Writing About “Our Good Neighbors South of the Rio Grande”: Moral Geographies of Latin America in the Early 1940s

ABSTRACT

President Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy emerged as a non-aggressive form of cultural diplomacy and emphasized mutual understanding among the nations in the Western Hemisphere through a substantial diffusion of books, music and movies. Though Roosevelt’s foreign policy has been widely discussed in general terms, there is still a lack of studies on the cultural-geographic dimension of this initiative, especially on the production of geographic images and stereotypes. The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of a popular picture book series (Pictured Geography) from the 1940s that introduces, depicts and describes Latin American countries for the broader public in the United States. The reading between the lines of the stories and pictures reveals a moral geography of the region from an American viewpoint and opens up a debate on the impacts of images and discourse on the shaping of worldviews and understanding of different cultures.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the staff of the American Geographical Society Library in Milwaukee for letting me delve and dive into their fascinating map collection for two weeks in July 2016. Without the unconditional support of the librarians, I would not have stumbled into these geopolitical treasures from the Good Neighbor period.

Notes

1. The idea of the western hemisphere has been discussed in detail (for example, Whitaker 1954). In the context of this study, the term is related to the production of a Pan American identity for political purposes. The hemispheric vision aims to separate the Americas from other continents as a distinct cultural and historical region that is, nevertheless, diverse in its unity (as it is said about the European Union in present times). The metaphor of the good neighbor scales down continental dimensions to a local sense of place.

2. For an insightful overview on the use of this “soft power diplomacy” see Sadlier (2012).

3. This article aims to contribute to the critical comparative study of geographical imagination in US foreign policy, taking into account the specific governamental approaches to other countries and cultures. Parallels to and contradictions and negations of other moments of international relations such as JFK’s Alliance for Progress, spearheaded by the Peace Corps, and Donald Trump’s nationalistic and almost xenophobic handling of immigration issues can be drawn.

4. For a basic discussion on otherness in geography see Staszak (2009).

5. The origin of the expression “south of the Rio Grande” cannot be determined without ambiguities and is open to speculation. It could be an allusion to the popular Western movies from the 1930s and 1940s, which created a geographical imagination of the border between the United States and Mexico. A movie with this exact title was produced in 1932 under the direction of Lambert Hillyer (another film production for the Cisco Kid series by the same director followed in 1945). Crossing the line, outlaws, social mavericks, and adventurers escaped from prosecution and punishment to enjoy a free life in the supposedly lawless lands south of the river. In this context, the Good Neighbor Policy did not aim to dissolve international boundaries and invoke a Pan-American borderless region, but attempted to reduce or overcome cultural barriers, critical for international collaboration. Evidently, the expression serves as a metaphor for the territorial identity of the United States in relation to other countries in the western hemisphere in general, even without clear boundary lines or a common border with other Caribbean and Latin American nations.

6. The geographical imagination in popular magazines such as National Geographic or Reader’s Digest, not only during the Second World War, have been documented in detail (see, for example, Rothenberg 2007; Sharp 2000). The focus of this study is not on the most spectacular publications in circulation, but on “minor” and less known products, that are equally relevant for the understanding of the geographical other.

7. An in-depth discussion on geographical imaginations, i.e. how places and people are imagined and represented in literature, arts, and politics, would go beyond the word count limits of this article. Key references to the topic are Gregory (1994) and Said (1979; 1993).

8. Using the term “persuasive geography,” I intend to allude to and establish an analogy with a paper on persuasive cartography from the early 1980s, in which the author affirms that “[a]ll maps are to some degree persuasive because they coax the reader into believing that they are true representations of a given situation” (see Tyner 1982, 140). Verbal discourse works in a similar way.

9. These ideas are discussed in Campbell and Shapiro (1999b) and Shapiro (1981; 2004).

10. I have not been able to find a passage in Henry Clay’s writings, in which the expression “good neighbors” is explicitly mentioned.

