America, América: A New History of the New World - Book by Greg Grandin
“somos más americanos,
que el hijo de anglosajón
que el hijo de anglosajón
Quiero recordarle al gringo:
yo no crucé la frontera,
la frontera me cruzó.
We are more American than the sons of the Anglo-Saxons.
I want to remind the Gringo:
I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me.
This song "Somos más Americanos" by the Mexican band Los Tigres del Norte is a common refrain from Mexicans who are subjected to the cruel shaming and abuse by Trump. The US annexed half of Mexican territory in the mid nineteenth century and has usurped even the name “America” from the hemisphere, while it is “América" for the Latinos.
Prof Greg Grandin of Yale University, the author of this book, says that his objective in writing this book is not to fuss over names but rather to explore the New World’s long history of ideological and ethical contestation. It is a long book of 743 pages which reads like the "one hundred years of solitude” the Magical Realism novel of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Grandin has given an elaborate account of the interaction between the US and Latin America, starting from colonial days until the second Trump administration. The book, published in April 2025, has come at an opportune time when Trump has reasserted the US hegemony of the hemisphere with his “Donroe Doctrine” (Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine). Trump’s actions have reconfirmed yet again the famous prediction of the South American Liberator Simon Bolívar “The United States seem destined by Providence to plague America with torments in the name of liberty.”
Grandin has dug up history deep and come out with a number of interesting anecdotes and vignettes of the US-Latin America interactions. Some of them are predictable and others surprising. One of the incredible stories in the book is the mediation between US and Mexico by ABC Powers.
The US invaded Mexico on 21 April 1914 and occupied the port of Veracruz on the pretext that it was to prevent the shipment of arms by Germany to the Mexican military dictator Victoriano Huerta. On 24 April, the ambassadors of the ABC Powers (Argentina, Brazil and Chile) offered mediation to resolve the conflict between Mexico and the US. This was, surprisingly, accepted by President Wilson. The negotiations started in Niagara on the Canadian side on 20 May. The ABC powers tabled three proposals: Mexican military dictator Huerta should resign; the US should withdraw its armed forces from Mexico; and a neutral candidate should succeed Huerta. The conference ended on 1 July. Huerta resigned on 15 July and went on exile to Europe. In September, Carranza from the democratic faction of Mexico took over as President. In November, US withdrew their forces. In March 1915, the US Congress passed a resolution thanking the ambassadors of the ABC countries and recommending award of Presidential medals of honor to them. After a series of meetings with Latin American delegates, the US joined with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Colombia, and Costa Rica in a collective recognition of Carranza as provisional president. President Wilson hailed the innovation, saying that the collective recognition of Carranza showed that the cooperative relations of the Western Hemisphere could serve as a model for other regions and the world. An amazing story, indeed, at this turbulent Trump times.
Trump is not the first American President to use objectionable language against Latin Americans. President Roosevelt ridiculed Venezuelan President Castro, calling him an “unspeakable villainous little monkey.” The US press painted the Venezuelan leader in extreme racist terms, creating a new standard of dehumanization of foreign leaders, especially leaders who threatened the property rights of foreign (American) investors. The diplomat Francis Huntington Wilson, Yale educated, described another economic nationalist, Nicaragua’s president José Santos Zelaya, as “unspeakable carrion.” Roosevelt thought Colombians were “contemptible little creatures” for opposing his Panama grab.
In the late 1800s, the US and European corporations and banks started economic exploitation of Latin America. The United Fruit Company regularly overthrew governments in Guatemala and Honduras. The US banks financed many of the arms sales to Latin America. At least a third of all loans made in the years following World War I to Latin America was spent on arms. National City Bank floated a bond on behalf of Peru to pay for weapons. But Lima soon ran out of revenue with which to make its payments, so it worked out a deal with United Aircraft and Electric Boat Company to sell guano in the United States to pay off its debt. Freighters sailing to Peru dropped off TNT and weapons and picked up guano. Bombs floated south. Bird shit went north.
