to the Atlantic not only by differences among the conquer- Ocean at Puerto Cortes in Honduras, lie ors and their successors but also by differ- three-fourths of Nicaragua, half of Hondu-

Richard N. Adams is director of the Institute for Latin American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Born in Ann Arbor, Mich., he received an A.B. from the University of Michigan (1947), and an M.A. (1949) and Ph.D. (1951) from Yale University. He is the author of a number of books dealing with Central and South America, including A Community in the Andes (1959) and Crucifixion by Power, Essays in the National Social Structure of Guatemala, 1944-66 (1970).

WQ SUMMER 1990 44 THE INDIAN QUESTION

Indians were forced to serve as human "mules" throughout Spanish-dominated Central America, often transporting goods from ships on one coast to those waiting on the other. ras, all of Panama, and all but a tiny wedge around the Gulf of Darien, they had little of northwestern Costa Rica. In this south- contact with the people who inhabited the eastern portion of the isthmus, the Spanish volcano-dotted highlands or the steamier came upon very different kinds of Indian plains and forests of the lowlands. The first societies-an assortment of tribes, chief- serious expedition into the interior was not doms, and confederations. mounted until 15 13, when Vasco Nfiiiez de The societies of the southeastern Indi- Balboa made his way across the Panama- ans-including the Cuna, the Guayrni, and nian isthmus to the Pacific Ocean and the Sumo-were not only smaller* but far claimed all of its waters, and the shores less socially evolved than those of the they lapped, for the Spanish crown. north. Their cultural accomplishments- Six years later, in 15 19, Balboa was be- weaving, basketry, and simple forms of headed for treason and replaced as Spanish home construction-could not begin to commander in Panama by his rival, Pedro match the achievements of the "high cul- Arias de ~vila,known in the New World as tures." Unlike the more sophisticated maize Pedrarias DAvila. He led or directed expe- farmers of Mesoamerica, the southeastern ditions north into what is now Honduras Indians subsisted on simple slash-and-burn and Nicaragua, finding gold in the latter farming or by hunting, gathering, and fish- and killing all Indians he could not press ing. Their diversity and scattered living pat- into service as slaves. His brutality-excep- terns could not have stood in bolder con- tional even by the standards of his day-is trast to the concentrated and highly one major reason the Indian populations organized societies of the north. came close to extinction in the south. Of course, the Spanish knew nothing But well before Pedrarias's death in about such differences when they arrived 153 1, Hernan Cortes in Mexico heard tales on the threshold of the region in 150 1. Set- about gold and silver in Honduras. Al- tling mainly on the Panamanian coast though still consolidating his conquest of Mexico (15 19-2 I), he sent two expeditions 'Scholars estimate that there were up to 13 million Indians in Central America at the beginning of the 16th century, with south, one led by Pedro de Alvarado in the greatest populations concentrated in Mesoamerica. 1523. A cunning and ruthless commander,

WQ SUMMER 1990 45 THE INDIAN QUESTION

Alvarado came to be as closely identified vere. Many Indians were uprooted from with the subjugation of Mesoamerica as their villages and sent as far off as Peru to Pedrarias was with that of the southeast. In work the Spanish mines. Many succumbed 1523, taking advantage of a tribal war in the to the alien climates or harsh working con- Guatemalan highlands to enlist Indian al- ditions. Others met their deaths in Panama lies, he conquered the Maya-related Quiche transporting Spanish cargo across the isth- Indians and shortly thereafter founded the mus, the overland stage in the shipment of city of Santiago de 10s Caballeros (now plunder from Peru to Spain. Between 1500 known as Antigua) as his administrative and 1700, the Indian populations of the center. He then defeated the Pipiles of El southeast, smaller than those of Salvador and marched into Honduras, en- Mesoamerica to begin with, fell sharply: by countering fierce Indian resistance and, on about 93 percent in Panama, 98 percent in occasion, Pedrarias's men. Costa Rica, and 95 percent in conquered In the north as in the south, the Spanish Nicaragua (compared with about 80 per- conquest represented the triumph of the cent in Guatemala). few over the many. Pedro de Alvarado's 420 conquistadores, even with Indian allies, n Mesoamerica, by contrast, many In- were greatly outnumbered in most battles; dians were already familiar with the on one occasion, reputedly, they faced an conditions of enforced servitude. Indian force of 200,000 men. But for Alva- Slaves and plebes had for centuries served rado, as for other Spaniards, the advantages their kings, tilling the fields and building of muskets, armor, horses, and divide-and- such ceremonial centers as Utatlan and conquer diplomacy proved decisive. Zaculeu in the Guatemala highlands. (Ar- "There were so many Indians that they chaeologists have identified at least 116 killed," ran a Quiche account of a major such centers, which once boasted great battle with Alvarado, "that they made a pyramids, palaces, and observatories.) The river of blood; that is why it was given the Spanish, taking advantage of the existing name of Quiquel [blood], because all the system, simply stepped in as the new lords. water became blood and also the day be- The conquerors of Mesoamerica-mod- came red on account of the great blood- els of gentleness none-at least in principle shed that day." observed certain restrictions that the More devastating even than gunpowder, crown and Cortes had put on slavery: They scholars believe, were the white man's dis- enslaved only Indian combatants or former eases. Smallpox, measles, yellow fever, ty- Indian slaves. And shortly after Cortes be- phus, and a variety of new viruses in some came governor and captain-general of New cases marched ahead of the conquering ar- Spain (Mexico and most of Central Amer- mies, laying waste to native villages before ica) in 1522, most of his subalterns adopted a shot was fired. But muskets and viruses the medieval Spanish system of labor called were not the only killers. Forced labor- the encornienda and abandoned outright both physically taxing and psychologically enslavement. demoralizing-also took its toll. Slavery Under the encornienda, a colonist was was particularly hard on the southeastern awarded land and Indian labor in return Indians, who were completely unaccus- for his pledge to protect and Christianize tomed to the rigors of "disciplined" labor. his charges. The converted Indians, in turn, The shock of enslavement-including lit- were obliged to pay a tribute, part of which eral branding under Pedrarias-was se- went to the crown and part to their enco-

WQ SUMMER 1990 46 THE INDIAN QUESTION

monarchs title to most of the new land*- and, with it, the duty to convert the pagans. But despite the closeness of church and government, the two often disagreed over the treatment of Indians. Dominican and Jesuit missionaries were generally protec- tive of the Indians, viewing them as no dif- ferent from any other of God's creatures. The Dominican Bartolome de Las Casas traveled throughout Central America, de- nouncing the Spanish for their mistreat- ment of the Indians. Local civil authorities, however, and many regular clergy, argued that Indians had no inherent rights, much less civilization; coercive labor, they held, was the best means of Christianizing these less-than-human creatures. The conflict was partially resolved in 1542, when Charles I (1519-56) issued the New Laws and sent a forceful adminis- trator, Alonso Lopez de Cerrato, to Santiago menderos. The Indians were also expected to enforce them. Intended to protect Indi- to provide a certain amount of labor to the ans from the worst abuses of coercive la- colonial leaders. Some worked on the haci- bor, the laws forbade outright slavery, elimi- endas or on public projects in colonial nated many of the encomiendas, and towns like Santiago de Guatemala or placed Indians under the direct jurisdiction Gracias in Honduras, while others, despite of the crown. But the crown did not abolish royal ordinances, were forced to labor in the tribute obligations of the Christianized mines or serve as human pack-horses. A Indians, which remained a mainstay of the goodly number of Christianized Indians colonial economy until 18 11. ended up being resettled in villages, or Even as their treatment was regularized, pueblos, where they enjoyed limited self- the Indians continued to decline in num- government. Their leaders, or caciques, bers. Throughout Central America, but par- formed native councils, responsible for in- ticularly in the southeast, miscegenation ternal order, the allocation of work and ser- hastened the disappearance of pure- vices, and the collection of tribute. But blooded Indians. Out of this other "con- Spanish civil authorities retained ultimate quest" came mixed-blood mestizos, or ladi- authority over the tribute system, and all nos, who by the 17th century formed a activities remained under the watchful eyes distinct class of wage laborers, small farm- of the missionary priests. ers, artisans, merchants, and peddlers. With In fact, from the earliest days of the con- time, of course, ladinos came to disdain the quest, secular and religious authority were poor, pure-blooded Indians as much as the virtually indistinguishable throughout the pure-blooded creoles disdained the ladinos. Spanish empire. When news of Columbus's discovery reached the Spanish court in 'The same papal edict of 1493 gave Portugal a part of the New World-what amounted to the eastern portion of 1493, Pope Alexander VI gave the Spanish present-day Brazil.

WQ SUMMER 1990 THE INDIAN QUESTION

Indian Populations approximate for early 1980s

BELIZE 123,5001 HONDURAS [ 157,000] Gziriluna 1 1.000 Choni 2.(K)O Kckchi 4.0110 Garifuna 70.003 Mopan 2.700 Lcnca 50.1XX) Yucatcco 5,XIXl Miskito 25,000 Pcch 1.800

NICARAGUA [76,000] Garifuna 8(X) Mtitqalpa I'!] Mi-ikno 70.SiX) Rama 60U Suniu 4,200 COSTA RICA 11 1,2001 Boruca 1.1XX) Bnhn 3,S(Xl Cahiicar 3,'XX) The dotted line marks the Guiiymi 1,4lK) Malcku 200 approximate divide between Malamhu 400 the Mesoamerican "high cul- Quitirrki 500 TCrraba 300 tunas" and the more primi- Ziipdlbn 1'!1 tive Indian societies of south- T~utuhil65,0(K) eastern Central America. Uspanleco ~,IMX) PANAMA [93,100] Xinca 3.5011 Brihri 500 Chuc6 10.1(Xl Cuna 28.700 EL SALVADOR I?] Guaymi 52,3(KI 1-cnca S.(XX) TCrraba 1,5(Xl t'lpll ["I

WQ SUMMER 1990 48 THE INDIAN QUESTION

INDIANS OF CENTRAL AMERICA 1980s

Compiled by Melanie A. Counce and William V. Davidson Department of Geography and Anthropology Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Indian Settlement of over 100

0 Non-Indian Settlement with over 100 Indians

Area of Dispersed Indian Settlement

(.-.) Indian Area, Native Language Absent or Rare ,---,-, , Group Boundary

COSTA RICA \ THE INDIAN QUESTION

But in the southeast, because there were perity to the Spanish colonies in Central few Indians, and because those who sur- America. Gold and silver mining in Hondu- vived lived far from Spanish settlements, ras produced disappointing yields, and there was relatively less fear of the Indi- Spain's tight control of the colonial trade ans-and less imagined need to keep the kept down the prices of the colony's cocoa "savages" down. Not unrelated to this low and indigo exports. The Kingdom of Guate- level of conflict was the declining impor- mala, which had acquired de facto auton- tance of Indians to the regional economy. omy from New Spain in the mid-16th cen- By the end of the 16th century, in much of tury (and which encompassed all of Central Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica, la- America except Panama), remained a par- bor was provided mostly by the growing ticularly impoverished backwater of the mestizo population. Spanish empire. Spain's new Bourbon monarchs, starting with Philip V in 1700, hings were different in most of tried to open up trade within the empire, Mesoamerica. There the Indians re- but their efforts did little good for the Cen- mained vital to the colonial (and tral American colony. post-colonial) economy. Repartimientos The Bourbons' attempt to assert stron- (forced labor drafts), debt peonage, and ger royal control did, however, have one sharecropping kept Indians captive on the lasting effect on the Kingdom of Guatema- haciendas long after the encomiendas were la. It reduced the autonomy that locally curtailed. Life was not much better in the born landlords-the creole elite-had ac- pueblos. "The demands for [Indian] pro- quired through their domination of town duce and labor were constant," observed councils. Seeing their power stripped by the historian Murdo MacLeod-so con- representatives of the imperial court in stant, in fact, that many Indians chose Santiago de Guatemala, discontented cre- peonage on the haciendas over the sup- oles became receptive to the independence posed freedom of the pueblos. movement that began to stir throughout Largely because the Indians were so vi- the empire in the late 18th century. tal to the Mesoamerican economy, the cre- In 182 1, Central America allowed itself ole~and ladinos believed that they needed to be annexed to Mexico in order to win periodic reminders of their low status: independence from Spain; two years later Such treatment understandably reinforced the union with Mexico dissolved. But be- the fears of the Indians, who kept alive their fore Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, hope of eventual liberation in rituals such Nicaragua, and Costa Rica declared them- as the "Dance of the Conquest" or even in selves independent republics, they tried outright rebellion. One notable uprising briefly to live together as the United Prov- was staged by Indians in the Chiapas and inces of Central America. (Panama, part of Guatemalan highlands in 17 12. Colonial au- Colombia, became independent only in thorities retaliated with wholesale execu- 1903, and Belize remained a British colony tions and forced resettlements, meeting ter- until 1981 .) The federation was effectively ror with counter-terror in what was dead by 1838, but one ironic consequence becoming clearly defined as the conquest of the liberal experiment was that the Indi- tradition of Mesoamerica. ans were left worse off than they had been Indian labor, whether scarce (as in most before independence: The crown's protec- of the southeast) or abundant (as in most of tion-slight though it had been-was no Mesoamerica), failed to bring great pros- longer available to them. As the historian

WQ SUMMER 1990 50 THE INDIAN QUESTION

Hector Perez-Brignoli has shown, the new and a ribbon of mainland territory. The In- ruling classes of Central America, whether dian reserve, or comarca, of San Bias has bourgeois, oligarchical, or aristocratic, been respected by all subsequent Panama- failed to forge "a new collaboration and nian governments. Today, some 35,000 consensus to replace the crumbling colo- Cuna enjoy great autonomy, even as they nial paternalism. Control rested therefore participate in national politics. exclusively on exploitation, violence, and But if the comarca typified the Indian terror." policies of the southeastern states-and In the specific case of state-Indian rela- even influenced the arrangement that the tions, however, Perez-Brignoli's description Sandinistas later worked out with the Mis- holds far more for the Mesoamerican re- kito-the conquest tradition remains very gion than for the southeast. One finds many much alive in Guatemala and El Salvador. examples of a more benign state of govern- The Indian populations there are still very ment-Indian affairs in the southeast well be- large; in Guatemala not only large (maybe fore the resolution of the Sandinista-Miskito even half of the eight million population) conflict during the 1980s. but also recognizable. Clearly, though, the Shortly after Panama gained indepen- price of retaining a distinct Indian identity dence from Colombia in 1903, for instance, has been high. It has often provoked the the new government ran into trouble with government campaigns of terror, and it has its largest Indian tribe, the Cuna. These made it easy for the government to identify proud Indians lived mainly on, or just off, the "enemy" once those campaigns were the northeast coast of the country, but under way. some lived along the sensitive border with Colombia-and many retained a fondness he situation in El Salvador is quite for their former rulers. The Panamanian different. According to a 1989 esti- government naturally wanted to win over mate, there may be around 500,000 these Indians; its strategy was assimilation. Indians in that country of 5.4 million. But But when the Cuna resisted, the govern- they are close to being an invisible people, ment committed a costly error: It sent po- most of them having abandoned their dis- licemen to the Cuna's islands, charging tinctive native dress and customs under them with the impossible task of eradicat- pressure from the dominant creole culture. ing the Indians' folkways and customs. That Their assimilation, however, is only a differ- proved to be too much for the Cuna tradi- ent response to the conquest tradition. tionalists, many of whom had won the The plight of El Salvador's Indians had friendship and support of American ethnol- been terrible ever since the conquest, but it ogists and missionaries. During the festival reached a low point during the Great De- of Carnaval in 1925, the Cuna rebelled, kill- pression of the 1930s, when the country's ing some 30 policemen, Panamanians, and coffee-based economy collapsed. In Janu- acculturated Indians. ary 1932, shortly after the military over- But the government response was re- throw of a progressive president, Arturo markably tempered. Partly in response to Araujo, a band of Indians armed with ma- the urgings of U.S. officials, the government chetes swooped down on a cluster of land- decided to negotiate. The two sides worked lords and storekeepers in southwestern El out an agreement that allowed the Cuna Salvador, hacking about 35 of them to control over a portion of their traditional death and looting their homes and stores. homeland, including the offshore islands Among the leaders of the uprising was

WQ SUMMER 1990 5 1 THE INDIAN QUESTION

An early 20th-century photograph of group of Cuna Indians on the island of El Tigri. The nose ring was but one of the native customs the Panamanian government tried to eradicate.

Augustin Farabundo Marti, a communist The Indians took the hint. No further whose renown lives on in the name of El massacres were needed. Instead, the Indi- Salvador's contemporary revolutionary or= ans have become an indistinguishable part ganization, the Farabundo Marti National of El Salvador's vast laboring population. Liberation Front (FMLN). General Maximil- To be sure, the country has experienced re- iano Hernandez, the usurper, responded to peated bouts of terrorism and civil strife the Indian revolt with an organized reign of since 1979, including street fighting in the terror. According to eyewitnesses, soldiers capital between the army and FMLN guer- rounded up anyone who looked or dressed rillas in late 1989. But the government no like an Indian, women and children in- longer responds by singling out the Indi- cluded, and conducted mass executions. ans. Can one safely conclude that the men- The death toll reached 30,000 according to tality of the conquest tradition has run its some estimates. For years after, in radio course in El Salvador? Not at all. The forces broadcasts and newspaper articles, ladino of reaction now direct terror at all of the commentators spoke of the need to exter- laboring poor. The indiscriminate shelling minate all of the country's Indians so that of the poorer neighborhoods of San Salva- insurrections such as that of 1932 would dor in the most recent uprising shows that not be repeated. the conquest mentality lives on, despite the

WQ SUMMER 1990 52 THE INDIAN QUESTION

relative invisibility of the much dreaded of assimilation, but in a way that holds out Indios. some hope for the future of the Indians. In- The situation of the Indians in Guatema- deed, according to this story, Indian for- la, meanwhile, has become increasingly tunes are already on the rise in some of complicated. Twenty years ago, anthropolo- Guatemala's rural departments-those, in gists claimed that the Indians were being particular, that the earlier insurgency by- rapidly assimilated into the dominant la- passed. In village after village, Indians are din0 culture. In some important ways, they starting small agribusinesses, accumulating were wrong. Government policies, for one capital, even buying back land that they had thing, reinforced Indian separateness. As earlier sold to the ladinos. They are effec- recently as 1984, the Guatemalan army tively creating a new Indian economy- brought thousands of displaced Indians one that husbands Indian labor and re- into newly formed communities-"model sources rather than leaving them open to towns." Replicating the system used by co- ladino exploitation. lonial Spain, the army found these settle- It is, of course, all to the good that the ments easier to keep under surveillance Indians of Guatemala are beginning to than the scattered hamlets the Indians for- show confidence and pride in their own na- merly inhabited. As in the past, Indians tive identity. Further economic strength were expected to serve for no compensa- and independence will only bolster these. tion. They were forced into unarmed mili- But self-respect is not enough to bring an tias to patrol the countryside and to moni- end to the dismal record of state-Indian re- tor guerrilla activities. When not on patrol, lations in the Mesoamerican states of Cen- the Indian men and boys would join their tral America. That will require the govern- families in scratching out a meager exis- ments of Guatemala and El Salvador-with tence, farming in nearby fields or perform- the encouragement of their biggest backer, ing menial labor for ladinos in neighboring the United States-to follow the example of communities. their neighbors in the southeast and take steps to reduce the inequalities, the threat hat is part of the story of Guatema- of violence, and the perpetuation of fear. It la's Indians-many still oppressed, will require, in others words, that the elites T some even terrorized. Another part; of these nations finally abandon the time- equally valid, also disproves the prediction worn ways of the conquest tradition.

WQ SUMMER 1990 53 THE INDIAN QUESTION

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

uatemala is the only distinctive character and customs. country in Central The extent of this Indian renaissance America with a large In- was brought home to me on a recent visit dian population. The In- to Aguacatan, a remote farming commu- dians, mostly of Mayan nity whose inhabitants are about 80 percent ancestry, are probably a Aguacatec Indian and 20 percent ladinos. majority,G although it is hard to know for he first shock was the number of televi- sure since there is much debate over who sion aerials on the adobe cottages dotted all is, and who is not, an indigena. Once a fam- over the rich green valley. The second was ily of Indians moves to the city, they can the sight of young Indians racing past on turn themselves into ladinos (as mestizos ten-speed mountain bicycles, imports from are called in much of Central America) af- Taiwan that sell for about $175 each. The ter a couple of generations if they learn to central plaza of the pueblo was alive with think and behave like ladinos-that is, if commerce and movement. Aguacatec they speak only Spanish and abandon their women walked along busily, dressed in Indian culture. I recall meeting a Guatema- blue and green headdresses with baubles lan army lieutenant with unmistakable Ma- falling down behind their ears. Beneath yan features who spoke in a detached way their outlandish Indian costume, or traje as about the Indian conscripts in his platoon, it is known, many were wearing stout as if they were of a different species. He leather shoes-a concession to conve- considered himself a ladino, and so, there- nience. Among the crowd there were a fore, did everybody else. number of ladinos. A few were chatting po- By 1960 the rate of assimilation was so litely to the Indians; most were just mind- high that anthropologists began to despair; ing their own business. fearing that Mayan culture would gradually Until recently, Aguacatecos were terri- disappear during the next 30 years or so. In fied of ladinos. "It was awful," said Dimitrio certain parts of Guatemala, this has hap- Rodriguez, a soft-spoken, bespectacled In- pened. But the great surprise is that the In- dian, as we sat drinking Pepsi on his veran- dians have generally held their ground, and dah. "My father can remember being seized in the well-documented case of San Anto- by ladinos as he was walking down the nio Aguascalientes, the ladinos themselves road. They whipped him and sent him off are finding it useful to become bilingual, as a beast of burden to fetch goods from learning Cakchiquel so as not to be margin- Huehuetenango [a day's walk away]." alized in a pueblo where the Indians in- Forced labor was abolished after the creasingly play a dominant civic and eco- revolution of 1944, but the ladinos contin- nomic role. It is no longer far-fetched to ued to control the power structure of imagine the Maya doing what the Japanese Aguacatan, and a form of apartheid per- have done: mastering the machinery of a sisted. Indians were not allowed to use the modem economy without giving up their sidewalks, for instance, and they had to step

WQ SUMMER 1990 54 THE INDIAN QUESTION

aside in shops if a ladino The garlic industry al- were waiting to be served. lowed the Indians of Aguacatan, and of other The first time ladinos ever parts of Guatemala, to met socially with Aguaca- stage their own economic tecos in a private home was "miracle." Two leaders of in 1972, when an American the Aguacatan Agricul- tural Association (left), one anthropologist, Douglas Indian and one ladino, Brintnall, invited both to the stand in front of their co- birthday party of his young operative building. An In- son. dian woman (below) re- moves garlic stalks with Today Aguacatan is a dif- pruning scissors. ferent world. Dimitrio's brother is the top adminis- trative officer in the local government and is consider- ing a run for mayor. His cousin is a Catholic priest, the first Aguacateco ever to be ordained. And last year Dimitrio himself finished his medical training at the Uni- versity of San Carlos and re- turned home to become Aguacatan's first Indian phy- sician. Dimitrio's family lives in an imposing farmhouse perched above terraces of elaborately irrigated garlic. It was this unlikely crop that lifted his parents out of pov- erty during the 1950s and '60s, and which has since transformed the whole economy of Aguacatan. The difference in yield between garlic and the Mayan staple of maize is stag- tional role as traders. For a while they gering. An acre of land currently yields made fat profits buying garlic from the In- about $140 worth of maize, or $2,600 of dians and selling it in Guatemala City. But garlic. Overwhelmingly, the Indians have during the 1980s, the Indians not only been the quickest to seize the opportunity, caught up but leapt ahead in the sophistica- and many have accumulated enough capi- tion of their marketing. When I visited tal to buy back land lost to ladino creditors Humberto Hen-era, president of an associa- during the last century. The five largest gar- tion of 500 Aguacatec smallholders, he lic growers are all Indian. seemed interested that I was English and The ladinos have stuck to their tradi- began chatting about London. To my aston-

WQ SUMMER 1990 55 THE INDIAN QUESTION

ishment, he said he had just returned from to escape from one of the paralyzing defor- a trip promoting garlic in Covent Garden. mities of their own culture, notably the His association has built its own packing cofradia, a religious fraternity imported plant on the outskirts of Aguacatan, from from Spain. Deformity is perhaps too harsh which it exports directly to the United a word, for many historians would argue States, England, and Panama, without any that this exotic institution kept Mayan tradi- dealings through ladino middlemen. tions alive after the great wrecking attempt The influence of ladinos in most of Gua- of the Spanish conquest. Certainly, the Indi- temala's Indian towns depends, to a great ans transformed the cofradm into some- extent, on a monopoly of access to the out- thing uniquely Mayan, a sort of theocratic side world. In Aguacatan they have clearly council of elders that ran village life. Al- lost this, in every sense. The most sophisti- though Catholic on the outside, it was cated man I met in the pueblo was Pedro strongly pre-Columbian on the inside. Castro, an Indian who runs the local branch of Habitat For Humanity. He has he beauty of the cofradia was its lev- been to the United States six times, giving eling effect. A rich Indian would talks on behalf of the organization. On one T usually rise to a senior post in the visit, he had had a private meeting with hierarchy, and the higher he rose, the more Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who are he was expected to spend on lavish Christo- closely involved with Habitat's mission of pagan religious festivals. A sort of wealth building houses for the poor throughout tax prevented the emergence of an heredi- the world. "They seemed like very nice tary Indian aristocracy. But it was an un- people," he said nonchalantly. Castro is an productive tax. Almost the entire savings of Indian nationalist, and although fluently bi- the pueblo were spent on ceremony, and lingual, he insists on speaking to his fellow much of it went to ritual drinking. There Indians in a pure form of Aguacateco, with- was no capital accumulation for invest- out Spanish adulteration. ment, ensuring a primitive static economy. In The Revolt Against the Dead, a bril- Moreover, the cofradias tended to be reac- liant study of Aguacatan based on fieldwork tionary. In 1962 the elders of a neighboring done in the early 1970s, Douglas Brintnall community sent out a machete gang to de- writes that it was an American Maryknoll- stroy the new school. According to Ricardo priest with indigenista sympathies who got Falla, a Jesuit priest working in the area, Indian education off the ground. Seeing the cofradia said that the school only taught that the municipal school was dominated the children "to rob, become lazy, learn by ladinos, this priest started a bilingual bad prayers and bad language, and to lose parish school for the Aguacatecos. Al- respect for their fathers and mothers." though it charges higher fees, it has been a The ladinos did not participate in the huge success. Indeed, the standard is so cofradia, but they have long understood much higher that some ambitious ladinos how it kept the Indians down, and have of- have enrolled their children in the parish ten been the most vigilant guardians of In- school. dian costumbre (custom). In Aguacatan, for It was not inevitable that the Indians instance, they even used their judicial would respond to the new opportunities power, illegally, to enforce obedience to the with such impressive energy. First they had traditionalist hierarchy. By the 1950s, some Ambrose Evans-Pritchard was a correspondent for the London Spectator in Central America and the United States. He now lives in Guatemala and is at work on a novel.

WQ SUMMER 1990 56 THE INDIAN QUESTION

-

Indians were waking up to the subtle op- made Catholicism dangerous in these com- pression of the cofradia. In 1955 Dimitrio's munities, allowing the cofradia to enjoy a uncle became the first Aguacateco from a small revival. Most of the refugees, how- respected family to abandon costumbre and ever, sought safety in one of the Pentecostal convert to Catholicism (without consider- churches that have sprung up all over Gua- ing himself any less Indian). He set off an temala. These evang6licos have the same avalanche. Over the next generation the ethic of thrift and hard work as their fellow flower of Aguacatec youth, those destined converts in the Catholic Church, and they for leadership of the cofradia, rebelled seem to be transforming their villages in a against the religion of their fathers. similar way. The cofradia has withered. At last, the Aguacatecos are investing in their future, t is tempting to think that the Maya are saving money and educating their children. at last emancipating themselves. They To what degree these changes have oc- I are such long-suffering people, so ele- curred in the rest of Guatemala is an open gant, dignified, and loyal. Foreigners are and highly debated question. The Marxist forever romanticizing them, projecting guerrilla uprising of the early 1980s has left their own ideologies onto the inscrutable a political mosaic in the Indian highlands. Indian culture. The Left likes to imagine In some villages the Catholics, or catechists the Maya as proto-socialists, and the Right as they are called, became identified with (I confess my bias), as budding entrepre- the guerrillas. This identification tended to neurs. On the whole they have both been occur wherever radical priests and nuns disappointed. But the social revolution has had been active. (It is believed that three run so deep over the last generation that I liberation theology priests joined the Guer- predict, with caution, that nothing can hold rilla Army of the Poor.) Army repression back the Maya any longer.

