![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This was initially posted in reply to a posting at John and Antonio's Iberian Notes blog, to the opening paragraph:
In response, John wrote:
Randy, that's the point I'm trying to make. All nations were born through conquest and war. It's no fair going around bashing other countries for what they did in the past if your country did the same thing, only worse. Spaniards bash Americans for what America did in the past. I am calling this unfair because everybody else, including Spain, did the same thing. If we criticize everybody involved for the slave trade, that seems perfectly fair to me. What isn't fair is picking out one country to blame for something everybody was doing.
And I replied as follows:
***
This is fair, and I do agree with it, actually. You list four events that Spanish anti-Americans/people opposed to American policy cite:
* the 1973 coup in Chile
* the American military alliance with Spain under Franco's regime
* the Spanish-American war
* the embargo on Cuba.
The Spanish-American War is chronologically quite distant from events in modern-day Spain, the United States, and the Spanish colonies involved in the war. It had a huge effect on Spain, and on the Spanish colonies which fell into the American sphere, but it's a dead letter: American sins in 1898 are about as relevant as, oh, German sins in 1870-1871.
The American alliance with Franco's Spain isn't quite so distant--there are still quite a few Spaniards (Spanish?) and Americans alive now who were alive in the 1950's, and who were involved in making policy or benefitting from policy. That has some relevance.
Now, 1973 in Chile. Myself, I'm of the opinion that the divisions in Chilean society in the early 1970's were such that some kind of extraconstitutional intervention would have been inevitable, later and probably less brutal and enduring than Pinochet's. To the extent that American support for Pinochet's coup efforts did install a harder and longer-lasting military regime, there's room for blame. And modern Chile, from all that I know, is rather sharply divided over the issue to this day, never mind the continuing tensions over the role of the military.
The American embargo on Cuba, now, is an ongoing thing. As I post my reply and as you will read the reply, the embargo will still be going on. It's a live issue.
These four issues are of radically different chronological depth, and consequently, of radically different importance in day-to-day policymaking. The Spanish-American War is as dead a historical issue as the Franco-Prussian War. The American alliance with Franco's Spain isn't quite there yet.
The last two issues, though--particularly Cuba--are contemporary issues, with continuing repercussions. As it happens, they're issues directly connected with current-day United States policy-making to this day. Take Jonathan Edelstein's take on the events in the 1970s-era war against drugs: If elements of that policymaking mindset are still in evidence, the United States will have big problems in justifying its current policies. (With which I don't necessarily disagree.)
All four of these events, though, share in common the fact that they're far more contemporary than Spanish colonial sins in the Indies in the 16th century. To bring these up in the context of modern-day American foreign policy seems perilously like bait-and-switch. Bring up Spanish sins contemporary with Chile and Cuba, and then you'll have a useful point.
Looks like the Chileans might be fairly easy to convince, but the Mexicans won't, because the Mexican government cannot appear to its highly nationalistic citizens to be following gringo orders. It's interesting that the Chilean people and media seem to be a good bit less anti-American than their Spanish equivalents, particularly so since the 1973 coup in Chile is one of the great crimes of the United States according to Spanish America-haters. (The others are, in order, the American military alliance with Spain under Franco's regime, the Spanish-American war, and the embargo on Cuba. You might hear references to Hiroshima and Vietnam. Spaniards normally fail to dig into the two great sins of the American past, though, slavery and the treatment of the Indians. This is possibly because their empire was considerably more brutal than the British and, later, the Americans, regarding these questions.)
In response, John wrote:
Randy, that's the point I'm trying to make. All nations were born through conquest and war. It's no fair going around bashing other countries for what they did in the past if your country did the same thing, only worse. Spaniards bash Americans for what America did in the past. I am calling this unfair because everybody else, including Spain, did the same thing. If we criticize everybody involved for the slave trade, that seems perfectly fair to me. What isn't fair is picking out one country to blame for something everybody was doing.
And I replied as follows:
***
This is fair, and I do agree with it, actually. You list four events that Spanish anti-Americans/people opposed to American policy cite:
* the 1973 coup in Chile
* the American military alliance with Spain under Franco's regime
* the Spanish-American war
* the embargo on Cuba.
The Spanish-American War is chronologically quite distant from events in modern-day Spain, the United States, and the Spanish colonies involved in the war. It had a huge effect on Spain, and on the Spanish colonies which fell into the American sphere, but it's a dead letter: American sins in 1898 are about as relevant as, oh, German sins in 1870-1871.
The American alliance with Franco's Spain isn't quite so distant--there are still quite a few Spaniards (Spanish?) and Americans alive now who were alive in the 1950's, and who were involved in making policy or benefitting from policy. That has some relevance.
Now, 1973 in Chile. Myself, I'm of the opinion that the divisions in Chilean society in the early 1970's were such that some kind of extraconstitutional intervention would have been inevitable, later and probably less brutal and enduring than Pinochet's. To the extent that American support for Pinochet's coup efforts did install a harder and longer-lasting military regime, there's room for blame. And modern Chile, from all that I know, is rather sharply divided over the issue to this day, never mind the continuing tensions over the role of the military.
The American embargo on Cuba, now, is an ongoing thing. As I post my reply and as you will read the reply, the embargo will still be going on. It's a live issue.
These four issues are of radically different chronological depth, and consequently, of radically different importance in day-to-day policymaking. The Spanish-American War is as dead a historical issue as the Franco-Prussian War. The American alliance with Franco's Spain isn't quite there yet.
The last two issues, though--particularly Cuba--are contemporary issues, with continuing repercussions. As it happens, they're issues directly connected with current-day United States policy-making to this day. Take Jonathan Edelstein's take on the events in the 1970s-era war against drugs: If elements of that policymaking mindset are still in evidence, the United States will have big problems in justifying its current policies. (With which I don't necessarily disagree.)
All four of these events, though, share in common the fact that they're far more contemporary than Spanish colonial sins in the Indies in the 16th century. To bring these up in the context of modern-day American foreign policy seems perilously like bait-and-switch. Bring up Spanish sins contemporary with Chile and Cuba, and then you'll have a useful point.