Bolivia in 1908 had no foreign debt and had a small army. Two decades later, the country owed forty million dollars, much of it to Rockefeller’s Chase National. A significant portion of the loaned money had been used to supply arms to Bolivia. By 1929, 37 percent of government revenue went to service debt, and 20 percent went to the military. As the military grew more politically powerful within Bolivia, civil politicians were increasingly subordinated to its edicts. Standard Oil, which by 1921 had taken control of fifty million acres of Bolivian land, instigated the country to fight a border war against Paraguay in 1932-35, claiming falsely that the area had huge oil reserves. Paraguay was supported by the British Royal Dutch Shell. The war ended in a stalemate with hundreds of deaths and the discovery that the surveyors’ reports were wrong and there was no oil below the ground.
British merchants and banking houses also joined in the fatal game of loans and arms through extending credit and collecting debt; financing weapon purchases; advancing loans to feed armies. Then the bill came. London suppliers began presenting staggeringly high invoices for materiel they said they had shipped on credit during the early years of the war against Spain. Debt piled up, requiring the securing of more loans to service interest. British warships carted off millions of pounds of Potosí silver as interest payment.
Not one Spanish American republic in the decades after independence could keep up with interest payments. Nations that couldn’t pay back what they owed weren’t so much denied credit as forced to accept ever more onerous terms. France had leveraged a dispute over a bond issuance to justify its 1861 invasion of Mexico. Napoleon III, the French emperor installed Maxmilian I as the emperor of Mexico from 1864 to 1867.
Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany owed Latin American nations a significant amount of money for the wheat, beef, and nitrates they had purchased on credit during the four-year First World War. They paid off this debt by offering, at cut-rate prices, all their leftover war materiel, arms and ammunition. Flooding the continent with weapons sparked political extremism, especially on the right, facilitating the rise of paramilitary organizations and inciting violence within and between nations.
While Trump has been using force and violence for deportation of immigrants, President Abraham Lincoln considered sending out the African Americans into Central America. On August 14, 1862, one year into the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln received a deputation of free Black leaders at the White House, where he suggested Central America as a place they might go. Lincoln was committed to finding some spot, preferably not too far away, where the nation’s emancipated could live in peace. Upon taking office, Lincoln asked Secretary of State William Seward and Montgomery Blair to sound out the governments of Mexico and Central America to see if any might be amenable to taking in the United States’ population of African Americans. Lincoln named Reverend James Mitchell, who headed Indiana’s American Colonization Society, to run the federal Office of Emigration, which oversaw various schemes to encourage the self-deportation of free people of color. But Lincoln had to abandon this scheme after resistance from the Afro- Americans.
The book reconfirms the reality that Latin America is condemned to be subjected to US hegemony, interventions and destabilization. The South American countries have some wiggle room to play the China card since China has become the largest market for their agricultural products and minerals, the largest trade partner, investor and infrastructure builder. But the Central American countries and Mexico which are more dependent on US for trade, migration and remittances have no option but to be on the receiving end of US domination. Despite this challenging constraint, it is admirable to see that the Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has managed Trump with her calm, intellectual and pragmatic manner showing firmness on issues of greater stake and flexibility on other matters. Trump has even expressed admiration for her and said that Mexico should be proud to have her as President. Her mature conduct and sophisticated style offers a stark contrast to the polarizing, extremist, uncouth and offensive words and actions of Trump and company. She is a climate scientist while Trump demonizes scientists.
In contrast to the Epstein-tainted US, Mexico has achieved gender parity by giving almost fifty percent share to women in the top executive, legislative and judicial positions, as mandated by a 2019 law. The Supreme Court, the Senate, the Lower House and the cabinet have almost fifty percent representation of women. The President is a woman. Her leading rival in the Presidential elections was also a woman.
Grandin’s book is free from the usual bias and condescending attitude of US writers. He is objective and neutral in his observations and comments. His book is a valuable and comprehensive resource for Latin America studies.