WQ SUMMER 1990 57 BACKGROUND BOOKS

LATIN AMERICA'S INDIAN QUESTION

hristopher Columbus's famous confusion the Indians. They perished from warfare and c led the European invaders of the Americas harsh treatment but in much larger numbers to refer to the inhabitants of the New World from disease and famine. The biological, social, indiscriminately as Indians. Similar uncertainty and cultural consequences of the European in- has bedeviled all discussions of the Indians vasion are well described in Alfred Crosby's ever since. We can only guess how many Indi- The Columbian Exchange (Greenwood Press, ans there were in the Americas when the Euro- 1972). He points out that the conquest proved a peans arrived-between 35 and 40 million is shock to Indian society " . . . such as only H. G. one reasonable estimate. Nor can we establish Wells's The War of the Worlds can suggest to how many Indians there are living in the Amer- us." Crosby, who teaches American studies at icas today. This is largely because of the centu- the University of Texas, documents the tremen- ries' old debate over how to define an Indian, dous biological and demographic transforma- and who does the defining. tions that took place when the two worlds met; In colonial times, relations with and poli- he tells how the diseases of the Old World cut a cies concerning the Indians were important swathe through the populations of the New, items on the agendas of the colonizing powers. causing the Indians to experience a "spectacu- In the 19th century, however, the Indians be- lar period of mortality." came either physically or socially marginal to Those that survived the ravages of disease, the newly independent nations of the western famine, warfare, and maltreatment found hemisphere. Indians at the frontiers were con- themselves in a different world, one organized sidered savages to be exterminated or, at best, to meet the demands of their European over- rounded up and confined in remote places, lords. A whole array of institutions was intro- where they would not interfere with "prog- duced to enable the colonists and their sover- ress." Meanwhile, in Central America and the eigns to control the human and natural Andean countries, where the new republics de- resources of the Americas. These differed from pended on a large Indian labor force, system- one region to another, according to the tradi- atic attempts were made to compel the Indians tions of the invading nations and the nature of to give up their identity and become assimi- the Indian societies they encountered. The lat- lated into the national mainstream. At various ter varied from the large Aztec and Inca polities times and places, the very category of "Indian" to unstratified societies that lived by hunting was formally abolished. Even in the absence of and gathering. Eric Wolf, professor of an- such formal prohibitions, the matter of who thropology at Herbert Lehman College, pre- should be considered Indian remains unde- sents a broad historical overview of the impact cided in many countries. Over the years, Indi- of colonialism on native peoples in Europe ans have been defined, variously, as people of a and the People without History (Univ. of certain racial stock, as people who can speak Calif., 1982). His book gives an excellent ac- only an Indian language, as people who live in count of the nature of pre-conquest societies in Indian communities, as people who maintain the Americas and of their transformation dur- Indian customs in mixed communities, or as ing colonial times. people who combine a number of these charac- Meanwhile, the encounter with the Indians teristics and sometimes others as well. Since forced Europeans to rethink their views of the the criteria are applied differently in different world and its inhabitants. The famous debates places and even differently by different people between the Dominican Las Casas and 16th- writing about the same place, both the defini- century Spanish theologian Sephlveda are care- tion and total numbers of "Indians" in the fully analyzed in historian Lewis Hanke's Aris- Americas today are uncertain. totle and the American Indians (Ind. Univ., One thing is clear: The European invasion 1959). The rights of the Indians were at issue, of the Americas was a demographic disaster for and these depended partly on how Indians

WQ SUMMER 1990 THE INDIAN QUESTION

were defined. Were they hu- man? If so, what kind of humans were they? Were they savages, cannibals, heretics, or in other ways beyond the pale? If not, what were they, and how should they be treated? Much has been written about the impact of the Indians on European thought. Anthony Pagden, an English scholar, treats the subject at length in The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Ori- gins of Comparative Ethnol- ogy (Cambridge Univ., 1982). In The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (English trans., This remarkable tenacity, after the initial Harper & Row, 1984), Tzvetan Todorov, a shock and through the continuing horror, is the French literary theorist, offers a strongly philo- subject of other recent studies, including sophical reading of the change in Europeans' Nancy Farriss's Maya Society under Colonial views of themselves as a result of their encoun- Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival ter with the Indians. Todorov's discussion of (Princeton Univ., 1984) and Karen Spalding's both Indian and European attitudes contrasts Huarochiri: An Andean Society under Inca dramatically with that of Eduardo Galeano, a and Spanish Rule (Stanford Univ., 1984). Nor Uruguayan writer who set out to retell the his- was Indian resistance merely ideological. Dur- tory of the New World since the conquest in his ing the three centuries of colonial rule, peri- epic trilogy, Memory of Fire. In Genesis odic rebellions broke out, and in some parts of (1985), Faces and Masks (1987), and Century the Americas the Indians were never con- of the Wind (1988; all English trans., Pan- quered. The rebellions often achieved tempo- theon), he constructs out of excerpts and vi- rary or local success, but precisely because gnettes a vivid collage that makes the reader they were local or at most regional affairs, they feel the horror as well as the grandiose drama were always supressed as soon as the power of of the history of the Americas. the state could be concentrated and brought to Horror is a recurrent theme in the Indians' bear against them. Two excellent studies of view of the conquest, and it is eloquently re- such rebellions, in the Andes and Central corded in the Mayan chronicles of Chilam America, respectively, have recently appeared: Balam, written soon after the Spaniards had Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in seized control of Mexico. Nathan Wachtel the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Cen- caught this sense of shock and horror in his turies, edited by historian Steve Stern (Univ. of pioneering book, The Vision of the Van- Wise., 1987) and Riot, Rebellion and Revolu- quished (English trans., Barnes & Noble, tion: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico, edited 1977). "The Indians," he wrote, "seem to have by historian Friedrich Katz (Princeton Univ., been struck numb, unable to make sense of 1988). These volumes are unusual because they events, as if their mental universe had been deal with the 19th and 20th centuries, and with suddenly shattered." Wachtel does not stop the Indian-peasant continuum. They empha- there, however, but takes his story up to the size, as Stern puts it, that an "ethnic compo- present in order to show how the Indians, par- nent is built into the oppressions, patterns of ticularly those in the Andes, succeeded in de- adaptation and resistance, sense of grievance, fending and perpetuating their own values in and aspirations that will loom large in the ex- the face of powerful and determined efforts to planation and analysis of revolt." eradicate them. There is a striking contrast between the

WQ SUMMER 1990 59 THE INDIAN QUESTION

wealth of materials referring to Indians in colo- and analyzed in Harvest of Violence: The nial times and the dearth of similar treatments Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis, for the 19th century. As the newly independent edited by Robert Carmack (Univ. of Okla., countries of Latin America turned their atten- 1988). The contributors to this volume show tion to modernization and nation-building, they that the problems of Guatemala, often repre- saw no place for Indians in either agenda. The sented to North Americans as resulting from Indian question thus came to be seen as an the conflict between communism and capital- anachronism, and it was assumed that the Indi- ism, are in fact rooted in the relations between ans of the past would soon become the cam- Indians and the non-Indian elites. pesinos of the future. Meanwhile the mistreatment of Indians in the Amazonian regions of Brazil, carried out in n the 20th century, scholars tended to deal the name of development, is getting some at- I with national questions (which did not in- tention in the world press. Yet international clude the Indians) or to publish studies of In- concern seems to focus more on the destruc- dian peoples or communities (in which the sub- tion of the rain forest than on the rights of the jects were only tenuously related to national Indians, and there is no good general study affairs). The most important exceptions came showing why the Indian question has become from Peru and Mexico, where traditions of such a sensitive political issue. indigenismo, or concern for the nations' Indian Until recently the Indians of Central and heritage, became part of the national discourse. South America were treated as if they were in- Peruvian writers such as Jose Carlos visible, except by specialists whose works were Mariategui, Haya de la Torre, and Hildebrando regarded as having little national significance. Castro Pozo incorporated a somewhat roman- That is changing now that the Indians them- tic view of the Indian into their political selves are asserting their right to maintain their analyses, while in Mexico Manuel Gamio, own cultures. However, the Indian demand for Moises Saenz, and others dealt with the Indian cultural pluralism is rarely taken seriously. question from a Mexican perspective. It was in Throughout the Americas, indigenous peoples Mexico, after the revolution of 1910-20, that continue to be caught in the crossfires of na- the most serious attempt was made to put tional politics. This has led to a growing realiza- indigenismo into practice. But the traditional tion among scholars that the situation of the theses of Mexican indigenismo, namely that an- Indians cannot be studied except in relation to thropology in the service of the revolutionary each nation's larger political agenda. At the state should assist Indians to blend into the na- same time, it is also becoming clear that the tional melting pot, are now much criticized. nations of the Americas cannot be fully under- As the 20th century draws to a close, first- stood without taking their treatment of the In- rate books dealing with the Indians' place in dians into account. Fresh studies informed by their own countries are relatively rare. Even these ideas are now in progress. They give us the problems of Peru, rent as it is with violent hope that the quincentennial of Columbus's conflicts, are regularly written with only pass- first landfall in the New World may be cele- ing mention of the peculiar circumstances of brated by the emergence of a more balanced its large Indian population. The same could be vision of the shaping of the Americas. said of most of the countries of the Americas, with the exception of Guatemala and Brazil. -David Maybury-Lewis The slaughter of Indians by the Guatemalan Paul H. Gelles authorities in recent years has been described Harvard University

WO SUMMER 1990 60 ROBERT CONQUEST "Stalin was not only the master criminal; he was the master concealer. It took a master detective, and a poet, like Mr. Conquest, to unmask him con1pletely"-The New York Tin1e.s Book Review. "Availing himself of the new historical data from Soviet sources freed up by gluLs~io.st,Conquest has now updated and fleshed out his classic study of the purges. The extraordinary thing is how closely the new information fits with the conclusions he had to work out 20 years ago"-Lo.7 A1ige1e.s Times. "Universally respected for its scholarship"-Boston Sunday Globe. $24.95, 570 pp.

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There is no question that blacks have had a harder struggle than most other groups in America. But is race still the greatest obsta- cle to their progress? The question itself is a sensitive one. Ten years ago, sociologist William Julius Wilson created a furor when he claimed that economics was a greater problem for blacks than race. Received wisdom dies hard. Shelby Steele here argues that the reluctance to think beyond accepted formulas is not only lazy thinking; it is a formidable obstacle to black advancement.

by Shelby Steele

am a fortyish, middle-class, black ally satisfy this need, though recently, in the American male, with a teaching po- interest of convenience, I've taken to let- sition at a large state university in ting my wife cut my hair. California. I have owned my own I see in people's eyes from time to time, home for more than ten years, as and hear often in the media, what amounts well as the two cars that are the to a judgment of people like me: You have minimal requirement for life in California. moved into the great amorphous middle And I will confess to a moderate strain of class and lost your connection to your peo- yuppie hedonism. Year after year my two ple and your cultural roots. You have be- children are the sole representatives of come a genuine invisible man. This is a their race in their classrooms, a fact they judgment with many obvious dimensions, sometimes have difficulty remembering. many arrows of guilt. But, in essence, it We are the only black family in our subur- charges me with selfishness and inauthen- ban neighborhood, and even this claim to ticitv. specialness is diminished by the fact that At one point in my life I romanticized my wife is white. I think we are called an my situation, thought of myself as a mar- "integrated" family, though no one has ginal man. The seductive imagery of alien- ever used the term with me. For me to be ation supported me in this. But in America among large numbers of blacks requires today, racial marginality is hard to sell as conscientiousness and a long car ride, and, the stuff of tragedy. The position brings in truth, I have not been very conscientious with it an ugly note of self-insistence that lately. Though I was raised in an all-black annoys people in a society that is, at least community just south of Chicago, I only oc- officially, desegregated. casionally feel nostalgia for such places. For better or worse, I'm not very mar- Trips to the barbershop now and then usu- ginal. In my middle-American world I see

WQ SUMMER 1990 BLACKS IN AMERICA

people like myself everywhere. We nod coolly at each other when we're stopped at traffic lights, our eyes connect for an awk- ward instant in shopping malls, we hear about one another from our white friends. "Have you met the new doctor at the hospital. . . the engineer at IBM . . . the new professor in history?" The black middle class is growing in size. We are often said to be sneaking or slipping or creeping unno- ticed into the middle class, as though im- ages of stealth best characterized our move- ment. I picture a kind of underground railroad, delivering us in the dead of night from the inner city to the suburbs. But even if we aren't very marginal, we are very shy with one another, at least until we've had a chance to meet privately and take our readings. When we first meet one another, we experience a trapped feeling; it is as though we had been confronted by a set of expectations that could rob us of our individuality by reducing us to an exclu- sively racial dimension. We are a threat, at first, to one another's uniqueness. I have Yes, Leroi, by David P. Bradford (1968). seen the same well-dressed black woman in the supermarket for more than a year now. We do not speak, and we usually pretend mately makes for race fatigue. not to see each other. But when we turn a I have a friend who did poorly in the corner suddenly and find ourselves staring insurance business for years. "People won't squarely into each other's eyes, her face buy insurance from a black man," he al- freezes and she moves on. I believe she is ways said. Two years ago another black insisting that both of us be more than man and a black woman joined his office. black-that we interact only when we have Almost immediately both did twice the a reason other than the mere fact of our business my friend was doing, with the race. Her chilliness enforces a priority that same largely white clientele. I agree with-individuality over group Integration shock is essentially the identity. shock of being suddenly accountable on But I believe I see something else in this strictly personal terms. It occurs in situa- woman, which I also see in myself and in tions that disallow race as an excuse for many other middle-class blacks. It is a kind personal shortcomings, and it therefore ex- of race fatigue, a deep weariness with poses vulnerabilities that previously were things racial, resulting from the fact that hidden. One response to such shock is to our lives are more integrated than they face up to the self-doubts that it occasions have ever been before. Race does not deter- and then to act on the basis of what we mine our fates as powerfully as it once did, learn about ourselves. After some struggle, which means it is not the vital personal my friend was able to do this. He com- concern it once was. Before the sixties, pletely revised his sales technique, asked race set the boundaries of black life. Now, himself some hard questions about his especially for middle-class blacks, it is far motivation, and resolved to work more dili- less a factor, even though we don't always gently. like to admit it. Because blacks still suffer But when one lacks the courage to face from racism, we must be alert to the prob- oneself fully, a fear of hidden vulnerabilities lem, but the imperative to be concerned triggers a fright-flight response to integra- with what is not personally urgent ulti- tion shock. Instead of admitting that racism

WQ SUMMER 1990 63 BLACKS IN AMERICA

has declined, we argue all the harder that it white people who live around them. You is still alive and more insidious than ever. cannot be raised in a culture that was for We hold race up to shield us from what we centuries committed to the notion of your do not want to see in ourselves. My friend inferiority and not have some doubt in this did this at first, saying that the two blacks in regard-doubt that is likely to be aggra- his office were doing better than he was be- vated most in integrated situations. So the cause they knew how to "kiss white ass." rejecting tone of their rules is self-protec- Here he was race-holding, using race to tive. "I will reject you before you have a keep from looking at himself. chance to reject me." But all of this is cov- ered over by race. The Saratoga family in- ecently I read an article in the local vokes racial pride to shield themselves R papet- that explored the question of from a doubt they are afraid to acknowl- whether blacks could feel comfortable liv- edge. Unacknowledged, this doubt gains a ing in the largely white Silicon Valley. The negative power inside the personality that article focused on a black family that had expresses itself in the rigidity and absolut- been living for more than a decade in Sara- ism of their rules. Repressed fears tend al- toga, a very well-to-do white community. ways to escalate their campaign for our at- The neighborhood, the children's schools, tention by pushing us further and further the parents' places of employment, the into irrationality and rigidity. shopping areas and parks-the entire phys- The refusal to see something unflatter- ical environment-were populated by af- ing in ourselves always triggers the snap fluent whites. Yet during the interview, the from race fatigue to race-holding.And once wife said they had made two firm rules for that happens, we are caught, like this fam- their children: that they go to all-black col- ily, in a jumble of racial ironies. The par- leges back East and that they do "no dating ents in Saratoga, who have chosen to live outside the race, period." integrated lives, impose a kind of segrega- I have pushed enough black history and tion on their children. Rules that would be culture on my own children to be able to racist in the mouth of any white person are identify with the impulse behind the first of created and enforced with pride. Their un- these rules. Black children in largely white examined self-doubt also leaves them un- situations must understand and appreciate able to exploit the freedom they and their their cultural background. But the rigidity ancestors worked hard to attain. Race fa- of these rules, not to mention the rules tigue makes them run to a place like Sara- themselves, points to more than a concern toga, but integration shock makes them with transmitting heritage or gaining ex- hold race protectively. They end up cling- perience with other blacks. Rigidity arises ing to what they've sought to escape. from fear and self-doubt. These people, I Once race-holding is triggered by fear, it believed, were afraid of something. ensnares us in a web of self-defeating atti- What was striking to me about their tudes that prevents us from taking advan- rules, especially the one prohibiting interra- tage of the new freedoms we've won over cial dating, was their tone of rejection. The the past several decades. I have seen its cor- black parents seemed as determined to re- rosive effects in my own life and in the lives ject the white world as to embrace the of virtually every black person I've known. black one. Why? I would say because of Some are only mildly touched by it, while integration shock. Their integrated lives others seem incapacitated by it. But race- have opened up vulnerabilities that they do holding is as unavoidable as defensiveness not wish to face. But what vulnerabilities? itself, and I am convinced that it is one of In this case I think a particularly embar- the most debilitating, yet unrecognized, rassing one. On some level, I suspect, they forces in black life today. doubt whether they are as good as the I define a holding as any self-description

Shelby Steele is professor of English at San Jose State University. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he re- ceived a B.A. (1968) from Coe College, an M.A. (1971) from Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. (1974) from the University of Utah. This essay will appear in his forthcoming book, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America. Copyright @ 1990 by Shelby Steele.

WQ SUMMER 1990 64 BLACKS IN AMERICA

that serves to justify or camouflage a per- choice has greatly expanded, which is prob- son's fears, weaknesses, and inadequacies. ably why race-holding is so much more vis- Holdings are the little and big exaggera- ible today than ever before. But anything tions, distortions, and lies about ourselves that prevents us from exploiting our new that prop us up and let us move along the freedom to the fullest is now as serious a compromised paths we follow. We develop barrier to us as racism once was. them to defend ourselves against threats to our self-esteem, threats that make us feel elf-fulfilling-prophesytheory is no doubt vulnerable and that plant a seed of fear. correct that black students, like the This fear can work like wind on a brush ones I regularly see in my classes, internal- fire, spreading self-doubt far beyond what ize a message of inferiority that they receive the initial threat would warrant. As a result, from school and the larger society around we become even weaker and thus more them. But the relevant question in the needy of holdings. Since holdings justify 1990s is why they choose to internalize this our reticence and cowardice, they are usu- view of themselves. Why do they volun- ally expressed in the form of high belief or tarily perceive themselves as inferior? We earthy wisdom. A man whose business fails can talk about the weakened black family from his own indifference holds an image and countless other scars of oppression and of himself as a man too honest to be a good poverty. And certainly these things have businessman-a self-description that draws much to do with the image these students a veil over his weakness. have of themselves. But they do not fully For some years I have noticed that I can explain this self-image, because none of walk into any of my classes on the first day them entirely eliminates the margin of of the semester, identify the black students, choice that remains open. Choice lives in and be sadly confident that on the last day the most blighted circumstances, and it of the semester a disproportionate number certainly lives in the lives of these black col- of them will be at the bottom of the class, lege students. far behind any number of white students of I think they choose to believe in their equal or even lesser native ability. More to inferiority not to fulfill society's prophesy the point, they will have performed far be- about them but to evade individual respon- neath their own native ability. Self-fulfilling- sibility. Their margin of choice scares prophesy theory says that their schools them, as it does all people. They are natu- have always expected them to do poorly, rally intimidated by that eternal tussle be- and that they have simply internalized this tween the freedom to act and the respon- message. But this deterministic theory sees sibility we must take for our actions. To blacks only as victims, without any margin some extent, all of us balk in the face of of choice. It cannot fully explain the poor this. The difference is that these students performances of these black students, be- use their race to conceal the fact that they cause it identifies only the forces that pres- are balking. Their "inferiority" shields them sure them to do poorly. By overlooking the from having to see that they are afraid of margin of choice open to them, this theory all-out competition with white students. fails to recognize the degree to which they And it isn't even an honest inferiority. I are responsible for their own poor show- don't think they really believe it. It is a false ing. (The irony of this oversight is that it inferiority, chosen over an honest and pro- takes the power for positive change away ductive confrontation with their real from the students and puts it in the hands fears-a strategy that allows them to stay of the very institutions that failed them in comfortably on the sidelines in a university the first place.) environment that all but showers them The theory of race-holding is based on with opportunity. the assumption that a margin of choice is "I'm doing okay for a black student," a always open to blacks (even to slaves, who student once told me. "I'm doing well con- had some choice). And it tries to make sidering where I came from," I have told clear the mechanisms by which we relin- myself on many occasions. Race allows us quish that choice in the name of race. With both to hide from the real question, which the decline in racism, the margin of black is, "Am I doing what I can, considering my

WQ SUMMER 1990 BLACKS IN AMERICA

tance of race as well as to justify a fear of individual responsibility. Race-holding makes fluid the boundary between race and self, group and individual iden- tity, allowing race to swing over at a moment's notice and fill in where fears leave a vacuum. This is a worse problem than it at first seems, be- cause the individual is the seat of all energy, creativity, motivation, and power. We are most strongly motivated when we want something for ourselves. When our per- sonal wants are best achieved through group ac- tion, as in the civil-rights Boy on Roof, by Hughie Lee-Smith (1967). movement, we lend our en- ergy to the group, and it be- talents and energies?" comes as strong as the sum of our energies. I see all of this as pretty much a subcon- When the need for group action recedes, scious process, fear working on a subterra- more energy is available to us as individ- nean level to let us reduce our margin of uals. But race-holding intercedes here by choice in the name of race. Consciously, affixing the race-holder too tightly to this we tell ourselves that we are only identify- racial identity and causing him to see the ing with our race, but fear bloats our racial locus of power in race rather than in him- identity to an unnatural size and then uses self. In this way race-holding corrupts the it as cover for its subversive work. The greatest source of power and strength avail- more severe the integration shock, the able to blacks-the energy latent in our more cover is needed. personal desires. Doesn't race enhance individuality? I One of my favorite passages in Ralph El- think it does, but only when individuality is lison's Invisible Man is his description of the nurtured and developed apart from race. problem of blacks as The race-holder, inside the bubble of his separate self, feels inadequate or insecure; not actually one of creating the uncreated so he seeks reassurance through race. conscience of [our] race, but of creating When, instead, a sense of self arises from the uncreated features of [our] face. Our task is that of making ourselves individ- individual achievement and self-realization, uals.. . . We create the race by creating when self-esteem is established apart from ourselves and then to our great astonish- race, then racial identity can only enhance, ment we will have created something far because it is no longer needed for any more important: We will have created a other purpose. culture. The word individualism began to con- note selfishness and even betrayal to many These lines hold up well close to 40 blacks during the 1960s. Individualism was years after they were written. They seem to seen as a threat to the solidarity that blacks suggest a kind of Adam Smith vision of cul- needed during those years of confrontation. ture: When the individual makes himself, Despite the decline in racism, these con- he makes culture. An "invisible hand" uses notations have lingered. Race-holding individual effort to define and broaden cul- keeps them alive, because they serve the ture. In the 1990s we blacks are more than race-holder's need to exaggerate the impor- ever in a position in which our common

WQ SUMMER 1990 BLACKS IN AMERICA

good will best be served by the determined the possibilities of black people had pursuit of our most personal aspirations. evolved. I pointed to the black unemploy- I think the key to this pursuit, and the ment rate, the continued segregation of answer to race-holding generally, is per- many schools, housing discrimination, and sonal responsibility, a source of great many other problems. Soon I saw that the power that race-holding does its best to old harangue-flagellation ritual was firmly conceal. back in place. I was shaming these people, and they nodded at what I said in a way that ome years ago I made a mistake at a gratified me. s neighbor's cocktail party that taught me But at home that night I felt a stinging something about personal responsibility. I shame, and even weeks later the thought of went to the party for the thinnest of rea- that afternoon made me cringe. Eventually sons, mere politeness, though the after- I saw why. For one thing, I was trading on noon was hot and I was already in a peev- my race with those people, using the very ish mood. The event would have been thing I claimed to be so concerned with to problematic even if I weren't the only black buy my way out of certain anxieties. Like at the party. But I was, and on this after- the Saratoga family, I was race-holding in noon I chose to make note of the fact, response to the integration shock I felt in though it was hardly a new experience for this integrated situation. I had begun to feel me. As I strolled around the sun-baked pa- vulnerable, and I hit those people with race tio, avoiding people more than engaging before they could hit me with it. My vul- them, I held this fact more and more tightly nerabilities, of course, were essentially the until I came to believe it had a profound same as the Saratoga family's. On some meaning I needed to understand. After a level I doubted myself in relation to these while I decided that others needed to un- whites, and my insecurities drove me into derstand it too. an offense that was really a defense. The During the 1960s, blacks and white lib- shame I began to feel, though I could not erals often engaged in something that identify it at the time, was essentially the might be called the harangue-flagellation shame of cowardice. I felt as though I'd run ritual. Blacks felt anger, white liberals felt away from something and used race to guilt, and when they came together, blacks cover my tracks. would vent their anger by haranguing the This shame had another dimension that whites, who often allowed themselves to be was even more humiliating than the cow- scourged as a kind of penance. The "offi- ardice I had felt. On that patio I was com- cial" black purpose of this rite was to "edu- plaining to white people, beseeching them cate" whites on the issue of race, and dur- to see how badly blacks were still treated, ing the '60s this purpose may sometimes and I was gratified to see their heads nod as have been served. But by the 1980s, after a though they understood. My voice con- marked decline in racism and two decades tained no audible whine, but at least some of consciousness-raising, the rite had be- of what I said amounted to a whine. And come both anachronistic and, I think, irre- this is what put the sting in my shame. Cow- sponsible. Nevertheless, it suited my mood ardice was a common enough fault, but on this hot afternoon; so I retrieved it from whining was quite another thing. its dusty bin and tried to make it fashion- The race-holder whines or complains able again. indiscriminately not because he seeks re- A woman at the party said how much dress but because he seeks the status of vic- she liked Jesse Jackson's rhetorical style. tim, a status that excuses him from what he Was "style" the only thing she liked? I fears. A victim is not responsible for his asked, with an edge to my voice. The condition, and by claiming a victim's status woman gave me a curious and exasperated the race-holder gives up the sense of per- look, but I pushed on anyway. Soon I was sonal responsibility he needs to better his lecturing the six or seven people around condition. His unseen purpose is to hide me: I told them that racism had been rather than fight; so the anger and, more driven underground in the 1960s and '70s, important, the energy that real racism where more insidious strategies for foiling breeds in him are squandered in self-serv-

WQ SUMMER 1990 BLACKS IN AMERICA

ing complaint. The price he pays for the be responsible for something that only I false comfort of his victim's status is a kind and other blacks can be responsible for. Of of impotence. course, whites must be fair. But they can- The difference between the race-holder not be fully responsible for the well-being who merely complains and the honest pro- of blacks; they cannot actualize our lives. If tester is that the latter keeps the respon- I had said this to the people at the party, sibility for his condition in his own hands. they might have gone away with a clearer The honest protester may be victimized, sense of their own responsibilities. But I but he is not solely a victim. He thinks of never considered doing so. The real goal of himself as fully human and asks only that my complaining was to disguise a fear that the rules of the game be made fair. Fair- I didn't want to acknowledge. ness, rather than entitlement, is his goal. By limiting his demands to fairness, he retains he barriers to black progress in Amer- his personal responsibility and the power T ica today are clearly as much psycho- that grows out of it. But he also under- logical as they are social or economic. We stands that he must keep this responsibility, have suffered as much as any group in hu- whether or not society is fair. His purpose man history, and if this suffering has enno- is to realize himself, to live the fullest possi- bled us, it has also wounded us and pushed ble life, and he is responsible for this, like us into defensive strategies that are often all men, regardless of how society treats self-defeating. But we haven't fully admitted him. this to ourselves. The psychological realm Personal responsibility is the brick and is murky, frightening, and just plain embar- mortar of power. The responsible person rassing. And a risk is involved in exploring knows that the quality of his life is some- it: the risk of discovering the ways in which thing that he will have to make inside the we contribute to, if not create, the reality in limits of his fate. Some of these limits he which we live. Denial, avoidance, and re- can push back, some he cannot, but in any pression intervene to save us from this risk. case the quality of his life will pretty much But, of course, they only energize what is reflect the quality of his efforts. When this repressed with more and more negative link between well-being and action is truly power, so that we are victimized as much accepted, the result is power. With this un- by our own buried fears as by racism. derstanding and the knowledge that he is In the deepest sense, the long struggle responsible, a person can see his margin of of blacks in America has always been a choice. He can choose and act, choose and struggle to retrieve our full humanity. But act again, without illusion. He can create now the reactive stance we have adopted to himself and make himself felt in the world. defend ourselves against oppression binds Such a person has power. us to the same racial views that oppressed I was neither responsible nor us in the first place. Snakelike, our defense when I stood on my neighbor's patio com- has turned on us. I think it is now the last plaining about racism to people who had barrier to the kind of self-possession that only the most removed interest in my racial will give us our full humanity, and we must well-being. In effect I was asking them to overcome it ourselves.

WQ SUMMER 1990 68 Tools for Serious Readers Victoria's Jubilee Silver Crown

Ah, to read without aching arms and dented elbows. Now you can with our teak Reader's Table from Denmark. It adusts easily to hold our book at just the right height and an Ie Reading becomes surprising1 comfortable in a chair, beside a desk, or in bed. The lar er art of the top (14-1/2 by 18 inches) tilts to both sizes so that the table can roll in from the ri 11t or left The smaller part (14-1/3 by 9 inches remain; level. An intelligent design and a handsome piece of furniture. 1 Reader's Table $175 + $9Ship. Assembly required. The 1887-1892 "Queen Victoria" Silver Crown of Great Britain . . Own this famous Queen Victoria silver crown, struck at the height of the British Empire's glory. Late in her reign Victoria ruled over the largest empire in history, withvastly more subjects than even the Russian Czar- and her magnificentsilver crown contains almost 50% more silver than Czar Nicholas It's big silver rouble. In its time, the sun never set on thisimpressivesilvercoin,usedincommerce through- out the Empire. Yet comparatively few were minted, so our well-preserved specimens are genuinely 1 The ~ui~nexmay be the best light made for scarce today. reading in bed. Its bright halogen light, recessed This short-lived Victoria portraitwas struck for the in a cool shade, illuminates your page-not 50th anniversary of her reign (Golden Jubilee). On your partner. Exceptionally well made and the reverse is Pistrucci's famous "St. George and the stable. In matte black. Dragon" engraving. Our choice of dates. Each coin Nightstand Swex $156 + $7.50 ship. contains 28.2759 grams of 925 silver, substantially (27-inch flexible gooseneck, 8-inch base) more than U.S Morgan silver dollars of the period, of Floor Sunitex $198 + $9 ship. which more than 100 times as many were struck. (55-inch gooseneck, 10-inch base) While limited supplies last, your price for our guaran- Pair Savings -$I0 and use $12 ship. teed Fine to Very Fine quality is just $39 each Extra Halogen Bulb $9 postpaid or 3 for $1 12. Order #13037. To order by MC/VISA/AMEX/Check credit card, call toll-free 1-800-451-4463anytime. Money-Back Guarantee Catalog on Request Or send your check or money order to: International 800-544-0880 or 407-276-4141 Coins & Currency, Inc., 11 E. State St., Box 218, Dept. 1597, Montpelier, VT 05601. Money-back LEVENGER guarantee: 30-day home examination. I Tools for Serious Readers 975 S. Congress Ave., Code WQ3, Delray, FL 33445 The Wild West looms nowhere nearly sb large in the American imagination today as it did only a generation ago. Children whose parents were reared on Bat Masterson during the 1950s now dream of Masters of the Universe. On those rare occasions when Hollywood still deigns to put on spurs and six-shooters, it is more likely to deliver comic send-ups like Blazing Saddles and Silverado than heroic sagas like High Noon and The Magnificent Seven. The western myth was popular- ized by moviemakers, novelists, and painters. But one reason Americans were prepared to believe that the frontier determined the national character was that an eminent turn-of-the-century historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, told them so. Since the 1950s, however, Turner's successors have been hard at work rewriting the history of the West, reversing, or at least strongly qualifying, his judgement. Hollywood is only beginning to catch up. As Brian Dippie shows in this exploration of the new western history, scholars now consider the myths-of independence, of rugged individualism, even of frontier violence-so cold in their graves that the study of myth-making itself has become a major preoccupation.

WQ SUMMER 1990 70 by Brian W. Dippie

e are now within cago's magical growth was, in microcosm, easy striking dis- the story of America. Four centuries after tance of 100 years Columbus's landfall, a century since white since Frederick settlers began occupying the interior of the Jackson Turner, fol- continent, there was no frontier left, no vast lowing the lead of reserve of "free land" to the west. the Superintendent of the-census, pro- Turner's timing was acute, the psycho- claimed the end of the frontier and, with it, logical moment perfect to find symbolic "the closing of a great historic moment": meaning in recent events. The rise of the "The peculiarity of American institutions is, Ghost Dance movement, with its vision of a the fact that they have been compelled to rejuvenated Indian America, the arrest and adapt themselves to the changes of an ex- killing of Sioux leader Sitting Bull on De- panding people-to the changes involved cember 15, 1890, the culminating tragedy in crossing a continent, in winning a wil- at Wounded Knee two weeks later-all at- derness, and in developing at each area of tested that the "winning of the West" was this progress out of the primitive economic no longer a process but a fait accompli. In- and political conditions of the frontier into dian wars, a fact of American life since the the complexity of city life." first English colony was planted at James- Then, in 1890, it was all over. town, were finished. There was no longer Turner, a young historian at the Univer- an Indian domain to contest; it had disap- sity of Wisconsin, delivered his paper on peared, along with the Jeffersonian vision "The Significance of the Frontier in Ameri- of an agrarian democracy resting on an can History" at the 1893 meeting of the abundance of cheap land. American Historical Association in Chi- Whatever else farmer discontent repre- cago. The setting gave point to his observa- sented in the 1890s, it manifested an aware- tions. Chicago was then playing host to a ness of the new urban-industrial order. gargantuan fair, the World's Columbian Ex- America's 20th-century future was reaf- position, commemorating the 400th anni- firmed in Chicago the year after the Expo- versary of the discovery of the New World. sition, when labor unrest erupted into vio- The session at which Turner spoke met on lence and troops that had served on distant the Exposition grounds, where buildings frontiers "taming" Indians were shipped in coated in plaster of Paris formed a White to tame Chicago's unemployed instead. City, symbolizing civilization's dominion When Turner read his paper, then, por- over what not long before had been a wil- tents were everywhere. Near the Exposition derness on the shore of Lake Michigan. Chi- grounds, Buffalo Bill's Wild West show was

WQ SUMMER 1990 71 THE AMERICAN WEST

offering the public its immensely popular tury, it served as the master explanation of version of the frontier experience. Sitting American development. Problems of fact Bull's horse and the cabin from which the and interpretation were acknowledged. But chief was led to his death were both on dis- Turner's essay offered a coherent, self-flat- play. Frederic Remington, the artist most tering vision of the American past, and it responsible for the public's perceptions of seemed prophetic in anticipating American life in the West, was on hand to tour the involvement abroad. It would be "rash," Exposition's midway and to take in Buffalo Turner wrote, to "assert that the expansive Bill's show; a year later he was back in Chi- character of American life has now entirely cago to cheer George Armstrong Custer's ceased. . . . [Tlhe American energy will old unit, the "gallant Seventh," against, as continually demand a wider field for its ex- he put it, "the malodorous crowd of an- ercise." Cuba and the Philippines soon archistic foreign trash." proved him right. Like any good historical It did not take a prophet to discern a explanation, the frontier thesis seemed to pattern in all this, but Turner reached be- account for past and future. Finally, its yond the obvious. Frontiering, he argued, sweeping imagery and elegiac tone nicely was not merely a colorful phase of Ameri- matched the nostalgic mood, which, during can history. It had actually shaped the the 20th century, would make the mythic American character. On the frontier, envi- Wild West a global phenomenon. ronment prevailed over inherited culture. The inadequacy of the frontier thesis did The frontier promoted individualism, self- not become plain until the 1940s, after the reliance, practicality, optimism, and a dem- complex industrial civilization it sought to ocratic spirit that rejected hereditary con- explain had suffered through the Great De- straints. In Turner's reading of U.S. history, pression and risen to become a world the significance of the frontier was simply power. But if American history was only enormous. To understand American his- temporarily under Turner's shadow, west- tory, one had to understand western his- ern history has never quite emerged. tory. Whatever distinguished Americans as a people, Turner believed, could be attrib- egin with the basics: time and place. uted to the cumulative experience of west- Turner's West was a fluid concept, ering: 'What the Mediterranean Sea was to. an advancing frontier line and a re- the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, treating area of tree land. If one instead de- offering new experiences, calling out new fined the West as a geographical entity- institutions and activities, that, and more, that old standby "the trans-Mississippi the ever retreating frontier has been to the West," for example-then over half of west- United States." ern American history proper has transpired Turner's audience in Chicago received since Turner's 1890 cutoff date. What the these ideas with polite indifference. In Louisiana Purchase inaugurated in 1803 is time, however, the frontier thesis gained in- an ongoing story of growth and change. fluential adherents. For almost half a cen- The boundaries of this geographic West are

Brian W.Dippie is professor of history at the University of Victoria in Canada. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, he received a B.A. (1965) from the University of Alberta, an M.A. (1966)from the University of Wyoming, and a Ph.D. (1970) from the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of several books, including most recently Looking at Russell (1987) and Catlin and his Contemporaries:The Politics of Patronage (1990). This essay is adapted from a longer version that appeared in American Studies International (Oct. 1989). Copyright @ 1989 by The George Washington University.

