Latin American perspectives; John Kenneth Galbraith

Latin American perspectives a program of comment and analysis about current Latin American problems and their historical setting. The commentator for these programs is Dr. C. Harvey Gardner research professor of history at Southern Illinois University. Here now is Dr. Gardner. They both have a Latin flavor even to this day both meaning Texas and California. But the truth is that in the last hundred twenty years there has been a great reduction of the Latin content the Latin flavor in the life of both Texas and California in the spring of 1846. James K. Polk announced that the Mexican army had invaded United States territory and had quote shed American blood up on the American soil. This blend of price establishes as political rhetoric in his new volumen titled origins of the war with Mexico. The Polk Stockton

intrigue. The author of this work Glenn W. Price has for some times as a story and related himself to Texas history publishing a volume entitled After son has a second volume dealing with the Texas Mexican frontier of 1842 entitled attack and counterattack in this third work origins of the war with Mexico. The Polk Stockton intrigue he explodes the myth of American innocence. It represents the internal contradiction that exists between professed values and patterns of action perpetuated by American Historical writing that emphasizes national consequences of the acquisition of foreign territory and minimizes both its international significance and the importance of the diplomatic and military methods employed. A

conflict with Mexico leading to territorial expansion by the United States was not unwanted. California was Polk's prime objective. And from the beginning this was to be gained by a negotiating a war on the Texas Mexican border. To this end Polk sent several agents to Texas but the man at the center of the War intrigue was Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Independently wealthy or prominent in politics the head of a great business enterprises sufficient evidence exists. Indeed the evidences employed by Price in his work to substantiate in every particular instance the steps in Polk's path of intrigue. His attempts to bribe Mexican officials his efforts to encourage revolutionary forces in Mexican provinces. His use of the threat of force to frighten Mexico into selling California

and his attempt to initiate a war by proxy through the government of Texas and Anson Jones. If Paul was unwilling to assume responsibility for aggressive war Commodore Stockton was not. He arrived in Galveston with a squadron of naval vessels in May. Eight hundred forty five. And was prepared to finance an army of three thousand men from personal funds to avoid the overt involvement of the government of the United States. But says Mr. Price in his book for all the internationally dangerous implications of such a maneuver the two men who played out the chief roles in this intrigue of 1845 are representative in their written and spoken expression of faith in American righteousness of action and in the American tradition of the divine

mission. Based on extensive research into the written and spoken words of the men who are involved Polk and Stockton directly and indirectly in the events this analysis by price is one that can be considered revisionist concerning the origins of the war with Mexico. It resulted in the kind of objective approach to national history for which the author makes a plea in his preface and his conclusion suggesting that while after all the historian has the extraordinary advantage of being able to examine mankind from a distance and elevation a detachment which should reveal the gulf between pretension and performance. The work of Glenn W. Price origins of the war with Mexico the Polk Stockton intrigue published by the University of Texas press is yet

another bit of revisionist history relating us to Latin America. Related also to this matter whereby one man takes a step and is followed by a horde of others. And there is a consequence shift from an emphasis of Latin to Anglo-Saxon control from the Latin culture to a growth of the American culture is a second volume that I would turn to now. This is a biography of John Sutter entitled fool's gold. The author is Richard L. and Dylan is well-known for other works among which was his volume on Merrill whether Lois as head librarian of the sutra Library in San Francisco. He's well known for his works dealing with American history. Fool's Gold treats the life of John Sutter who more than anyone else might be called the father of California and this father of California John

Sutter is one of the most magic figures in the history of the American West. Was he merely an adventurer or a conniver an opportunist who saw in the rich Sacramento Valley a chance to build govern and reap the profits of a personal empire. Or was he a dreamer ill equipped to cope with the unscrupulous no holds barred realists of the front to hear an open hearted host who shared his table and his hard won experience with a horde of emigrants who poured into California. This is also John Sutter. In this biography of the man Richard Dolan comes to grips with a paradoxical personality. A lot of the paradox of which has escaped the historians and biographers the result is an insight Laden revealing account of the making and breaking of a man who in real measure opened our

present state of California to the wave of white men who make the shift from the Latin to the Anglo-Saxon way of life possible in California. Every facet of Sutter's checkered career is explored from his restless unhappy life in Switzerland. A brief shady stint as a Santa Fe trader to the building of Sutter's Fort a strategic gateway to the west and heart of his wheat and sawmill empire on the Sacramento. More important answers are provided to some riddles about Sutter that have so far been frustratingly unsolved including the central one. Why even when gold was discovered on his property by one of his employees sparking that gold rush of 1849 did John Sutter fail to get rich. Richard Dylan has a style which must be flavored and I would introduce you to

some words from the introduction of the book. Certainly Sutter was no George Washington. In fact as state founders ago he was not even of the stature of Stephen Austin or Brigham Young and it is no surprise to astute Californians but he is not immortalized in the marble splendor of Statuary Hall. He was a deceptively simple man neither a genius a hero nor a giant but viewed at close range. He emerges from history as more than an ambitious adventurer. For in truth Sutter was a key figure in the drama of westward expansion. Sutter was Mecurio swinging a radically from mood to mood and altering markedly in outlook and purpose. With the passing of a mere 10 years. He was an ordinary man but one who did extraordinary things in a savage wilderness. Unlike his European contemporaries he was not content

to dream of the romantic American West. He remade it in his own design. Sutter came to the farthest American frontier as a bankrupt and bad debtor who had abandoned his family and his flight from a police warrant as a colonizer. He's become a legend. Just five years after he erected a grass shack near the Sacramento River he was master of Sutter's Fort and new health. The governor's right hand man in the most powerful individual you know all California but. It is as a visionary as much as a builder the John Sutter deserves to be remembered. And yet it isn't exactly this role that historians and biographers have most neglected him. The latter have been preoccupied with the dramatic story of his fall from power. One of the great tragedies or at least ironies of American history Center's success is the preeminent colonizer of California was crowned with disaster

when the gold rush which he triggered utterly destroyed him and his empire before Sutter passed from the scene. He made his mark on California a mark that never can be erased but more his dreams of California as a great agricultural and commercial enterprise price rather than a mere source of raw materials of minerals for the vigorously growing United States ultimately came to pass. Yet it came too late for the Ambar builder who pioneered in shipping trading large scale growing irrigation lumbering. In fact you name it. And Sutter was a party to it. We have then in this the work of Dylan the volume entitled fool's gold a biography of John Sutter published by colored McHattie. A survey of a man at a moment in American history that has known other

writers other interpretations. And we find that a man who has previously looked common and simple has indeed come to be exceedingly complex. He has become a forerunner instead of just a moment in the history of California so easily identified and stated. There is more than the false image that his detractors have given him in the past. There are more than the adulate hers have. And so there is a certain can you Rosen of the nature of the man that is seen. And when a Californian himself comes to express his doubts about the hero founder of the state there is reason to accept him at his word. These two books have been coupled one on the origins of the war with Mexico and this on California because in both instances we have the Spanish giving way to the Anglo American.

This was a Latin American perspectives with Dr. C. Harvey Gardner research professor of history at Southern Illinois University. Join us for our next program when Dr. Gardner will examine another aspect of life in Latin America Latin American perspectives is produced and recorded by station WFIU FM at Southern Illinois University and is distributed by the national educational radio network.