Part 1: A Hard Look At Latin America

A LEGACY OF INEQUALITY

Over 500 years ago Europeans invaded the Americas. Seeking trade routes and treasure (the Native Peoples resources). They brought guns and metal swords and armor. Using these, and exploiting religious beliefs and local rivalries (divide and conquer), they quickly made themselves absolute rulers over millions of Native Americans. In Latin America, the Spanish rules with a cold, calculated brutality. Native languages, customs, and religions were done away with.

The social structure of Latin America was shaped by CONQUEST. Beneath a veneer of modernity and democracy, the social structure of these countries remains essentially feudal. A small wealthy, ruling elite, mostly descendants of the European conquerors, dominates social, economic, and political life. Although mestizos, Indians, and blacks make up the majority of the population in most countries, they have little voice in the government. The concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a few forces most of the people into poverty.

This vast inequality gives rise to "social unrest" as the poor struggle for equality and social justice. Unwilling to give up their privileged social position, the elites respond with repression: arrests, torture, and death squads. As President Kennedy observed many years ago, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." Social movements for equality and democracy continue to emerge, generating ongoing conflict in the region. The tragic cycle of revolutions and civil wars in Latin America - Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Columbia, among others - are products of this historically unequal social structure.