WQ SUMMER 1990 THE AMERICAN WEST

Frederic Remington, one of the creators of the frontier wyth, painted The Fall of the Cowboy (above) in 1895 as a lament for a way of life that seemed to be vanishing as cattle ranchers enclosed the open range with barbed wire. It was not only the cowboy'.^ supposed freedom that Remington and others admire4 it was his slalus as a kind of Anglo-Saxon ideal at a time when "foreign swarms" were taking over the eastern cities. Nearly a ce17t1qlater, in the San Jose Mercury-News (April 15, 1990), reporter Michael Zielenziger added a new twist to the cowboy's saga:

Wyoming, the Cowboy State, is facing a short- "Nobody wants to be a cowboy," said Oralia age of cowboys. Mercado, executive director of the Mountain One would not think so. On every state li- Plains Agricultural Service, which helps ranch- cense plate, cowboys ride broncos. The univers ers like LeBarr find suitable workers. "It's hard sity football team is the Cowboys. Likenesses of work, it's dirty work, it's round-the-clock work. cowboys gallop through restaurants and saunter It's not something a U.S. worker wants to do.'' across billboards throughout this large, lone- This month, for the first time, Mercado's or- some state. ganization imported Mexican vaqueros, or cow- But to ranch owners like Georgie LeBarr, boys, to work with cattle on the open range of those symbols represent the romance of the Old Wyoming and the Dakotas. It is a formal West, not the reality of the new. Truth is, no one acknowledgment that efforts to hire qualified wants the job these days. cow hands have met with failure. "Nobody wants to work that hard," said It is also a reminder to the families still LeBarr, -who grew up on a ranch and never in- working the range in this sparsely populated tends to leave her rolling spread. state that their traditional, even romantic, way As a resu1t;LeBat-r is among the first U.S. of life is quickly disappearing. ranchers to legally import Mexican cowboys to "We advertised in the newspapers and on work on her 400,000-acre ranch properties radio, but we got zero results," Mercado said, straddling two states. She can do that because displaying a classified ad that appeared in a the federal government has for the first time Denver newspaper. "I can't see that there's any- certified that no qualified American citizens are one in the U.S. that wants this job. The status of interested in the work. being a cowboy just doesn't exist anymore."

WQ SUMMER 1990 73 THE AMERICAN WEST

usually set at the 49th parallel to the north, never before had felt suppressed or impris- the Mexican border to the south, the Missis- oned. Not until I was locked into the Mis- sippi to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to souri River breaks and banished from the the west, though historians have found world, so to speak." each of these too arbitrary. Some see these A romantic myth that is untrue for the boundaries as too inclusive to be meaning- present is probably untrue for the past as ful, others as too restrictive. Historians of well. By redefining western history's sub- the fur trade might want to embrace all of ject-matter, a 20th-century perspective en- North America, historians of the border- courages a reassessment of the 19th cen- lands all of Mexico, students of outlawry tury. That process began in 1955, when kr1 the Old Southwest, and students of the In- Pomeroy of the University of Oregon pub- dian wars the Old Northwest. lished a breakthrough essay, "Toward a Re- Then there is the matter of time. Tur- orientation of Western History: Continuity ner's frontier West ended with the 19th cen- and Environment."* Not only did it pull to- tury. To effect a revolution in western his- gether many scholars' dissatisfactions with tory one need simply move forward into the frontier thesis; it offered a persuasive the 20th. Immediately, most of the familiar alternative. signposts are missing: fur trade and ex- ploration, Indian wars and Manifest Destiny he crux of Pomeroy's revision was (overland migration, war with Mexico, in the word "continuity." "America Mormonism, the slavery expansion contro- was Europe's 'West' before it was versy), gold rushes and railroad building, America," a pair of literary critics once ob- vigilantism and six-gun violence, trail served. Frontiering was a global phenome- drives and the open-range cattle industry, non, as old as the idea of the West, which the farmers' frontier and the Populist re- was freighted with significance even for the volt. Beyond 1900, a different West ancient Greeks. More than a direction or a emerges, a hard-scrabble land rich in scen- place, the West was a cultural ideal signi&- ery and resources, perhaps, but thinly pop- ing quest and the prospect of fulfillment in ulated for the most part, chronically short some elusive Elysium. To the west, then, of capital and reliant on government aid myths ran their course, and America was (such as cheap water and access to federal simply a new stage for an old dream. lands), a cultural backwater whose primary- Charging the Turnerians with a "radical appeal nationally is as the setting for a ro- environmental bias," Pomeroy argued that mantic historical myth. Writing in a bitter- inherited culture had strongly persisted in sweet key about the creation of these myths the West. Indeed, cultural continuity, imita- in The Mythic West in Twentieth-Centuty tion in everything from state constitutions America (1986), historian Robert G. to architectural styles, a deep conservatism Athearn began by recalling his own boy- only intensified by the process of moving hood sojourn at his grandfither's Montana away from established centers, and a con- ranch: "To me, the wilderness just couldn't stant search for respectability and accep- hold a candle to indoor plumbing. Of tance-these, not individualism, inventive- course, I was just a kid, an unformed man ness, and an untrammeled democratic whose regard for the freedom of the un- spirit, were the real characteristics of the touched country was yet nascent. I had not West. "Conservatism, inheritance, and con- yet developed a sense of romance or the *Pomeroy's essay appeared in The Mississippi Valley Histori- appreciation of idealized landscapes. I cal Review (March 1955).

WQ SUMMER I990 74 THE AMERICAN WEST

tinuity bulked at least as large in the history Indeed, Anglo-American citizens remained of the West as radicalism and environ- the minority ethnic group in New Mexico ment," Pomeroy wrote. "The Westerner has until 1928. Colorado, on the other hand, been fundamentally [an] imitator rather was essentially an American frontier min- than [an] innovator.. . . He was often the ing society, which retained close business most ardent of conformists." and social connections with the American For the popular image of the West as East. The settlers of Utah, though partly na- pathbreaker for the nation, Pomeroy substi- tive American in origin, felt so persecuted tuted the West as a lund of colonial depen- because of their firm belief in the Mormon dency, an area dominated by eastern val- religion-and the accompanying doctrine ues, eastern capital, eastern technology, of polygamous marriage-that they deliber- eastern politics. To understand American ately developed their own unique social development, one need no longer look and political systems. . . . The diverse pio- west; but to understand western develop- neer settlers of Arizona Temtory, hailing ment, one had to look east. That was the from Mexican Sonora, the Confederate essence of brl Pomeroy's reorientation. South, the American Northeast, and Mor- To historians born during the 20th cen- mon Utah, formed a conglomerate Ameri- tury, Pomeroy's version of the western past can frontier society not quite like any of the seems much nearer the mark than other three." Turner's. Moreover, Pomeroy reinvigorated Another staple of revisionist western western history by suggesting subjects out- history is economic studies emphasizing side the frontier thesis that merited investi- the West's dependence on eastern invest- gation-frontier justice, constitution-mak- ment capital. In his 1955 essay, Pomeroy ing, and politics and parties. His call was wrote that the economic history even of answered, most notably, by Yale's Howard "the pre-agricultural frontiers'' would Lamar, who sought to recti5 the historical come to rest "on the cold facts of invest- neglect of the later territo- rial period with Dakota Ter- ritory, 1861-1889 (1956) and The Far Southwest, 1846- 1912: A Territorial History (1966). In the latter, Lamar showed that the various cul- tures imported into the Southwest remained re- markably impervious to what Turner had regarded as the homogenizing influ- ence of the frontier environ- ment. "Throughout the ter- ritorial period New Mexico remained stubbornly and overwhelmingly Spanish- American in culture, tradi- One would not know it froin watching John Wayne inovies, but tion-directed in habits, and after the Civil War up to 25 percent of all cowhands were black. Roman Catholic in religion. Here, black cowboys gather at a fair in Bonhatn, Texas, in 1910.

WQ SUMMER 1990 75 THE AMERICAN WEST

OWN IN DODGE CITY Was it really a wild, wild West before settlers With these celebrated personalities tamed the frontier? More like a mild, mild contributing far less than their supposed West, concluded historian Robert Dykstra. share, it is hardly surprising that the overall The Cattle Towns (1968), his relentlessly fac- homicide statistics are not particularly tual study of Dodge City and four other fabled high. . . . Kansas towns during the supposedly wild The number of homicides never topped years between 1870 and 1885, suggests that five in any one cattle-season year between neither outlaws nor lawmen spent much on 1870 and 1885, and reached this figure only amtnunition. at Ellsworth in 1873 and at Dodge City five years later. In both instances, homicides Many legendary desperadoes and gunfight- may have been said to have manifested ers sojourned in the cattle towns at one time "wave" dimensions, and were in fact thus or another, but few participated in slayings. considered by local residents. In at least six Among those with clean records were such years no fatalities occurred at all . . . . The ze- famed killers as Clay Allison, Doc Holliday, ros recorded for two busy [cattle trade] and Ben Thompson. The teen-aged gunman years at Dodge City seem particularly mean- John Wesley Hardin was responsible for ingful. The average number of homicides only one verifiable cattle-town homicide, ap- per cattle-town trading season amounted to parently having fired through the wall of his only 1.5 per year. hotel room one drunken night to silence a In the case of at least six of these man snoring too loudly in the adjoining cu- killings-or well over 10 percent-it is hard bicle. Nor did famous gunfighters serving as to identify any connection whatever with the officers add much to the fatality statistics. As existence of the cattle trade. Besides a Wich- city marshal of Abilene in 1871, his only ita insurance murder, and the murder of an term as a cattle-town lawman, the formida- Abilene tailor and the lynching of his mur- ble Wild Bill Hickok killed just two men- derer, already noted, these included the one, a "special" policeman, by mistake. Wy- shootings of a Wichita hotel keeper resisting att hrp, who served as an officer (but never arrest on a federal warrant, that of one actually as marshal) at both Wichita and Wichita Negro by another, and that of a Dodge City, may have mortally wounded Caldwell housewife by her drunken hus- one law violator, though he shared credit band. with another policeman for this single cat- The majority of those involved in homi- tle-town homicide. The now equally re- cides, however, were indeed law officers, nowned lawman William B. ("Bat") cowboys and drovers, or gamblers-the last Masterson, at least according to contempo- a somewhat elastic category to accommo- rary sources, killed no one in or around date four ex-lawmen without obvious means Dodge, where he lived for several years. - of support. Of homicide victims, nine were

ment capital." However, he said, "we still lust, were Jacksonian men, expectant cap- howthe homesteader better than the land- italists out to make their fortune. In Bill lord, the railroad builder better than the Sublette, Mountain Man (19591, John E. railroad operator. The trapper, the prospec- Sunder detailed the career of one of the tor, and the cowboy, moving picturesquely most famous beaver trappers of the early over a background of clean air and great 19th century. Sublette frequently relied on distances, hold us more than the tycoons eastern capital or credit to keep his dreams and corporations that dominated them." alive, and was almost as familiar with the The revisionists had their work cut out. business hotels of New York, Philadelphia, They showed, in William H. Goetzmann's and Washington as he was with the back- memorable phme, that even the trappen, woods. those legenday embodiments of wander- According to legend, cowboys were sec- THE AMERICAN WEST

cowboys or drovers and nine were gam- blers. Six were officers of the law. Aside from the non-cattle-trade killings mentioned above, victims included five townsmen with conventional occupations, three local rural settlers, two dance house proprietors, two

miscellaneous visitors (one lawyer and a TVJO GUNS-lo bock +heploy Pawnee Indian), and one female theatrical ior!o~vondo~dor~n!hefoe$ entertainer. The status of the remaining two victims is obscure. Analyzed in terms of per- petrators, 16 cattle-town homicides can be attributed to law officers, or citizens legiti- mately acting as such, 12 to cowboys or n.z-+--&*e -- .-.~. drovers, and eight to gamblers. The other PUT THEM TOGETHER nine homicides are distributed evenly AND YOU HAVE among some of the categories already men- WYATT EARP, tioned. These included two lynchings evi- FRONTIER MARSHAL dently carried out by cattle-town residents rather than transients. Besides the episode at Abilene, a Caldwell gambler and bootlegger was hanged in somewhat mysterious cir- cumstances. With the exception of killings by law offi- cers and lynchings, the homicidal situations varied considerably. Seventeen apparently resulted from private quarrels, four were ac- cidental or without discernible motive, two were committed by resisters of arrest, two officers died attempting to make arrests; the avenged prior homicides, and two consisted other fell in a private quarrel. of murders for profit. Homicidal disputes in- Lest tradition be completely overthrown, volving women, incidentally, exceed by let it be noted that gunshots were far and eight to one those mainly resulting from away the principal medium of death. But gambling disagreements. Of the six lawmen tradition would also have it that the cattle- killed, interestingly enough, half met death town homicide typically involved an ex- in circumstances that must be termed acci- change of shots-the so-called gunfight. Ac- dental, although two of them-Ellsworth's tually, though 39 of the 45 victims suffered Sheriff Whitney and the Abilene policeman fatal bullet or buckshot wounds, less than a killed by Marshal Hickok-were attempting third of them returned the fire. A good share to help quell trouble when shot. Only two of them were apparently not even armed.

ond-generation mountain men, fiddle- excess on his infrequent visits to the shoddy footed wanderers with guns on their hips. little cowtowns that dotted the West. . . . Their status as what we now refer to as sea- Most of his physical dangers scarcely bor- sonal agrarian workers might be obscured dered on the heroic, necessary as they were by romance, but, Lewis Atherton noted in in caring for other men's cattle, and they The Cattle Kings (1961), cowboys were sim- served primarily to retire him from cow- ply hired hands who lived with the environ- punching." Atherton shared the disparag- ment while their employers, the ranchers, ing view of Bruce Sibert, a rancher in the were businessmen out to dominate it. "The Dakotas during the 1890s: "Only the few cowboy's life involved so much drudgery good ones got into the cow business and and loneliness and so little in the way of made good." For those who did become satisfaction that he drank and caroused to ranchers in "the cow business," Gene M.

WQ SUMMER 1990 77 THE AMERICAN WEST

Gressley observed in Bankers and Cattle- history, Pomeroy had suggested various men (1966), profit was the motive, capital- paths historians might follow to discover ization a major problem. Again, eastern ht-West continuities. The study of frontier money figured prominently. justice would open into an examination of Nowhere was eastern domination more western legal history. Inquiry into frontier evident than on the mining frontier. Gold religion, literacy, education, and architec- rushes thoroughly disrupted the stately pro- ture would establish the westerners' cul- gression of Turner's frontier line, making a tural conservatism. Likewise, scrutiny of shambles of his ht-West advance and the the U.S. Army in the West would show it to stages of social evolution preceding urban be only intermittently a fighting force but civilization. As Richard Wade asserted in continuously a visible manifestation of the The Urban Frontier (19591, his history of federal government and its role in promot- early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, ing western development. Forest G. Hill's Louisville, and St. huis, "The towns were Roads, Rails, and Waterways: The Artny En- the spearheads of the frontier." gineers and Early Transportation (1957) and Mining was a case in point. "On the Goetzmann's Ariny Exploratio~zsin the mining frontier the camp-the germ of the American West, 1803-1863 (1959) re- city-appeared almost simultaneously with sponded to the challenge. Goetzmann went the opening of the region," Duane A. Smith on to redirect the history of western ex- wrote in Rocky Mountain Mining Camps: ploration from the exploits of hardy individ- The Urban Frontier (1967). In California, the uals to a collective, nationalistic enterprise flood of gold-hungry Forty-Niners created in which the federal government played a an overnight urban civilization with eastern decisive part, the theme of his Pulitzer values. In his history of the Far West, The Prize-winning Exploration and Empire: The Pacific Slope (196.51, Pomeroy noted that in Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of 1860 California had a population three the American West (1966). Other histories times that of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, showed that western communities rou- Utah, and Nevada combined, and an econ- tinely exaggerated the Indian threat in or- omy thoroughly integrated into that of the der to enjoy the benefits-payrolls, im- Atlantic Seaboard. A network of eastern proved transportation and communication merchants and investors supplied the Cali- facilities, even a livelier social life-that an fornia miners through West Coast middle- army presence brought. The link between men. As miners dug deeper into the htand West, metropolis and hinterland, ground, overhead soared, and the need for federal government and frontier citizen, capital with it. Thus, the network even was everywhere a fact of western life. Even stretched across the Atlantic. British inves- today, the federal government owns vast ar- tors contributed so heavily that they made eas of the West. the Far West part of Britain's "invisible em- By submerging regional in national con- pire," and provided the leadership to draw cerns, "colonial" histories make western out more cautious American investors as history, as such, of limited significance. Re- well, Clark C. Spence explained in British gional history is based on the assumption Investments and the American Mining Fron- that there are meaningful differences be- tier, 1860-1901 (1958). It was not long be- tween local and national developments. fore the fabled individual prospector and The South's claim to distinctiveness, histo- his trusty mule were eclipsed. rian C. Vann Woodward has argued, arose In advocating a reorientation of western from its unique past, marked by the un-

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The five-month ordeal of traveling to Califor- women would find it difficult to maintain nia or Oregon offered pioneer women many symbolic ties with home life and the female opportunities to shed traditional feminine world. The woman who started out in a trav- roles. Most, wrote Julie Roy Jeffrey in Fron- eling dress with clean collar and cuffs soon tier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, found she had to abandon it for clothes she 1840-1880 (1979), declined to take them. originally had refused to wear. Indeed, changes in clothing hinted at the social dis- As they catalogued each sign of the passing ruption the frontier could cause women. By of civilization, women coped with their 1852, some women on the trail were wear- sense of desolation by reproducing aspects ing the bloomer costume, finding the "short of the world they had left behind. Thus, skirt and pantletts" a "very appropriate women arranged their wagons, writing in dress for a trip like this." Although bloomers their journals of the little conveniences they were practical, the costume, espoused by had fixed, the pockets in the wagon's green feminists as dress for liberated women, car- cloth lining which held "looking-glasses, ried a radical sexual and political message combs, brushes, and so on," the rag carpet to keep the floor of the tent snug at night, the bedding, sleep- ing, and dressing arrangements. As one woman explained, she was busy making "our home" comfort- able so that there would be little time "for that dreaded disease, 'home-sickness.'" Another hoped to maintain some continuity by dressing as neatly on the trip as she might at home, in a blue traveling dress with white collar and cuffs rather than homespun, linsey- woolsey, or calico. These attempts to reproduce the rudiments of a home setting and to perpetuate a sense of the familiar, though they might appear trivial, L were of domesticity Women's work? Collecting buffalo chips for the had to campfire on the Great Plains, about 1880. that the physical arrangements of their homes exerted a powerful in- fluence over their families. The makeshifts and was, in the words of one magazine, of the journey were an unconscious way of "ridiculous and indecent." So one woman asserting female power and reassuring who had brought bloomers with her found women of their sexual identity. And, of she lacked the "courage" to wear them and course, the objects symbolized an entire way vowed, "I would never wear them as long as of life temporarily in abeyance. When her my other two dresses last." Women bick- husband grumbled about the quantity of her ered over the pros and cons of the costume. baggage, Lucy Cooke revealed how vital her Supporters accused women in dresses of be- knickknacks were. Fearing that she would ing vain and preoccupied with appearance, have to discard some. . . , she confessed, "I while they, in turn, replied that bloomers led had a cry about it. . . as I seemed to have to male gossip. Said one opponent, "She had parted with near everything I valued." never found her dress to be the least incon- Although Cooke's husband promised to venient.. . . [Slhe could walk as much in stop complaining about belongings which her long dress as she wanted to, or was provided so much comfort for her, other proper for a woman among so many men.''

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American experience of guilt arising from A legacy of conquest, of course, is con- slavery, military defeat, and occupation. sonant with Pomeroy's colonial thesis. But History, more than any other factor, ac- Limerick in effect views the East-West rela- counted for southern uniqueness. But tionship from a western perspective rather Pomeroy's argument robbed the West of its than a national one. "With its continuity re- distinctiveness, making it simply an appen- stored," she writes, "western American his- dage of the East that was neither excep- tory carries considerable significance for tional nor especially consequential in the American history as a whole. Conquest history of the nation. forms the historical bedrock of the whole Opposition to that point of view was not nation, and the American West is a preemi- long in coming, and it has usually worked nent case study in conquest and its conse- some variation on the exceptionalist quences." premise. Gerald D. Nash, the first historian "Celebrating one's past, one's tradition, to attempt a synthesis of 20th-centuryWest- one's heritage," she concludes, "is a bit like ern history, rejects Turner's 1890 cutoff hosting a party: one wants to control the date and agrees with Pomeroy that colo- guest list tightly. . . . To celebrate the west- nialism remained a fact of western life well ern past with an open invitation is a consid- into the 20th century. But Nash argues that erable risk: The brutal massacres come World War I1 liberated the West from its back along with the cheerful barn raisings, political, economic, and cultural depen- the shysters come back with the saints, con- dency on the East. The year 1945 becomes tracts broken come back with contracts ful- a new dividing line in western history, sig- filled." nifymg the moment not when the frontier passed into oblivion but when the West imerick calls her introduction passed out of colonialism to become "a 'Closing the Frontier and Opening pace-setter for the nation." Western History," as if summoning Yet only by focusing on the Sun Belt, her fellow historians to put away the toys of and especially on Southern California, is childhood and get on with the sterner du- Nash able to make much of a case for the ties of adulthood. Western historians today West as a 20th-century pace-setter. One regularly berate themselves for failing to must be cautious in making parts of the keep up with trends in the discipline, for West synonymous with the whole and, out glorying in narrative at the expense of anal- of regional pride, discarding too readily the ysis, for favoring the colorful and periph- unflattering fact of western dependency. eral to the neglect of the ordinary and sub- Such caution characterizes Patricia Nel- stantial. Hard riding makes for easy son Limerick's provocative new synthesis, reading. The very qualities that explained The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past the public's love affair with the West also of the American West (1987). Limerick is explained western history's decline in aca- skeptical about talk of the New West, argu- demic circles. ing instead for a continuity in western his- Over the years, suggestions for revitaliz- tory uninterrupted by any turning points. ing western history have been pretty con- In her mind, it is this continuity-not links ventional: Find out where everyone else is to the East, but the defining western experi- going and follow. Learn to quantify. Adopt ence "of a place undergoing conquest and social-science methodologies. Alter the never fully escaping its consequences"- very nature of historical inquiry and expres- that validates a regional approach, sion or fade into academic oblivion, west-

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ern historians were warned. But the most extravagant claims for the new social history, for example, have been recanted, and dire pre- dictions about the early de- mise of "old-fashioned" his- tory have failed to come true. It is apparent now that the advocates of new history too often adopted the strat- egy of Melville's lightning- rod salesman and sold fear rather than necessity. To date, the net effect of the new history revolution has Among the many Westerners who found it profitable to promote the Western mystique was Jesse James's brother Frank, shown here been new topics rather than about 1914 at the family farm in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. a consistent new direction for western history, fragmentation rather old sexual roles to a new but altogether fa- than synthesis. miliar environment." While confessing that Turner's thesis is now notorious for ex- she had hoped to find otherwise, Julie Roy cluding women and everyone whose skin Jeffrey, in Frontier Women: The Trans-Mis- was dark or whose language was not Eng- sissippi West, 1840-1 880 (1979), is forced to lish. Indians were obstacles handy for de- agree with Faragher: "The frontier experi- marking the frontier line and eliciting pio- ence served to reinforce many conven- neer traits in the white men who would tional familial and cultural ideas.. . . The overcome them; women apparently stayed concept of woman as lady, the heart of do- in the East until the land was tidied up and mestic ideology, survived." made presentable; Mexicans and other Jeffrey did detect some changes in ethnics never existed. women's roles. Prostitutes, for instance, Women have been a favorite topic of the were treated as individuals in the West new history. Studies of army wives and rather than simply as a pariah class. Polly daughters, women teachers, women on the Welts Kaufrnan in Women Teachers on the overland trails, farm women, prostitutes, Frontier (1984) also strains against the limi- divorcees, widows, and urban women have tations implied by the colonial interpreta- forever altered the sentimental stereotypes tion, noting that the 250 women who went of sunbonneted pioneer mothers and soiled west to teach for the National Board of doves with hearts of gold. Popular Education before the Civil War de- Pomeroy's argument for cultural con- cided to do so largely out of a desire for tinuity has been echoed in discussions of independence and control over their lives. one key issue: Did the move West liberate Kaufman concedes, however, that teaching women from conventional sex roles or not? was among the few occupations that met John Mack Faragher concludes Women "society's expectations for women." Libera- and Men on the Overland Trail (1979) with tion plays an even larger part in Paula a flat negative: "The move West called Petrik's No Step Backward: Woman and upon people not to change but to transfer Family on the Rocky Mountain Mining Fron-

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E FINAL FRONTIER?

"Our nation's quest for the unknown," Presi- comparison make any sense? Does the land- dent George Bush declared when he an- ing of the space shuttle really have anything nounced plans to put an American on Mars to do with the building of the transcontinen- by the year 2039, "took American pioneers tal railroad?" from the bluffs of the Mississippi to the moun- Now the first thing that strikes the west- tains of the Moon. But today.. . it's time to ern historian is that President Reagan and open up the final frontier." Such equations of his speech writers thought that this frontier outer space with the American West are very business was a happy comparison, the right familiar-and very much in need of re- comparison for an occasion of congratula- consideration, says Patricia Nelson Limerick, tions. But add a few facts to, say, the picture a historian at the University of Colorado at of the golden spike, and things look a bit dif- Boulder. In a paper presented at the Second ferent. What the president thought was just a Colorado Space Policy Workshop in Boulder light "Have-a-Nice-Day'' reference to history on September 8, 1989, she argued that the could have been a pretty useful warning, if real value of the frontier metaphor is hidden. anyone had taken it seriously. When they connected the railroad lines Consider President Ronald Reagan's speech, at Promontory Point in 1869, the represen- delivered on the Fourth of July, 1982, at the tative from the Central Pacific, Leland Stan- landing of the shuttle Columbia: "In the fu- ford, proved unfamiliar with a sledgeham- ture, as in the past, our freedom, indepen- mer and could not hit the golden spike. The dence, and national well-being will be tied inability of a railroad executive to perform to new achievements, new discoveries, and the most elemental act of railroad construc- pushing back frontiers. The fourth landing tion might-if anyone wanted to take these of the Columbia is the historical equivalent analogies seriously-say something about to the driving of the golden spike which the gap between executive planning and completed the first transcontinental rail- hands-on implementation that transporta- road." tion industries are vulnerable to, and it In making this comparison, neither Rea- would deepen that point to recognize that gan nor his speech writers had to think; by much of the railroad trackage theoretically 1982, this way of speaking and thinking was "completed" in 1869 actually had been laid so well set that no one would say, "Does that in such a rush that much of it had to be laid

tier, Helena, Montana, 1865-1 900 (1987). and has served as the polestar for genera- The move west, Petrik maintained, did- tions of immigrants who sought a greater change things for some women, at least measure of human happiness in a land of during the frontier period. unrivaled wealth and opportunity. Another prominent strain of western It should come as no surprise, then, that historical scholarship takes the western the popular image of the Wild West is myth itself as its subject. Americans have largely the work of outsiders meeting out- loved the Wild West myth with an abiding, side needs. There seems no escaping east- though some say waning, passion. It has em domination. Pomeroy himself traced circled the globe in its appeal. To its critics, an aspect of this cultural imperialism in his however, the myth is an invitation to the imaginative In Search of the Golden West: wrong set of values. It embodies an essen- The Tourist in Western America (1957). The tially conservative ethos-rugged individ- West, he found, became whatever the east- ualism, stern justice, indifference or hostil- ern tourist wanted it to be: "[Flor 60 or 70 ity to women and ethnics, exploitation of years. . . tourists had to be reassured, and the environment, development at any cost. Westerners felt that they had to assure But it also embodies the American dream, them, that the West was no longer wild and

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again almost immediately. In other words, a Add to this the far-reaching corruption in reference to the golden spike, to anyone Congress that came out of federal aid to rail- who is serious about history, is also a refer- roads, and add the rough and even brutal ence to enterprises done with too much working conditions on the railroad, espe- haste and grandstanding, and with too little cially for the Chinese working on the Cen- care for detail. tral Pacific in the Sierras in winter; add it all Ronald Reagan also did not know, or together-executive misbehavior, large- care, that one half of the first transcontinen- scale corruption, shoddy construction, bru- tal, the Union Pa- tal labor exploita- cific Railroad, went tion, financial bankrupt 25 years inefficiency-and later in the depres- it's a wonder that sion of the 1890s, or when the president that the other half, compared the shut- the Central Pacific, tie landing to the even though it be- golden spike, some- came more prosper- one from the Na- ous, did so by keep- tional Aeronautics ing a stranglehold and Space Adminis- on Pacific coast traf- tration didn't hit fie, charging all that him for insulting the traffic would the organization's bear, through its honor. It's a wonder affiliate, the South- no one-no shuttle ern Pacific, the company known as the Octo- pilot, mission coordinator, mechanic, or pus, the company whose chief attorney was technician-said, "Now cut that out-we widely understood to hold much greater may have our problems, but it's nowhere power in the state of California than the so- near that bad." called governor did. With all that prosperity, That's the joy of the present status of the the Central Pacific still played out a pro- frontier metaphor-you can use it to say longed drama in trying to avoid paying back things that are really quite insulting to the its government loans and in trying to get out integrity of the space program, and the people of the interest payments. thus insulted will smile and say, "Thank you."

woolly-until fashions changed and it was Burrows's John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who time to convince them that it was as wild as Never Was (1987) are good examples of this it ever had been." approach to biography. How wild was it to begin with? There is Cultural historians find the legends an established tradition in western history more arresting-and revealing-than the of separating fiction from fact to get at the facts. Strip Billy the Kid of his myth and truth behind the frontier's most storied in- little of historical consequence remains. dividuals and episodes. Don Russell's The Even the number of his victims does not Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (1960), Jo- hold up under scrutiny. But the mythic seph G. Rosa's They Called Him Wild Bill: Billy the Kid is full of interest, as Stephen The Life and Adventures of James Butler Tatum explains in Inventing Billy the Kid: Hickok (1964, rev. 1974), William A. Settle, Visions of the Outlaw in America (1982). Jr.'s Jesse James Was His Name; or, Fact and During the first 40 years after his death at Fiction Concerning the Careers of the No- the hands of Pat Garrett in 1881, writers torious James Brothers of Missouri (1966), (including Garrett himself in his The Au- Robert K. De Arment's Bat Masterson: The thentic Life of Billy, the Kid) portrayed the Man and the Legend (1979), and Jack Kid as the villain in "a romance story

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dramatizing civilization's triumph over a nor figure historically, but he was once a stubborn, resistant, and savage wilderness." national hero, a martyr to cause and coun- For roughly the next 30 years, however, try, held up as a model for America's youth. Billy was portrayed in a more positive light. His defenders still think him a paragon, if Disillusioned by the power of gangsters and not a saint, and he has been compared to the weakness and corruption of govern- Jesus. His detractors regard him as a racist ment, the Kid's "creatorsv-including the villain, fit symbol for America's mistreat- composer Aaron Copland, who wrote the ment of its native peoples. In 1988, a Sioux score for the 1938 ballet, Billy the Kid- activist likened him to Adolf Hitler and ar- conjured up a new image. Because society gued that the Custer Battlefield National is "unable to defend itself or recognize the Monument was as welcome in Indian evil within its own ranks," Tatum writes, country as a Hitler monument would be in "the outsider like the Kid enters the scene Israel. to save the day and restore a society of common people being threatened by evil yths have consequences, and bankers and their henchmen. Yet no matter Richard Slotkin's Regeneration how noble his actions, in this era the Kid is M Through Violence: The Mythology not integrated into society at story's end." of the American Frontier, 1600-1 860 (1973) But after 1955, Tatum continues, inven- and The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the tions of the Kid "typically omit the ro- Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, mance framework of civilization's progress 1800-1890 (1985) are the most ambitious or foundation, and instead present a dehu- attempts yet to trace patterns of frontier manizing society at odds with an authentic mythology, from Cotton Mather through individual's personal code." No longer is Walt whitman and Theodore Roosevelt. So there much hope that the hero can trans- deeply has the language of the frontier form the world; the Kid "appears in works myth been woven into our popular culture, that dramatize the individual at odds with he writes, "that it still colors the way we society, a civil law unrelated to moral law, count our wealth and estimate our pros- and violence hardly legitimated or regener- pects, the way we deal with nature and with ative." This culminated in the purely mean- the nations so that the Myth can still tell us ingless cinematic violence of Sam Peckin-, what to look for when we look at the stars." pah's famous Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Works like Slotkin's assume something (1973). Today, the Kid awaits new myth- Turner labored to prove: American except- makers. ionalism. On the other hand, they encour- Since cultural values shift over time, age a reexamination of the qualities suppos- myths, in order to remain relevant, shift edly fostered by frontiering and which, their meanings as well. If the major chal- according to Turner, combined to form the lenge facing western history is to relate past American character. to present in a meaningful way, the mythic The character-forming western myth is approach has much to offer. It accounts for marked by some notable omissions. continuity and change. George Armstrong "Where are the women in this tradition?" Custer is dead, his Last Stand long over. asked Helen Winter Stauffer and Susan J. Why then do so many people continue to Rosowski in Women and Western American refight it? Why can they still see it in their Literature (1982). It is a question that cuts minds? Why are passions still aroused by to the heart of a male myth steeped in es- the man? We may dismiss Custer as a mi- capist fantasies. The myth does include In-

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dians, but simply as part of the savage Na- low, conditions hard, strife endemic, up- ture that the white pioneer was expected to ward mobility limited, and independence subdue, a test of the sort that meets any illusory. Or ask any racial minority strug- quester after Elysium. The native fact offers gling to get ahead in the West. its own rebuttal: The white man's occupa- Six-gun justice and self-reliance? The tion of America was an armed invasion, horrifying rate of contemporary violence nothing more, nothing less. would seem rebuttal enough to such a When one moves from individuals and cherished tradition, but in The Cattle events and omissions to the qualities or Towns (1968), Robert Dykstra shoots down traits revered in western myth, it is appar- the Hollywood version of Dodge City and ent that the myth generates its own cri- its ilk. [See box, p. 76.1 tiques, its own counter-images. Abundant natural resources ensuring all Rugged individualists taming a raw wil- a chance to prosper? The antimyth points derness? Roderick Nash's Wilderness and to the depletion and spoliation of a rich the American Mind (1967, rev. 1982) and heritage, a destructive "Myth of Superabun- Lee Clark Mitchell's Witnesses to a Vanish- dance," and the rise of resource monopoli- ing America: The Nineteenth-Century Re- zation and agribusiness, the creation of a sponse (1981) show that frontiering and its boom-and-bust economy, and a continuing apotheosis of axe and plow created a con- reliance on the federal government. More trary reaction, a conservationist outlook colonialism, and precious little individual that deplored the wastefulness inherent in opportunity. Myth, after all, is myth. pioneering and opened the way to resource For the historian, the western myth of- management and federal controls. fers a skewed but revealing national por- Buoyant optimism and the mastery of trait, a study not in what was but in what material things? The lunacy of such hopeful once seemed desirable. To the extent that it frontier slogans as "Rain follows the plow" was always false, we have a measure of the was revealed during the 1930s, when the distance between expectation and reality in interior of the continent turned into a dust western and American history. To the ex- bowl, spurring a massive internal migration tent that it now seems unbecoming, we that exposed the hollow promise of western have a measure of the distance between the opportunity. The California Dream? Ask the values of yesterday and today. The myth Okies. and the antimyth are keys to the western Cowboy freedom in a spacious land past and the western present that can also where all were equal? Ask the multitude of unlock the American past and the Ameri- western wage-earners who found the pay can present.

