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about Central America, LaFeber is involved
in "informing the debate," as he
says, even though he admits he doesn't
particularly like to go out and talk ("I
do not like to fly in and out of Ithaca in
the middle of the winter, for one thing,
and I've got obligations here, which I
take quite seriously"). That he nonetheless
continues to make public appearances
and statements addressing the situation
in Central America is testament
both to his concern for what is happening
there and to what he feels is his "obligation
as an educator."
Much of Inevitable Revolutions concerns
the historical illustration of one of
the quotations with which LaFeber
opens the book: the eye-opening 1980 remark
by Ambler Ross, the US ambassador
to Panama, that "[w]hat we see in
Central America today would not be
much different if Fidel Castro and the
Soviet Union did not exist."
Examining the history of American
domination in the region, LaFeber
shows how successive US administrations
have misunderstood Central America's
miseries. Although employed time
and again, both economic aid and military
intervention have done nothing but
accelerate revolutionary conditions, he
maintains, and will continue to do so so
long as the US puts its own interests
above an objective reading of the region
and its history.
LaFeber analyzes what he considers to
be the two main approaches toward
Central America competing for favor today
in the United States. 'One is associated
with the Reagan administration,"
he says, "and that is that you use military
pressure until governments change
and become what you want them to become.
"The other one [argues] that the Reagan
approach has produced very bad results.
It's driven some of those governments
farther to the left, and accelerated
the revolution. So a better way of doing
it might be to bring in outside negotiators—a
so-called contadora group [consisting
of representatives from Venezuela,
Colombia, Panama, and Mexico]—
into the situation and allow them with
the United States to try to mediate between
the different factions, and ask for
ceasefires, and try to work out political
solutions.
"Which would be very difficult," La-
Feber hastens to add. "Extremely difficult.
I don't think the Reagan administration
can do it. Politically, they're
about the least talented group we've had
in power in a long time. And I just don't
think they can probably negotiate something
like that. But it seems to me that's
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He argues calmly,
even in public,
without crusading
as do others
in current debates
much preferable to the military policy
that they've been trying to follow, and
that has not produced much."
LaFeber states his arguments calmly;
even when speaking in public, he lacks
the strident, "crusading" tone that often
seems to characterize many who address
Central American issues. He delivers
the facts as he's discovered them with
perspective, avoiding neither the gruesome
reality of human rights violations
nor the occasional opportunity to inject
a touch of humor.
For instance, in a Citizen's Forum on
Central America held at Ithaca High
School in late February, LaFeber discussed
the different theories which the
US has applied in Central American
countries. In Honduras, we've employed
the "Hallmark Theory, as in Hallmark
cards," he explained. "That is, when
you care enough to send the very best,
send the United States Marines."
As Virginia M. Harrington, Grad,
notes, "He's not the crusader type. It's
just not his style."
"I care about this issue a great deal,
because there are people dying down
there," he says. "So if you know something
about the area, and you think you
can do something about it, you like to
feel you're contributing something to
helping resolve the situation.
"When it comes right down to it, the
reason I did the book, and the reason I
accepted Mike Curtis's offer to do the
thing for The Atlantic which set this all
off, was that I had the feeling, and I still
have the feeling, that we're talking
about this very much in a vacuum. That
we talk about policy in Central America
as if it started in 1979, or in 1981. And
you simply cannot understand what's
going on down there until you go way,
way back and see the roots of it."
The Midwesterner
There are some who might suggest that
Walter LaFeber is a consummate midwesterner—confident
yet low-key, solid
but self-effacing. There is good reason
for this "midwestern" turn of character:
LaFeber was born and raised in Walkerton,
Indiana, a quiet town of 2,500
("eighteen miles from Notre Dame Stadium"
is how he locates it).
As he grew up, and even as he headed
down to Hanover College in the southern
part of the state, LaFeber never assumed
his life would ultimately take him
very far out of Walkerton. His father
ran a local grocery store; young Walter
figured he would eventually do the
same. He did not come to realize his father
had larger things in mind for him
until one summer early in his undergraduate
career.
"One night, he and I were working
very late," he remembers. "I said something
about coming back to town and
running the grocery store someday. And
he said, 'No, you're not going to do
that.' Which was news to me, because I
just assumed he thought I was going to
come back."
Himself barred from college by a father
who needed him in the store, the elder
LaFeber refused to consign the same
life to his own son.
Suddenly stripped of his presupposed
career, Walkerton's Walter LaFeber decided
to pursue the study of history due
nearly as much to a great teacher he had
as to his own love of the subject. Right
there "in this little Presbyterian school
in southern Indiana," says LaFeber, "I
had really the best teacher I've ever run
across. He got a lot of us interested in
history. Just in the four years I was
there, he probably produced six PhDs in
history."
A year and a half after graduating
from Hanover, LaFeber received, in
1956, his master's degree in history from
Stanford University. Proceeding to do
his doctoral work at the University of
Wisconsin, he studied there under Prof.
Fred Harrington '33, who soon became
Wisconsin's president.
After a rough start in a doctoral program
so rigorous and tedious that he and
two close friends were on the verge of
quitting, LaFeber and his classmates
found their strength and faith renewed
in'a late-night talk with Wisconsin's renowned
"revisionist" historian, William
Appleman Williams. (Disputing the
work of many leading historians, especially
concerning the nature of the Cold
War, revisionists like Williams sought to
remove what they saw as ideology from
historiography, and to inject a true sense
of history into contemporary writing
and thinking.)
On this particular night in Wisconsin,
the three PhD candidates confronted