The Latin America Red Pill: My Search for Freedom South of the Border by Fergus Hodgson offers a bold, firsthand journey through the political and economic realities of Latin America. In this chapter, you will get a taste of the book’s content, discover whether it is the right read for you, and find links to purchase the paperback or audiobook versions.
The purpose of this book is twofold: (1) to correct misleading narratives regarding Latin America and (2) to explain why the region suffers from chronic economic underperformance relative to Canada and the United States (which I will refer to as Anglo-America). The first objective opens the door to the second, and without profound myths I would have no motivation to write. However, they are ubiquitous and outlandish, especially with regards to US relations, so there is no shortage of motivation on my end.
These myths have damaged the lives of people dear to me. Many of my closest friends are exiles, especially from Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. While some are still working on their departures, those who have left their countries will never return, at least not to make a home. For many, that is a departure from centuries of lineage, and it hurts profoundly. I have witnessed this pain, and my patience is over for deceptions, lies by omission, censorship, and follies that continue to harm the region and foment the exodus.
As I write this, there is an organized migrant caravan heading north from Honduras. This is not the first—I have lost count at this point—and it will not be the last. This long-term departure begs an explanation: why have people been leaving for generations, and why did the emigrations from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere to Latin America dry up many decades ago?
My intent is to provide a sketch for the proximate and historical reasons. The account is unabashedly autobiographical, even therapeutic as a weight off a man’s shoulders. While others went to graduate school for Latin American studies, I traveled to 19 of 20 countries in Latin America—all except Bolivia—which includes Brazil and Puerto Rico (a US territory). I devoted a decade of my life to exploring this continent firsthand, to living it up close in more ways than one. Initially, that was a search in 2010 for a new place to put down roots. Later, my devotion to Latin America grew into a profession as an editor, reporter, columnist, economic consultant, and financial analyst.
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My approach of predominantly learning directly with boots on the ground has, in many ways, put me at an advantage relative to academics. Direct experience let me see Latin America without the filter of political correctness. I could proceed without the Marxist trappings of higher education, journalism schools, and legacy media. As the late economist Murray Rothbard wrote in Anatomy of the State (1974), there is an age-old alliance between the state and intellectuals that molds opinion towards socialism.
Being a New Zealander of British heritage—a Pakeha kiwi—without loyalties in Latin America also allowed me to begin with a relatively blank slate and to be an independent observer. My late mother grew up in Calgary, Canada, and moved to New Zealand to start her family. Her own parents were immigrants from Ireland and England, making me a triple citizen with a natural disposition towards exploration. Seven of their nine children remain in Canada, three of whom have entered academia, including one recently retired university president.
Further, I have been able to follow not a static curriculum but my intense curiosity, which has made the journey fascinating, eclectic, and revealing. I will be forever grateful for the countless people who have befriended me and shared their insights along this journey. Many continue to work with me, and listing them would be onerous, but they know who they are.
An Intellectual Treasure Canceled
Aside from many economics conferences and classical-liberal forums, I took a brief break from travel for a formal academic interlude in 2013.1 This was during my tenure as editor in chief of the PanAm Post. The professional certificate program with what was the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami introduced me to many thoughtful and passionate gentlemen.
These experts on Cuban history lived it vividly, including suffering from President John Kennedy’s cowardly abandonment with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. ICCAS heightened my awareness regarding the mismatch between history and media portrayals. It has only broadened and crystalized in my eyes with time.
The late Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza’s autobiography, Nicaragua Betrayed (written in 1980 with help from US journalist Jack Cox), is another source that laid bare to me the widespread misrepresentation, contamination, and confusion in Western media. His book—which came out just prior to his assassination in Paraguay at the hands of Fidel Castro’s thugs—is an eye-opener on Central America, and it motivated me to write more forthrightly.2
Mexico, ICCAS is no more. Frenk fired the entire staff in 2017 and supposedly began a search for a new director. Nothing has come of it.
ICCAS’s Bacardi House home on campus, where I spent many wonderful evenings, is no longer opening people’s eyes and has become another victim of the progressive monolith in higher education. Carlos Eire, a Cuban exile and historian at Yale University, blogged that “it was an academic massacre.… It is clear [Frenk] wanted to shut down the institute.” José “Joe” Azel, a longtime ICCAS senior scholar—who holds University of Miami doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s degrees—described the closure as ICCAS-gate with a “disingenuous cover-up.” You can see why a man feels compelled to speak out. Courageous, brilliant scholars have lost their homes and now their platforms to the thought police, as is so common in this era. Another example is Marco Navarro-Génie, a Nicaraguan exile in Alberta, Canada, and biographer of Augusto “César” Sandino. Fed up with the mob in academia, he exited and now plies his trade as an author, think-tank president with the Haultain Research Institute, and columnist with the Western Standard.