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SCHOLARS' CHOICE Recent titles selected and reviewed by Fellows and staff of the Wilson Center

Is America in Decline?

BOUND TO LEAD: The Changing Nature of by Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great American Power. By Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Basic. Powers (1987) showed that it was far from 307 pp. $19.95 obvious within the United States. Angry de- bate raged between the pessimists, who AMERICAN POWER: The Rise and Decline believed decline to be inevitable, and the of US. Globalism. By John Taft. Harper & Row. indignant optimists, who regarded it as in- 321 pp. $22.50 conceivable. Historians inclined to the first school, political scientists to the sec- THE SUICIDE OF AN ELITE: American In- ond. Both showed their professional bi- ternationalists and Vietnam. By Patrick Lloyd ases. As historians saw it, what had hap- Hatcher. Stanford. 429 pp. $35 pened before was likely to happen again. Political scientists examined indices with he first I heard of American decline little consideration as to how these could T was when, some seven years ago, a be affected by chance and will. All partici- bright American graduate student came to pants, however, whether by their defense me in Oxford and proposed writing a the- of the thesis or the ferocity with which sis on "American decline from a European they attacked it, revealed the self-doubt perspective." I had to tell him that it was that has tormented American thinkers not evident to me that America was in de- ever since the Vietnam War. cline at all. Europe and Japan might be To this controversy Joseph Nye, a pro- catching up with it economically, the fessor of international security at Harvard Third World was as recalcitrant as ever, University, brings a refreshingly brisk ap- and American foreign policy was, as usual, proach. He properly distinguishes between in a mess. But if anyone were patently in "decadence" and "decline," quoting the decline it was the Soviet Union, and the incomparable Raymond Aron: "Deca- United States remained what it had effec- dence implies value-judgements . . . . De- tively been ever since 1945: the only super- cline simply describes a power relation- power combining military, economic, and" ship." The power relationship between the cultural strength in a fashion no other na- United States and the rest of the world. tion could rival. The young man prudently Nye admits, has certainly changed since chose another thesis topic. the 1940s, as Europe and the Pacific states A few years later the historian Paul have recovered from the effects of World Kennedy was to point out that this happy War 11. But no one else has overtaken state of affairs would not necessarily last America in general power indices or forever and that the United States should seems likely to do so. Japan's power is too remedy certain weaknesses if it were not one-dimensional. that of Europe divided one day, like earlier empires, to be one among nation-states unlikely to federate, with Nineveh and Tyre. But that day, he while the Soviet Union has virtually said, was not yet, nor was its coming inev- dropped out of the race and China has not itable, so long as the United States recog- yet entered it. But even when American nized its limitations, addressed its latent power was at its peak, Nye reminds us, it weaknesses, and learned to manage its did not attain hegemony. The United States strengths. could and did constrain the Soviet Union: This all seemed fairly obvious to the but it could not shape Europe to ~merican sympathetic outsider, but the furor set off wishes, nor prevent the "loss of China,"

WQ SUMMER 1990 CURRENT BOOKS

nor inhibit the emergence of a plethora of Third-World states "non- aligned" against the West. Long be- fore the emergence of anything like a rival power, the United States had lost control of the United Nations and found itself isolated in fighting a losing war in Vietnam. Part of the trouble was that the United States converted so much of its wealth into military resources which bought it little military influ- ence. Not only were nuclear weap- ons inherently almost unusable, but, as Nye rightly points out, the rise in national self-consciousness throughout the world gradually nar- rowed the possibilities of successful military intervention to such mar- ginal cases as Grenada and Panama. More effective than nuclear military might is what Nye calls "soft" or "co-optive" power: the ability "to structure a situation so that other nations develop preferences or de- fine their interests in ways consis- tent with one's own nation." Eco- nomic strength helps here, and A 1943 poster equates power with military strength. In the even more does cultural compati- nuclear age, "soft coercion" is often more effective. bility. With the gradual diversifica- tion of power throughout the world, the the wrong choices could bring it on." declining effectiveness of military force, Nye thus accepts that power is a matter and the waning" of "the Soviet threat." the not just of potential but of judgment and success of the United States policy, says will. The other works under review deal Nye, will now depend on its capacity for with these factors as displayed by the ',power conversion," abandoning military American elite which dominated the con- pressure for economic and cultural influ- duct of foreign policy from the end of ence. The success of this will in turn de- World War I1 through the catastrophe of pend on internal factors-such as the dis- Vietnam. The two books complement jointed American system of government each other well. John Taft, a writer on U.S. and the introverted attitude of the Ameri- foreign policy, has produced a lively, some- can people themselves-factors which a what sardonic survey focusing on the long line of observers from Alexis de personalities and backgrounds of the ~ociuevilleto John Kennedy has seen as WASP Wilsonian liberals whose ideology, the fundamental weaknesses of the Ameri- self-confidence, and sense of "obligation can giant. Nye concludes that the problem as gentlemen to elevate the masses of the is one of "domestic political leadership on world" drove the United States out of iso- power conversion rather than long-term lation into global intervention. Patrick economic decline." Although Nye criti- Lloyd Hatcher, a political scientist at the cizes The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, University of California, Berkeley, provides his conclusion is much the same as Paul a more sophisticated analysis of their ideas Kennedy's: "Decline is not inevitable, but as well as a detailed account of how and

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why they finally came to grief in Vietnam. Vietnam was for them the supreme test. The lesson of both is clear: Good inten- They failed it, and they never recovered tions and command of huge economic and their self-confidence. "Having been foolish military resources are of little use unless in their pride," as Taft puts it rather well, directed by an understanding of the com- "they became foolish in their humility." It plexities of a multi-cultural world. was indeed foolish. for on the whole thev had done remarkably well. "~ur~risin~l~," n Taft's opinion, the first of these Wilso- as Hatcher remarks rather patronizingly, nian epigones with a mission to reform "given the complex nature of global poli- the world was also America's first ambas- tics, they were generally successful, espe- sador to the Soviet Union, William Bullitt, cially in managing national security tasks." an erratic figure who was followed by Taft hints at a sociological dimension of staider creatures such as undersecretary the problem that is missing from most of State Sumner Welles, columnist Walter analyses, even Nye's. These international- Lippmann, Ambassador Averell Harriman, ist liberals, he points out, "were the closest diplomat David Bruce, Congressman Ches- thing to an American ruling class since the ter Bowles, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, early 19th century. They did not, however, Jr., and Secretaries of State Dean Acheson rule on their home territory. Lacking their and John Foster Dulles. (Paul Nitze. curi- own political base, they had the consent of ously enough, is not mentioned.) They a large Middle American majority that no were high-minded, energetic, financially longer exists." If this is so, there is an inter- secure, and as determined to make the esting analogy with the British case. The world safe for democracy as Woodrow ruling classes of Britain began attempting Wilson had been. Their ideals were those to spread their beliefs and influence of classical 19th-century liberalism: free throughout the world during the latter trade, anti-colonialism, and self-govern- part of the 19th century, just as they were ment. Unfortunately, they found them- beginning to lose their power base at selves confronted by the opposing ideol- home. They also fell victim to destructive ogy of communism-Lockeans, as self-doubt and scuttled an empire which ~atcherputs it, against Leninists. In their they had, on the whole, administered fairly creed, anti-communism took the place of well. Can a nation, whatever its indices of anti-colonialism, and, for some of them, of power, pursue a firm and positive foreign

virtually everything else. They reinter- oolicvA ., if it lacks a self-confident elite com- preted the concept of "collective security" paratively independent of domestic pres- to mean allied cohesion behind American- sures? And, in the United States, where is leadership. They adopted diplomat George such an elite now to be found? Kennan's concept of "containment" and shared his enthusiasm for covert opera- -Michael Howard, '84, is the Robert tions. They embraced with some alacrity Lovett Professor of Military and Naval concepts of deterrence and limited war. History at Yale University.

Inside Casino Capitalism

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: The Fall of trademark for his newly formed baking RJR Nabisco. By Bryan Burrough and John concern. Green was a progressive busi- Helyar. Harper & Row. 528 pp. $22.95 nessman. He refused to employ child la- bor, even though it was then a common n 1898, Adolphus Green, chairman of practice, and he offered his bakery em- the National Biscuit Company, found ployees the option to buy stock at a dis- himself faced with the task of choosing a count. Green therefore thought that his

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trademark should symbolize Nabisco's Wall Street, however, immediately realized fundamental business values, "not merely that Johnson was trying to play two incom- to make dividends for the stockholders of patible games. LBOs typically put corpora- his company, but to enhance the general tions such as RJR Nabisco through a prosperity and the moral sentiment of the ringer in order to pay the mammoth debt United States." Eventually he decided that incurred after a buyout. But Johnson, de- a cross with two bars and an oval-a medi- siring a conservative debt structure in or- eval symbol representing the triumph of der to keep corporate perquisites intact, the moral and spiritual over the base and "low-balled'' his offer. Other buyout inves- material-should grace the package of ev- tors stepped forward with competing bids, ery Nabisco product. and after a six-week-long auction the If they had wracked their brains for buyout boutique of Kohlberg, Kravis, Rob- months, Bryan Burrough and John Helyar erts & Co, (KKR) emerged on top with a could not have come up with a more $109-a-share bid. The $25-billion buyout ironic metaphor for their book. The fall of took its place as one of the defining busi- Nabisco, and its corporate partner R. J. ness events of the 1980s. Reynolds, is nothing less than the exact op- Burrough and Helyar, who covered the posite of Green's business credo, a corn- story for the Wall Street Journal, supply a pelling tale of corporate and Wall Street breezy, colorful, blow-by-blow account of greed featuring RJR Nabisco officers who the "deal from hell" (as one businessman first steal shareholders blind and then jus- characterized a leveraged buyout). The tify their epic displays of avarice by claim- language of Wall Street, full of incon- ing to maximize shareholder value. gruous "Rambo" jargon from the Vietnam The event which made the RJR War, is itself arresting. Buyout artists, who Nabisco story worth telling was the 1988 presumably never came within 10,000 leveraged buyout (LBO) of the mammoth miles of wartime Saigon, talk about tobacco and food conglomerate, then the "napalming" corporate perquisites or 19th-largest industrial corporation in liken their strategy to "charging through America. Battles for corporate control the rice paddies, not stopping for anything were common during the loosely regu- and taking no prisoners." lated 1980s, and the LBO was just one At the time, F. Ross Johnson was widely method for capturing the equity of a cor- pilloried in the press as the embodiment of poration. (In a typical LBO, a small group excess; his conflict of interest was obvious. of top management and investment bank- Yet Burrough and Helyar show that John- ers put 10 percent down and finance the son, for all his free-spending ways, was rest of their purchase through high-inter- way over his head in the major leagues of est loans or bonds. If the leveraged, pri- greed, otherwise known as Wall Street in vately owned corporation survives, the in- the 1980s. What, after all, is more rapa- vestors, when they can re-sell public cious: the roughly $100 million Johnson shares, reach the so-called "pot of gold;" stood to gain if his deal worked out over but if the corporation cannot service its five years, or the $45 million in expenses debt, everything is at risk, because the col- KKR demanded for waiting 60 minutes lateral is the corporation itself.) while Ross Johnson prepared a final com- The sheer size of RJR Nabisco and the peting bid? furious bidding war that erupted guaran- teed unusual public scrutiny of this par- arbarians is, in the parlance of the ticular piece of financial engineering. F. B publishing world, a good read. At the Ross Johnson, the conglomerate's flam- same time, unfortunately, a disclaimer is- boyant, free-spending CEO (RJR had its sued by the authors proves only too true. own corporate airline), put his own corn- Anyone looking for a definitive judgment pany into play with a $75-a-share bid in of LBOs will be disappointed. Burrough October. Experienced buyout artists on and Helyar do at least ask the pertinent

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question: What does showing no concern all this activity have for employees below to do with building senior management and sustaining a busi- after a leveraged ness? But authors buyout. should not only pose The triumph of questions; they gossip over sub- should answer them, stance is manifest in or at least try. many other ways. Admittedly, the Wall Street's deft single most impor- manipulation of the tant answer to the business press is RJR puzzle could not barely touched upon, be provided by and the laissez-faire Burrough and Hel- environment pro- yar because it is not cured by buyout art- yet known. The ma- ists via their political jor test of any finan- contributions is cial engineering is its scarcely mentioned, effect on the long- crucial though it is. term vitality of the le- Nowhere are the au- veraged corporation, thors' priorities more as measured bv such obvious than in the key indicatorsas market share (and not number of words devoted to Henry just whether the corporation survives its Kravis's conspicuous consumption com- debt, as the authors imply). However, a pared to those devoted to the details of the highly leveraged RJR Nabisco is already RJR deal. In testimony before Congress selling off numerous profitable parts of its last year, no less an authority than Trea- business because they are no longer a sury Secretary Nicholas Brady-himself "strategic fit": Wall Street code signifying a an old Wall Street hand-noted that the need for cash in order to service debts and substitution of tax-deductible debt for tax- avoid bankruptcy. able income is "the mill in which the grist If the authors were unable to predict of takeover premiums is ground." In the the ultimate outcome, they still had a rare case of RJR Nabisco, 81 percent of the opportunity to explain how and why arr $9.9 billion premium paid to shareholders LBO is engineered. Unfortunately, their was derived from tax breaks achievable af- fixation on re-creating events and dia- ter the buyout. This singularly important logue-which admittedly produces a fast- fact cannot be found in the book, however; moving book-forced them to accept the nor will a reader learn that after the issues as defined by the participants them- buyout the U.S. Treasury was obligated to selves. There is no other way to explain the refund RJR as much as $1 billion because book's uncritical stance. When, for exam- of its post-buyout debt burden. In Barbar- ple, the RJR Nabisco board of directors ians, more time is spent describing tried to decide which bid to accept, Kt-avis's ostentatious gifts to his fashion-de- Burrough and Helyar report that several signer wife than to the tax considerations directors sided with KKR's offer because that make or break these deals. the LBO boutique "knew the value of Fulminations about the socially corro- keeping [employees] happy." It is impossi- sive effects of greed aside, the buyout phe- ble to tell from the book whether the di- nomenon may represent one of the biggest rectors knew this to be true or took KKRs changes in the way American business is word. Even a cursory investigation would conducted since the rise of the public cor- have revealed that KKR is notorious for poration, nothing less than a transforma-

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tion of managerial into financial capital- ket for corporate control. That creates a ism. The ferocious market for corporate brittle structure, one that threatens to turn control that emerged during the 1980s has the U.S. government into something of an few parallels in business history, but there ultimate guarantor if and when things do are two: the trusts that formed early in this fall apart. It is too easy to construct a sce- century and the conglomerate mania that nario in which corporate indebtedness swept corporate America during the forces the federal government into the 1960s. Both waves resulted in large social business of business. The savings-and-loan and economic costs, and there is little as- bailout is a painfully obvious harbinger of surance that the corporate infatuation with such a development. debt will not exact a similarly heavy toll. The many ramifications of the buyout As the economist Henry Kaufrnan has mania deserve thoughtful treatment. Basic written, the high levels of debt associated issues of corporate governance and with buyouts and other forms of corporate accountability ought to be openly debated restructuring create fragility in business and resolved if the American economy is structures and vulnerability to economic to deliver the maximum benefit to society cycles. Inexorably, the shift away from eq- and not just unconscionable rewards to a uity invites the close, even intrusive in- handful of bankers, all out of proportion to volvement of institutional investors their social productivity. It is disappoint- (banks, pension funds, and insurance com- ing, but a sign of the times, that the best panies) that provide the financing. Superfi- book about the deal of deals fails to edu- cially, this moves America closer to the cate as well as it entertains. system that prevails in Germany and Ja- pan, where historically the relationship be- -Max Holland, a current Wilson Cen- tween the suppliers and users of capital is ter Fellow, is writing a biography of close. But Germany and Japan incur John McCloy and is the author of higher levels of debt for expansion and in- When the Machine Stopped: A Cau- vestment, whereas equivalent American tionary Tale from Industrial America indebtedness is linked to the recent mar- (1989).

The English Scrutinized

THE PLEASURES OF THE PAST. By David - and its interpretations. Cannadine. Norton. 338 pp. $19.95 Cannadine is a social historian with an acute political sense, a combination that he oxygenated quality of these essays strongly informed Lords and Landlords T reflects more than the fact that many (1981), his major work on the aristocracy's of them were (we are told) conceived and role in creating modem English towns. drafted mid-air. David Cannadine, now at That juxtaposition of grandee culture and Columbia University, was one of the more gritty urbanization is typical. He has an eye eminent British historical brains to be for the flamboyant, a high style, an interest drained across the Atlantic in the 1980s ac- in royalty, architecture, food, and sex. But ademic diaspora. Like the 19th-century his essays on Prince Albert, the Duke of Whig historian Lord Macaulay, Cannadine Windsor, the Mayfair estate, and English has made a parallel reputation as a re- stately homes are hardly celebrations of viewer of dazzling panache. The principle England's aristocratic past; they are re- of collecting book reviews as essays, rarely lated to Cannadine's tireless deconstruc- defensible, is here vindicated by their com- tions of urban history, economic decline, mon theme: an exasperated, mocking, of- and socialist historiography. The inanity of ten profound interrogation of Englishness King George V obsessively hunting birds,

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or of Queen Victoria martyring her ladies- wisdom, but has itself become a thing of in-waiting through her finicky rituals-all the past. The Welfare State is not a way of the high premium put on social niceties- seeing history anymore: It is history." is, from Cannadine's perspective, an objec- Unlike the previous generation of Brit- tive correlative of an England entering ish historians whose perspective was into decline. While many Englishmen shaped by the Welfare State, Cannadine's view Earl Mountbatten-the World War I1 framework comes out of Thatcher's Brit- naval commander and last viceroy of In- ain; in his view, Thatcherite Britain, dia-as the last heroic symbol of Greater through its lack of funding for education Britain, Cannadine shows him to be, and a contemptuous ignorance of human- through both his virtues and his tailings, ist values, has failed in its social duties. the "imperial undertaker" and architect of Nor is a nostalgic return to England's great Little England. "Most members of the traditions any answer, for Cannadine royal family are employed to open things," shows they are not what once they he writes, "to lay foundation stones or seemed. The received ideas of English- launch ships. But Mountbatten was quite ness-as represented musically in Elgar's brilliant at the much more difficult and The Dream of Gerontius, architecturally in important job of closing things down: not Lutyens' viceregal New Delhi, and socially just. . . the Japanese Empire; but more in the cult of the English country house- crucially, the independent deterrent, the are for Cannadine only too emblematic of autonomous armed services, the Royal England's inability to adapt to the disloca- Navy, and the Raj." tions of 20th-century post-industrialism. Associated with this is Cannadine's pre- annadine's real strength-and rar- occupation with ritual in modern times; c ity-as a reviewer is this ability to he has edited a collection of essays, Rituals scale the particular up to the general, and of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Tradi- it is as a commentary on the large general- tional Societies (1987), on the theme, and ization of Englishness that this collection he helped to popularize the ringing phrase may become required reading. Here are "the invention of tradition." The gewgaws no complacent reassurances about the and trappings of the English aristocracy, elastic strengths of the British social sys- and the arcana of the hereditary political tem or the tolerance of its traditions. Brit- class, become for Cannadine clues that ex- ish traditions today-having survived "the plain the length of time the Establishment bleakness of the 1980s, the 'Thatcherite has been able "to get away with it." In one contempt for consensus,' the cuts in pub-- essay, he dissects, in tongue-in-cheek style, lie spending, the growth in unemploy- the construction of reputations that earn ment''-Cannadine finds in the same one a place in the Dictionary of National shambling, uninviting condition as many Biography. "Those men were quiet, care- of the country's museums: "their funds in- ful, cautious, pragmatic, orderly, logical, adequate, their lighting unsatisfactory, and unemotional. . . . They took work their galleries only intermittently open." home at night and at weekends; they had In another thoughtful piece Cannadine time for few hobbies or recreations; they effectively buries what he calls "Welfare jealously guarded their private lives; but in State history," whose most noted practi- the select company of those who 'knew tioner was Asa Briggs: "The broad nexus of them well, they were warm-hearted, left-of-center goodness, of low-tech de- charming, kindly and generous. Indefati- cency, of middle-class improvement, gable, relentless, remorseless, formidable, which flourished from the steam-engine to indomitable: They sound like the Grand the steam-radio and beyond, and which Fleet at anchor at Spithead." has informed Briggs's life as an academic For Cannadine, English "genius, flam- statesman and his work as an academic boyance, audacity, intuition, romanticism, historian, is no longer the conventional high color [are all] slightly suspect." Here

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and elsewhere, one can hear an echo of (1984), that "Clio and the clitoris have the last public lecture Cannadine gave be- never been so close." It would be a mis- fore departing for America, in which he as- take simply to relish these essays as so sailed Britain, its governing establishment, many canapes before the publication next and its treatment of history and historians. November of Cannadine's magnum opus, Many of these essays lead to implicitly po- The Decline and Fall of the British Aristoc- liticized and prescriptive conclusions- racy; they also represent a uniquely sub- never very acceptable, nor considered versive style of high entertainment. quite correct taste, in traditional British academe. This will hardly trouble a man -Roy Foster is professor of history at who can cheerfully write, about historian Birkbeck College, University of Peter Gay's The Education of the Senses London.

NEW TITLES

Contemporary Affairs roles, Soviet women in- stead tend to ignore SOVIET WOMEN: Walking the Tightrope. By their indolent men and Francine du Plessix Gray. Doubleday. 213 pp. forge bonds with other $1 9.95 females: friends, moth- ers, and grandmothers. Francine du Plessix Gray, an American novelist The old Russian matri- of partly Russian descent, investigates a side of archy survives in a soci- Soviet reality little known to most Western ety where strong, self- readers-the world of the "second sex." Much sacrificing, self-suffi- of what she reports will come as revelation. cient women dominate A Soviet poster: the How many Americans know, for example, that passive, emasculated working woman as only five percent of Soviet women have access husbands. None of du hero. to birth-control pills or IUDs, or that the main Plessix Gray's subjects form of birth control in the Soviet Union is felt the need to compete with men. Indeed, the abortion, or that the national average is 14 author began to wonder which sex was more in abortions per woman? In terms of sex educa- need of support: "After dozens of evenings tion, one of Leningrad's few sexologists ob- spent with distraught, henpecked men and with served, "the Soviet Union is among the most a dismaying abundance of superwomen, I backward countries in the world, somewhere reached the conclusion the Soviet Union might on the level of Bhutan [or] Afghanistan." be. . . in need of a men's movement." The quotidian complaints of Soviet women All the same, Soviet superwomen are fed up will come as less of a surprise to their Western with being superwomen on the job. "American sisters. Working hard all 'day, queuing in long women are still struggling for the freedom to," lines at the stores, and coming home to hus- du Plessix Gray notes, "whereas Soviet women bands who won't share in the housekeeping or are struggling for the freedom from." The Revo- child-rearing constitute the fate of many Soviet lution gave women the right (actually the women. But if their plight sounds familiar, responsibility) to work outside of the house and their response to it is not. The Soviets du to receive equal wages. But practice has lagged Plessix Gray interviewed scorned Western fem- behind theory: For the majority, women's "lib- inism, often dismissing it as unnatural. eration" has become an overworked, under- Reluctant to question traditional gender paid nightmare. Nearly half of Soviet women

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work at unskilled, often backbreaking jobs; men," Conor Cruise O'Brien once observed. most warehouse workers and highway con- Schaeffer musters little sympathy for the cause struction crews, for example, are female. "We of their fatigue-the fact that they had tried are like [American] blacks!" complained one other solutions and repeatedly failed. What woman. The social services, health care, and then does Schaeffer suggest? That we heed the child-support that enabled an earlier genera- examples of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Lu- tion to bear the double burden of work and ther King, Jr. Lincoln saved the United States family deteriorated during the Brezhnev era. from partition by rejecting the South's right to The heroism and outright despair of today's So- secede; later, King rejected the goal of Black viet women are expressed in the aphorism, Power separatists by invoking Lincoln's logic: "Women do everything, and men do the rest." that true democracy lies not in partition but in The strongest desire of most women du Plessix guaranteeing a minority's rights. Schaeffer Gray interviewed was to raise their children passes lightly over the fact that, between Lin- themselves and not to work outside of the coln's decision and King's activism, a non-par- home. titioned United States underwent a bloody civil Soviet Women may be slanted-almost no war and then a century during which minority peasant women or women living outside major rights were mostly denied. cities are interviewed-but overall it has the Indeed, Schaeffer skirts over any facts that ring of recognizable truth. Soviet women, support the case for partition. Europe with a trapped between traditional values and con- partitioned Germany enjoyed its longest period temporary expectations, are living simulta- of prosperity and peace in modem times. And neously in the 19th and 20th centuries. Du in some areas like Korea, partition enabled the Plessix Gray's account of a society fragmented superpowers to limit their disagreement and not only among nationalities but even between avoid another world war. different eras hints at the difficulties facing re- When Schaeffer quotes Lincoln on secession, formers in the age of Gorbachev. however, he hints at a problem even more ba- sic than partition: self-determination. If a mi- nority secedes, Lincoln warned, it forges a dan- WARPATHS: The Politics of Partition. By gerous precedent, "for a minority of their own Robert Schaeffer. Hill and Wang. 306 pp. will secede from them." It sounds as if Lincoln 522.95 were describing the Soviet Union today, where Abkhazians are threatening to secede from In 192 1, the war-weary British hoped to bring Georgia if Georgians secede. an end to the Irish problem by dividing the is- Warpaths is thus timely in its underscoring of land between Catholics and Protestants. In- a paradox of contemporary politics. Many prob- stead of solving the conflict, partition brought lems today-of nuclear weapons, of econo- 70 more years of bloodshed, with no end in mies, of ecology, of terrorism-can no longer sight. It was hardly an auspicious precedent for a practice that would soon be applied to con- flict-ridden nations throughout the world. Schaeffer, a journalist who specializes in se- curity issues, surveys the results of partitioning in, among other countries, Palestine, India, Germany, Korea, and Vietnam. He comes up with a staggering body-count: Since World War 11, "wars in the divided states have claimed nearly 13 million lives." Partition has also "up- rooted millions from their homeland.. . [and] led to internecine war within and between di- vided states and [drawn] superpower states into intractable regional wars." A South Korean guards the 151-mile demili- "Partition is the expedient of tired states- tarized zone dividing North and South Korea.

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be confined within national borders. Yet mi- seph 11's stinginess was norities in Israel, Lebanon, Ethiopia, and the proverbial. While en- Soviet Union are demanding self-determina- couraging Mozart with tion. The two trends, nationalism and interna- praise, he was reluctant tionalism, run counter to each other and can to guarantee him a per- produce situations fraught with risk. Although manent salary. So Mo- Schaeffer does not offer an answer, he asks an zart gave lessons, sold important question: Should national or ethnic copies of his music, self-determination, once championed so ar- and performed con- dently by Woodrow Wilson, be a governing certs to support him- principle of world politics? self, his wife Constanze, and their children, all the while maneuvering- Arts & Letters for imperial appointments that never came. A war with Turkey in 1788 emptied Vienna of the MOZART IN VIENNA, 1781-1791. By aristocrats who supported him, forcing Mozart Volkmar Braunbehrens. Weidenfeld. 481 pp. to borrow heavily from friends. Still, Braun- $25.95 behrens shows that his prospects were improv- MOZART: The Golden Years. By H. C. ing in 1791, the year he died of a recurrence of Robbins Landon. Schinner. 272 pp. $29.95 rheumatic fever; indeed, in that year he made more money (almost 4,000 florins) than he had "Looking at Mozart's daily life serves only to in any previous year. emphasize how little we really know about Readers will find fewer details of Mozart's life him," says musical historian Braunbehrens, in musicologist Robbins Landon's study of the who succeeds nonetheless in revealing "what same period. But while Braunbehrens shuns was happening outside Mozart's house while he discussion of Mozart's music ("Music must be was composing inside." Braunbehrens' investi- heard," he says), Robbins Landon lavishes at- gations lead him to dispute the popular notion tention upon the origins and legacies of Mo- that "Viennese society and, above all, Joseph I1 zart's works. We learn, for example, that the [the Habsburg emperor] were to blame for Mo- Stein pianos used by Mozart were well suited to zart's lack of recognition, slow demise, and in- the "delicate and rather staccato technique" he terment in a pauper's,grave." Indeed, a differ- favored-as opposed to later pianos whose sus- ent portrait emerges. It depicts a willful young taining qualities allowed for the "beautiful and man rebelling against the restrictions put upon silvery effect" associated with Beethoven's his music by his employer, Archbishop Col; "Moonlight Sonata." Robbins Landon shows loredo, and boldly setting out in 1781 to seek how Mozart revolutionized orchestration with artistic freedom and renown in imperial Vi- unusual pairings of instruments, and how he enna. Despite financial difficulties during his broke with established forms of concerti and decade in Vienna, Mozart composed a body of quartets to create a sound never before music-including six operas, some 20 syrnpho- heard-so unique that a quartet dedicated to nies, a host of works for piano, strings, clarinet, his fnend Joseph Haydn in 1785 was dubbed flute, horn, oboe, and voice, as well as the great the "Dissonance" quartet. The weakness of The Requiem mass he was working on when he Golden Years is its attempt to psychoanalyze a died-that would stand as a remarkable cata- man known to us only through his letters. (The logue for any composer, but particularly for author, for example, diagnoses Mozart as a one who lived only to the age of 35. manic-depressive in order to account for the Mozart had been to Vienna before. His fa- large number of works he composed in a mi- ther, Leopold, had nurtured his musical talent nor key.) What stands out in both volumes, from childhood and taken him, the child prod- however, is the fact that Mozart-despite hu- igy, to perform before princes, kings, and popes man failings and personal misfortune- throughout Europe. But earning a living as a achieved what most others can only marvel at. free-lance musician was another matter. Jo- We are still marveling 200 years later.

