Book Review: Latin America and Caribbean: The Unwritten Alliance
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Author | Robert Cuff |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200168 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
162
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
wide
pattern
of
enrichment
of
the
rich
and
deprivation
of
the
poor.
The
rising
costs
of
industrial
goods
and
the relatively
falling
prices
of
primary
produce he
sees
as
a
crucial
feature
of
a
world
economically
domnnated
by
men
of
wealth
whose
concerns
are
with
the
creation
of
profits
rather
than
the
achievement
of
equity and
progress
for
cen-
turies-poor nations.
This
is
generally
obvious,
and
Nkrumah
offers no
method
of
re-
distributing
wealth
which
does
not
also
involve
severe political
reforms
in
countries
whose
power
structures
could
not
countenance
such
reforms.
Nor
is
it
clear
how
sufficient
investment
capital can
be
generated
from
within
if
not
from
without
countries
lacking
indigenously controlled
productive
systems.
Still,
this
is
clearly a
heart-felt
book
by
a
person
with
considerable
experience
and
it
is
too
easy
to
dismiss
it
on
doL
trinaire
or
techmcal-economic
grounds,
or
on
the
basis
of
Nkrumah
and his
ex-government's
latter-day
behaviour. At
worst it
can
be
seen
as
a
contribution
to
the
ethnography
of
Presidents
and
at
best
as
a
statement
of
how
appalling
the
economic
world
must have
looked
to
an
ambitious
leader
managing
an
endowment
a
fraction
of
Harvard's
and
an
annual
budget
much
less
than
the
University
of
Califorma's.
University
of
British
Columbia
LIONEL
TIGER
Latin
America and
Caribbean
TiE
UNWRITTEN
ALLIANCE:
Rio
Branco
and
Brazilian-American
Re-
lations.
By
E.
Bradford
Burns.
1966.
(New
York:
Columbia
Umversity
Press.
Toronto:
Copp
Clark.
xi,
305pp.
$6.95)
In
the
years
1902
to
1912,
when
many
South Americans were
reacting
angrily
to
the foreign
policy
of
the
Roosevelt
and
Taft
Administrations,
Brazil and
the
United
States
entered
a
period
of
friendship
unparalleled
in
the
history
of
the
two
countries.
So
firm did
the
accord
become,
in
fact,
that
while
other
Latin
American
states
denounced
the
U.S.
move
into
Panama,
Brazil
supported
it;
while
others
condemned
the
Monroe
Doctrine and
the
Roosevelt
Corollary Brazil
positively
favoured them.
Professor
Burns
discusses
the
origins
and
evolution
of
this
important
rapprochement.
He
suggests a number
of
broad
reasons
for
it,
including
the
tradi-
tional
policy
of
friendship
between
the
two
countries,
their
increasing
economic
ties,
their
similar
political systems,
and
the
implications
of
Brazil's
distrust
of
her
Spanish-speaking
neighbours.
But
his
central
conclusion
is
that
the initiative
for
the approximation
came
ultimately
from
Brazil's
very
astute
Minister
of
Foreign
Relations,
the
Baron
of
Rio-Branco
who
came
to
office
in
1902.
The
Baron
skillfully
used
the
American
friendship
he
won
as
a
means to
achieve
his
three
major
aims:
the
favourable
settlement
of
Brazil's
boundary
disputes,
the
increase
of
her
prestige
abroad,
and
above
all, the establishment
of
Brazilian
pre-eminence
in
South
America.
In this
sense,
the
"unwritten
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