58 pages • 1 hour read
Juan GonzalezHarvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Roots, Branches, Harvest
The central metaphor of roots, branches, and harvest creates the structure and thesis of the book. To explain the harvest (the explosion of Latin American immigrants in this country) we must look to the causes of such growth, the roots, which start as early as the 1500s when Spain (and later England) began colonizing in the Americas. As these colonies grew and developed, the annexing of land up until the Spanish-American War, at the end of the 19th century, ended up annexing both Mexican land and Mexican citizens; many Latin American immigrants became US citizens through conquest.
Other causes also explain the great number of Latin American citizens in this country. US foreign policies designed to protect and promote the profits of American businesses in various Latin American countries came to be the norm in the 20th century. These policies often actively supported Latin American dictators and strongmen, despite their human rights abuses, simply because these strongmen could be counted on to support American businesses. During the Cold War, the United States perceived any leader with ties to communism as being a threat to the United States; American presidents worked actively to destabilize such leaders, as can be seen in the Iran-Contra deal that worked to overthrow the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, even though the Sandinistas were the populist leaders.
These figurative roots grew to multiple branches. These branches, representing the different journeys taken by the various countries, are distinct from one another, and yet, the branches of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, and El Salvador all stem from the same root: their relationship with the United States. Gonzalez methodically presents the evidence, showing example after example of how the United States directly determined the trajectories of different countries. These examples created a harvest that resulted in devastated economies and violence, resulting in people fleeing to the US. Thus, as the United States continues to hurt these economies, the people from those countries will continue to come here. The United States has given them few other choices. This cycle will continue until we understand the root causes and change the direction of the past 500 years. There is hope that this can happen, that a new root can be planted, new branches formed, and a new harvest can take place, one that lives up to the ideals that the United States was founded on.
The Alamo
The Alamo symbolizes the importance of interpretation, particularly as it relates to The American Dream Versus the American Nightmare. Many textbooks point to the last stand at the Alamo by the Texas explorers and adventurers as examples of the bravery of these men as they stood against the forces of Mexico’s general Santa Anna. However, Gonzalez points to the fact that these men were trespassing on Mexican land and continuing to rely on the filibuster attempts to seize land that didn’t belong to them. Rather than “martyred defenders,” they were “adventures, vagabonds, and land speculators” (42). One was a murderer. Another was an enslaver. Others were “veterans of Andrew Jackson’s grisly victory over the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, and they shared Old Hickory’s racist and expansionist views toward Latin America” (42). Rather than brave and admirable, the author paints the men at the Alamo as greedy and opportunistic.
This dual interpretation “underscores an unresolved contradiction of U.S. history—between our ideals of freedom and our predilection for conquest” (39). It also raises the question: Who gets to control the narrative? Who gets to decide the “real story”? The mythologized interpretation hides the darker impulses that have driven much of US policy toward Latin American nations. It is the author’s goal to bring the stories that have been hidden to light so the reader can have a better understanding of not only our past but also our future.
The United Fruit Company
The United Fruit Company was formed on March 30, 1899, the year after the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-American war and ceded the lands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. Many Americans were uneasy about acquiring these lands. Despite this, American companies had no qualms about taking immediate advantage of the situation. Suddenly Latin American countries, previously under the rule of Spain, were now ripe for picking. Corporate executives saw these countries as weak and vulnerable and thus perfect for establishing companies where they could dominate that country’s economy. The author uses United Fruit as a symbol of 20th-century US imperialism. Its dominance over Central America—United Fruit at one time owned more than 230,000 acres of land and 112 miles of railroad—symbolized the numerous companies that acquired great power in Central America in the 20th century. These corporations, with the help of the US government, were able to prop up or topple governments, depending on what would help US corporations profit.