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WILLA GATHER: Double Lives. By Hermione ary Manifest Destiny, a romantic self-identifica- Lee. Pantheon. 410 pp. $29.95 tion with the conquest of the continent. Gather was more interested in Obscure Destinies (as Willa Gather's novels of Midwestern prairie life she titled her 1932,short-story collection). Her made her one of America's most popular novel- aim was to reveal the emotional lives of settlers ists. Indeed, many of her fans came to associate rooted to one spot on the prairie. In that prairie the qualities of such novels as 0 Pioneers! existence, according to Cather, it was women (1913) and My Antonio. (1918) with Cather who displayed the traditional masculine (1873-1947) herself: provincial simplicity, in- strengths and the men who were weak. nocence, integrity, endurance. But Lee, a Brit- In 1923, Cather wrote that "we must face the ish critic who has written about Virginia Woolf fact that the splendid story of the pioneers is and Elizabeth Bowen, finds that Cather was "no finished. . . ." Her own pioneer experience hav- laureate of rural America." As Lee's subtitle, ing lasted barely a decade, she began to cast Double Lives, suggests, things were not as sim- about for other subjects. Her travels to the ple as they once seemed. Southwest inspired Death Comes to the Arch- Gather's childhood was already half over bishop (1927). And in The Professor's House when, in 1883, her family moved from Virginia (1925), her own difficult transition inspired the to Red Cloud, Nebraska, a bleak land that the story of a Midwestern boy who leaves the prai- nine-year-old girl viewed with an outsider's eye. rie, enjoys initial success, but finds himself in- After college, she left the Midwest for Pitts- creasingly at odds with the modern world. burgh and later New York, seeking to lead the Much of her own experience Cather consid- life of the "new woman" and supporting herself ered too private to write about. (She began as a schoolteacher and journalist. The Maine dodging reporters, building a mountain retreat, writer Sarah Orne Jewett, whom she met in and even burning letters and manuscripts.) In 1909, convinced Cather that the region she had her writing, she abandoned the contemporary once almost despised, and its "everyday people world for 17th-century Quebec (Shadows on who grow out of the soil," could be material for the Rock, 1931), Old Virginia (Sapphira and the the fiction she soon began writing. Slave Girl, 1940), and even a story of 14th-cen- Feminist and lesbian critics have claimed tury France. Little wonder that the New Critics Gather as one of their own, even though Gather of the 1930s and '40s dismissed her as provin- never openly expressed her sexual orientation. cial and escapist. Lee describes the youthful Gather wearing Lee ioins those who would revive Cather's mannish attire and signing herself "William reputation. But she does so not because of Cather." But she warns readers "not to collapse Cather's feminism but because of her art, her Cather's imaginative life into a simple matter of creation of a language uniquely suitable for repression." (Lee herself treats Cather's 44-year American experiences and landscapes. Lee "Boston marriage" to Edith Lewis in a mere weakens her case somewhat by overstating it, four pages.) What makes the gender question by indiscriminately approving all of Gather's interesting, however, is that it seems to influ- stories, and by characterizing this author who ence the genre question. finally fled the modem world as a modernist The struggle for the frontier was long consid- "in the company of Proust, Lawrence, Eliot, ered an essentially and Virginia Woolf." male story. Lee praises Cather for "being the only woman of her History time to have appropri- ated a 'great tradition' LET THEM CALL ME REBEL: Saul of male American writ- Alinsky-His Life and Legacy. By Sanford D. ing." Male authors like Horwitt. Knopf. 595 pp. $29.95 Hamlin Garland and Ole Rolvaag pro- Alexis de Tocqueville observed in 1835 that the pounded a kind of liter- genius of American politics expressed itself at

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the local level. A cen- rights organization, but Alinsky found himself tury later, Saul Alinsky being edged out of the movement by black appeared the living em- leaders. Even though he remained as feisty as bodiment of Tocque- ever, lecturing and staging rallies, he died in ville's observation. In 1972 a largely forgotten man. his native Chicago, he Horwitt, a policy adviser for public interest organized and prodded organizations, provides a superb account of into action thousands of immigrants, minor- Alinsky's colorful life. But he struggles vainly to ities, slum-dwellers, and juvenile delinquents. A persuade his readers that Alinsky is not forgot- cross between Machiavelli and P. T. Bamum, ten, that his legacy is alive and well. To be sure, he perfected the tactics of confrontation: When the Catholic clergy of Chicago's slum neighbor- one Chicago- alderman proved indifferent to ad- hoods always supported Alinsk .', the Jewish agi- equate garbage pickup, Alinsky had mounds of tator, and certainly Alinsky influenced the Cath- trash dumped in front of his tavern. olic Church in its populist social activism. Born in 1909. the child of Russian-Jewish im- Later, when he organized Hispanic migrant migrants, Alinsky received his earliest educa- workers in California, he put on the payroll a tion in the streets of the Windy City. Later, as a promising young man-Cesar Chavez. Never- student in the University of Chicago's sociology theless, the limitations of Alinsky's confronta- department, he imbibed the new social-envi- tional approach decrease the likelihood of his ronmental understanding of urban problems. having a lasting influence. Doing field work with Italian street gangs, Successful mass movements seem to require Alinsky respected their behavior as plausible re- not only strategies and tactics but also ideologi- sponses to social disorganization. cal underpinnings. Alinsky, however, shunned In 1939, Alinsky organized the first "neigh- ideology. His successes, the Back of the Yards borhood council" in the Back of the Yards, as Council and TWO, had piggybacked on two of the largely Polish slaughterhouse area was the great ideological movements of the 20th called. The council helped bring John L. Lew- century: the labor-unionism of the 1930s and is's Committee for Industrial Organization the civil-rights struggle of the 1950s and '60s. (CIO) into the packing houses, and eventually it Without an ideological stance, Alinsky was left opened day-care and recreational centers. The organizing communities and fighting City Hall New York Herald Tribune declared that democ- when real power-in commerce, in industry, racy had arrived in Upton Sinclair's "jungle." in the media, and in politics-was shifting away Alinskv modeled his tactics on those of union from localities to a limited number of urban organizers and especially of Lewis, who dis- centers. Alinsky may have been Tocqueville's dained ideology and fought ruthlessly for American genius, but Alinsky's America was no power. Alinsky's "method" involved three longer the one Tocqueville had visited. stages: first, employing professional organizers to lay the groundwork; second, organizing a communitv around an immediate, winnable is- COSMOPOLIS: The Hidden Agenda of sue; and, third, turning power over to local Modernity. By Stephen Toulmin. Free Press. people. "Don't do for people what they can do 228 pp. $22.95 for themselves" was his ironclad rule. By 1945 Alinsky was a national celebrity. After two world wars, dramatic economic fluc- When his Reveille for Radicals became a best tuations, and environmental catastrophes-or, seller that year, he hardly suspected that his fin- for that matter, just after the morning traffic est days were behind him. During the commute-"modernity" may no longer seem McCarthyite 1950s, he lost many of his support- the unquestionable wonder earlier generations ers and much of his funding. He again made thought it to be. In Cosmopolis, physicist and headlines in 1963, when his Temporary philosopher Toulmin attempts to understand Woodlawn Organization (TWO) blocked the how a world men set out confidently to control University of Chicago from buying up adjacent got so out of hand. His explanation-which fo- black neighborhoods. TWO was an early civil- cuses on the passion for the scientific, rational

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ordering of society ("the hidden agenda of mo- lars he admires in the earlier humanists. He dernity'')-is hardly new. Toulmin is more thus discusses modernity without a single refer- original in locating that rationalist philosophy ence to race, class, gender, and he is as free as in its time and in demonstrating, through the Descartes was of any allusion to a world be- limitations of his own book, how difficult it is to yond the West. Physician, one is tempted to say free oneself of its hold. to Toulmin, heal thyself. Modernity, in Toulmin's view, began when 17th-century thinkers began to substitute for heavenly truths secular certainty: To overcome RACE AND HISTORY: Selected Essays, the ideological warring in a perpetually crisis- 1938-1988. By John Hope Franklin. LSU. 450 ridden Europe, philosophers such as Descartes, pp. $29.95 Newton, and Hobbes renounced all human ambiguities and envisioned a human society John Hope Franklin, born in 1915 in an all- that would be rationally ordered. Descartes and black town in Oklahoma, is now completing his Hobbes are usually discussed without reference remarkable academic career as James 6. Duke to the preceding Renaissance philosophy, but Professor of History Emeritus at Duke Univer- Toulmin shows just whom they were writing sity. Along the way, he not only wrote such against. Descartes's epistemology, with its works as From Slavery to Freedom (1947), Re- clear, uniform distinctions between subject and construction After the Civil War (1962), and Ra- object, was written specifically to refute the re- cial Equality in America (1976) but also served vival of classical skepticism in such writers as as president of America's four most prestigious Montaigne. historical associations. In 1915, it would have If Cosmopolis has a hero, it is clearly Mon- taigne. Montaigne (1533-92) talks about him- self, recounts his moods and his sexual experi- ences, admits his ignorance, and abjures all systems. Descartes (1596-1650), by contrast, demands absolute certainty, assumes the model for all knowledge is mathematics, and separates the controlling mind from controlla- ble nature. The Cartesian quest for certainty has, over three centuries, invariably favored the written over the oral, the universal over the particular, the general over the local, and the timeless over the time-bound. In trying to real-. An integrated jury during Reconstruction. By ize the Cartesian agenda, modernity got on the 1880, juries in the South were all white again. wrong track by not taking into account the infi- nite variety of human experience. Toulmin's been impossible to imagine such a career for a prescription for our overreaching rational con- black teacher or scholar. But if what we have trol, and the one-sided modernity it has cre- here is proof of the American Dream, it is a ated, is a return to that humane, cautious, toler- dream sullied by many slights and rebuffs, sev- ant skepticism that he finds in Montaigne and eral of which are angrily recalled in this tough- generalizes to all the Renaissance humanists. minded collection. Toulmin's essay reflects so much of the re- All together, these 27 essays-which range cent criticjue of Western culture that it is a bit from the racial perceptions of the Founding Fa- of a surprise to realize at the end how com- thers to 20th-century efforts to achieve racial pletely he remains within the intellectual equality-embody Franklin's lifetime program framework he condemns. His argument lacks to revise American history "in order to place humility, omits all thinkers (e.g., Spinoza, the Negro in his proper relationship and per- Hume) who would force him to qualify; spective." Consider, for example, the two es- Toulmin is himself systematic and generalizing, says on Reconstruction written by Franklin 30 too often dispensing with the taste for particu- years apart. In 1948, when Franklin surveyed

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the relatively unresearched topic, Reconstruc- that all human thinking is the process of com- tion was considered a tragic era during which plicated calculations that computers theoreti- white southerners suffered at the hands of rapa- cally can, and one day will, do. (According to cious Yankee carpetbaggers and their ignorant strong AI, our brain is only, as Marvin Minsky Negro minions. But by 1980, when Franklin put it, a "computer made of meat.") published "Mirror for Americans," Reconstruc- Strong A1 has one of its most forceful spokes- tion was understood as a serious attempt to es- men in Hans Moravec, director of the Mobile tablish some measure of racial equality. Robot Laboratory of Carnegie Mellon Univer- Franklin's other major theme-the scholar's sity. Narrating the history of the A1 community, social responsibility-is dealt with in a selec- Moravec provides some comparisons to show tion titled plainly "The Historian and Public where we now stand: The computers of the Policy." Much of Franklin's career coincided 1950s he likens in intelligence to a bacteria, with the civil-rights upheaval, and he attempted while today's computers, he says, are on the to tread a course between both white and black intellectual level of a spider. Moravec makes extremists. Franklin believed that the black his- some calculations of his own. The computing torian should remain calm and objective, refus- action of the human retina can be performed ing "the temptation to pollute his scholarship today by computer simulations; by calculating with polemics, diatribes, arguments." Dis- what fraction the retina's function represents of passionate scholarship at times forced Franklin the brain's operation as a whole, Moravec ex- to repress his feelings in a way that "would not trapolates how long it will be, given the phe- be satisfying to some, and. . . may even be lack- nomenal rate of advances in computer technol- ing in courage. I do not commend it; I merely ogy, before computers can simulate all of the confess it." Yet Franklin's scholarship led him brain's operations. In 40 years, Moravec esti- to his own variety of social activism. He pro- mates, computers will have "human equiva- vided expert witness in the courts and Con- lence." From there, Moravec goes on to imag- gress; and he wrote the background studies for ine a "postbiological" world in which the NAACP's desegregation cases. Perhaps no computerized robots not only perform, for ex- scholar of his generation may more rightfully ample, brain surgery on humans but even im- claim that "the historian is the conscience of prove and reproduce themselves. Moravec's his nation, if honesty and consistency are fac- technological future resembles Stanley tors that nurture the conscience." Kubrick's film 2001, in which the computers end up seeming more human than the people. Proponents of strong A1 like to label their op- Science & Technology ponents "mystics," but Roger Penrose has im- peccable scientific credentials. The Rouse Ball MIND CHILDREN: The Future of Robot and Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, he has Human Intelligence. By Hans Moravec. contributed to the physics of the "Big Bang" Haward. 214 pp. $18.95 origins of the universe, and his research with THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND: Concerning Stephen Hawking helped establish the plausi- Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics. By bility of black holes. Penrose's refutation of Roger Penrose. Oxford. 466 pp. $24.95 thinking as programmed computation is straightforward: Computers can deal only with Last year a new computer program, playfully computable numbers, but there exists an entire named Deep Thought, defeated several grand branch of advanced mathematics that works chessmasters at their own game. Such tri- with noncomputable numbers. Indeed, he cites umphs are seized upon by the people, espe- numerous mathematical laws underlying the cially popular-science writers, who argue that operations of both the brain and the physical we are moving into a new reality, a 21st cen- world which have this noncomputational char- tury shaped by computers that will take over acter. As he differentiates thought from mere almost all the tasks once done by people. Advo- computation-in an argument that brings in cates of this argument for artificial intelli- complexity theory, quantum mechanics, Ein- gence-called, for short, "strong A1"-reason stein's relativity, Godel's undecidability,

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Mandelbrot's set, and physiology-Penrose "more than 90 percent of the entire mass within proposes a new model of the mind that con- the visible universe is made of material that is joins 20th-century biology, which is largely invisible to telescopes." The new Hubble space mechanistic, with contemporary physics, telescope, by possibly determining at what rate which is paradoxical (e.g., matter turning into the universe is expanding, may be able to sug- energy or a particle passing simultaneously gest where and how much invisible or missing through two slits). Penrose's description of the mass there is. But even without this evidence, mind's operation includes intuition, taste, and Newton's universal theory of gravitation, Ein- judgment, attributes which proponents of stein's theory of relativity, and the "Big Bang" strong A1 like to disregard. theory all support the idea of the existence of Penrose has acknowledged that Moravec's "dark matter." If dark matter doesn't exist, then Mind Children is stimulating and suggestive- these established theories will also have to be as science fiction. However, when theoretical reconsidered. physicists and mathematicians speculate about What, then, is dark matter? And why not, a masterful set of equations that will unite sub- Krauss asks, assume "that this dark matter is atomic quantum physics and large-scale relativ- made of the same stuff we areH-that is, of fa- ity into a "theory of everything" (or T.O.E.), lay- miliar neutrons and protons? Because if it were men are finding it increasingly difficult to tell composed only of these "normal" subatomic the science fiction from the science. That may particles, galaxies would be much larger than explain why the strong A1 argument is enjoying they actually are. So the search is on for the such a vogue. other constituents. One candidate that meets theoretical muster is weakly interacting mas- sive particles (WIMPS). But how do you test THE FIFTH ESSENCE: The Search for Dark something like a WIMP, which is so elusive that Matter in the Universe. By Lawrence M. it could pass through the molecules of a "solid" Krauss. Basic. 342 pp. $21.95 rock 100,000 times the size of the Earth and still not interact once with anything? Krauss Sir Isaac Newton found that the amount of proposes that one could build a 10-cm cube de- force that planets exert on one another de- tector, and in one hour 1012 of them will have pends on their mass and their distance from passed through, statistically enough for one to each other. This "pull," in turn, determines the interact with the detector. He predicts that speed and course of planets. The same princi- "there is a real possibility that this darkness will ple applies to galaxies-or did. In 1933, the reveal its identity within our lifetimes." astronomer Fritz Zwicky established that galax- Krauss cautions that the "discovery" of dark ies move at speeds that should tear them apart,- matter is "not necessarily as 'deep' as those as- based on what we can observe. sociated with the development of relativity or Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy quantum mechanics." Yet, he adds, it is "mind- at Yale University, demonstrates that for galax- boggling that within less than a quarter-century ies to hold together as they do, there must be a we have come within striking distance of the lot more mass to them than meets the eye. answer" to the question man has been asking From the available evidence, he argues that for millennia: What is the universe made of?

WQ SUMMER 1990 100 Find out in Quarterly of the National Archives Each issue features -

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With Audio-Forum's intermediate and advanced materi- als, it's easy to maintain and sharpen your foreign-language skills. Besides intermediate and advanced audio-cassette courses - most developed for the U .S. State Dept. - we offer foreign-language mystery dramas, dialogs recorded in Paris, games, music, and many other helpful materi- als. And if you want to learn a new language, we have beginning courses for adults and for children. We offer introductory and advanced materials in most of the world's languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Greek, Russian, Portuguese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, and many others. Call 1-800-243-1234 for FREE 32-page catalog, or write: The arrival in the American workplace of the computer and other high- tech marvels was supposed to give a strong boost to the US. economy. So far, it hasn't. The cause of frustration is a band of obstinate grem- lins-what Edward Tenner here describes as "revenge effects." Unless we confront them with better organization, Tenner argues, we will con- tinue to be tantalized.

by Edward Tenner

he tragic god of the indus- productivity least in services, the sector of trial West was once Prome- the economy that was growing fastest. theus, who still holds the There are success stories to the con- place of honor at the Rocke- trary. Thanks to computer-based explora- feller Center skating rink. If a- tion geophysics, America's estimated re- statue for the year 2000 is coverable reserves of oil have declined needed, it perhaps should be of King Tan- little during a decade of three-billion-bar- talus, son of Zeus, who according to one re1 annual production. Authors' electronic account brought secrets-information files and conversion software have helped rather than fire-from the gods to human- some book publishers reduce production ity. For this theft he was cruelly punished costs and hold down prices. But will these in the netherworld: The water in which he be typical experiences? Many people, still was condemned eternally to stand would tantalized, are wondering. recede whenever he leaned over to drink, In 1987 the Labor Department re- and a bough of fruit that dangled above ported that the rate of productivity growth him would be blown beyond his grasp outside manufacturing had fallen signifi- whenever he reached for it. cantly since the beginning of office auto- The 1980s was a tantalizing decade. mation in the early 1970s. The pre-com- Computers seemed to transform the work- puter postwar average of 2.3 percent place. They did not, as feared, throw mil- declined to 0.5 percent annually between lions out of work. But neither did they, as 1973 and 1981 and was still only 0.7 per- hoped, make many workers feel less ha- cent by the mid-1980s. In the professions, rassed or more creative. They increased the record has been even worse: two-

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tenths of one percent annu- ally. Government fared no better. The U.S. Postal Ser- vice has spent $526 million on automated equipment in the last year yet still runs a $1.6 billion deficit and has actually increased its mail- processing work force to handle all those bar codes and nine-digit zips. In 1988 Robert H. Flast, vice president for technol- ogy strategy at American Express, told a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences that the costs of making computer systems work have "more than off- set the savings from work transferred to the ma- chines." Stephen Roach, a Morgan Stanley & Co. econ- omist, declared to the Wall Stwl Journal: "Fifteen years into the 'high-teching' of America, the U.S. is still trapped in a quagmire of low-productivity growth." Since the great majority of new jobs in the 1990s will be in the service sector, the recent record is an enigma. Tantalus tantalized. What we have discov- ered the hard way, and will continue to find, are re- venge effects: unintended and ironic con: chines, originally an alternative to long sequences that apparently neutralize the banking lines, now have queues of their benefits of technology. Everyone has his own: revenge again. At home, as the histo- own favorite revenge effect. Parkinson's rian Ruth Schwartz Cowan has shown, "la- Law, that work expands to fill the time bor-saving" appliances have redirected available for its completion, is a cautious rather than reduced time spent on house- executive's revenge effect. The unmanage- work. And all that oil recovered by new able growth of traffic on new highways techniques may lead only to more sprawl that were built to lower the old level of and longer commutes. congestion is an environmentalist's. A re- cent book on long-term accident rates in revenge effect is not necessarily bad. developed countries by John Adams of the A It may simply reflect a consumer pri- University of London argues that total ority. To some people, rural life or a better casualties changed remarkably little from job may be worth a fatiguing drive to 1900 to 1975; Heinz Wolff, another British work. Access to cash at all hours may mat- academic, has used Adams's data to sug- ter more than shorter waiting times. Clean gest that people are "buying back danger," underwear daily may be worth a sacrifice taking new risks that cancel the benefits of of leisure time, especially if it's that of an- safety measures. Automatic teller ma- other family member. Speed may be val-

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ued above safety. If we were consistently 1990s will have to look much harder at conscious about our preferences, we learning costs-theirs, their customers', might not perceive revenge effects as and third parties'. problems. But forecasters and marketers In principle, this learning time is an in- influence our expectations. When they are vestment that should lead to higher pay for not met, we are tantalized. the employee as well as more profit for the We expect, for example, that technol- firm. In fact, the benefits aren't necessarily ogy will give us an advantage over compet- appearing. A recent survey of desktop pub- itors; but of course the competition has or lishing managers suggests that impressive gets technology of its own. Martin Neil gains in the productivity of their systems Baily, an economist at the Brookings Insti- often haven't affected their salaries. And tution in Washington, has pointed out that technology is also shifting work within "much of information processing is used organizations without necessarily increas- as a tool in the effort to move customers ing output. While some workers are elimi- from one company to another." If slick la- nated or downgraded, others have the dou- ser printing influences even tough-minded ble burden of learning new systems and biomedical researchers to rank some sci- making up for the work of the displaced. entific materials higher than others, as a In one recent study of a small midwestern recent study suggests, no wonder so much manufacturing company, the "protected" computer power goes into persuasion employees chosen to operate the new sys- rather than production. But these advan- tems frequently cited job stress and 60- tages seldom last. The first users, whether hour workweeks. In offices, skilled em- of hot-air balloons, carrier pigeons, real- ployees may take hours from their real time stock quotations, or cellular tele- jobs to guide coworkers with new equip- phones, have a temporary advantage that ment. No wonder a current cynical defini- disappears as rapidly as the technology tion of productivity is "fewer people work- spreads. In the long run, arms races help ing longer." mainly the armorers. Even where staffing isn't changed, speed doesn't necessarily bring more pro- ven where we appear to gain real pro- ductivity. Spreadsheet software should be ductivity, we are tantalized because we able to free managers' time for more cre- can't estimate the price we will have to pay ative work. But some managers armed in learning time. Digital Equipment Cor- with financial and statistical software may poration estimated in 1987 that it pre- demand and produce more data more of- sented more classroom hours each year ten, with no net saving of time. As the than Harvard, Yale, and Princeton com- computer consultant Paul Strassmann has bined. The technical manuals for a single- pointed out: "If a secretary types 300 lines car can cost a repair shop $1,600 a year, of mostly useless texts per day it does not and mechanics may need two days to follow that replacing the typewriter with a study one new electronic transmission. word processor capable of generating Computers themselves will continue to be 3,000 mostly useless lines" will make a simpler to use; yet as their capabilities firm more productive. grow, there will be more to study. There With texts as with data, revenge effects seem to be between one and two pages of don't stop at the first draft. The ease of cor- documentation per dollar of retail price rection can relax the incentive to get for most popular applications software, things right the first time; writing may take not to mention entire bookstore sections as much time as it did conventionally. It's devoted to the information and techniques all too easy to fiddle with perfectly good the producers left out. Organizations in the work, making neutral or even harmful re-

Edward Tenner, an executive editor at Princeton University Press and a vi.sitii~glect~drer in the Council of Humanities, recently gave a course on the liistory of infomation at Princeton. He received an A.B. (1965) from Princeton and a Ph.D. (1972) from the University of Chiago. The author of Tech Speak (1986), he has written for many publications, iiiclz~diiigMoney, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Magazine, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Copyifit @ 1990 by Ediw(1rd Tenner.

WQ SUMMER 1990 HIGH-TECH TANTALUS

visions. And data of all kinds do seem to but no more hours in a day, the prolifera- expand to fill ever cheaper storage tech- tion of paper will make it even harder to nology. According to the market analysis attract attention and to pay attention. Top firm Dataquest Inc., American users managers will cope with information over- bought nearly four times the IBM disk load only at a price: Assistants will screen storage in 1987 alone that they had in the and organize data. Professor William Mel- seven years between 1975 and 1982. ody of the British Program on Information A decade ago, the experts imagined and Communications Technology (PICT) that this abundant storage and electronic even foresees "corporate electronic networking would reduce the need for monks" giving context and meaning to hard copy. Instead, the most surprising data and raw information. On the front and striking revenge effect of all has been lines, some blue- and white-collar workers a paradoxical proliferation of paper. The will have more and more information pre- paperless office has already gone the way organized electronically. Already, Ameri- of the fiberglass bungalow and the robot can Express credit card authorizers use an butler. From 1975 to 1987, total sales of expert system summarizing account in- printing and writing paper (excluding formation that once took as many as 16 newsprint) increased from 10.9 to 23.4 screens from six data bases. Middle man- million short tons. The techno-pundits ig- agers will have less help. nored how much easier and cheaper it was becoming to print out a new document. ill the next decade and beyond be as They imagined that'the computer was cen- wtantalizing as the 1980s? Not neces- tral and the printer "peripheral." They sarily. We are starting to learn from experi- didn't see how soon the speed, quality, and ence about technology in organizations, economy of printers would improve. They and there are encouraging lessons. Auto- didn't understand that most people hate mation doesn't solve the problems of orga- long hours at a terminal and fear losing nizations. The hierarchies borrowed from data. And they didn't realize the electronic- the military and old-style manufacturing driven potential of paper, from high-vol- are poorly matched with the ability of new ume, self-diagnosing copier-duplicators to technology to share information and to up- faxes to satellite-transmitted national grade work. Some companies already give newspapers. No wonder experts once pre- more authority to smaller numbers of bet- dicted that 5,000 plain-paper copiers ter-educated and highly-trained produc- would satisfy the entire demand of the tion employees-"gold-collar" workers, as United States. (There are approximately Robert Kelly at Carnegie-Mellon Univer- 5,224,000 in circulation today.) sity has called them. The same is possible Image processing is beginning to re- in the service sector. New corporate struc- duce the need for long-term paper storage. tures can give initiative to larger numbers Its revenge will probably be even more of employees. The real challenges are no frequent paper retrieval. No more rum- longer electronic but human. maging through filing cabinets, walking Once we realize how commonplace re- down the hall, and waiting in line; instant venge effects are, we can do s6mething photocopies will follow a few keystrokes. about them. (Sometimes there's nothing Cheaper and faster laser printers will en- wrong with them: Isn't it better to recycle courage making more copies of longer paper than to force people to stare all day documents. Inexpensive plain-paper faxes at terminals?) We can plan for them, take will transmit these from office to office, advantage of them, or train ourselves to while postal volume will continue to grow avoid them. Blind optimism makes it more as people continue to mail confirmation likely that they will dominate us. The age copies. of Tantalus need not extend indefinitely. Because there will be more documents But we must resolve to end it.

WQ SUMMER 1990 105 AN IRISH MEMOIR

Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man

The artist telling how he or she came to be an artist is a well-established genre, crowded with both fictional and nonfictional examples. But what about the story of the making of a critic? One version emerges in these scenes of a Northern Irish childhood, recalled by one of our foremost literary scholars.

by Denis Donoghue

think of Warrenpoint as a town, not and one of the mountains is called the as a village. In my private diction- Long Woman's Grave. Warrenpoint is in ary a village is a community sur- Northern Ireland; Omeath is in the South. rounded by fields: The people are As a seaside resort, Warrenpoint relied farmers, or they serve farmers and not upon laughing girls or golden weather their families as shopkeepers, but upon three more reliable consider- nurses,I doctors, teachers, priests. At Sun- ations. One: You could get to the place day Mass the men wear caps, not hats, and easily from any part of the North by train, after Mass they stand around the church to since it was the terminus of the Great chat, gossip, or stare at the hills. A town, Northern Railway's branch line from small or large, is not dependent on the, Newry. No longer; the train is gone. Two: land that surrounds it; it opens on a differ- Warrenpoint has the largest square in Ire- ent world. Tullow, in County Carlow, land, a great place for amusements, cir- where I was born on December 1, 1928, cuses, swings and roundabouts, ice-cream still seems to me a village. carts, parades, celebrations. The square Warrenpoint is a town because one was promiscuous in the wiles of display. side of it opens upon the sea. If you look at Three: The licensing laws for the sale of a map of Ireland, find Belfast, come alcohol are stricter in the North than in around the Ards Peninsula and Strangford the South, mainly because Presbyterians Lough, and mark Ardglass, Newcastle, keep the Sabbath more severely than Cath- Kilkeel, and Rostrevor, you'll find the next olics do. If you came to Warrenpoint for a town is Warrenpoint, where Carlingford Sunday trip, you would find the public Lough narrows till it ceases being a lough houses shut, but you could go by ferryboat at Narrow Water and becomes the Newry across to Omeath, an open town on the Canal; not much of a canal these days. Sabbath, for drink and noise. Warrenpoint looks across the lough to I remember nothing before Warren- Omeath, a meagre town, though it has point. Newry on one side and Carlingford on the Tullow comes into reckoning because other and the Cooley Mountains behind it, my father, a policeman in the Royal Irish

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Constabulary, was stationed there when he met my mother, a girl named Johanna O'Neill. Her fa- ther, too, was in the RIC, stationed in Clonnlel. My fa- ther was promoted to the rank of sergeant in Tullow when the reigning sergeant, named Morris, went mad and ran from the barracks, for reasons known only to himself. My father was the man in the gap and he got the job, the only preferment he ever enjoyed. When the Government of Ireland Act (1920) divided Ireland into two parts, with a Parliament in Belfast to govern the six northern counties, it was ordained that any member The future critic, De11j.y of the RIC would have the ~ono&e, at about age 10 right to go North and take (above). The critic's father up the same rank in the (right),Sergeant Doi7og/z11e, newly formed Royal Ulster in the uniform of the Royal Constabulary. Mv father. Ulster Constab~{lcny. having seen enough of 1re1 land and of police work in a violent time, spent three months trying to find an al- ternative job. He and my mother went to Chester, where he tried to establish himself as an insurance agent, till someone started a runlor that he late." he cried in vain. had murdered a man in Ireland and was "on the run." My father gave up and went n Warrenpoint we lived in the police to Northern Ireland to take up his rank in barracks, or rather in half of it, the other the RUC. He always maintained that the half being given over to the business of the lapse of three months in his official career, police, centered on what was called the taken in association with his Catholicism, Day Room. There was a concrete wall made any further promotion in the RUC about six feet from the building, protecting impossible. I believe him. During his years it against an attack or a riot. By locking in the RUC it was not yet necessary for the two small gates and one large one, you authorities to show goodwill toward Cath- could close off the barracks and hold out olics or to promote them above the rank of against a siege. The barracks had two cells, sergeant. If my father had been 20 or 30 or lockups, as they were called, one for years younger and in the same profession, men, one for women. I remember my fa- he would probably have been selected as a ther lifting me up to look through a metal token Catholic and raised perhaps to the slit at a man he had arrested. rank of Head Constable or even District In- Our half of the barracks, the "married spector to placate the natives. In the event, quarters," had a parlor, a kitchen and scul- he retired on pension before such a con- lery, three bedrooms, a bathroom, and an cession became necessary. "Too late, too outhouse. The parlor had a black upright

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piano, a circular mahogany table, and a I am not sure that I understand him. What trolley for the wireless. The married quar- is that past which shines through transpar- ters were different in certain respects from ent things if it is not a sense or a recollec- the ordinary working-class home. The tion of those things? And if it is, how can it kitchen and the parlor were in the front, be other than their history? I can't distin- equally in view if they could have been guish between the past and my sense of seen behind the barrier of the wall. The those objects which detain my mind. The common life was conducted in the difficulty is that the more I concentrate my kitchen, and the parlor was reserved for mind on a particular object, the more special occasions. But many activities con- opaque it seems to become, as if it devel- stituted a special occasion. Listening to the oped its own personality by virtue of being radio was special; so was the formal occa- noticed. This is what Hopkins means when sion of schoolwork. I did my lessons on he says, in one of the journals, that what the parlor table, which gleamed in prepa- you look hard at seems to look hard at you. ration for the social life we rarely had. If I believed Walter Pater, I would expect Do I remember accurately that our to find that when I think of the kitchen kitchen had brownish-red stone tiles, a gas table, I see it dissolving before my eyes cooker, an old cast-iron range, a wooden into flickering impressions, gone as soon box for holding odds and ends, a sofa with as they come, till nothing remains but my the horsehair stuffing falling out of it and sense of myself, my mind. But I don't find the springs sagged, a Singer sewing ma- this at all. The table becomes opaque, al- chine, four wooden chairs, and a lino- most sullen under my attention, as if it leum-covered table with one corner of it wanted nothing of my mind or interest. It's broken or hacked off? Is that likely? What like taking a word, any word, and speaking would make me certain of these things, as it aloud, and repeating the word 15 or 20 certain as I am that in the scullery my fa- times, and then you find it recoiling from ther always kept a bottle of cod-liver oil you as if your voice were a blow, and the and drank from it twice a day? And when I meaning of it goes dead on you. Thinking refused to drink the stuff, he compromised of the table, I recall the linoleum, and the by buying a bottle of Kepler's malt, which wetness of it when my mother cleaned it contained enough cod-liver oil to appease after a meal, and the stickiness of my him and enough malt to remove the vile hands on it, and my thumb as it traced the taste. I'm not sure about the table, and yet line of the broken part. Is that what Nabo- I feel that I'm merely introducing a doubt kov means by sinking into the history of an as if miming a scruple I'd like to be seen object? All I know is that the table doesn't showing. The corner of the table was bro- dissolve into my impressions of it but ken or hacked. Which, I can't say. seems to return my stare, without welcom- About the linoleum, I'm sure enough. ing my attention. There is a curious passage in Nabokov's Transparent Things where he says that have tried to recall my father's con- "when we concentrate on a material ob- versation, but little of it survives, and I ject, whatever its situation, the very act of conclude that there was never much of it. attention may lead to our involuntary sink- Speech was not his medium. His silence ing into the history of that object": was not gruff or nasty: It did not betoken a scene. Indeed, I surmise that most of his Novices must learn to skim over matter if expressiveness was physical; it took the they want it to stay at the exact level of form of his dress, the precision of his the moment. Transparent things, through shave, the way he walked. My father gave which the past shines. me an impression of concentration; I

Denis Donoghue, a fanner Wilson Center Fellow, holds the Henry James Chair of Letters at New York University. Born in Tullow, County Carlow, Ireland, he received a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland. is books include We Irish (1986) and Reading America (1987). This essay is drawn from his forthcoming memoir, Warrenpoint. Copwight @ 1990 by Denis Donoghiie.

