    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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