BOGOTÁ — We just need to listen to the declarations made by Claudia Sheinbaum about Latin America’s cooperation potential at the CELAC conference. From that speech last week in Honduras by Mexico’s new president, we see anew how the 21st century has brought nothing but bad news for the poor of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
As the world gets more dangerous and divided, the newspapers seem to have one basic message for our continent: it is irrelevant.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
China as an economic power, Russia as a military power and the United States as a technological power, are fighting for hegemony over the world. Europe, the only region with which we have something in common, if only for our cultural affinities and aspirations, has lost clout and its own historical vocation.
Not that we are Europe, nor do we even know yet what exactly we are: only that, historically, Latin America has always been a part of the spoils shared among the powers.
As the economists say, at the banquet of politics, those not on the guest list are on the menu, and that is what has happened with our continent.
But remember, the powerful are often conquered by their conquests. England colonized the United States only to end up in a subordinate position. The United States grabbed Mexican territory and has ended up with an enormous Hispanic population, with Spanish as the country’s second language. Europe invaded, well, everywhere, mixing the races and confounding the predominance of those supposedly purer races.
It is a challenging moment in history, and Latin America needs something more than a mere project for its own consumption. It should instead show that it is capable to become the face of a project that serves not armies or specific corporations or big tech, but humanity.
China’s reinvention
Take China, the great miracle of our time. It reinvented itself 75 years ago — yanking 800 million people out of poverty — and has shown over four decades that an ancient civilization can engage in a daring dialogue with modernity. But China is disciplined, collectivist and despotic — and miracles of its caliber need those three conditions.
Russia is different. It appears to be vaster than the world itself, arousing greed and envy in all and sundry, but remains trapped in the clash of anarchy and despotism. It is a land of conflict, torment, barbaric violence and refinement.
Only Russia, as a land of unique compassion and of extreme cruelty, could have given birth to that autocrat Ivan the Terrible, those giants of literature Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Lenin and Stalin but also Osip Mandelstam, the poet who shared their horrific times.
The United States was — for a long time — an example of faith in democracy, as defined by another poet, Walt Whitman. It came to symbolize humane instincts, institutional strengths and private enterprise, but also the work ethic, naivety and even excess.
That very excess has led it to become the world’s most opulent, and most indebted, country, which ultimately means disaster.
The counterpart to its internal freedom was external aggression.
Surprisingly, more than two centuries after the French Revolution and its ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité, the modern world is facing a far harsher paradigm: the triple hegemony of the Chinese model, which entirely disregards freedom; the U.S. model, marked by its contempt for equality; and the Russian model, which has cast doubt on the very notion of fraternity.
When Europe sought to embody those principles, the counterpart to its internal freedom was external aggression; its model of equality treated the rest of humanity as inferior; and its dream of fraternity sank in the blood of endless wars — nation against nation, race against race, sect against sect.
Enemy of freedom, and fraternity
Europe’s history seems to suggest that equality is the enemy of freedom, and that freedom is the enemy of fraternity.
Europe gave birth to the philosophy of human rights and Christian humanism. Yet, as it infected the rest of the world with its Christianity, its liberalism, Marxism and yearning for material comfort and even supremacy, it was exhausting itself struggling to maintain unity and contain internal rivalries.
China, Russia and the United States have a far narrower interest, namely their own economic, military and technological supremacy. They appear oblivious to an unfolding reality: that their transformative industries, insatiable rearmament, unfathomable technologies and their tug-of-war, may entail our collective downfall.
The world needs more than this, something that cannot be given by industry, military power or the technological frenzy. And that is a sense of balance, not supremacy, of friendly cohabitation instead of the domineering urge, and a sense of awe for what we already have instead of follies and hubris.
Bubble of delusion
The ideal of living in opulence, with better weapons and control through technology has created a bubble of delusion that could burst at any moment. Empires project themselves as endless but are surprisingly fragile. Rome may have lasted for centuries, yet the Soviet Union only lasted decades, and Napoleon and Hitler’s “1000-year Reich” a mere few years. And the current struggle between the planetary titans could turn everything to ash in moments.
Who knows if, as Jesus declares in the Bible, “the meek shall inherit the earth,” but it’s already clear the thugs of our world have a fight on their hands if they want it all. The future, should we ever see it, may yet belong to those who have nothing to lose, who wield no arms and are not consumed by hate. The compassionate among us have certainly more to give than any tycoon or philanthropist, while those who know what gratitude means are in turn enriched by this gift of God that makes everything before them a miracle.
Europe’s greatness is thus not in its empires but in Christ’s doctrine, China’s and India’s in the teachings of Lao Tseu and the Buddha, Russia’s in the lives and novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and the United States’ in the poetry of Whitman and Emily Dickinson. These constitute a hoard of wealth available to the poorest among us.
There have been barely any wars between Latin American nations
And we may be sure it won’t be the message of opulence but the efforts of millions of ordinary workers that will restore dignity to our lives. Our security won’t come from inexhaustible, mechanized armies or giant prisons, but from our efforts to teach and live together.
Let us recall here, there have been barely any wars between Latin American nations, as none aspires to supremacy. Nobody will earn a place in history for wielding some crushingly effective technology, but for their ability to honor, protect and respectfully utilize what we still have: namely the natural world we live in.
Our grace and charm
In a world sickened with ambition, we might do well to read some of the gentle poetry of our continent: like ‘The Missionary’ (El misionero) by Argentina’s Almafuerte (Pedro Palacios), ‘Lucky the Normal People’ (Felices los normales) by Roberto Fernández Retamar or ‘Soft Fatherland’ (La suave patria) by López Velarde. For therein lie our grace and charm.
To those beggars who need people to come and kneel before them, the Colombian poet Porfirío Barba Jacob has said in all his splendor, “Rest your fatigue on mine, and I shall lay my grief on yours.”
To the greedy who say they must grab a piece of land or a planet, Diogenes (“the Cynic”) said from the depths of the past, repeating the words of his teacher Antisthenes, that “in this world, the only things of value are those floating to the surface with their owner in a shipwreck.”
It is always good to listen to a calm and respectful voice, when blind powers want to send us full speed toward the ultimate shipwreck.