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never saw him loose or wayward, but he tel, now long gone, bombed-a Catholic implied that whatever had to be said was name. But the telling detail was the first, already said, already embodied in its en- or Christian, name. Isabel, as I knew to my tirely sufficient forms: law, custom, the cost and pain, was a Protestant name. De- daily routine. He lived as if speech were nis, Timothy, Kathleen, and Mary couldn't rationed and you had to save up coupons be anything but Catholic. Patrick was an for it: There was no place for extrava- awkward case, because at a certain level of gance. If a new situation arose, requiring social standing and grandeur, it was a comment, one was free to speak, but spar- common name among Protestants. At a ingly. As wartime posters noted, careless lower level, it was standard Catholic. talk costs lives. Sometimes, and especially now, it is necessary to hear the full name before de- e were a Catholic family, and thus ciding where you stand. Murphy is gener- we bought our groceries at Catholic ally a Catholic surname, but not always. shops-Curran's, mostly, and the butcher The leader of the infamous Shankill Butch- ~iti~atrick-andwere on speaking terms only with Catholics. My mother was an exception: She was friends with Mrs. Harper, wife of one of the police- men, a Protestant. They lived in Slieve Foy Place. The population of War- renpoint was about two thousand in my time: a thousand Catholics, a thou- sand Protestants. There was no enmity between them; it was necessary only to keep your distance. My father, not given to phrasemaking, told me once that my deal- ings with other people should be "civil, but strange." Power, such as it Warrenpoint had "the largest square in Irelc~nd,"Donoghue writes. was, was in the hands of the 'A great place for amusements, circu.se.s, .swings and rounda- Protestants: That was all a bouts. . . [it]-was promiscuo~1.sin the wiles of display.'' Catholic needed to know. My father, a splendid policeman, could not ers was a man called Murphy, and he spent be promoted: He was not a Protestant, his time kidnapping and torturing Catho- therefore he was not a Unionist, therefore lics. His inventiveness in that occupation he was not a member of the Loyal Order of was extraordinary; it is fully documented Orangemen, therefore. . . . in Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers: A The ability to tell a Protestant from a Case Study of Mass Murder (1989). His full Catholic, in Warrenpoint, is not a skill I'm name was Lennie Murphy, and anyone in proud of, but it was a social necessity in Belfast could tell you that Leonard is a those years. Necessary more than ever Protestant name. You have to learn such now. It was prudent to look at a man or things, watch for signals, in Seamus woman, boy or girl, before leaping to the Heaney's "land of password, hand grip, notion that you could speak. Names were wink and nod." a help but were not decisive. Dr. O'Tierney was a Catholic, Dr. Glenny a Protestant. he Penny Catechism disposed of every Newel1 and Chew were Protestant names, ethical issue in questions and answers. O'Neill-the family owned the Crown Ho- Question: Who is my neighbor? Answer:

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My neighbor is all mankind and without figured by its presence. That there were any exceptions of persons, even those who beautiful bodies in the same world seemed injure us or differ from us in religion. to me not to incapacitate the doctrine but Where, I neglected to ask, did that put to intimate the presence of divine grace. Protestants? Isabel Bridges was the visible sign of one, as I of the other. That a certain few people n winter, when the tide was high and the were saints or geniuses held out the pos- waves broke over the road between sibility of salvation, but it didn't remove Warrenpoint and Rostrevor at Sea View my conviction that to be a body was to be Terrace, it was possible to catch fish by constitutionally and categorically polluted. shooting them. Possible and illegal. You The question was: How to act in the light stood on the wall and waited for the pre- or the shadow of that fate? My father's way cise moment when a mullet swam up to of being in the world seemed to me to of- the surface between two waves, and with a fer the best hope of salvation. "point 22" rifle you shot it. If his body turned over and vou saw the white of its had a good boy-soprano voice. I sang belly, you waded out to retrieve it. Gerard solo in the choir at Mass. 0 .sal~~l(lria Heatley owned the rifle and let me use it 1io.stia. Pauge lingua. Ave Maria. Before my now and again. Why did I want to shoot a voice broke, my father decided to have it n~ulletor anything else? recorded in some form. We cycled to Dub- A strange phrase: to kill a fish. I as- lin, where we sought out Walton's Musical sumed that one caught a fish or, as in this Store, 90 Lower Camden Street. We had case, shot it. But many years later, when I no accon~panist,but it happened that a was in Sligo to give a lecture at the Yeats man called Chris Sylvester, who played pi- Summer School, I was silently corrected ano and accordion in his brother Ralph's in a matter of usage by T. R. Henn, an An- dance band, was in Walton's when we pre- glo-Irish Protestant scholar who swent his sented our case. A wax recording was childhood in a manor house called Para- made of my performance of "Silent Night" dise. Henn mentioned that, after the on one side and "Panis Angelicus" on the school was over, he was going fishing. other. I broke down on the first attempt at "Will you catch salmon or what?" I asked "Silent Night," but the second attempt was him. "I hope to kill salmon," the author of deemed satisfactory. And it was. I was not Tlie Lonely Tower: Studies of the Poetry of the finest boy soprano of my time or W.B. Yeats answered. A Catholic wouldn't later-that Welsh boy Jones or Evans or be expected to know the right word. Henn whatever he is called is of a different order was a decent man, a good scholar, and a of sweetness and range-but I was good. hospitable Fellow of St. Catherine's Col- lege, Cambridge. He was responsible for here were no books in our house. inviting me to Cambridge to give the Ju- apart from schoolbooks and the few dith E. Wilson Lecture in Poetry and morally inspiring tracts and novels I got Drama, and then to take a permanent job, from my uncle. The only book I recall my a university lectureship, in the English father owning was Guide to Careers, a Faculty. He evidently approved of me and book that told you how to apply for a job, didn't hold my origin or my upbringing what the qualifications for the job were, against my record. But when it came to and the address to which to write for an the propriety of a verb, as a sign of one's application form. My father had confi- social bearing anlong words, he was im- dence in this work and reeularlv consulted placable. it to see the jobs for which his children might be qualified. He was not otherwise a had no difficulty with the doctrine of reader, having left school when his father Original Sin. My body was sufficient evi- died. dence for it. I saw no discrepancy between I worked hard at school without think- the ungainliness of my body and the sup- ing of it as work. I was not conscious of position that the human body as such being ambitious, or of wanting to do well, came already corrupted into a world dis- or even of imitating my father's zeal in the

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knowledge that he would be pleased. creq, between carnal readings of a text, Whatever the motive was, it had already which are all the same, and spiritual read- settled itself in my daily life; a habit, it ing where differences enter. If I could didn't need to be interrogated or kept up find an occasion for "ministry," I could to a mark. I was content to let my life have slip the whole phrase into an otherwise pe- its definition as work, so that intervals be- destrian sentence. I always suspected, tween bouts of study came to appear as even at school, that this was a pretentious lived in the service of work. way of reading and that reading was raid- There were several subjects at school ing. But nonchalance was hard to acquire. for which I had little capacity: the math- ematical subjects, mostly. But I worked at t the Christian Brothers' School in these, too, and recognized only that my A Newry, I sensed that I differed from habit had to take a grim turn or enter upon my colleagues, but I did not feel that the an especially dogged mood before I could difference amounted to much in my favor. take out the textbook in, say, algebra or I knew that my intelligence was not of a trigonometry. It didn't occur to me to ask creative kind. I did not even try to write a why I should be studying these subjects for poem or a story. My mind was usually en- which I had no natural talent. One day a gaged in considering the work or bearing boy asked what was the use of studying of someone else; my father in the first in- geometry if you didn't intend being an en- stance, certain writers thereafter. My gineer. The teacher answered: to develon stance was retrospective. If I formulated that part of your brain. I found the reason an idea, it seemed merely to name feelings sufficient. that hardly went in need of naming. The I was a good reader, or at worst an en- best fortune they aspired to was adequacy: ergetic one. But I see now that my reading They were good enough if they were justly was opportunistic: not in the sense of read- responsive to something someone else had ing one book in preference to another, but done. They did not compel into existence in my way of reading. I can't recall a time any feelings otherwise silent or repressed. when I read disinterestedly; I always had a Many years later, I recognized this limita- Den and a notebook at hand. If I found tion so frequently that I believed it deci- something interesting, I'd want to make a sive; it is a limitation in discursiveness it- note of it. But "interesting" isn't the truth. self, that it comments on everything and I went through books looking for whatever has nothing better to do. There is a passage I needed. I was never free of purpose. A in Paul Klee's diary where he talks about phrase or a sentence might come in handy the empty spaces left to chance: for an essay I was writing, some clinching quotation which I could almost fancy, It is necessary never to work toward a while quoting it, that I had written. If I was conception of the picture completely not imaginative, I was no- tionally in the company of r those "who were: writers, poets especially. Even now, detective sto- ries are the only fictions I can read without pen and notebook. I am always on the lookout for phrases, as if I lived for the opportunity of using them. "The minis- try of carnal perception": It is unlikely that I will have occasion to use that one. On the other hand, Frank he harbor in Warrenpoii~t.A British 17~1Ijdship now patrols the Kermode made a distinc- waters off Warrenpoint to prevent the Irifili Republican Annv from tion, in The Genesis of Se- bringing weapons from Ireland into Ulster.

WQ SUMMER 1990 I1 1 MEMOIR

thought out in advance. Instead, one mind almost as soon as I have heard them. must give oneself completely to the Plots of the novels I have read, studied, developing portion of the area to be and written about are the first parts I for- painted. The total impression is then get. Chapters stay in my mind, fragments rooted in the principle of economy; to de- rive the effect of the whole from a few of conversation, a descriptive passage here steps and there, but I would be hard put to re- cite the plot of even the standard master- pieces. Don't ask me to recall the plot of A few steps, a hunch, a swift stroke, not the Pride and Prejudice. Do parents still tell whole canvas filled with forethought. It is their children bedtime stories? I doubt it. I the distinction between concetio and never told any of my children a story or i/i~ii~ugii~e:coi7cetto is a free act of cre- read to them a chapter of a novel. To think ation, full of confidence in possibilities at of all the things I haven't done. I wonder any moment undefined, a notion, an idea have I lived a life without air, not enough for a poem, trusting to the future; im- oxygen or light or ease or fantasy. Isn't it iiz(q$~e is the idea which identifies some- silly that opera means nothing to me; that thing already complete except for the for- oratorios seem alien to me because most mulation; it merely annotates something of them are Protestant; that I have only that sustains the annotation without need- once, and recently, seen The Wizard of Oz? ing it. I would like to have lived with What am I preserving my pvitu.s for? .spre7~utura,cutting a dash: My talents are such as to express themselves in cir- t did not grieve me that I lacked inven- cumspection. tiveness, could not make up a story or imagine a sequence of thoughts requiring transcribed fine sentences and stanzas rhvme. All I wanted was to observe a rela- so that I might the more thoroughly re- tion between myself and structures I had member them, but also for the satisfaction not invented. Tolstoy says somewhere that of embodying a privileged relation to their freedom consisted "in my not having merit. I had not composed any of those made the laws." Presumably he was free to splendid pieces, but at least I could claim obey them or, at his risk, to reject them. the distinction of having appreciated them. When I think of my early years, I find my- They were, in that limited but not dis- self always in relation to something I re- graceful sense, my property. I had a better vered precisely because its existence and claim to them than anyone else had, apart force were independent of my will. I sang from the author in each case. I could even and played music, observed the score, at- fancy that everyone in the world had read tentive to the composer's will as the form them and failed to see their magnificence. of the music embodied it. I liked poems So I labored over the transcriptions as if I more than novels because their formal were a scribe bent over his vellum, tracing character was more completely in evi- the characters and adorning them. Be- dence. I admired the dogmas and doc- sides, penmanship was a skill in high re- trines of the Church all the more because pute during those years, presumably for they did not consult my interests. I revered the last time. the law because mv father administered it I have never been able to tell a story or and bore witness to its integrity. Mine was even to recall one. Jokes fall out of my the intelligence that comes after.

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Recent changes in the Soviet Union have been nothing short of revolu- tionary. Almost as startling was how little scholars or journalists were prepared for them. Partly to blame was their "Copernican" approach to Soviet politics, a tendency, says Nicolai Petro, to look only at the top leadership. To understand the Soviet Union today, he argues, it is neces- sary to consider popular politics and the nation's emerging civil society. A new national consensus, based on traditional Russian values, may well provide the foundation for a future non-Soviet federation.

by Nicolai N. Petro

n just five years, much to the aston- everything else, over history itself. Such a ishment of professional Sovietolo- state submitted only to its own laws, was gists, the Soviet Union has gone explainable in its own terms. . . . [Wlhile from being the world's most men- change was posited as possible, it was con- acing superpower to a weak ag- ceived of as small variations within the un- glomeration of states uncertain of alterable framework: that such a state its very future. Why were most Moscow-- could undergo serious reform seemed un- watchers so ill-prepared for this dramatic thinkable.'' transformation? The fault lies partly in Most Copernicans also believed in a what may be called their "Copernican" fundamental continuity between Russian view of the Soviet Union, a view which has and Soviet political culture. Scholars like dominated the field since the 1960s. Ac- Adam Ulam, Stephen Cohen, Robert V. cording to Copernican Sovietology, all po- Daniels, and the late Cyril Black argued litical life revolves around the sun, and the that specifically Russian values lent sup- sun most recently has been Mikhail Gorba- port and stability to the regime. Identifying chev. Copernican analysts tend to view the the ruled with the rulers, they saw little rest of society-at least everybody below possibility of change coming from below. the top Party leadership-as bit players, Harvard's Timothy Colton, in The Di- seemingly content to play out secondary lemma of Reform in the Soviet Union roles in a well-worn script. (1986), predicted that there would be no Such a perspective, as Moshe Lewin serious challenges to the regime's legiti- noted in The Gorhachev Phei'ionieiion macv for at least another decade because (1988), led to rather bizarre ideas about it was so firmly "moored in familiarity, Soviet political reality: "A political system past successes, and Russian nationalism." without a social one, a state floating over It is not easy to escape Copernican RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

thinking. Even today, the fate of reform in the Soviet Union is tied almost exclu- sively to the fate of Gorba- the;. There are good rea- sons for this. Gorbachev is the prime instigator of pere- sti-oika and, as such, de- serves enormous credit for initiating change at the top of the political pyramid. But after giving Gorbachev his due, we must look beyond him. After all, Gorbachev's initial vision of perestroika was limited to a program of economic restructuring; glasnost was merely a con- venient tool for breaking the resistance of recalci- trant factory managers. Drc~11~i1;g200,000 i11ei1~c/~er.s,a Mo.suw cidno~i.s/rationuqyiiized 1)~ pressure fO1-ced tlie Dei~~ocre~~icRl,.s.si(~ ccmlitio~~ lc~.st Fel)rll(~l? ii~cl~~ded .scure.s oi leevise and ex- ~~(~tio~ic~/i.sto~~~~Iz~:(L/~oI~.s, {r0111 ~izo~~(~rcI~i.s~.s 10 .soci(~I de~~zoe~-(~/.s. pand his agenda. ~uringthe past five years, in fact, Gorbachev found himself zens who are rejecting conln~unisn~and presiding over an expanding civil society turning ever more insistently to traditional with its own ideas about reform and open- Russian values as a desirable foundation ness, and with its own ideas about what for a future Russian federation. the greater Russian federation should be. To be sure, ethnic Russians make up More than 60,000 informal social and po- only half the population of the Soviet litical groups have sprung up around the Union-a vast federation consisting of country; at the same time, assorted non- about 50 political units (including peoples political groups concerned with ecological with republic status, peoples with autono- or historical preservation have increas- mous republic status, and peoples with ingly been adopting their own political autonomous region status). Nevertheless, platforms and asserting themselves in ar- Russian language and culture, or at least eas where the Party is losing influence. what historian Hugh Seton-Watson called This en~bryoniccivil society has its own a "mutilated" version of the latter, form independent information outlets-more the core of the Soviet federation. It is no than 700 non-official publications in the coincidence that leaders of reform are of- Russian language alone. These groups, ten figures of cultural authority-writers, these movements, and these publications artists, editors-or, more to the point, that are now the driving force behind pere- many of the more popular USSR People's stroika. Deputies, including actor Mark Zakharov and Academicians Dn~itryLikhachev and o understand what is going on in the Sergei Averintsev, have made traditional Soviet Union, we need to develop a Russian values the centerpiece of their po- more "Newtonian" approach that takes litical proposals. into consideration not only the constituent The questions of Russian cultural iden- parts of Soviet society but also culture, tity and Russian nationalism are matters of particularly literature, folk traditions, and importance not only to Russians. If there religion. Only by looking at society and is to be a nonviolent evolution toward culture can we begin to comprehend the greater autonomy for the Baltic, Central frustrations and aspirations of Soviet citi- Asian, and other peoples, then the core of

WQ SUMMER 1990 RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

the Soviet Union-the "vast Slavic terri- owed largely to their championing authen- tory of Russia, Byelorussia, the eastern tic Russian values. Maurice Friedberg Ukraine, and northern Kazakhstan," as po- identified the best of these values as "ha- litical scientist Martha Brill Olcott defined tred of war; an affirmation of Russian eth- that core-must be confident of its cul- nic identity, nostalgia for a pastoral Rus- tural and national identity. Even Baltic in- sian past, a desire for a measure of privacy dependence leaders such as Virgilius protected from state interference, a need Chepaitis and Lagle Park say that a healthy for personal ethics, and a sense of compas- Russian nationalism should be encour- sion . . . ." As social critics appealing to aged. Russian traditions and eternal human val- To understand what Russians are striv- ues. the village". prose writers saw them- ing to restore, one must first understand selves, often correctly, as working in the what they have lost. They have lost their tradition of the great 19th-century Russian history. Vladlen Sirotkin, a professor at the writers such as Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, foreign ministry's diplomatic academy, is Tolstoy, Gogol, and Goncharov. not alone in deploring the "nihilistic atti- Their main concerns centered on the tude toward the country's past" that has preservation of villages, religion, historical prevailed since the 1920s. At the end of monuments, and the environment. Al- that violently transformative decade, the though they organized no political parties, doyen of Marxist historians, Mikhail their work aligned them with other indi- Pokrovsky, declared that the very concept viduals opposed to the policies of the re- of "Russian history" was anti-revolution- "gime. A notable example was the decade- ary. Russia's religious heritage has been long campaign waged by writers, nearly destroyed: As many as 95 percent of scientists, historians, artists, and journal- the country's churches may have been de- ists to reverse the government's decision molished. Perhaps most devastating of all, to divert major northern rivers into the Russia's national patrimony-a rich and country's arid south. Arguing that such an vibrant peasant culture with all its tradi- undertaking would destroy much of the tions, crafts, legends, songs, and prov- northern Russian heartland, this spontane- erbs-was nearly extinguished by the ous coalition eventually forced the govern-

forced collectivization that took the lives ment to shelve the nroiect1 J in 1987. of millions during the 1930s. Historian Such informal associations to preserve Ksenia Mia10 aptly compared Stalin's rural Russia's environment and its historical collectivization drive to the extermination and religious monuments grew more com- of Inca civilization by the conquistadors. mon during the 1980s. Yet it was not until The first openly to lament the destruc- Gorbachev and glasnost that cautious sup- tion of peasant life, and thus to restore plication yielded to an active search for al- these events to the national memory, were ternative Russian values and for more the so-called "village prose writers." Nov- open ways of expressing them. els such as Valentin Ovechkin's A Difficult Spring (1956), Efim Dorosh's Village Dia- any in the West view the re-emer- ries (1958), and later Vasily Belov's That's gence of Russian national self-aware- How Thiiqgs Are (1966) and Valentin Ras- ness with justifiable concern. While sym- putin's Mark You This (1974) depicted the pathetic to the anguish caused by the costs of precipitous industrialization and Soviet destruction of Russian national her- the uprooting of an entire way of life. The itage, foreign observers worry about the tremendous popularity of the village prose revival of anti-Semitism, imperialism, and writers during the Brezhnev era (1964-82) anti-Western sentiment. The village writers

Nicolai N. Petro is an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreigu Relations. Until June 1990 lie was special assistant for policy at tlie U.S. Department of State's Office of Soviet Union Affairs. Born in Berlin, Germany, he received a B.A. (1980) and a Ph.D. (1984) from the University of Virginia. He i.s the author of The Predicament of Human Rights: The Carter and Reagan Policies (1983) and editor of Christianity and Russian Culture in Soviet Society (1990). He is c~(rre11t1ywork- ing on a book about the Russian response to perestroika.

WQ SUMMER 1990 RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

themselves, notably Rasputin and Viktor cost. In general, though, most nationalist Astafyev, have frequently been criticized groups believe that such unity is to be for their anti-Semitism and for their insen- achieved not by force of arms but by estab- sitivity to other non-Russian nationalities. lishing a new common bond-resting on The crucial question, however, is whether vague, rather romanticized notions of such sentiments are shared by most Rus- common historical ties-among the vari- sian nationalists. If so, any future reforms ous ethnic groups in the country. While all based on Russian national values would Russian nationalists pay lip-service to the clearly be odious to liberals both within principle of self-determination, some seem the Soviet Union and abroad. noticeably hesitant about implementing it. Discussion of anti-Semitism has cer- As more Soviet nationalities opt for seces- tainly increased under glasnost. In such sion, the distinction between those who prominent literary journals as Molodc~yc~ support freedom over empire and those Gvardiya (The Youi~gGuard) and Na^k who do not will emerge. Sovremei7~ik(Our Conteii7porafv), the is- A third concern is that Russian nation- sue of Jewish participation in the Russian Revolution and in the subsequent Party leadership has become virtually an edito- rial obsession. When Nash Sovreiizennik published an essay on 'lRussophobia" by dissident mathematician Igor Shafarevich, it brought the issue to a head. Shafarevich, a friend of Aleksandr Sol- zhenitsyn, based much of his provocative essay on the ideas of Augustin Cochin, a 19th-century French historian who had ar- gued that revolutions were caused by alienated "little nations" within the "larger nation." Just as Cochin blamed the French revolution on anti-national, self-contained groups like the Masons, so Shafarevich at- tributed the distinctive character of the Russian Revolution to the "Jewish ele- ment." Little matter that relatively few of the revolutionary leaders, and even fewer of the later Soviet leaders, were Jewish- or that the most famous, Trotsky, was ex- Many nationalists romanticize the villcige life iled from Russia. Shafarevich got around and ideals of Old Russia. The consider PecLter such empirical deficiencies by claiming local autoiiomy the only road to democr(icy. that the "Jewish element" meant not so much individual Jews as an iconoclastic alism is anti-democratic and anti-liberal Jewish spirit which had infected tradi- and thus poses a threat to the ascendancy tional Russia. Anticipating his critics, of Western values. As it turns out, there are moreover, Shafarevich denounced as some Russian nationalists who oppose the "R~~ssophobes"all those who tarnish Rus- introduction of free markets and a multi- sian nationalism by equating it with a re- party system on the grounds that they are surgence of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, it not Russian. Many others fear more simply is hard to read his article and think that that at present such moves would produce those who see such an equation are com- greater anarchy and turmoil. While the pletely wrong. former are anti-Western, the latter are What about the resurgence of imperial- looking for reassurance that a realistic al- ist chauvinism? Here again, one finds sev- ternative to anarchy exists, that political eral nationalist groups, including the Asso- forces outside the Party can prevent chaos ciation of Russian Artisans and Fatherland, and even bloodshed. that want the empire held together at any Acknowledging the dark side of the

WQ SUMMER 1990 117 RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

Russian national revival, one must at the ers," or "left radicals." same time avoid blurring some important Many others charge that socialism-by distinctions, a mistake that would be as se- which they mean communism-is itself rious as confusing the conservatism of a largely to blame for the country's current William Buckley or a George Will with the crisis. Socialism, they claim, infected the reactionary racism of the Ku Klux Klan. Russian intelligentsia with disdain for all Indeed, the failure to distinguish between that was traditionally Russian. What is chauvinism and patriotism feeds the needed today, they argue, is to cast aside counter-accusation of "Russophobia." the present value system and to pick up Russophobes, Shafarevich charges, fear a what Ksenia Mialo calls "the broken strong and nationally healthy Russia; they thread to the past." Sharing many philo- would rather see the country destroyed by sophical assumptions of the early 19th- communist rule or dismembered bv na- century Slavophiles such as Ivan Aksakov tional tensions before they would counte- and Yuri Samarin, these people today are nance any Russian national revival. variously referred to as "Russites," The debate over Russia's national re- v~o~e17i.sy(revivalists), "Russophiles," vival is sensitive precisely because it or "the Russian Party.'' touches so directly on the character and historical prospects of the Russian people. he philosophical differences between The polemic in the Soviet press over the radicals and restorationists lead, as recent publication of excerpts of Vasily might be expected, to significant practical Grossman's novel Life and Fate (published differences. Radicals tend to want a rapid abroad in 1980) goes to the heart of the introduction of free markets, while restor- quarrel: Who should be blamed for the dis- ationists usually stress social guarantees. mal failure of the Soviet Union? Socialist Radicals view the secession of republics as ideology, say the Russian nationalists. The a step toward a healthy decentralization, backward economic and political tradi- while restorationists are fearful of the costs tions of Russia, say the radical reformers. of fragmenting the empire. Radicals at The reformers read Life and Fate as an ex- times seem almost eager to dismantle the pose of the crimes of Stalinist collectiviza- Soviet military; restorationists are con- tion and the corruption of Lenin's ideal- cerned about security and foreign policy. ism. But conservative nationalists are But these differences should not ob- offended bv the novel's deniction of Lenin scure the fact that both groups have as a well-intentioned liberal intellectual learned to compromise and work together whose progressive impulses were on key Soviet reform legislation. In the Su- thwarted by "Russia's thousand-year tradi- preme Soviet last year, they came together tion of slavery." They were incensed that- to repeal the electoral provisions that Soviet historian G. Vodolazov, in his pref- guaranteed a certain percentage of seats to ace to the novel, absolved Lenin of any the Communist Party; together, they are blame for the events leading to Stalin's dic- pushing for a new law on the freedom of tatorship. Wrote Voclolaxov: "I believe that the press that goes far beyond Gorbachev's

neonleA 1 who wish to assist humanitv's proposed version of the law. On at least progress should not he thinking about how seven other occasions, radicals and con- to 'replay' October and Leninism, but servatives working together have rejected about how to 'replay1 the years 1929 and Gorbachev-proposed legislation as too re- 1937, relying on the values of October and strictive. Leninism." Both sides acknowledge that they need People like Grossman and Vodolazov each other to promote changes in the sys- follow in the footsteps of 19th-century tem. The progressive deputy-mayor of Westernizers such as Alexander Herzen Moscow, Sergei Stankevich, in a speech to and Nikolai Chernychevsky. Although they the Supreme Soviet last fall, commented reject the current political system, they are on how essential conservatism was to pro- attracted to Western-style socialism. In the viding a balance of ideas in the new parlia- Soviet Union today they are known as ment. Likewise, Anatoly Salutsky, the arch- "radical Westernizers." or "radical reform- conservative commentator for Liieratur-

WQ SUMMER 1990 RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

nays Rossiya (Literary Russia), has argued broad spectrum of political opinion should that today's Slavophiles and Westernizers not be confused with the factions that have are not opposing forces but comple- developed within the Party itself, even mentary wings of a movement that is shap- though certain ideas are shared across the ing a new Russian national consensus. non-Party-Party divide. Party factionalists, There is much about this new consen- whether reformers like the historian Roy sus that should be appealing to the West. Medvedev or conservatives like Egor Both radicals and restorationists share a Ligachev, still insist that the Communist belief in the rule of law, in a national re- Party remain the guiding force in Soviet vival based on Russian patriotic sentiment, society. and in an educational system resting not The Party, however, is rapidly losing its on ideological slogans but on a critical un- credibility. Over 10 million young people derstanding of Russian and foreign history. have abandoned the Communist Youth Supporters of the consensus are likely to League since 1985. After local elections be wary of any foreign adventures that this past March, Party members were, for would further bleed the country. They are the first time in Soviet history, a minority already skeptical of the value to Russia of among people's deputies elected to Rus- many non-Slavic areas of the Soviet Union. sia's supreme legislative body. In large In a remarkable public letter published Russian cities like Moscow and Leningrad, this year, three prominent nationalist orga- Communists have relinquished power to nizations warned that if tranquility did not the democratic opposition. return soon to the Caucasus, they would The establishment of pluralistic politics launch a campaign to remove Russian ser- in rural Russian areas has been much vicemen from the region. The reluctance slower. Nevertheless, Russia's political of conservatives to use troops echoes ear- evolution seems clearly foreshadowed in lier appeals by liberals not to use force to the experiences of Eastern Europe and the keep regions like Lithuania in the Soviet Baltic States. And as in Eastern Europe, Union. the new political parties, rather than the The new Russian consensus is not with- discredited remnants of the Communist out historical precedent. A strand of turn- Party, are likely to guide the country's fu- of-the-century Russian thought-repre- ture. Most of these parties fall into political sented by the religious philosophers categories analogous to those on the rest Nikolai Berdyaev and Semyon Frank and of the European continent. the political economist Peter Struve- The Social Democrats. During the combined many of the same disparate ele- first days of perestroika, reformist intellec- ments. Although the earlier thinkers were, tuals organized discussion clubs. A num- as the late Leonard Schapiro pointed out, ber of their political leaders-Yuri Afanas- "first and foremost nationalists and patri- yev, Gavril Popov, Sergei Stankevich, the ots," they "stood midway between late Andrei Sakharov-eventually "gradu- Slavophiles and Westernizers. They ac- ated" to the influential Moscow Rostrum cepted the Slavophile veneration of Rus- and the leadership of the Interregional sian national tradition, while rejecting Deputies Group in the USSR Supreme So- their romantic idealization of innate Rus- viet. The social-democratic groups see sian virtues as a substitute for the more themselves as standing for a humanistic re- usual civic virtues." For these people newal of socialist values. They support the Schapiro employed the oxymoron "liberal introduction of Western constitutional conservativeH-an epithet first used to de- guarantees as well as radical economic re- scribe Russia's most famous poet, form, but they are rightly concerned about Aleksander Pushkin. It applies equally well the extent of popular support for radical to many of the radicals and nationalists of change. Even so, the social-democrat ori- today. entation appears to be the most active in The liberal conservative consensus has Russian politics today, both within the found organizational expression in the Communist Party and as a separate party more than 40 political groups active itself, the Social-Democratic Association. throughout the Russian federation. This In recent local elections, social-demo-

