27
Violence In South America And Africa
The Islamic world is not the only place where violence is
elevated to a virtue.
We blame ourselves for the bloodshed in Latin America.  In
reality, it was already going on when this country was too young to be
involved.  In 1827, many years before the first platoon of American
marines set foot on Latin America's tropical soil, the German
philosopher Hegel described the area's culture.  In his lectures on
world history, Hegel explained that Latin America was a deeply
homicidal place.  Revolutions were an almost daily occurrence.  Armed
violence was the standard method of changing a  government or
settling a difference of opinion.89  The situation was so bad that the
Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar, the man who had freed
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from colonial rule,
gave up in disgust during 1830 and left South America for Europe.
Said Bolivar, "After fighting for 20 years, I have reached a few
definite conclusions."  Chief among them: that Latin America's
addiction to butchery would inevitably cause the Central and South
American states to "fall into the hands of an unruly multitude and then
into the rule of petty tyrants."90
American greed had nothing to do with the thirst for murder that
dispirited Bolivar and Hegel.  There were no massive multi-national
U.S. corporations in existence during the 1820s.  Imperialist ambitions
wouldn't infect American presidents for another seventy years.91  Due
to reasons Hegel never went on to describe, some Latin American
cultures seemed inherently brutal.  Englishmen and North Americans
might like to solve their political problems with a heated debate.  Latin
Americans preferred to spill blood.92
But many African societies make the perpetual civil war of Latin
America seem like languorous peace.  Look at the following examples.
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