Prophets of a New Order - Epilogue - Part II - Latin America and Africa
Brazil
In terms of population and territory, it was inevitable that Brazil would play a dominant role in the course of South American history. Syndicalists under the leadership of Astrojildo Pereira had seized power in 1936 from the corrupt and ineffective republic after the 1936 economic crash, but years of deep-seated corruption, poverty, and racism were difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, Pereira wisely avoided the siren call of the Syndicalist Coalition, remaining neutral in the war and avoiding destruction at the hands of the United States; Brazilians were content to reform and build their nation for the time being, until they could return to the world stage as a great power.
That opportunity finally came when the democratic government of 'La Plata,' the union of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, was overthrown in a bloody military coup in 1954. The local militias of Paraguay and Uruguay refused to cooperate with their Argentine counterparts, but their defiance served only as a reason for the nascent military junta to launch a massive invasion spearheaded by the largest and most powerful military machine South America had ever seen. Unable to abide such blatant aggression, President Luis Carlos Prestes, Pereira's successor since 1950, Brazil declared the tiny republics under Brazil's protection, provoking the Argentines to declare war. Brazilian troops crossed the border into all three of its southern neighbors, confident that the time for Brazil's resurgence was at hand.
But within two months of the war's start, Argentina counterattacked, using modern tank formations to encircle and destroy twenty Brazilian divisions. With most of the army suddenly in prison camps, Brazil was completely open to invasion. But Brazil's sheer size would prove its salvation as the Argentine's pressed northward toward Rio de Janiero. Faced with poor to nonexistent infrastructure, the Argentine tank formations quickly outran their supply lines, the offensive grinding to a halt all while Brazil frantically rebuilt its military with a flood of American material support, making a heroic last-stand south of Sao Paulo that finally halted the invasion.
Caught hundreds of miles inside Brazil, the Argentine forces were trapped, constantly battered by the unremitting Brazilian counterattack while partisans and guerillas rose up in occupied territory. By the end of 1957, the front lines had returned to their pre-war state. By the end of the next year, Brazilian troops stood victorious in Buenos Aires, toppling the military dictatorship and replacing it with the revolutionary government of Ernesto Guevara, a young syndicalist who had gained prominence as a resistance leader inside Argentina.
The war left Brazil battered but triumphant, guarantor of Latin American democracy and infused with a new sense of national pride and unity forged by war. Prestes stepped down in 1958, to be succeeded by the wildly popular Jânio Quadros, who embarked the nation on an ambitious modernization program that promised to finish the work started by Pereira and Prestes. Its overambitious scope inevitably doomed the project to failure, but not before substantially raising the country's standard of living, uplifting millions from crushing poverty and confirming Brazil's place as the great power of South America.
Mexico
Though its Syndicalist government had been toppled during the war with the United States, Mexico remained stable under the leadership of Lazaro Cardenas. With both syndicalists and militarists discredited by their actions in the war, Cardenas was able to successfully navigate a liberal democratic course though one of the Western Hemisphere's most volatile states., eventually stepping down from power in 1955 in a peaceful transition to a popular socialist government.
For the next twenty years, Mexico would alternate between socialist and liberal governments in a series of commendably peaceful and fair elections. Bolstered by oil revenues and a growing manufacturing sector, the Mexican economy brought prosperity to many, allowing the government to widen the social welfare programs enacted during the Zapata era. That peace was abruptly shaken in 1976 when the so-called 'Centroamerico' invaded neighboring Honduras. Backed by the United States, Mexico would successfully intervene to defend Honduran independence, but the mounting cost in men and material strained the patience of the Mexican people, resulting in the election of a syndicalist administration that broke the electoral cycle of the previous two decades. The syndicalist government would only last one term in office, but the combination of war and electoral upheaval had greatly destabilized America's southern neighbor. Old habits die hard.
Cuba
In few other places in the world did American idealism and American self-interest clash more starkly than in the island nation of Cuba. Fulgencio Batista, who took power after the American invasion, was in the unenviable position of presenting himself to the Cuban people as their savior from American imperialism while presenting the American business interests that controlled the island's economy as a loyal, pliable corporate patron.
