The Lost Massey Lectures by Thomas King Read Free Book Online Page A

waits on reforms which reduce the power of a vested ruling elite. Here there is no such elite.
    There is a measure of overstatement in any attempt to establish categories. No country is without some small group of honest and competent people in some area of economic activity or government. But in those countries where colonialism was exploitive and regressive—where there was no liberalizing urge that sought to prepare people for some role other than that of primitive agriculture and unskilled industrial labor—this group is very small. This Model, as a result—as in the classic case of Haiti and possibly the more recent one of the Congo (Leopoldville)—can readily become one not of advance but of disintegration with eventual reversion to tribalism or anarchy. All that is needed is for the perilously small group of competent and honest people to be overwhelmed by those who see government in predatory and personal terms. Once the latter are in possession of the available instruments of power—the army, government payroll, police—it is not clear when (or even whether) the process of disintegration can be reversed by internal influences. This disintegration, not Communism for which these countries are as little prepared as for capitalism, is the form of failure in this Model.

IV
C AUSE AND C LASSIFICATION (C ONTINUED )
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    In the first two lectures, I spoke of the homogenizing influence of poverty on individual and social behavior. I suggested that it might be more important in explaining how people react—biologically, socially and politically—than any other factor including their decision to be communists, socialists, free enterprisers or some judicious combination of all three. It is not easy walking through a South Asian jungle, or across the Andean
altiplano
, to determine whether the country is capitalist or communist. And the people themselves tend to be clear only on one principal point, which is that they are poor. The more sophisticated distinctions as to social structure acquire importance only as one approaches world capitals, including Washington.
    But in the last lecture I argued that one must not mistake similarity in effect for similarity in cause. The causes of thepoverty of different countries are, in fact, very different. I started in to make a rude classification of underdevelopment based on the principal barrier to advance. I dealt last time with what I called the Sub-Sahara African Model where the obstacle to advance is the very narrow cultural base—the very small number of trained and educated people and the very limited capacity for getting more. I come now to Model II—what I have called the Latin American case.
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    The great mass of the people in these countries is also very poor. But in most of them there is also a sizable minority that is well-to-do. And associated with this well-to-do minority is a rather large number of people with a diverse assortment of qualifications and skills—lawyers, physicians, accountants, engineers, scientists, economists and managers. As compared, in other words, with the Model I countries, the cultural base is quite wide. And back of this group there is a limited, undemocratic and otherwise imperfect, but still substantial, educational system. Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala are, by any calculation of per capita income, very poor countries. Argentina, Brazil and Chile are well below North American and European levels. But all have trained and educated personnel and facilities for its replacement that are far better than those of the new African states. As a further aspect, they have a strong intellectual tradition. As is also true of the United States or Canada, they could use more people of the highest caliber and training. Public servants of high competence are rarely in surplus. But in these countries—as also in the Arab states and Iran where the pattern is similar—the absence of trained and educated people