Begegnungen mit dem Yankee: Nordamerikanisierung und soziokulturellerWandel in Chile (1898-1990) (review)

Jürgen Buchenau

The Americas, Volume 64, Number 2, October 2007, pp. 294-295 (Article)

Published by The Academy of American Franciscan HistoryDOI: 10.1353/tam.2007.0132

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tam/summary/v064/64.2buchenau.html

efforts to produce knowledge of Indian languages as ploys to act as agents of evan-gelical churches and U.S. imperialism, Hartch insists that the story is much morecomplex. He notes that USAID did support the SIL, but insists that because directlinks between the CIA and SIL cannot be proven, they likely did not exist. Leavingaside the fact that if there were direct links they would not likely be found in thepublic record, Hartch may go too lightly on the agents of the SIL. When he writesof their sympathy for anti-communist regimes, he suggests that it was the religiousfreedom afforded by such regimes that the SIL favored. Given the backgrounds ofmany SIL employees, it seems that there may be more to the story.

Hartch notes that translators were careful about acting in overtly missionary orpolitical ways, and his rendering of the experience of the SIL in Otomí communi-ties is quite convincing (especially his point that the translations could have manyunforeseen effects, and not all of them propitious for the evangelicals) but his analy-sis might go further in exploring the complex and evolving balance between trans-lation and evangelism that lay at the heart of the SIL’s work in Mexico. Given thechanges in SIL personnel over time, and the influence its resources conferred, thisissue deserves further examination. Ultimately Harsch provides an interesting andcompelling analysis of a curious institution. Part agent of U.S. imperialism, partagent of the Mexican state’s acculturation policies, and in part an agent of indige-nous literacy, the SIL tells us a great deal about the history of post-revolutionarysociety. Scholars and students should find this an important study.

Simon Fraser University ALEXANDER DAWSON

Burnaby, British Columbia

Begegnungen mit dem Yankee: Nordamerikanisierung und soziokultureller Wandelin Chile (1898-1990). By Stefan Rinke. Cologne: Böhlau, 2004. Pp. 633.

The published version of his Habilitationsschrift, Stefan Rinke’s ambitious studyanalyzes Chilean views of U.S. cultural influence across almost an entire century. InEnglish, its title would be “Encounters with the Yankee: North Americanization andSocio-cultural Change in Chile, 1898-1990.” The author particularly emphasizes thefirst three decades, which he calls the “transnational phase,” and the phase of newglobalization since approximately 1970.

Rinke shows convincingly that the United States came to represent modernity formost Chileans during the transnational phase. After World War I, U.S. companiestook advantage of the absence of European competition to push their products ontothe Chilean market, where they became synonymous with material progress. At thesame time, human connections increased in the form of visitors as well as U.S.white-collar employees in the mines. As the author demonstrates, Chileanshybridized and contested U.S. culture in the contact zone that they inhabited. U.S.cultural imperialism met with staunch resistance among conservative Chileans, whobelieved that U.S. culture represented moral decline. After the onset of the Great

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Depression, Chileans also witnessed the adverse consequences of close economicties with an industrial power. As a result, the decades following the transnationalphase witnessed an attempt to limit the dependence of the Chilean economy and cul-ture on the United States and other industrial nations.

Even as the socialist regime of Salvador Allende highlighted the culmination ofthis attempt at greater economic and cultural independence in the period 1970-1973,however, Chileans found themselves more intimately engaged with U.S. culturethan during the transnational phase. Factors contributing to these closer culturalrelations include the advent of mass communications, the sending of U.S. economicassistance workers, and particularly the rise of popular culture on a massive scale.The bloody coup of General Augusto Pinochet in September 1973 not only endedChile’s experiment in socialism, but it also accelerated this process of ever-closercultural relations between Chileans and North Americans, even as Pinochet dis-played a strident nationalism, in part to paper over the differences between his polit-ical system and that of the United States (not to mention to make his people forgetabout the assistance his regime had received from Washington). For example, heonce justified his own military regime by saying “nosotros somos distintos a losEstados Unidos. Nosotros somos latinos y ellos anglosajones” (p. 569). UnitedStates influence hence crept into all aspects of Chilean politics by defining what was“Chilean” and what was “foreign.”

Because of the nature of the topic, as well as the length of the period studied bythe author, the book primarily draws on published primary sources such as newspa-pers, journals, and pamphlets. However, Rinke has also done exhaustive research inChilean and U.S. archives. Perhaps the only other repository the author might haveconsidered visiting is the British National Archives, as the holdings of the ForeignOffice offer fascinating commentary on U.S. cultural expansion and its Latin Amer-ican reception. This book represents the new international history at its very best,demonstrating cultural interplay across many levels in an unequal relationship.Rinke’s detailed study successfully shifts attention from the state-to-state level toindividual, corporate, and institutional actors, revealing the contact zones in whichU.S. and Chilean culture interacted. It is to be hoped that it will be available in Eng-lish and/or Spanish very soon, as it deserves a wide audience.

University of North Carolina, Charlotte JÜRGEN BUCHENAU

Charlotte, North Carolina

Tim Hector: A Caribbean Radical’s Story. By Paul Buhle. Jackson: University Press ofMississippi, 2006. Pp. x, 272. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Index. $32.00 cloth.

Writing about the life of someone recently deceased is only slightly less chal-lenging than writing about someone still living. In the former case, the subject canstill cast a shadow that threatens the scholar’s ability to shed light. Add to this thesense of deeply-felt loss on the part of the writer who thoroughly admired his sub-

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