WQ SUMMER 1990 119 RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

cratic candidates won a majority of seats Ligachev. Those who abandon the Party in over 20 large Russian cities, including are likely to edge closer to the views of the Moscow, Leningrad, Gorky, and Sverd- Christian democrats. lovsk. The Christian De?nocrats. Christian The Conservatives. Last fall a number democrats are found in the middle of the of the conservative groups moved beyond political spectrum. Like the conservatives, their strictly cultural preoccupations to they reject Marxism-Leninism and believe form a political organization-the Bloc of that Russian patriotism can contribute to Russian Public-Patriotic Movements-in promoting reform. But like the social order to counter the growing popularity of democrats, their program includes an in- the social democrats. Before that, conser- sistence upon the rule of law, a clear sepa- vatives had been as reluctant to enter poli- ration of church and state. and nrivatiza- tics as social democrats had been to ap- tion of markets. ~hristiandemocrats, peal to Russian patriotic sentiment. Both however, stress that all politics needs a have abandoned their reluctance. firm moral foundation. Many of the Rus- Most conservatives, rejecting Marxism- sian religious philosophers that they turn Leninism, see Russian patriotism and reli- to, including Semyon Frank, Nikolai Ber- gion as the only alternative to decay. They dyaev, and Father Sergei Bulgakov, had are united bv five common assumntions: themselves been Marxists in their youth the need for a moral and religious revival; but later abandoned Marxism in favor of skepticism about Western intellectual im- democracy and reliaion. ports such as capitalism, pop culture, and ~hristiandemocracy has no political especially Marxism; fear of unconstrained precedent in pre-revolutionary Russia, but market competition and "windfall profits" it is quickly finding a following. Three (some, like Mikhail Antonov, propose a members of the newly elected Russian Su- Japanese model, with the economy more preme Soviet-among them noted hu- closely attuned to native cultural tradi- man-rights activist Father Gleb Yakunin- tions); the need to return land to the peas- recently joined the Russian Christian Dem- antry; and belief in the nobility of military ocratic Movement. As Andre Louis, secre- service. But conservatives differ widely on tary-general of the Christian Democratic how to resolve Russia's current problems. International, recently observed, "In the Some recommend radical decentraliza- long run, I think Christian Democracy has tion and even Russia's secession from the its best opportunity in the Soviet Union. Soviet Union; others see a strong central- Christian Democrats there have come to ized authority as the only thing preventing political life out of religious conviction. In the country's collapse. searching for a more fraternal and useful The conservatives have not done well- religion, they come to recognize the need at the polls. In direct confrontations with for political activity." The movement's un- social democrats in last March's local elec- compromising rejection of communist tions, they were easily defeated. (Only 16 ideology may be the best guarantee of its out of 65 conservative candidates in Mos- future success. cow even made it to the run-off elections.) Extremist groups. A number of small Their prospects are hampered by a lack of but vocal chauvinistic groups-Pamyat clarity about how to achieve a Russian re- (Memory), Vityazi (Heroes), and Patrioty vival, by a contradictory economic and po- (Patriots)-go far beyond professing con- litical platform, and by ambivalent atti- cern for Russia's revival and openly ac- tudes toward the Party's monopoly on cuse "dark forces" and "foreign elements" power. In the not-too-distant future, con- of engaging in a conspiracy to destroy Rus- servatives are likely to split over the cen- sia. They typically identify these forces as tral political issue of the day: whether the people of Jewish origin and those who do Party is still a viable political force or sim- their bidding. ply a burden to the country. Those who Extremists of both the left and the right support the Communist Party are likely to often form strange and paradoxical alli- join forces with reactionaries within the ances. In Leningrad, Pamyat groups have Party such as Nina Andreyev and Egor received open help from two district Party

WQ SUMMER 1990 RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

organizations. In a recent interview, Elena ther in national or local elections. In Mos- Bonner, wife of the late Andrei Sakharov, cow, the Pamyat candidate, Tamara noted that the Leningrad KGB was pro- Ponamareva, received five percent of the teeting and promoting Pamyat. votes for, and 86.5 percent of the votes Western concern about these groups against, her candidacy. stems from the fear that they may eventu- Moreover, public opinion surveys re- ally have a decisive influence on national port that the overwhelming majority of the policy. Many of these organizations are ac population favors continued glasnost, de- tively seeking allies among disgruntled sol- spite doubts about the economic success diers, workers, and Russian minorities in of perestroika. And there is still reported the outlying republics. In the event of a to be strong support for expanding weakened and demoralized Soviet state- friendly contacts with the West. In one re- a "Weimar Russia"--such groups might cent survey, for example, the only ministry seize power, unleash to get a favorable rat- i,, campaign ing was the ministry against minorities of foreign affairs, pre- (particularly Jews) sumably because of and threatening mili- its role in fostering tary aggression better relations with abroad. / the West. Such a turn of Thus while there eventsis possible but are dangersassoci- highly unlikely. First i ated with the emerg- of all, in the after- ing Russian national math of the Afghan consensus, notably war, foreign military authoritarianism and adventures have no intolerance, there popular constitu- '" are good reasons for ency. We are witness- thinking that the So- ing in the Soviet viet Union has what Union today perhaps S. Frederick Starr the most widespread " calls "a usable past." peacetime rejection i Starr and other of military service in scholars--including the 20th century. Not James Billington, only are individuals John Dunlop, Geof- in many parts of the frey Hosking, and country refusing to Al? ercllv j6fk-Ce)?lLl~yiC0)7 Of St. Gt·orXe,sLlr- Helen Carrere D'En- serve; a number of ~-oul?dejhy val.iortsotlzel· scti,?ls. bl?ccges of Sr. causse-have all the country's leading Geol~ge,lhL· pntroll sailll of Rttssia,co·e popltlar pointed to the resur- universities are no (1111017gCOl?l~ll?P01.(117' )7ali0)7nliSIS. gence of interest in longer offering the Russia's pre-revolu- required courses in military indoctrina- tionary classical liberal heritage. It is a tion. Furthermore, given the country's dire fragile flower in Russian history, they all economic straits, it would be almost im- acknowledge, but it exists. possible to mobilize support for a war- The question is how to cultivate it in absent the immediate threat of foreign in- the present. The weakness of the Russian vasion. liberals in the past, according to i:migri: For all the attention it receives in the historian Nicholas Zernov, was their indif- Western and Soviet media, Pamyat has ference to the more conservative tradi- never attracted more than a few hundred tions of the populace. This led first to their people to its rallies (compared to nearly isolation, then to disillusion with liberal- 200,000 for Democratic Russia rallies in ism, and finally to a fatal attraction to rad- Moscow this past February). It has failed to icalism. elect a single candidate to public office,ei- Today,however, particularly in the po-

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litical arena, radicals and restorationists (meaning only ethnic Russians), a distinc- are consciously striving to build bridges, tion roughly analogous to the difference to wed the best elements of Western uni- between British and English. Today, a versalism and Russian particularism, rule number of Russian political organizations of law and healthy patriotism. Their efforts are using rossiiskoe to broaden their ap- embody Dostoyevsky's insistence that to peal. But they will succeed only if their in- "become a true Russian" means "to be- clusiveness is backed up with real assur- come a brother of all men, a Llnivel-su[ ances: of mutually beneficial economic man." The Democratic Russia coalition of ties between the center and periphery; of People's Deputies is the most promising full cultural and religious freedoms for all fruit of their labors. With over one-third of nationalities; and of the right of any people People's Deputies in the next Russian Su- to independence. Treated fairly, non-Rus- preme Soviet under its banner, the Demo- sian peoples will have good reasons for re- cratic Russia coalition is likely to play a maining within the federation, including a key role in the passage of legislation in the shared defense burden and a huge, estab- republic's supreme governing body. lished outlet for manufactured goods. It is The r-ecent election of coalition leader worth remembering that Russians made Doris Yeltsin to the chairmanship of the up only half of the population of the em- Russian Supreme Soviet will only increase pire during the 19th century; yet for most that likelihood. Yeltsin himself exemplifies of that century--until restrictive national the spirit of liberal conservatism: He ities policies were imposed by Tsars Al- champions the social-democratic agenda exander III and Nicholas II--ethnic fric- and greater independence for the repub- tions were minimal. lies while calling: for the restoration of reli- gious and other traditional Russian values. t its best, then, the emerging Russian The Russian national consensus is also be- A consensus is one that both Western ginning to build momentum at the local liberals and conservatives can be comfort- level. There we are witnessing efforts to re- able with. It promotes decentralization, store land tenure to peasants, to bring political accountability, domestic tranquil back pre-revolutionaly symbols and place ity, and international retrenchment. It is names, and to promote a more prominent also an ideal that Russians themselves find role for religious organizations. With the increasingly attractive, preferring it to ei- election of local governments oriented to- ther the restoration of communism or the ward radical economic reforms, the vagaries of Gorbachev's perestroika. Sur search for political alternatives is likely to veys by the Center for Public Opinion proceed even more rapidly than before. Study show that while three-quarters of The thorniest issue facing supporters of, ethnic Russians believe that "relying on the new national consensus is the question their national roots" is an important con- of other Soviet nationalities. Apart from sideration for Russia's salvation, a mere 14 the Slavic majority of Russians, Byelorus- percent now expect government to solve sians, and Ukrainians, there are 19 other their problems. Nearly a third feel that major nationalities and scores of smaller they "must at last become free people and national and ethnic groups. How will the make the state serve [their] interests." minorities abide an explicitly Russian fed- The combination of economic neces- eration? History provides a possible an- sity and national revival is a powerful prod swer. During the 19th century, the word to the development of a healthy national rossiiskoe (which suggests the broad multi- self-conception. The best traditions of Rus- ethnic Russian national state) was as com- sia's pre-revolutionary past may hold the monly used as the narrower term rtlsskoe key to Russia's post-revolutionary future.

wQ SUMMER 1990

122 Co~s~8~~en~ga8"Y

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Continuedfrom page 21 ties' effort to curb the rise A Second is a Tewzble Thing of civil society." To Waste It may be too much to ex- pect Western reporters to How can the degradation of American political debate be have anticipated develop- explained? Fresh evidence is offered in the New Republic ments that also caught (May 28, 1990) by Kiku Adatto, who compared television's MikhailGorbachev and U.S. coverageof the presidentialelections of 1968and 1988. intelligence experts by sur- prise, as Tismaneanu does. By 1988 television's tolerance for the languid pace of politi- But he warns that they still cal discourse; never great, had all but vanished. An analysis do not understand that it is Of all weekday evening network newscasts lover 280) from the strength of the groups LaborDay to ElectionDay in 1968and 1988reveals that the that constitute civil society ~two candidates'/ average "sotlnd bite" fell from 42.3 sec- that~ will ultimately deter- onds in 1968 to only 9.8 seconds in 1988. Meanwhile the mine the success or failure time the networksdevoted to visuals of the candidates,tln- accompanied by their words, increased by more than 300 of freedoin in the nations of percent. Eastern Europe.

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

Mind and ~lanners "I Think;Therefore I Thank" by Judith Martin and Gunther S. Stent, in The Alnerican Scholar (Spring 1990), 1811 Q St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009. Modern philosophers rarely have anything quette flow from the subscription to man- to say about etiquette, and when they do ners-the belief in communal harmony, they seem to make a terrible hash of individual dignity, and so on. And the evi- things. In 1972,for example,Philippa Foot dence from man's earliest history suggests wrote a controversial essay called "Moral- that the embrace of morality and manners ity as a Systeni of Hypothetical Impera- is fundamental to human nature. Even to- tives." In attacking Immanuel Kant's argu- day, criminals cling to a belief in manners. ment that morality is a categorical During the summer of 1986, the 30 motor- imperative, she compared morality to the ists who were arrested for shooting fellow "silly rules" of etiquette. A long debate fol- drivers on the freeways of Los Angeles de- lowed, but not one of Foot's fellowphilos- fended themselves by arguing that they ophers took issue with her callow com- were provoked by gross violations of traf- parison. fic etiquette. "Extremely distressed" might be the Etiquette has three chief functions, the most polite term for the reaction of Mar authors say. First, it is "a system for the tin, better known as the newspaper colum- codification of ritual in the service of tht nist Miss Manners, and Stent, a Berkeley sacred." By that they mean that it tells one l;iologist."As heirs of the Greekfounders how to behaveat weddingsand (lessand of their discipline," they scold, philoso- less these days, they lament) funerals. It phers should "be expected to remain con- also has a "symbolic" function: An individ- cerned with the quest for the virtuous life, ual's compliance with the etiquette of, say, where 'virtuous' refers to proper behavior diplomacyor professionalsports, signifies in general." his adherence to the values of these profes- Just as the commands of morality are sions. Finally, etiquette has a "regulative~' categorical imperatives for anyone who function; it exists on a continuum with desires to be moral, so the rules of eti- law. Etiquette seeks to avert conflict; law

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addresses serious violations of morality. ful to call her, her fundamental error was Etiquette restricts freedom of expression; in assuming that morality and etiquette are law restricts freedom of action. But they two different things. Both are part of a sin- are mutually dependent: Law cannot be gle, highly complex system of rules for the administered justly without the order pro- governance of social conduct, the authors vided by courtroom etiquette. insist. Without both of them, civilization As for Mrs. Foot, as the authors are care- would disappear.

Inventing "HolyHeadgear" byHarry Steinhauer, inThe An~ioch Review The YamzuZke (Winter 1990), P.O. Box 148, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387.

Harry Steinhauer was troubled when he berg, who helped win congressional ap- received a fund-raising appeal from Sena- proval of a 1987 bill allowing servicemen tor Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) in 1988. to wear religious apparel. Lautenberg en- Lautenberg told the story of Captain Simha closed a yarmulke with his letter, along Goldman, an orthodox rabbi in the U.S, with the warning that we "can never take Air Force who had been barred by his su- our freedom for granted." Nor, the letter periors from wearing a yarmulke while on suggested, could the Senator's reelection duty. The rabbi's case went all the way to be taken for granted without a generous the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the contribution. Air Force, and then to Senator Lauten- What bothered Steinhauer, a professor

The Language of Hope The Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein said say the next logical point. "I hope," if used, that only those who have mastered a lan- can and ought to be followed by "since I guage can know how to hope. The inability hope, I will...," or "I think...," or "I to express hope, writes Leon Botstein in urge ...," and so forth. The older fonnula Daedaltls (Spring 1990), not simply incom- tion carries with it the assumption of per- petence in reading instruction manuals or sonal responsibility to act on hope and ex- newspapers, explains why mass illiteracy-- pressed the potential of utility in hoping, or pseudoliteracy--is a threat to American speaking, and acting. democracy. The abuse of hopefully, in contrast, signals the idea that what happens is the restllt of If indeed the categories of freedom, justice, neither one's beliefs nor one's actions, that truth, and humanity are to flourish, a Ian- one is powerless and subject to amorphous guage must be mastered ....We need to re- circumstances and impersonal forces apart tard the evolution of thoughtless language from one's existence .... use exemplified, ironically, by the way we use In the shift in our usage there is camotc- the word hope. It is now accepted land has flaged a pessimisln and an enha~lstion--a been since the 1950s) to use the adverb hope- sense of the superfluity of individual belief fully as a replacement for the phrase I and influence. This cuts against Wittgen hope.... stein's suggestion and (perhaps) admonition A shift in thinking is perceptible in the lin- that we command a language stlfficient for gtlistic change. In the shift one can perceive a authentic hope. Since hope is contingent on distancing from the idea of personal respon- language, real hope derives from a confi- sibility and a weakening of faith iri personal dence in hulnan knowledge and action. In efficacy. "I hope," the older formulation, this sense, it is the dissemination of language makes clear the presence of the speaker as and its consequent capacity to spread actor. Indirectly, one knows that the speaker hope--the essential meaning of literacy--on not only holds the view but is in a position to which the future depends.

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126 PERIODICALS

emeritus of Germanat the Univi~rsityof mon era--the custom of covering the California at Santa Barbara, was the as- head spread and became more and more sumption (which evejn the Supreme Court firmly entrenched in Jewish life." The real made) that the yarmulke is an old and sa- turning point came with the birth during cred part of the Jewish faith. the 19th century of liberal Reform Juda- In the Torah, he notes, nothing is even ism, which "goaded the orthodox into en- said about covering the head, much less dowing the rite with a significance it had with a yarmulke. "Neither in the 248 posi- not enjoyed until then." tive, nor in the 365 negative, precepts Even so, Steinhauer continues, the cus- listed in the Torah (the dos anci don'ts), is tom was far from uniformly observed. there any mention of this rite." Through- When Pope Paul VI visited Israel in 1964, out the Old Testament, "covering the head an Israeli newspaper printed a photo of was a mark of sorrow and shame," as the nation's president greeting him, with when King David fled his son, Absalom, the caption, "The one with the yarmulke is with covered head and bare feet. the Pope." Even among those who pre The Talmud (completed about A.D.500) ferred covering the head, the yarmLilkedid makes contradictory statements about not prevail until after World War II. It is covering the head, which is not surprising Steinhauer's guess that young Jews, like since it is basically a record of debates their Gentile counterparts of the era, sim- about Jewish religious law. In several Tal- ply found the plain hat too old-fashioned. mudic parables, a bared head is consid- And only in recent years has the yarmulke ered a sign of deference to God. become the overt symbol of being Jewish. Yet, Steinhauer concedes, although The point of all this, Steinhauer says, is learned Jews throughout history have that even if Captain Goldman felt obliged tended to favor the bared head, "it seems to keep his head covered on religious to be an incontrovertible fact that in the grounds, his service cap would have suf- dourse of the centuries-some say as early ficed. Jews, he concludes, should save as the third or fourth century of the com- their ammunition for more worthy causes.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

by Vitaly Shevoroshkin, in The Sciences The Search for "The(May-JuneMother 1990),Ton~uc" 2 E. 63rd St., New York. N.Y. 10021. Babel

Hopscotching from the words nigi and gini The search for proto-World began, in ef- (predecessors of the English nag and feet, more than two centuries ago when gnaw), to the Sino-Caucasian word gin, to William Jones, an English judge stationed Austro-Asiatic givzi, and to Congo-Saharan in Calcutta, India, noticed strange affini- nigi, linguists may have arrived recently at ties between Indian Sanskrit and the lan- a monumental destination: the mother guages of Europe. The cognates for tongue of all mankind. brother, for example, are bhratar in San- All of these words are cognates for the skrit, phrater in Greek, and frater in Latin. word tooth, says Shevoroshkin, a linguist In 178q, after intense study, Jones an- at the University of Michigan, and they sug- nounced his startling conclusion: Sanskrit, gest that the original terms, uttered per Greek, and Latin had all "sprung from haps 100,000 years ago, were nigi and gini. some common source which, perhaps, no So far, he and other researchers have re- longer exists." constructed between 150 and 200 words of Other researchers soon added Ger- thl: language they call proto-World. manic, Persian, Baltic, and Slavic to the

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original three. All were grouped together ancient migratory patterns, and archaeo- under the rubric Indo-European, and their logical evidence, backers of the proto- family tree traced back to an ancierit World theory concluded that the language tongue spoken perhaps 8,000 years ago. It is close to 100,000 years old. took another century for scholars--includ- What does their language tell us about ing the brothers Grimm of fairy tale our ancestors~ They were truly people of fame--to painstakingly reconstruct that few words and spared none for description lost language. of the emotions. Unsurprisingly, the most That was hardly the end of tht matter. common word was ngai ("I"). And, appar- As early as 1903, a Danish linguist named eritly, thi~ywere bothered by many of the Holger Pedersen noted vague similarities same things that bother us, for they took between Indo-European and other proto- the trouble to invent words for fleas, lice, languages, including Semitic (precursor of and in-laws. Arabic and Hebrew) and Al- talc (ancestor of Japanese and Korean). But it was not The Importance of Genes until 1964 that two Soviet scholars, Vladislav Illich- "We cannot continue to think about disease as an outside Svltych and Aaron Dolgo- enemy," geneticist P. A. Baird argues in Perspectives in Bi- polsky, were able to recon- ology and Medicine (Winter 1990). The enemjl is now us. struct (separately) a single Bairdfavors a "paradigmshift" in medicine,replacing the ancestral tongue called "war" againstdisease with effortsto detect and prevent ge- Nostratic, a tribal language "etic maladies. that they believe was spo- The relative contribution of genetic causes to all causes of ken some. 14,000 years ago. disease in our population has likely increased markedly in Nostratic, in turn, may be this century for many disorders. For example, in the early only one of several lan- yearsof the centurythe infantmortality rate inthe United guage "phyla": The others states was about 150per l,a00 livebirths. It isestimatedthat are Sino-Caucasian, Austra- about five of these 150 deaihs, or three percent, were due to lian, Khoisan, Indo-Pacific, a wholly or partly genetic cause. Nowadays the infant mor- Austric, and Amerind. ta2ityrate is closer to 15 per l,a00 live births. However, the During the last 10 years, five are still there in the geneticcategory; but, insteadof Sheveroshkin and others, constitutingthree peri~ent, they constitute ovdr dne thirdof now aided by computers, all infant deaths .... In the 1920s the role of vitamin D [in rickets] was elucidated and food supplementation by vita- have dompared the dif~er- min D on a population basis was initialed. The incidence of ent proto-languages to re- rickets declined dramatically, but cases continue to appear. construct proto-World. Ac- H,,,,,~ insteadof beingenvironmentally caused rickets tually, he says, dating rstlfferers/now have inherited genes giving a disorder of proto-World has ~een mineralmetabolism-rickets-even when normal amounts harder than reconstructing of vitamin D are present. The heritability of rickets is now it. Based on recent studies very high, and these cases need lifelong care. by geneticists, research on

KiZZerChlorophyZZ "Making, Breaking, and Remaking Chlorophyll" by George Hendry, in Natural History (May 1990), Central Park West at 79th St., New York. N.Y. 10024. If you were asked to name the most dan- tential hazards, writes Hendry, a re- gerous substances known to man, chloro- searcher at the University of Sheffield, is phyll probably would not come immedi- that nature has devised elaborate means to ately to mind. contain them. The autumnal glories of a One reason we are not aware of its po- Vermont sugar maple are partly the result wa SUMMER 1990

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of chlorophyll's programmed suicide. In any convenient neighboring molecule, the world's oceans, nature condemns thereby destroying the structure of many chlorophyll in single-celled marine phyto- organic molecules." plankton to a half-life as short as 48 hours. Even animals can be affected. In a rare (A half-life is the time it takes for half of the disorder among sheep called geldikkop, substance to be transformed or degraded.) partly digested chlorophyll passes into the Overall, the world stock of chlorophyll is bloodstream; sunlight striking the skin close to 250 million tons, and it is turned causes the chlorophyll to produce oxygen over 3.7 times each year. radicals, and the animal to suffer lesions. There are several reasons why nature al- Normal malfunctions of photosynthesis lows this seemingly senseless slaughter. are policed by the plant's antioxidants-- But an important reason has to do with the such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and to- process of photosynthesis. copherols (vitamin E)---which also hap- As Hendry explains, the chlorophyll pen to be beneficial to humans. But molecule can be thought of chiefly as a drought or cold weather triggers malfunc- provider of electrons. Each molecule is tions on a huge scale. As autumn nears in surroundedby a cloud of orbiting elec- New England,then, nature orchestrates trons; when struck by sunlight, the mole- the mass suicide of chlorophyll to prevent cule resonates and one of the electrons is an invasion of oxygen radicals, which flipped out of orbit "along an electrical cir- would disrupt the all-important process of cult to drive the production of storable salvaging carbohydrates, proteins, and chemical power." Occasionally, however, other useful compounds from the plants' there is a malfunction, and the electron es- leaves. capes and attaches itself to an oxygen mol- This elaborate fail-safe device, Hendry ecule. The result is an "oxygen radical," says, allows nature's leafy "solar panels" to one of which, the hydroxyl radical (HO), is operate "with an efficiency and safety a kind of terrorist of the natural world. It record unmatched by anything humans "almost instantly abstracts hydrogen from have yet devised."

Big Business, "TheScientific Tradition inAmerican Industrial Research" by John Kenly Smith, Jr., in Tech,~ology a,?d C~tlrnre (Jan. 1990), Big Science NationalMuseum o~American History, Room 5030, Smithso- nian Inst., Washington, D.C. 20560. The brash young pioneers of California's their own laboratories to help them main- Silicon Valley have revived the dream of tain market share. the swashbuckling American inventor, At first, Smith says, "American indus- freed at last from the shackles of big busi- tries cast a wide net for new technologies ness. There is indeed something new hap- but in general did not expect to invent pening in the relationship between science them. Rather, they made use of the work and business, writes Smith, a historian at of independent inventors." That strategy Lehigh University, but Silicon Valley ex- was a success, producing such technologi- emplifies the past, not the future. cal and marketplace triumphs as cello- That relationship began during the phane (DuPont), refrigerators (GE), and 1870s and blossomed into marriage be- color film (Kodak). cause of new competitive pressures on big By the 1930s, however, several corpo- business generated by the expiration of rate laboratories were beginning to many old patents and by the federal gov- change: "Instead of just applying science, ernment's vigorous antitrust efforts. By industrial researchers would 'do' science," World War I, the pioneers of U.S. indus- Smith notes. This kind of basic research trial research---GeneralElectric, DuPont, led to the creation of nylon at DuPont in AT&T, and Kodak--had all established 1934 and of the transistor at AT&T in

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1947. After World War II, presidential sci- new model. He doubts that a return to the ence adviser Vannevar Bush and other days of the heroic individual inventor is leaders persuaded corporate executives possible. The upstart Silicon Valley firms that "basic science led directly and rather that have revived these hopes relied on quickly to new technology," inaugurating two big institutions: from the Pentagon a new era of basic research. Corporate lab- came research money and from AT&T's oratories completed the change toward ac- once-famed Bell Labs came technology ademic-style research; the laboratories and personnel. But American corporate themselves were frequently relocated in laboratories no longer seem to have the suburban office parks, literally and sym- knack for good applied science, either. So bolically far from the plant and corporate what will the next phase of the business- headquarters. science marriage be? Perhaps the partners As early as the 1950s, however, corpo- may try living apart, Smith suggests. A por- rate managers began to sour on the "ivory tent may be GE's sale last year of the RCA tower" approach. Where was the new ny- research laboratory to the RAND Corpora- ion or the new transistor? tion, thus creating a huge independent re- Today, says Smith, the search is on for a search establishment.

~a~

RESBURC@S & ENVIRONMENT

BedaZ Pot/ver "Reinventingthe Wheels"by MarciaD. Lowe,in Tech,?ology Revie~~, (May-June 1990), Building W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.

Maybe all those cab-dodging downtown bi- ence. Buses and subways are often cycle couriers know something. Traffic crowded and slow. So the urban messen- jams and air pollution, not to mention the gers--along with some gridlocked police- shortage of decent radio stations, make men in London and Los Angeles--have driving a car in the city a hellish experi- turned to the bicycle. The humble bicycle, in- sists Lowe, a Worldwatch Institute researcher, is a : kinder, gentler form of transportation that ought to figure prominently in the nation's transportation plans. "All you have to do," one California town official told her, "is make it easier to ride a bike than drive a car. People will take it from. there." Over hill and dale? Through rain, sleet, and snow? Lowe does not say. But a few pro-cycle soci- eties have taken some bold America'sfirst bicyclecraze began in 1876.In 1884,a California steps: Bicycle parking man even set off to cycle around the M,orld;it took nearly three towers dot the cities of Ja- years. Here, cyclists lake a break near Tallahassee, Flon'da. pan; Swiss buses are

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equipped with bike racks to encourage college town of Pale Alto, California, has "bike and ride" travelers; one Canadian given the bicycle a chance to show its stuff. aid group is even redesigning the bicycle The city has spent $1 million since 1980 rickshaw to better accommodate Asia's on bike lockers, racks, paths, and a two- shorter drivers. In China, of course, the bi- mile "bicycle boulevard" downtown. All cycle is king of the road. In the Nether- road patching must meet smoothness lands, the most "bicycle friendly" of the standards, and bike-detecting sensors industrial nations land one of the flattest) change traffic signals for bikers. the government spent $230 million to ex- Lowe believes that America should go pand bicycle parking and build special the way of Pale Alto. Yet, she laments, the "cycleways." Today, 20 to 50 percent of all bicycle was barely mentioned in the U.S. Dutch trips are made on two wheels. Department of Transportation's recently At least one American municipality, the announced national transportation policy.

Fad Famzing? "Alternative Agriculture" by Bette Hileman, in Che~,licnl & En- gineeril~g Ne~vs (Mar. 5, 1990), 1155 16th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

"Alternative agriculture" has been much Iowa alone. To paraphrase an old saying in the news since the U.S. National Re- about politics, however, all farming is lo- search Council (NRC) published a contro- cal. So different soil tests must be devised versial report last fall hailing its promise, for different areas of the country. Likewise, By and large, says Hileman, a Chemical& the results of alternative agriculture vary Engineering News editor, it is not what its from place to place. Pest control methods critics or its supporters claim. that work in arid California can't often be Even the term "alternative" is a little used in Florida's hot, humid climate. And misleading, since it conjures up images of because alternative agriculture is new and peasant dresses and pony tails. Most of the only spottily employed, its advocates lack farmers who are experimenting with new the large-scale statistical studies needed to agricultural techniques land they are a prove their claims. tiny minority) are more concerned about What does seem clear to Hileman is that paying their feed and fertilizer bills than "high-chem" farming has its limits. For ex- about singlehandedly saving Planet Earth. ample, David Pimentel, a Cornell entomol- From the Left or the Right, ancients or ogist, estimates that while the use of syn- moderns, they will borrow any technique thetic pesticides has grown 33-fold since that works. So many are trying ridge till- 1945, annual crop losses from insects, age, a system developed in China 3,000 weeds, and diseases have grown from 31 years ago that minimizes cultivation and percent to 37 percent. Twenty years ago, thus can sometimes reduce soil erosion shortly after they were introduced, herbi- and weeds. From the contemporary chem- cides virtually eliminated the need to culti- istry lab there is now a new soil test that vate fields. Today, cultivation is back. With allows farmers to determine the minimum surprising speed, about 80 out of some 500 amount of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer weed species have developed resistance to needed to obtain maximum yields. herbicides. That may not sound revolutionary, but Since the NRC's report, there has been a research shows that farmers steeped in lot of debate about alternative agriculture. modern "high-chem" agriculture habit- The best thing anybody can do, says ually overapply synthetic fertilizers. One Hileman, is to get out of the way--by specialist estimates that a good test could restructuring federal farm subsidy policies cut fertilizer use by one-third and outlays that discourage alternative methods--and by $100 million annually in the state of leave the choice to the farmers.

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~9- ARTS & LETTERS

The Virtues "TheWriter in Exile:The Good Years" by EwaM. Thompson, in Slal,ic al?d East ELlropean Joun?cll (Winter 1989), Dept. of of Exile Russian and East European Studies, Univ. of Minn., Minneapo- lis, Minn. 55455.

We live in an age that adoresvictims, and in pop- Who Speaks fov Whom? ular mythology there are few greater victims than the Do exiled Eastern European writers truly speak for (or to) exiled Russian or Eastern their countrymen? In an interview with Philip Roth in the European writer. Ne~YYork Review of Books(April 12, 1990), Czech novelist Save your tears for Ovid, and playwright Ivan Klima suggests that one of the most says Thompson, a professor prominent exiles, Miian Kundera, may not. of Slavic studies at Rice The reproach that he is writing for foreigners rather than for University. In 8 A.D.,the Ro- Czechs is ol?ly one of the ylzany reproaches addressed to man poet was exiled to a Kundera and only a part of the I·rzoresubstantial rebuke--- Black Sea backwater whose that he has lost his ties to his native cotcl?try.... inhabitants could not read In my opinion the allergy [to Kundela] is caused, in part, Latin--or any other lan- by what people take to be the simplified and spectacular way guage. Most of them were in which Kundera presents his Czech experiel?ce.What's illiterate. Exile today is dif- more,the experiencehe presentsis, theywould say, at odds ferent. Thompson believes with the fact that he hilnself had been an indtllged and re- warded child of the Comlntlnist regin2e until 1968. that it "has given some writ- The totalitarian system is terribly hard on people, as ers an audience for which Kundera recognizes, but the hardness of life has a mttch they could not have hoped move complicated shape than we find i,? his presentation of in the countries of their it. Kundera'spicture, his criticswotlld tell you, is the sortof birth. In some cases, it has picture which you would see from a very capable foreign converted their national newspapennan who 'd spent a few days in our countrv. Such readership into a world- a pictureis acceptableto the Westernreader because it con- wide one. It made their finns his expectations; it reinforces the fairy tale abotct good ideas matter in a way in and evil,which a goodboy likes to hearagain and again.But which they could not have." for the Czech readers our reality is no fairy tale.... A case in point is Alex- however,Last,but be not at theleast, veryis core an extraliterary of the chargereason,against Mtlzichhi~n. At mav, the sands Solzhenitsyn. Best time M,hen Kundera was achieving his greatest world poptl- known as the chronicler of lar'ty, Czech cttltttre was ii? a bitter struggle with the tolalitar- the Gulag, he is also the i,,,y,tem. intellectualsat homeas wellas thosein exile chief purveyor in the West shared in thisstruggle .... Ktlnderaseems to I?2anypeople to of the image of gentle have stood apart from this ki,?d of effort. Mother Russia as an inno- cent victim of history. "In- stead of trying to change the self-percep- and Janusz Glowacki. They "have begun to tion of his countrymen," she writes, "he forge a definition of that part of the world has reinforced abroad an old and paradox- that has become comprehensible to the ical image of Russia as a society of rural home audience and to the audiences of Ivan Denisoviches and Matriinas who the host countries. They have helped to somehow have produced the largest mili- create an understanding of the unity of tary-industrial complex in the world." 'the other Europe' which had not existed Quite the opposite is true of the eminent in the West before." From books such as Eastern European exiles, such as Milan Native Reakn, The Book of Laughter and Kundera, CzeslawMilosz, Josef Skvoreclj: Forgetting, and The Engineer of Ht~man wa SUMMER 1990

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Souls, there has emerged "a new type of free of self-pity; conscious of his national- East European literary hero: skeptical, yet ity but alert to the needs of other 'political not unprincipled; aware of the absurdity of losers."' Thus Eastern Europeans have dis- the situation in which 'the other Europe' tanced themselves from both their Russian has been forcibly placed, but remarkably and Western European counterparts.

