An Independent Dixie and Relations with Latin America

Regrettably, one of the few ways that the peoples of Latin America are introduced to their neighbors here in the United States is through the evil actions of federal agencies like the CIA, USAID, or the State Department. One example from Ramona Wadi will suffice:

‘Last month, the Argentinian Memory Museum (ESMA) in Buenos Aires was nominated for inclusion in the list of World Heritage Sites, to be approved by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

‘ESMA, which stands on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, was formerly used by the Jorge Videla dictatorship which lasted from 1976 to 1981, as a torture and detention centre, and the place where opponents of the dictatorship were drugged, tied and prepared for the death flights. The practice of disappearing political opponents by throwing them off helicopters into the ocean, and which started during the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was adopted by Videla as the most efficient means of covering the tracks of the state’s extrajudicial killings. It is estimated that 30,000 people were disappeared during Videla’s rule.

‘It was through the documents released by the U.S. in 2017, that the death flights were established as having been used not only as a means of disappearance, but also murder, given that some victims were still alive when they were disposed of by the dictatorship. The U.S. was also a supplier of aircraft and helicopters for the Videla dictatorship, and had full knowledge of its methods of disappearance.

‘Out of 5,000 people detained at ESMA, only just over 100 survived. To mark the International Day of the Disappeared, the street where ESMA stands was renamed “SON 30000” to mark the number of victims killed and disappeared by the Videla dictatorship.

‘ . . .

‘What the U.S. perpetrated in Argentina is in some ways a continuation of what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger instigated in Chile. In 1975, the year prior to which Videla took power in Argentina, Kissinger met with Chile’s Foreign Minister Patricio Carvajal. “I read the briefing paper for this meeting and it was nothing but Human Rights,” Kissinger mocked. “The State Department is made up of people who have a vocation for the ministry. Because there are not enough churches for them, they went into the Department of State.”’

The Elite in Washington City, however, do not represent all the peoples of the States, but only the eugenicist-technocratic element, which is mostly concentrated in New England and the West Coast.

The traditional folks of the South, for their part, would be glad to cut political ties with the Yankees and make a fresh start with the Latin American countries. Unlike the Yanks, Dixie doesn’t seek to dominate others, and there are also some cultural similarities that would naturally draw the South and Latin America together.

Firstly, the principle of non-interference in Southern geopolitical thought goes right back to the earliest days of the newly independent federation of States. President George Washington, a Southerner from Virginia, in his Farewell Address (1796) said,

‘Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? . . . The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.’

Thomas Jefferson, another early President from Virginia, said,

‘The presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation as well as moral sentiment enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one [independent nations] and our equal execrations against the other [dictating to other nations]’ (letter of 1823).1

John C. Calhoun (reposed in 1850), one of the South’s greatest statesmen, hailing from South Carolina, added this during the Mexican-American War in a speech to the US Senate:

… The course of policy which we ought to pursue in regard to Mexico is one of the greatest problems in our foreign relations. Our true policy, in my opinion, is, not to weaken or humble her; on the contrary, it is our interest to see her strong, and respectable, and capable of sustaining all the relations that ought to exist between independent nations. I hold that there is a mysterious connection between the fate of this country and that of Mexico; so much so, that her independence and capability of sustaining herself are almost as essential to our prosperity, and the maintenance of our institutions, as they are to hers. Mexico is to us the forbidden fruit; the penalty of eating it would be to subject our institutions to political death . . . . When I said that there was a mysterious connection between the fate of our country and that of Mexico, I had reference to the great fact that we stood in such relation to here that we could make no disposition of Mexico, as a subject or conquered nation, that would not prove disastrous to us. . . . you have looked into history, and are too well acquainted with the fatal effects which large provincial possessions have ever had on the institutions of free states—to need any proof to satisfy you how hostile it would be to the institutions of this country, to hold Mexico as a subject province. There is not an example on record of any free state holding a province of the same extent and population, without disastrous consequences.