11. The grammatical incorrect wording is from the original text.

12. The metaphor of the good neighbor serves to trigger Pan American feelings. However, as a political construction of neighborhood, fences, borderlines and division remain.

13. For a general discussion of the Good Neighbor Policy in the context of US foreign affairs see Gil (1971), Shoultz (1988), and Walton (1972). For a specific analysis of the Good Neighbor Policy see Wood (1961).

14. For literature on the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs see Espinosa (1976) and Rowland (1947). An insightful account of the Office’s activities, its rebranding and tensions with the State Department can be found in Hart (2013).

15. For the relations between Walt Disney and the Good Neighbor Policy see Adams (2007). For Orson Welles’ filming in Brazil see Benamou (2007).

16. The academic journal World Affairs had regular sections, in which books on and of Latin America were listed and reviewed in a few words. Among the wide range of publications to stimulate cultural understanding are curiosities such as Henley (1943), a road trip from Brazil to Chile written for the author’s grandchildren, or Beales (1943), a spy and war story from South America, invaded by German and Japanese armed forces.

17. Examples of general works on the topic are Cancino (1989) and Tota (2000). More recent studies deal with movies and documentaries. See, for example Barbosa and Tibau (2014) and Mauad (2014).

18. Other popular book series are Greenbie (1942–43) and the New World Neighbors Series (various authors), 1941–1944, consisting of 20 books, which mainly cover places in the western hemisphere. For a more detailed discussion on the New World Neighbors Series with sparse black-and-white image documentation see Robertson (2011).

19. In the following sections, I will use a large number of quotes from the Pictured Geography series. Unfortunately, the books do not have any form of page enumeration.

20. Non-Latin American places were Alaska, Bermuda, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland, Australia, Hawaii and New Zealand.

21. Text on back flap of the Paraguay book, Donaldson (1944c).

22. For biographical notes on Marguerite Henry see Silvey (2002, 194).

23. Despite her very productive life as a writer, there are not many written biographical accounts on Bailey. For a short online biography see Wolf-Astrauskas (2017).

24. Lois Donaldson is lesser known than the other authors. Internet sources are sparse. Born in 1898, she is listed as a Stetson University graduate (1918) and teacher at DeLand High School in Florida.

25. A short biographical sketch about Wiese’s life can be found in Silvey (2002, 469–470). See also De Sales Bertram (1956).

26. The following sections of this article consist of the description and analysis of these specific thematic clusters to permit a comparison of distinct conceptions of Latin American countries that are produced, conveyed and transmitted by the US government. The diverse country portrayals in the Pictured Geography Series can provide further food for thought for the debate on theoretical frameworks for comparative regional studies, not only in the context of the Good Neighbor Policy, but also with regards to ideas such as the North-South divide. For a South American example of comparative analysis see Dattwyler, Santana, and Paulsen (2016).

27. Bailey took particular interest in the key figures of Latin American history and published two popular books in the early 1960s: one on Christopher Columbus (Bailey 1960a) and another on important leaders in Latin America’s fight for independence from Francisco de Miranda to José Marti (Bailey 1960b).

28. Trujillo is described as a progressive political leader who executed many infrastructure projects to improve life in the Dominican Republic, not as the brutal “dictator next door,” whose regime was responsible for the death of thousands of people. For the political relations between the US and the Dominican Republic during the Good Neighbor Policy see Roorda (1998).

29. The educational dimension of the Good Neighbor Policy is still awaiting a closer investigation. For an in-depth account of the shaping of the geographical and cartographic imagination in the United States through maps, magazines and textbooks see Schulten (2001).

30. A brief search on www.worldcat.org reveals that the books were purchased by several public libraries, teacher’s colleges, and universities. However, few of them have acquired the complete collection.

31. Latin American scholars have dealt with visual cultures and geographical imagination for quite some time. However, most of these publications are barely known in the English-speaking academic world (see, for example, Lindón and Hiernaux 2012; Zusman 2013).