Annapolis -- WHEN I BEGAN covering Latin America as a foreign correspondent 30 years ago, even many Latins direly characterized themselves as "the people who never win." The great Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea had written typically of the pessimism that seemed to infuse Latin America from its very birth: "We carry our defects in our blood."
The Latins' abiding pessimism about their prospects was, of course, always exacerbated by the gnawing successes of their neighbor to the north. And, so, "anti-gringoism" and "anti-imperialism" were added to the Latins' geopolitical vocabulary, as the United States, simply by existing, eternally rubbed in their failures.
All these years later, has any of this changed? When the 34 freely elected leaders of the Western Hemisphere gather in Miami Dec. 9-11 for a first such meeting, "The Summit of the Americas 1994," will the inter-hemispheric mood be any different from the carping and complaining of the past? Almost certainly it will.
Some evidence: In the weeks before the unique summit, a most unusual meeting was held here at the U.S. Naval Academy. Several dozen leading Latin and North American analysts met for a two-day pre-summit discussion, under the auspices of a group hemispheric organizations, to consider whether there really was a "New Moment in the Americas."
Venezuelan political activist Beatrice Rangel led the optimism brigade with her opening remarks. "The 1980s were not a lost decade at all for Latin America," she began. "If you analyze what happened, the economic crisis broke down the authoritarian system and paved the road for the construction of real democratic societies. Now, for the first time, the free market is creating the possibility of social mobility and of people starting to share in the American dream."
And these changes "are going to be maintained because they in turn are creating a new set of values."
Enrique Iglesias, the respected president of the Inter-American Development Bank, went so far in his luncheon speech as to say, "I think Latin America's going through an important period of revolutionary change." He then listed exogenous or global forces such as new technologies that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall; the return of democracy in much of Latin America; the loss of power of the military; and the impact of the economic policies of the "Asian Tigers" and phenomenally successful free-market Chile.
"The belief that the new economic forces can create wealth has generated trust and confidence in the elites," he summed up. "We know that there are certain rules of economics that can't be violated. We see the irrationalities of populism -- we see gains in ,, terms of being reasonable."
Indeed, by the halfway point of the long discussion, one moderator was saying in hushed amazement, "Nobody has mentioned imperialism -- nobody has attacked the gringos." And the former Sandinista vice president of Nicaragua, Sergio Ramirez, who might have been expected to say at least something on behalf of the old left, said only, "I believe that Nicaragua is not a typical case for hope or for despair."
Perhaps the noted American Roman Catholic theologian Michael Novak, a little amazed at it all, summed it up when he said: "Nobody argues anymore that dictatorship is better -- and that was an earlier theme. I don't hear anybody arguing for the socialist experiment. Instead, the whole careful thinking is about democracy and capitalism."
So, what exactly was going on here?
Everyone seemed to agree that we are indeed seeing a new moment. But it is also perhaps not so simple as it might sound in a conference like this. The economic purists of the North look at the South and say, "Their economic indicators are great -- they'll make it." They fail to understand the necessary interrelated factors of social change and institutional formation; they don't attend enough to that absolute necessity for democracy, the free association of autonomous individuals in forming a civil society.
There was still another quirk in the conference. Unlike the old sure and occasionally superior "Americanism," the Americans here were unsure about so many of the dour factors of intellectual life today. They raked over the coals all the darlings of the left: multiculturalism, affirmative action, government handouts and victimology -- so much so that the Latins had to buoy them up by saying that, despite it all, the United States was really a fine place!
No one has any idea what exactly will happen in Miami (the schedule is, as yet, woefully unformed). Still, "the Latins want to be optimistic," commented Mark Falcoff, the American Enterprise Institute scholar on Latin America, afterward. "And for 'the people who never win,' that really is a change."
=1 Georgie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist.