Yankee No!: Anti-Americanism in U.S.–Latin American Relations

by Alan L. McPherson

In 1958, angry Venezuelans attacked Vice President Richard Nixon in Caracas, opening a turbulent decade in Latin American-U.S. relations. In Yankee No! Alan McPherson sheds much-needed light on the controversial and pressing problem of anti-U.S. sentiment in the world.

Examining the roots of anti-Americanism in Latin America, McPherson focuses on three major crises: the Cuban Revolution, the 1964 Panama riots, and U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic. Deftly combining cultural and political analysis, he demonstrates the shifting and complex nature of anti-Americanism in each country and the love-hate ambivalence of most Latin Americans toward the United States. When rising panic over "Yankee hating" led Washington to try to contain foreign hostility, the government displayed a surprisingly coherent and consistent response, maintaining an ideological self-confidence that has outlasted a Latin American diplomacy torn between resentment and admiration of the United States.

However, McPherson warns, U.S. leaders run a great risk if they continue to ignore the deeper causes of anti-Americanism. Written with dramatic flair, Yankee No! is a timely, compelling, and carefully researched contribution to international history.

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2003

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting...McPherson takes a look at the effects of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. He looks four countries that are typicall known as anti-American and examines a)the history behind the sentiment b)whether anti-Americanism really exists in those countries or if it contrived and c)how anti-Americanism has effected the Latin American countries. Definitely worth reading; it gives a pretty thorough history of anti-Americanism in Latin America, as well as track s its development through the years. Reads like a novel, but there are some pretty slow moments. All in all, a good read.

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

McPherson's take on anti-Americanism (ie, "anti-USism") in the cold war Caribbean was written as an historical guide to the 9/11 era and its recurrent themes of "Why do they hate us?" and "How can they hate us?" He explores the willful naivite behind the plaint by referring us to an earlier era which has merged almost seamlessly with the new.

McPherson takes anti-USism as unique, but I disagree. There most certainly is an anti-Britishism (re: Ireland, India) and anti-Russianism (Poland, the Baltic States.) There doubtless was an anti-Rome-ism too. Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn Rule" ("You break it, it's yours, you've bought it") is the historic norm. Great powers, by nature, inevitably act the bull in the global china shop and are as inevitably hated for it. Although more thoughtful policy makers are aware of this dilemma, such knowledge has little practical effect.

McPherson's analysis of anti-Americanism in Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, and the Dominican Republic stresses the underdog resentment of America's neighbors, and suggests anti-Americanism is more an elite than a grass-roots phenomenon. His recounting of the US-Cuba rupture is his key point. In the need of the new revolutionary elite to consolidate sovereignty over their country, Fidel's early pragmatic "Menshevism" gave way to a radicalizing class war and anti-Americanism, both of which were only latent and needed considerable stoking to emerge as a mass force. This echoes the need of conservative elites to promote their own anti-Americanism, to keep the Colossus of the North from trampling their own turf, a problem too remote from the majority's daily struggle for survival.

The US, for its part, conveniently conflated anti-Americanism with Communism as a rationale for extending its cold war battlelines: who else but Commies could find fault with the USA, Leader of the Free World? This raises a question that McPherson seems to avoid: that anti-Americanism might also be a manipulated pretext for Washington, a rationale to pursue policies otherwise morally unacceptable. McPherson quotes US Secretary of State Christian Herter that his Department "applied a series of tests to the Castro regime" in its first ten months, without specifying as to what said tests might have been. But we know that Fidel was not the only one pursuing disingenuous "ambivalence." Anti-Castro actions and McCarthyite red-baiting were already conveniently outsourced to the CIA, exiles, and private agencies, allowing the US to maintain its facade of diplomatic neutrality. The upper middle class, middle-aged white males running the State Department reacted much the same to Carribbean anti-Americanism as they did to the simultaneous civil rights movement at home.

Because at bottom they already knew the answer to their posed question. Without indulging in conspiracy theory, how convenient and necessary it seems for "them to hate us"; how readily the coup d'etat of the Patriot Act was rushed through after 9/11. George Bush's pained query, then, becomes a self-serving rhetorical device, not a puzzled wonder at the way of the world.

Although now nearly two decades old, the book is still timely as the US yet treads the world's turf in endless wars for respect and "prestige"; still imposing its way of life - in Stalin's famous phrase - as far as one's army can reach.

[Beau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good treatment of Cold War diplomatic history concerning Cuba, Panama and the Dominican Republic. His sources are better than average. Outstanding epilogue warns what the American future may hold if US attitudes do not change.
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