The ICCAS certificate program’s director, Azel—to whom I owe a debt of gratitude—became a mentor to me. I have read and reviewed three of his books and one by the other ICCAS instructor, Jaime Suchlicki. As I wrote of Mañana in Cuba (2010), if mañana (tomorrow) ever comes to Cuba, José has the plan. Actor Andy García has also narrated a short documentary summary of Suchlicki’s work, for those who want a quick overview: Cuba: Columbus to Castro (2015).
Why Half-Truths Replicate
One reason why the truth about Latin America fails to spread is that it hurts. Ignorance is often bliss, and pleasant lies spread faster than realities that compel introspection and self-responsibility. Conveying unpleasant realities is also unlikely to win friends in polite society.
Columnist and South Africa native Ilana Mercer learned this the hard way. Now based in Washington State, she wrote Into the Cannibal’s Pot (2012) about post-apartheid South Africa. Her accurate depiction contradicts the finger-pointing narrative that celebrates Nelson Mandela and vilifies the white population. Now her lucid writing garners a low profile as she finds herself unwelcome in many arenas.
The red-pill metaphor, as introduced by The Matrix film in 1999, also conveys why one might not wish to know the truth. This book is my own red-pill story. In particular, it touches upon heritable traits. These are crucial to cutting through the noise and understanding Latin America. However, such is the topic’s third-rail status, no one discusses it in academic circles.In 2019, I gave a speech, “Painful Truths about Latin America,” at the Capitalism & Morality seminar in Vancouver, Canada, organized by Jayant Bhandari. In it, I introduced much of the material that became the basis for this book, and I noted a memorable line from the late Venezuelan Carlos Rangel in his 1976 book, The Latin Americans.3 Rangel, whose perspectives echo throughout the following chapters, said the most notable feature of Latin America is failure. The ocean could rise up and submerge Latin America, and the rest of the world would barely notice: “It is a truth that hurts and that we seldom mention.”
So little has changed in the decades since this was written almost 50 years ago, well before I was even born. Yet the information age, coupled with greater migration and international trade, has made Latin America difficult to ignore. The region’s people, as they arrive en masse and become more influential, are making themselves known in Anglo-America.
Latin America’s most prominent military hero and liberator, Simón Bolívar—Bolivia being his namesake—shared Rangel’s perspective. Bolívar intended to leave what was then Gran Colombia and had sent his possessions to Paris just before his death in Santa Marta in 1830. Bolívar foresaw “a mob gone wild … under the domination of obscure, small tyrants,” and he encouraged sensible individuals to emigrate.
As you might guess, Rangel’s brutal honesty did not make him popular. His important books remain relatively obscure, and he died in 1988 aged 58 from either suicide or murder.
In contrast, Eduardo Galeano’s 1971 Open Veins of Latin America cast blame on US and European imperialism for Latin America’s backwardness, poverty, and penchant for losing. His book contains fascinating history and is worth a read, especially to help one understand the socialist mindset. However, its tortured language expounds venomous scapegoating and dependency-theory economics. This contorted, anticapitalist logic implies that even when developed nations trade with and invest in the likes of Latin America, the underdeveloped nations still lose.
Whatever kernels of truth there are in the Uruguayan’s account have served to deflect blame and demonize Latin America’s oligarchs, bourgeoisie, and trading partners. The book has become standard reading in Latin American history programs throughout the world. The late Hugo Chávez (1954–2013)—Venezuela’s socialist coup d’état leader, tyrant, and nation destroyer—even gave a copy to US President Barack Obama. A populist in the worst sense of the word, Chávez described Open Veins as “a monument in our Latin American history.”
Galeano, who passed away in 2015, regretted his book. In 2014, he said:
[Open Veins] tried to be a book of political economy, but I did not yet have the necessary training or preparation.… I would not be capable of reading [it] again; I would keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique cannot tolerate it.”
While he did not completely recant his Open Veins views, Galeano displayed maturity, humility, and honesty in distancing himself from the work that gave him worldwide fame. This introspection is precisely what Latin America needs if the people are to overcome the errors of the past and rise to join First-World economies. The truth might be a bitter pill to swallow, but avoiding it will not make it go away or lessen its veracity.
Buy the Book
- Purchase the print version here.
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