Latin America: A Race between Disaster and
Reform
As time remorselessly moves forward through the second
half of the twentieth century, a major problem for the United
States is the fate of Latin America, that gigantic portion of the
Western Hemisphere that is south of the Rio Grande.
It is not an area that can continue to be ignored, because
it is neither small nor remote, and its problems are both urgent
and explosive. Yet, until 1960, it was ignored.
The Latin America that demanded attention in 1960 was
twice the size of the United States (7.5 million square miles
compared to 3.6 million square miles), with a population about lo
percent larger (200 million persons compared to our 180 million in
1960). Brazil, which spoke Portuguese rather than Spanish, had
almost half the total area with more than a third the total
population (75 million in 1960).
In 1960 Brazil reached the end of a decade of economic and
population expansion during which its economy was growing at about
7 percent a year while its population was growing over 2.5 percent
a year, both close to the fastest rates in the world. (The
population increase of Asia was about 1.8 percent a year, Russia
and the United States were less, while Europe was only 0.7 percent
a year.) Brazil's rate of economic growth fell to about 3 percent a
year after 1960, while its population explosion became worse,
apparently trying to catch up with the Brazilian cost of living,
which rose 40 percent in 1961, 50 percent in 1962, and 70 percent
in 1963.
Except for its fantastic price inflation, Brazil's problems
were fairly typical of those faced by all of Latin America. These
problems might be boiled down to four basic issues:
(1) falling death rates, combined with continued high
birthrates, are producing a population explosion unaccompanied by
any comparable increase in the food supply;
(2) the social disorganization resulting from such
population increase, combined with a flooding of people from rural
areas into urban slums, is reflected in disruption of family life,
spreading crime and immorality, totally inadequate education and
other social services, and growing despair;
(3) the ideological patterns of Latin America, which were
always unconstructive, are being replaced by newer, equally
unconstructive but explosively violent, doctrines; and
(4) there is simultaneously an unnecessary spreading of
modern weapons and a growing disequilibrium between the control of
such arms and the disintegrating social structure and the
increasing social and political pressures just mentioned.
Some of the more obvious consequences of these four
problems might be mentioned here...
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