Art aMd the "CounterfeitingNature: Artistic Innovation and CulturalCrisis in Renaissance Venice" by Arthur Steinberg and Jonathan Wy- Decline of i\la~ions lie, in Co,lzpnun~ive Studies in Society and History (Jan. 1990), 102 Rackham Bldg., Univ. o~ Mich., Ann Arbor, Mich. 48109- 1070.

How many times has the story been re- cred figures such as the Virgin Mary, and if peated? A society slowly rises to greatness they could be depicted as part of profane and then, just as it passes its peak, experi- reality, the authors observe, their "sacred- ences a spectacular flowering of the arts. ness became ambiguous or even risked Venice during the early 16th century disappearing entirely." was such a place. Exhausted by decades of Bellini tried to solve the problem by sur- war with the Ottoman Empire, it then con- rounding his sacred figures with cherubs fronted the League of Cambrai--including and halos, and by placing them on an en- Florence, Spain, and France. The League tirely different plane. Invariably, the result handed the Venetians a disastrous defeat was really two (or more) pictures: a Ma- at Agnadello in 1509. donna in the foreground, for example, and Out of this turmoil grew one of the great a completely detached landscape in the flowers of Venetian art: the "natural paint- background. It was left to Giorgione and ing" of Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516), especially Titian to create the new style of Giorgione (c. 1478-1510), and Titian (c. 1480-1576).Steinberg and Wylie,both his- torians at MIT, argue that this flowering I was no accident. 1 ~4' The patriarchs of Venice proudly thought of themselves as having a special link to God. Venice was known as la sancta citti~ (the holy city), and legend had it that it was founded on Annunciation Day, the same day on which Adam was created, Mary impregnated, and Christ crucified. The city's misfortunes thus cast doubt not only on her favored status but on "the very souls of her political and eco- nomic elite." To continue the illusion of Venetian greatness, the city fathers went on a civic spending spree, creating a huge market for art. Venetian artists soon discovered that the newly developed oil paints allowed the painter to work more quickly and produce more pictures than traditional egg-based tempera paints did. And oil allowed artists In Titian's Noll Me Tangere (Do Not Totlch Me) to achieve much more vivid colors and of 1511, the sacred foregrotlnd is set apart by life-likeeffects. Almost too life-like,in fact. Christ'sInotion away from Mary Magdalene and The main subjects of Venetianart were sa- bythe buslh, the tree, and otherpictora2 Inarkers.

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"natural painting." Titian found several zens feared that God had turned His back ways to blend the planes in his pictures far on them. One writer of the day said that more naturally. His greatest innovation Titian's pictures "have a touch of divinity was to emphasize the natural qualities of in them...his colors are infused as the sacred figures in the foreground, often though God has put the paradise of our by painting them in motion. The effect, bodies in them, not painted, but made holy paradoxically, was to set them apart. and glorified by his hands." Natural painting was a critical and com- Alas, the Venetians had to content them- mercial success, say the authors, because selves with fine art. For while Venice re- it "opened a fresh avenue of mediation be- gained some of its lost empire, it never re- tween God and men" in a city whose citi- captured its status as a world power.

What i~akes "Masterpiecesand the Museum"by ArthurC. Danto, in GraMd Slrerr (Winter 1990), 50 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. 10024. A Illasterpiece? When philosopher and art critic Arthur Precisely, answers Danto. In his view, Danto attended a recent symposium on much of the work of museums has always the concept of the masterpiece, he was as- been political. The first modern museum, tonished to find that all of the invited the Musi·e Napoli·on, was created to house scholars and museum curators were reluc- the spoils of Napoleon's conquests. Thus, tant to talk about the subject. One gave a says Danto, the "museum entered modern clever lecture on "monsterpieces," an- consciousness as an emblem of power," other lamented the fact that advertisers including the power to dictate which art had co-opted and degraded the term "mas- should be displayed, and why. When Napo- terpiece," but nobody wanted to discuss leon's power waned and curators had to how one might define a masterpiece, decide which works to transfer from the The reason, Danto suspects, is that the Musi·e Napoli·on to the Louvre, they chose museum, like the university, has become to keep art that would advance the "moral an arena of intense political and cultural education of the citizenry." This was just conflict, and the museum's role in certify- one of the many different moral visions ing masterpieces by deciding which art is that have informed curators' decisions in of "museum quality" has become highly different times and places. controversial. The museum world is ex- But Danto insists that this does not periencing "a moment of upheaval and in-` mean, as some of the more radical critics deed of revolution." argue, that the whole concept of the mas- The revolutionaries are of two kinds. terpiece is arbitrary. Some are radical critics who believe that Danto believes there are two kinds of the very idea of the masterpiece "is hope- masterpieces. Michelangelo's Sistine Cha- lessly intertwined with white male oppres- pel, for example, is a work of pure genius, sion" and ought to be done away with en- which touches "our essential universal hu- tirely. Such a step, they believe, would manity." Even the tongue-tied curators at throw open the doors of museums to Danto's symposium would admit that such women and minority artists engaged in works are masterpieces. A second kind of creating "socially useful" art. masterpiece is created by the master, who The second kind of critic seeks not to labors within the rules and conventions of overthrow the concept of the masterpiece his art to produce, after much effort, his land thus the artistic authority of the mu- own masterpiece. Unlike the Sistine Cha- seum) but to win representation for previ- pel, with its timeless appeal, this kind of ously excluded artists by revising the defi- masterpiece tells us about the values of a nition of a masterpiece, particular time and place. Politics! scream outraged conservatives. This is the door through which Danto wa SUMMER 1990

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seems to think that works advocated by the have unthinkingly applied politicized defi- second variety of critic can be admitted to nitions of the masterpiece, he suggests. the museum. For many years, curators Now it is time to apply them thinkingly.

OTHER NATIONS

Debt and Democracy "Democracy and Economic Crisis: The Latin American Experi- ence" by Karen L. Remmer, in World Politics (April 1990). 17 Ivy Lane. Princeton. N.J. 08544. Nobody ever seems to say anything about mocracies; Chile and Paraguay were Latin America's new democracies without authoritarian during the whole period; six attaching warning words like "fragile," others undervent a transition to democ- "fledgling," or "struggling." The assump- racy. Usingsuch gauges as unemployment, tion among academics and journalists ap- real wages, and inflation, she found no sta- pears to be that the newly elected leaders tistically significant differences between of Brazil,Chile, and other nations will find democratic and authoritarian regimes. it much harder to deal with economic ad- Overall, however, the two "old" democra- versity, especially the debt crisis, than did cies were the best performers. They did their authoritarian predecessors. Ulti- not get as deeplyinto debt in the first place mately, the theory goes, the need to pla- as did their authoritarian counterparts. cate various constituencies will handicap People who are surprised by the success elected leaders to such an extent that de- of the Latin democracies, Remmer says, mocracy itself may fail. forget several things. Since 1982, demo- All of this strikes Remmer, a political crats and dictators alike have been forced scientist at the University of New Mexico, to rely on aid from organizations like the as very curious. Since the debt crisis began World Bank, which has limited their free- in 1982, she notes, not a single South dom of choice. But there are also many American democracy has fallen, but six varieties of democracy, from Peruvian authoritarian regimes (notably, in Argen- populism to Ecuadorian conservatism, tina, Brazil, and Chile) have. The story is which produce different approaches to much the same in Central America and the economics--and different results. And fi- Caribbean."It might be more appropriate nally, few popularly-elected leaders in to emphasize the fragilityof'old' author~i- Latin America feel free--or obliged--to tarianism rather than the weakness of buy popularity. Remmer says that they 'new' democracy," Rammer says. "are aware that the rise and fall of democ- Going one step farther, she set out to racy in Latin America have corresponded compare the economic performance of 10 less to the whims of the voting majority Latin nations between 1982 and 1988. Two than to the concerted opposition of busi- (Colombiaand Venezuela)were "old" de- ness and military elites."

A Betlr's-Eye "The'Beurs.'Children ofNorth-African Immigrants inFrance: The Issue of Integration" by Azouz Begag, in The Journal of ~ie·w of France Ethnic Studies (Spring 1990). Western Wash. Univ.. Belling- ham, Wash. 98225. Two centuries after the Revolution, can extraction into French society. France is facing a challenge that the parti- Until the 1980s, France was able to sans of libert~, Sgalit6, et fratemit~ could maintain the fiction that the Tunisian, Mo- hardly have imagined: the integration of roccan, and Algerian immigrants who be- some three million people of North Afri- gan arriving during the 1950s were only

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temporary visitors. Then, writes Begag, a plains. researcher at the University of Lyon and The Beurs themselves are uncertain himself an example of the phenomenon he about their political and cultural identity. describes, a second generation, largely Many even reject the term Beur. In Lyon, born in France, appeared on the scene. Begag reports, they refer to themselves as These young "Beurs"-the word rebetl "Khokhos" and speak ironically of the (Arab) rendered in a slang called verlan-- "Beur...geoisie Parisienne." Many Beurs obviously are not going to return to North cling to Islam yet reject their parents' Africa. (Youngsters born of Algerian par- norms. On the other hand, many young ents after 1963 even hold French citizen- men seem to favor stricter supervision of ship.) Nor are they well prepared to make their sisters than their fathers do. "Control- a place for themselves in France's highly ling the mobility of females appears to be, stratified society. Many are poorly edu- in the males' minds, a means of preserving cated; unemployment is high, as is the in- identity." As a result, Begag says, French- cidence of crime and poverty. Arab girls, or Beurettes, are excelling in Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National school to escape family control. Front is only the ugliest manifestation of The question for the Beurs is whether to racial politics in France. After the National pursue integration as individuals--sym- Front recently won a parliamentary elec- bolized by the likes of actress Isabelle tion in the city of Dreux with 62 percent of Adjani and tennis star Yannick Noah-or the vote, a chastened President Fran~ois as a political group. In March 1989, the Mitterand seemed to adapt the racist code- limited efforts of a group called France- words of the Right when he spoke of such Plus helped 390 of the 572 Beurs running matters as the "too-heavy geographical for municipal offices under various party concentration of immigrants." His perfor- flags win election. More promising, in mance has not been a profile in courage. Begag's view, was the victory of two Immigrants constitute 30 percent of Beurettes in the June 1989 elections to the Dreux's population, but they cannot vote European Parliament. Ultimately, he says, because Mitterand has not delivered on his the Beurs will have to look to the Euro- 1981 promise to grant them the right to do pean Community and a vision of a "multi- so in municipal contests. "French public cultural European space," not to France, opinion is not ready to accept it," he ex- for answers to their grievances.

O, Africa! "ButWhat About Africa!" byRichard J. Barnet, inHarper's (May 1990), 666 Broadway. New York. N.Y. 10012.

Gloom hangs over Western Africa special- Barnet says. The region has the fastest ists. "Feeling the burden of the Hippo- growing population in the world, but a to- cratic oath-First, do no harm!-" writes tal gross domestic product only about the Barnet, of Washington's Institute for Pol- size of Belgium's! The entire continent ac- icy Studies, "these disillusioned aid givers counts for only three percent of world wonder whether it is not time to cut back, trade. "Marginalization," not exploitation, scale down, go home." is now its chief peril, Barnet says, espe- The reasons for their loss of heart are cially now that erstwhile Cold Warriors painfully obvious. Of the continent's 650 can ignore the Marxist regimes in Ethiopia million people, at least 280 million are and Mozambique and "doctors of develop- poor, and most of the most wretchedly ment" are turning their attention to the poor live in sub-Saharan Africa. "Conup- economies of Eastern Europe. tion, mismanagement, and the persistence In Africa, these "doctors"-from the of tribal politics all conspire to direct well- World Bank and other institutions--have meant subsidies into the wrong pockets," learned from past mistakes. Instead of wa SUMMER 1990

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funding government megaprojects, they what the conservative Peruvian economist are supporting "grassroots" development Hernando de Soto calls the "informal sec- by non-governmental organizations. But in tor"--the poor mechanics, furniture-mak- Kenya, which Barnet visited, people were ers, and others who elude government pessimistic. Outsiders, they say, "do not, regulation, corruption, and harassment. really cannot, comprehend the centrality Ultimately, the hope is that they will be- of tribal politics, which affects almost ev- come politicized, creating a wellspring of ery intervention into the economy." "democratic energy," as in Eastern Eu- Now, says Barnet, many people on both rope. Barnet concedes this is very uncer- the Right and the Left (of which he is a tain, but none of it will come to pass if the prominent member) pin their hopes on West turns its back on Africa.

At the Illao I~useum

A less-than-reverent visit to Mao Zedong's nal having been burned down by the Japan- birthplace is described by journalist Murray ese ... during their first attempt to build a Sayle in the Australian magazine, Quadrant Greater East Asia CoProspen'ty Sphere, but (Jan-Feb. 1990). the replacement, we are told, repeats the orig- inal plan. TThe house/ stands on the side of a small va2- It stands opposite the trangtlil duck pond ley running up into pine-clad mountains from in which, we are told, the infant Mao learnt the main sgttare of Shaoshan village, a walk to swim, acquiring the form with which he of no more than 20 minutes. There is a car later dazzled the world while allegedly cross- and a bus-park nearby, empty when we were ing the Yangtze at Wuhan. The house is by far there, and the last hundred meters is a foot- the biggest in the neighborhood in which no path lined lyith what the French call less than 17 other families, all named Mao bondieuserie: stalls selling Mao medallions, and distant relatives, continue to live, mani- Mao tiepins, Mao thermometers tin glass cure their exquisite rice-paddies, and flour- cases witJI a picture of the Great He2msman ish. None of tlzem, however, has the colon- pasted inside), Mao singlets, Mao I·ulers in naded courtyard with lily pool, the summer inches and centimeters, Mao pencils, and- and winter kitchens, the separate bedrooms clearly diversification to save f2otclzdering and grain store of the Mao residence. Young business--postcards of Chinese pop stars Mao was, in short, the richest kid in the vil- and Inovie actresses .... lage. When we further learnt that his father When ~photographer Ren6] Btlrri and I was exactly the kind of hard, tight-fisted, asked for the Little Red Book we were met clever-with-money and upwardly mobile type only with en?bar- of capitalist entrepre- rassed smiles and neur so admired by giggles, and offered, I ~a - I Margaret Thatcher instead, a rare col- 1 1~3 ~E~n I and Robert Hawke, Iector's item, a set of I B%isg~d~Bt I and we hear that this Mao Zedong cuff- I ~8p~j~i~ I boorish domestic ty- links. Renk, a snappy I , ~II%O~B~IBI~IS~L I rant abused Mao's dresser, snapped ~d ~\JZ~ .:,g Sensitive mother and them tip. her siudiously-in- The Birthplace is dined eldest son, we well worth a visit for do not need the help what it tells us about ~fi~E~~BLR;~PL~a~·"""Ic~g(~l~~ of Austriarz doctors the future Chainnan to explain to us the and his family. The psyche-dynamics of apresent replica.famzhouse Ihe or~Ri is i; hirlory.muchrecent Chinese

wQ SUMMER 1990

137 Reviews of new research at public agencies and private institutions

"]Employers Large and Small." Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass. 02138. 109 pp. ~19.95. Authors: Charles Brown, James Hamilton, alzd James Medoff

"ghe Growtk Experiment: How the New l~ax Policy is Transforming the U.S. Economy." Basic Books, 10 E. 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022. 260 pp. Q21.95. Author: Lawrence B. Lindsey

"The age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s." The Washington Post Co., 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071. 110 pp. ~195. Author: Paul Krug~nan

Economists are often unchari- whelming. Moreover, they to three percent higher than it tably compared to the ancient contend, small business pro- otherwise would have been. priests and soothsayers who vides inferior jobs. Workers in Lindsey concedes that the looked to the inscrutable heav- large firms earn 35 percent tax cut was not self-financing, ens and somehow discerned more than employees of small as some supply-side extremists portents of the human future. firms. Virtually all large firms had predicted. But the tax cut But there is also a modern provide life, health, and acci- for people earning over metaphor that applies to the dent insurance while only two- ~200,000 did in fact pay for it- dismal profession. Economists thirds of smaller ones do; 83 self; these people paid a larger have become psychoanalysts, percent of large nonunion share of the nation's income experts who try to tell us, or firms offer pensions, but only taxes after the top rate was cut. lead us to discover, who or 33 percent of small firms do. Americans who earned be- what we are. So it is that dry What seems to irk the au- tween $75,000 and $200,000 debates over numbers are thors most is the image of the paid about 92 percent of what transformed into struggles to entrepreneur as underdog. they would have paid without a define America's identity. Small businessmen are wealth- tax cut. Workers earning less One such struggle concerns ier than the average American than $20,000 received the big- the role of small business in and very influential in Wash- gest windfall, paying only America. This long-running de- ington. The evidence can be about 82 percent as much as bate was reopened in 1981, seen in the exemption of small they would have. when MIT economist David firms from equal employment Lindsey denies that the Rea- Birch published a major study opportunity laws, lax enforce- gan tax cuts are chiefly to showing that small business is ment of job safety and health blame for subsequent federal responsible for the creation of regulations, and other advan- budget deficits. Those who a whopping 80 percent of the tages. These are advantages, make this argument, he says, U.S. economy's new jobs. It the authors maintain, that wrongly assume that the econ- was the perfect send-off for a small business does not de- omy would have been just as decade land a presidency) that serve. healthy without tax cuts as it celebrated Silicon Valley pio- Small business was popular was with them. neers and other entrepreneurs. during the 1980s, but taxes Between 1980 and 1987, he The new decade begins with were the big issue. The Growth estimates, the national debt a counteroffensive by Brown, Experiment, by Lawrence Lind- rose by ~W529billion more than of the University of Michigan, sey, a Harvard economist now it woul;-lhave if the fiscal poli- and Hamilton and Medoff, on leave and working at the cies of 1980 had remained in both of Harvard. In Employers White House, is a resounding effect. But 79 percent of the in- Large and Small, they argue vindication of what Lindsey's crease resulted from higher that small business (firms with current employer once called federal spending. Only 21 per fewer than 100 workers) is "voodoo economics." cent of the increase was the re- overrated. According to a 1983 Lindsey argues that the Rea- suit of tax reductions. It should study by the U.S. Small Busi- gan tax cut of 1981 did what it come as no surprise that Lind- ness Administration, it creates was supposed to: By 1985, his sey is not disturbed by today's 56 percent of all new jobs-re- economic model shows, the budget deficits. We will soon spectable, but hardly over- gross national product was two grow our way out of them, he

WQ SUMMER 1990

138 RESEARCH REPORTS

confidently predicts, and by rank status in the world." What ers suggest. A trade war that the late 1990s the time should they would have seen as a fail- cut international trade in half be ripe for another round of ure, we view as a success. would reduce world income growth-enhancing tax cuts. Particularly symptomatic, in by only 2.5 percent. However, If Lindsey sees the 1980s as a Krugman's view, is the nation's a trade war would hardly solve decade of triumph, Krugman, chronic trade deficit ($130 bil- America's problems. an MIT economist, sees the lion in 1989). The solution to Krugman sees continued decade as part of a complacent the problem, he writes, "is American drift as the most "age of diminished expecta- both clear and unacceptable": likely path for the 1990s. Grow- tions." Imagine, he says, con- Domestic demand must be ing protectionism around the fronting Americans of the curtailed, and, to that end, the world, along with increasing 1960s "with a nation where federal budget deficit must be foreign ownership of U.S. busi- productivity crept up by little cut. But so far the nation has ness would be one result. more than one percent a year, lacked the political will to trim American living standards where real hourly wages fell the deficit. would improve somewhat, but through the 1970s and '80s, Krugman makes some inter- the nation would decline to where poverty grew in abso- esting incidental points. A full- Number Three status. Clearly, lute terms, and where the fledged international trade Krugman, like so many of his economy was by some mea- war, he calculates, would not colleagues, hopes to stir the pa- sures slipping toward third- be nearly so costly as free-trad- tient to action.

"Pre~erential Policies: EPnInternational Perspective." William Merrow and Co., 105 Madison Ave.,New York, N.Y. 221 pp. ~17.95. Author: Thomas Sowell

What do India, Malaysia, Nige- those members of the favored meet quotas. Drastic reduc- ria, Sri Lanka, and the United group who are already better tions in admissions standards States have in common? All off. Dr. Mahatir bin Mohamad have occurred. Six highly se- have created "preferential poli- admitted as much in 1970 be- lective engineering schools cies" for certain racial, ethnic, fore he became prime minister agreed to accept untouchables or religious groups. And all of Malaysia: "These few with examination scores as low have seen their policies fail. Malays...have waxed rich not as 10 percent. "Even so," says "The rhetoric of 'disad- because of themselves but be- Sowell, "the quota of 54 was vantage' is invoked politically cause of the policy of a govern- never filled." Most of those ad- to cover radically different ment.... The poor Malays mitted flunked out. Through- situations," observes Sowell, themselves have not gained out India, 85 percent of all un- the noted black economist at one iota.... With the exis- touchables admitted to the Hoover Institution. It is tence of the few rich Malays at undergraduate institutions un- used to justify preferences for least the poor can say their fate der preference schemes leave the majority Malays, or Btlmi- is not entirely to serve rich without a degree. puleras (sons of the soil), of non-Malays." A 1984 study Finally, Sowell says, pref- Malaysia, and for the minority shows that the share of Malay erential programs almost al- untouchables of India. Every- income claimed by the top 10 ways lead to political polariza- where, says Sowell, the results percent of all Malays climbed tion and bloodshed. In Nigeria are the same. from 42 percent to 53 percent and Sri Lanka, they helped fuel Preferences always begin as as a result of the nation's pref- civil wars. "temporary" and become per- erentiai treatment policies. What is to be done? Sowell's manent. The world's first mi- Moreover, the gains of the answer is rigorous early nority preferences (for India's few usually are purchased at schooling for the disad- untouchables) began 50 years very high cost. In India, as in vantaged. Even then, the road ago and are still in place. the United States, institutions will be long, and group differ- The preferences always help of higher education struggle to ences are likely to remain.

WQ SUMMER 1990

139 \U~

"d~lik~~i~9~m~ne t~e issh~s be~6~re s~ers e~n a~E ~he ~iea~st~ons.

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We welcome timely letters from readers, especially those who wish to amplify or correct infonnation published in the Quarterly and/or react to the views expressed in our essays. The writer's telephone number and address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for pttblication. Some letters are received in response to the editors' reguests for comment.

Czech Identity Today,after several decades of massemigration, expulsions, deportations, and genocide, ethnic I should like to add a footnote to Ivan Sanders' boundaries have become much more clearly de- piece ["The Quest for Central Europe," WQ, fined. As a result, there are fewer immediate rea- Spring '90]. I think that Western observers some- sons for regional integration. Confined within their times underestimate the differences that separate own "nation states," with far fewer minority Czechs from Poles, or Hungarians, on the meaning groups in their midst, and reduced to cultivating of the protean label, Central Europe. Milan Kun- their own specific national cultures, the peoples of dera is not alone among his countrymen in ap- the region no longer benefit from the marvelous preaching this topic from a melancholic, disabused cosmopolitan culture that characterized the Habs- perspective, although he may be an extreme case. burg monarchy. True, they have been able recently Hungary and Poland are what used to be called to coordinate their actions in ridding themselves of "historical" nations, with longstanding linguistic, the hated Soviettutelage; but once the Sovietprob- literary, and geographical identities. Their writers lem is gone, there will be little incentive for re- and political thinkers have little difficulty in gional cooperation. Rather than deciding to share grounding their work and their identity in a secure their collective misery, these East Central Euro- and confident (sometimes self-confident)culture. pean economic "basket cases" will attempt, and Czechs, on the other hand, display a contrasting are already attempting, to strike individual agree- diffidence:Many of them have expressed doubts ments with the European Economic Community. about the viability of their state, or even the very Why then do I say that hope lies in the collective wisdom of bringing it into existence (hesitations memory of the Habsburg experienceT Because I shared by Tom4 Masaryk only a few years before am convinced that a truly successful European his election to the presidency of the new nation). Economic Community cannot be based on the co- The Czechinterest in a European identity,in the operation of today's nation states, each jealously importance of a European culture of which they guarding its "eternal national values"; each deriv- are a part, in distinguishing their experience from ing its legitimacy from some historic war for na- that of Russia and in treating it as a paradigm and a tional independence and from the successful elimi- warning for all Europeans, should be seen not just nation of its ethnic minorities.Hope for European as an echo of the "European" yearnings of Milosz unification lies in the reconstitution of the historic or Konr~d but as a peculiarly Czech way of having provinces of East Central Europe and of Europe as an identity of their own. Whether this form of self- a whole--provinces that reflected the outcome not identification (some Czechs see it rather as self-lac- of 19th century wars of "national liberation," but of eration) will fade as the country re-enters a more an organic development and of a shared cultural clearly defined European community remains to heritage. be seen. But its historical significanceand particu- Todayit may sound naive to conjure the image larity should not be underestimated, nor too of a sovereign Moravia,Transylvania, Saxony, Ba- readily combined with the different histories and varia, and other provinces united under an all-Eu- conceri~sof its neighbors. ropean government. But then consider that a year Tony Judt or two ago it would have been utterly utopian to Pa2o AIto, Calif. predict that Czechoslovakia would soon be led by one of its dissident writers, or that the people of the East Germany would vote, in peaceful and fair elec- Retum to Habsburg tions,to dismantletheir own state. Istvizn Deick I agree with Ivan Sanders that the East Central Eu- Columbia Univ. ropeans' best hope lies in a collective reconsider- ation of their shared experience under many centu- ries of Habsburg rule. Only in that monarchy were Race and Poverty the peoples of the region able to strike a delicate balancebetween independence and integration. One may questionHoward Husock's ["Fighting

WQ SUMMER 1990

141 COMMENTARY

Poverty the Old Fashioned Way." WQ, Spring '90] litical history." use of history. Are poor African-Americans or His- Yet the Eisenhower years were those of peak panic-Americanstoday very similar to the immi- American power and prestige in the world, com- grant of 1890 or 1920! Some, like Irving Kristol, parable to the years of the Roman Empire`under have argued that they are. But the differences-- Caesar Augustus. And those were years, as Brinkley especially with regard to unemployment and fam- writes, "of remarkable growth and abundance, ily break-up--seem more striking. Thoughtful when the American gross national product nearly scholars today are both perplexed and alarmed at doubled, when poverty declined by almost half" how unyielding the problem of poverty seems to and when "many Americans bathed in a warm be. David Ellwood and Lawrence Summers, puz- glow of triumph and contentment...." zling over our high rates of black joblessness, have Isn't this what has been known for a long time, entertained, only to reject, structural arguments that the happy years in history are the uneventful that focus on social isolation in the ghetto or on years, those without history! technological disruption. They concluded in 1986, Francesco S. Tolone "there are just not any good answers at the current Paradise ~alley, Arizona time." Christopher Sencks reminds us that African- American children of the same socio-economic backgroundas whitechildren enter schools know- Defending Deconstruction ing less. Family breakups, he adds, stem in part from "growing individualism and commitment to Frank McConnell's essay ["Will Deconstruction Be personal freedom." In short, subcultural traditions the Death of Literature?," WQ, Winter '90] is very (such as the relative importance assigned to educa- bad, full of errors and falsifications. He repeats all tion), as well as changes in national values com- the old erroneous journalistic clichb about so- pound the economic-structural problems faced by called "deconstruction," errors long since patiently many of our contemporary poor. refuted by Denida, by me, and by many others. It Prof. James ~ Panerson would be a long business to correct these errors--I Brown Univ. have marked eleven on pages 99-102, and there are eight errors in the second column of page 106 alone. Upward and Out? Rather than being only a decade old, "decon- struction" has been around for almost 25 years and Howard Husock correctly argues that the seale- has by now been thoroughly absorbed in American ment houses and their residents promoted social intellectual life in a large variety of forms. Far from and economic justice--and made numerous con- contributing to some "momentous crisis'' in the tributions to American social welfare from which study of literature, it has contributed to the mani- we can benefit today, fold admirably productive and socially useful trans- it is certainly correct to point out that the settle- formations that are going on now in literary study. ment-house residents emphasized upward mobil-_ It is impossible in a brief letter to try Once more ity, with success. It is doubtful, however, whether a to set the record straight, but three points may be "renewed emphasis on the active promotion of up- stressed here: 1) The dissemination of "decon- ward mobility offers a way out of" today's poverty structionisms" to theology, philosophy, anthropol- problem, as Husock maintains. More than a belief ogy, architecture, law, and even to the creative arts in upward mobility, the poor need steady, well-pay- has led to much diversity and downright heteroge- ing jobs with full benefits, especially health insur- neity. Sentences that take the form of "Decon- ance. When these are available, the belief in suc- struction is So and so" are bound to be aberrant. 2) cess, or upward mobility, will return with meaning One major value of deconstructionisms, for me at and effectiveness, least, has not been their theoretical formulations Waiter I. Tranner but exactly the same feature that drew me origi- Univ. of Wis., Milwatlkee nally to the work of Georges Poulet: the penetrat- ing, original, socially and pedagogically useful readings of specific works. 3) Deconstructionisms Happy with Ike have performed their liberating critique of "logocentrism" not to dismantle and undo, but as Alan Brinkley, in his article ["A President for Cer- an affirmative solicitation gesturing toward new in- tain Seasons," WQ, Spring '90], concludes that stitutional and cultural forms. These prospective af- nothing in "Dwight D. Eisenhower's uneventful firmations are oriented toward precisely that "real presidency ensures him an important place in po- world" of history McConnell says "deconstruction"

WQ SUMMER 1990

142 COMMENTARY

ignores. They involve new disciplinary studies deconstructionists, like true believers everywhere, whose outlines are only beginning to emerge, as have a problem distinguishing fact from opinion. well as new forms of democracy, new forms of The gravamen of his (to be generous) critique is in responsibility. fact in his last paragraph: What's wrong with me is McConnell is throughout tilting at a phantom that I am "no longer where the action is." In other windmill of his own concoction. The battle with words, humanism is out, deconslructiov2 is in, and shadows that he fights seems outmoded, outside so there. This sort of argument from fashion will not the "mainstream," to use his word against him-- surprise those who have followed Professor Miller's no longer where the action is. The spectacle would career. A kind of intellectual top-40 deejay, he has have its comic side if it did not become deadly seri- from book to book altered his approach--his pro- ous when a supposedly responsible journal like the gramming?--in a heroic quest of the au coLlrant. Wilson Quarterly prints the essay as an apparently And when he describes me as "ti2tingat a phan- accurate and authoritative account of its topic that tom windmill of ~my/ own concoction, " he gets his will be read by many people outside the field of source wrong. Don Quirote tilted at real windmills literary studies. that he thought were giants. But then again, since a J. Hil2isMiller windmill is a creaky mechanism producing circular Univ. of Calif., Ir/ine motion through the agency of warm air, whose only function is to grind living kernels into mush, as an image of deconstructiov2ism at its worst, it will Frank McConnell Replies serve.

Miller's comments perfectly incarnate what I find Cowections most objectionable in the deconstructionist stance but was too cov2ciliatoryto mention. What he her A periodical review on p. 13 of the Spring '90 WQ, aids as my "errors and falsifications" are, it turns stated that Turkey shares no border with the Soviet out, divergences of opinion and interpretation. But Union. It does. The WQ regrets the error. ··-· Bargain Books, Publisher's Overstocks Over 3,000 Titles at up to 80% Off in our Free Catalog dg- Choose from recent overstocks, remainders, imports and reprints from all major publishers - over 3,000 titles including about 600 new arrivals each month, ~ine most at savings of 50% to 80%! Here you'll find Politics, Biography, History, Fic- tion, Art, Literature, Reading Health, Movies, Nature, Cooking and Gardening Glasses and much more. Every- thing from yesterday's best Send for your FREE 16-page Catalog today. sellersto titlesyou never Featuring40 styles of magnifiers,magnified ( L~ knewexisted.

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