What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?
Quite a lot actually. You can go from the illegitimate son of a nobleman, illiterate, disregarded in Spain and become the Governor General of Peru, lord of all you survey (Pizarro) or you can use your manipulative charms (and unbounded capacity for deceit) and move from being a notary to lay claim to Mexico (Cortes) - and maybe, just maybe if you weave into your entourage just the right kind of priest, you may cling to your soul as well!
Maria Arana's exploration of Latin American history is through these three lenses: silver (extractive industry and greed), sword (violence and authoritarianism) and stone (religion) and how they interweave.
It is not a pretty sight. By her own admission, she is looking at the dark side of her continent's history, one that continues to cast a shaping shadow over the present, making all the real progress that has been achieved, especially most recently the reduction of poverty, fragile.
She does this by moving from three vignettes of individuals representing the realities of extraction - a Peruvian woman who labors to extract silver from the waste load of mines - a Cuban who serves the revolution (in Angola) but finds himself exiled by Castro and in a decaying, drug induced life spiral in the US; and, a Catalan Jesuit faced with the contradictions of serving the indigenous in Bolivia between revolution and reaction; and, from this to the wider arc of history and its patterning.
The book is primarily a narrative rather than an analytical study but its strengths are its breadth - exploring pre as well as post Colombian history, its even handiness between right and left; and, its ability to paint the continuities as well as the discontinuities of conquest.
It is often a harrowing tale - not simply for the sustained violence - 43 of the world's fifty most dangerous cities as of today are in Latin America - but mainly because of the continued sense of hope postponed especially when a liberator and reformer appears only either to be assassinated or displaced or to slowly corrode into an authoritarian. The primary example of which would be Bolivar, the great liberator himself, whose enlightenment ideals collapsed against the weight of the savagery of the wars of liberation and the competing visions of what liberation should look like. For the creole elite (self-perceived as white 'pure bloods'), this vision did not entail sharing power with the indigenous or black (and poorer) majority - and Arana is exceptionally fierce when exposing the ongoing, pervasive racism that stains through Latin America - around which much remains in denial.
Nor does she have any truck with pretending, as a response to this obvious bigotry, that Columbus is a simple dividing line: pre = good, post = bad. Not only was pre-Colombian America dominated by empires maintained through systemic violence (though better moderated than the post-Colombian version) but it fails to address the current complexities. The President of Mexico might want a Spanish apology for empire (and that might not go amiss and be welcomed as Pope Francis apology on behalf of the Church, given in Bolivia, electrified his mostly indigenous audience) but it would assume that all Mexicans were somehow now 'indigenous' rather than a complex, mixed, often deeply divided and unequal society - and that complex society is what it is because of the Spanish conquest. For unlike later colonial empires, the Spanish (in spite of their rhetoric of whiteness) mixed freely shaping the population of Latin America that we find today (undoubtedly accelerated by the depopulation that accompanied conquest).
She is, also, excellent on religion both that of its indigenous population (both pre and post Colombian) and on the role of the Catholic Church. Though as fitting a survey her brushstrokes are broad, you get a real and compelling sense of the original Conquistadors complete lack of interest (despite personal faith) pre-occupied as they were with gold and silver. The way the Church played catch up and slowly imposed itself on the culture - with only exceptional and remarkable attempts at mitigation of the conquest's impact - Bartolome de las Casas and the Jesuits in Paraguay being notable examples - and its sheer ambiguity - provision of aid and education to the masses and yet bulwark of conservatism only to be partially reassessed in response to the birth of revolution in the 50s and 60s and of liberation theology. She is, also, good on the rise of Pentecostalism and its appeal - social reforming at the level of individual habit, the opportunity for prosperity and an ecstatic, personally experienced religiosity.
The weaknesses of the book is in the analysis as you are left still wondering why - the propensity towards violence and its persistence (even in its apparent rituals), the default to the authoritarian despite persistent failure; and, the willingness of elites to shaft their own people and yet fail to adequately resist the extraction of wealth that is colonialism in a different form. It lacks too a theory (or theories) about these trends that might better explain them - though the slight attempts leave you wanting more. There is a fascinating dip into the complex field of epigenetics for example.
It undoubtedly also requires a balancing volume - the virtues of Latin American culture - not least the extraordinary resilience that helps people navigate such challenges and retain an ability to celebrate and strive - and that acknowledges the progress made and the examples to lean on or into. It does not explain why so many people fall in love with the region(s) including myself.
It does, however, make you deeply wary of buying anything made of gold or silver again (or in my case happy that I own neither)!
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