This shell game could not last forever, but it did carry on for longer than most American observers expected. Though beholden to American economic power, Batista avoided complete subservience, insisting on modest social welfare and occasional nationalization programs during the 1950s. But the pressure for real democratic government mounted during the 1960s, provoking the United States in 1964 to finally cut its ties with Batista, who rapidly fell from power in a bloodless popular revolution that restored democratic rule.
Sub-Saharan Africa
In 1948, there existed only three independent states in the entirety of the continent of Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The lion's share of the rest was now under the control of a severely-overextended American administrative apparatus. Due to insufficient resources and lack of attention, the American agents and administrators on the ground were forced largely to rely on the preexisting power structures and local elites, creating an eclectic blend of German and French colonial magistrates, British syndicalists, and resurgent tribal elements.
Africa's colonial legacy cast a long shadow over the American occupation. For decades, the native peoples had been forcibly divided by artificial borders, their resources seized exclusively for European benefit, and all pretenses of modern civilization directed toward that oppression and exploitation; neither democratic traditions nor national sentiment existed, leaving the United States at a loss of what was to be done.
Regardless, the persistent anti-colonialist rhetoric, to say nothing of racism, emanating from the United States could not long tolerate the whole African continent held under American occupation for long. Pressed with these demands before Africa was deemed 'ready' for independence, the American occupation hastily hammered outs plans for a post-colonial Africa during the early 1950s. Proposals for a pan-Africa union were rejected outright, while the more idealistic suggestion that borders should be cut along ethnic lines were dismissed as unfeasible and threatening a dangerous 'Balkanization' of the continent. Consequently, it was decided that the region would effectively be divided into four large-scale regional federations. East Africa would be divided into two states roughly north-south along the Benin-Nigeria border, while central Africa, centered on the Congo, and an East African Union stretching between Ethiopia in the north and Portuguese Mozambique in the south, would take up the remainder.
From the start, enormous problems faced these four brand-new states. The departure of even the paltry few American soldiers, government agents, and administrators, along with most of the European colonial administration, left a gaping power vacuum the infant African governments were completely incapable of filling. Faced with a breakdown in what little infrastructure there was, local strongmen, warlords, and chieftains quickly rose to dominate their localities, threatening to severely compromise the work of those few African politicians with the strength to press through the varying structural and societal problems left by European imperialism.
In the so-called Central African Republic, the brutality and violence of the Belgian period was simply too great to surmount; already by 1955, the country had degenerated into a bloody and multi-sided civil war, pitting revolutionary syndicalists, liberal democrats, separatists, and local warlords against one another from which it would never really emerge. The CAR's northern neighbor, the Nigerian Union faced the far less violent but no less prevalent bane of corruption and internal squabbling that paralyzed the government, a state of affairs the remains largely unchanged to the present despite frequent turmoil and pressure from both the international community and locals.
Further west, in the West African Republic, the problems facing the CAR and NU were combined to form a chaotic situation that left few hopes for a true democracy to take shape, culminating in a series of military coups and peasant uprisings throughout the 1960s. All that changed when in 1972, a 26-year old army colonel, Jerry Rowlands, dramatically toppled the 'democratic' government and installed himself as dictator. Using his loyal military cadres to clamp down on protests and secessionist movements in Liberia, Mali, and Guinea. With his position secure, Rowlands launched a sweeping series of reforms that rapidly brought desperately-needed relief to the impoverished masses. With his popularity soaring and international support growing, Rowlands pressed forward, using the opportunity to the utmost to lay the groundwork for a strong civil society. Finally and voluntarily relinquishing power in 1990, he left the West Africa far more prosperous, democratic, and stable than ever before.
South Africa, the most powerful and prosperous of the Sub-Saharan nations after the wave of decolonization, endured the legacy of racism during the middle part of the 20th Century, with the system of apartheid, imposed in 1948, at its heart. But for years, the oppressive system remained largely unnoticed and tolerated by the outside world. But events in the 1960s within the United States would soon do much to undermine apartheid's grip on the black population of South Africa. By 1970, the rising tide of protest and violence threatened to rip South Africa apart into civil war. When, in 1971, war nearly erupted after Angola and Mozambique refused to return several prominent black rebels and protest leaders, the United States at last intervened, threatening South Africa with economic sanctions and even a severing of diplomatic relations. All but a diplomatic pariah, South Africa's white government at last unilaterally repealed apartheid in 1974. The process of national reconciliation would be a long one, but the possibility was now there.
Next: Europe