But before leaving this part of the subject, I must enter my solemn protest, as one of the representatives of a State of this Union, against pledging protection to any government established in Mexico under our countenance or encouragement. It would inevitably be overthrown as soon as our forces are withdrawn; and we would be compelled, in fulfilment of plighted faith, implied or expressed, to return and reinstate such Government in power, to be again overturned and again reinstated, until we should be compelled to take the government into our own hands, just as the English have been compelled to do again and again in Hindostan, under similar circumstances, until it has led to its entire conquest. . . . I must say I am at a loss to see how a free and independent republic can be established in Mexico under the protection and authority of its conquerors. I can readily understand how an aristocracy or a despotic government might be, but how a free republican government can be so established, under such circumstances, is to me incomprehensible. I had always supposed that such a government must be the spontaneous wish of the people; that it must emanate from the hearts of the people, and be supported by their devotion to it, without support from abroad. But it seems that these are antiquated notions—obsolete ideas—and that free popular governments may be made under the authority and protection of a conqueror.

The South would rather see countries work out their own political and economic ideas without outside interference, just as she would like to do herself.

But good relations between Dixie and Latin America rest on more than this principle alone. Before the War of Northern Aggression that disrupted Southern self-consciousness and absorbed her into the aggressive Yankee American Empire, it is possible to see that the Southern view of Latin America was already quite positive. Often enough in Southern literature, there are kindly descriptions of life in Latin American countries, like this one of Cuba, for instance, in Mrs Margaret Junkin Preston’s 1856 novel Silverwood:

‘I could not help thinking how Sepha would have clapped her hands at sight of the odd, gay carriages that crowd the streets every evening, filled with black-eyed and black-haired senoritas, with no bonnets on their heads, but wreaths of flowers instead, looking like so many May-queens. There is nothing that may be called winter here, you know, so that flowers and foliage are in luxuriant abundance, though it is almost December. The plumes of the palm-trees, the rows of pomegranates, the aloe-enclosed fields of pine-apples, the coffee plantations, and scores of other things, make us feel as if we were much farther away than we really are, from our own familiar land. Just think of it, Eunice—you who are nursing so carefully the scarlet cactus you brought all the way from B--; think of hedges formed of the most splendid varieties!’2

But the friendliness between the two goes beyond the literary world to the world of flesh and blood. For after the War with the Northern States, many Southerners set out for destinations in Latin America to try to continue life as they had known it, rather than submit to the alien culture of the Yankees. Here is the account of one settlement in Brazil:

‘When the American Confederacy lost the Civil War in May 1865, 10,000 Southerners fled the US for a small city in Brazil, where they could rebuild their lives and carry on their traditions.

‘Now, 150 years later, their story has been seemingly erased from the history books.

‘But deep in the heart of Brazil, descendants of these confederate expats gather annually to celebrate their controversial history and maintain their traditions and culture. In 2015, Vice's Mimi Dwyer attended the festival and revealed what life is like in the city called Americana.

‘Each year, the small Brazilian city of Americana throws a huge celebration to commemorate the 10,000 Confederates who fled the American South after their side lost the Civil War.

‘They settled in Americana in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, which remains a sort of enclave for the long-dead expats' descendants.’

The rest may be read at this Business Insider page.

The basis for this goodwill, we think, lies in the shared underlying culture of the two: Both are rooted in more traditional forms of Christianity and in love for the creation – in fact, an awe before the mysteriousness of the creation – and in the agricultural way of life. This pre-Modern mindset leads to a deliberate slowness in living, so that it may be enjoyed, in a more friendly attitude toward others, rather than the fast-paced, utilitarian, and snobbish outlook of the Yankees.

But there is nothing that unites quite like the shared experience of suffering, and here, too, the South shares in common with many Latin American peoples the experience of suffering militarily and economically at the hands of the Yankees, always so determined to expand their empire. In the words of the President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis: ‘The lust of empire impelled them [Yankees] to wage against their weaker neighbors [the South] a war of subjugation.’3

The South and Latin America are brothers for a number of reasons. We hope that Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the rest of their kindred will understand that the death squads, economic sanctions, and other evils of this type are not the way of the South, that she has in fact suffered these same sorts of things at the hands of Washington City just as they have. The two ought, therefore, to walk into the future together, supporting one another.

Notes

1 James and Walter Kennedy, Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home, Shotwell Publishing, Columbia, SC, 2018, p. 140.

2 Margaret Junkin Preston, Silverwood: A Book of Memories, Forgotten Books, London, England, 2015, p. 197.

3 Yankee Empire, p. 342.