In a world where technology has made travel much simpler, it is easy to live abroad and feel safe. Few Americans, however, have dared to reside in countries under military dictatorships. Fewer still have been in a state of siege even once, let alone five times. But Dr. Joseph Tulchin, a preeminent Latin Americanist, has: once each in Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay, and twice in Argentina. Dr. Tulchin \u2013an expert on U.S. foreign policy, inter-American relations, and contemporary Latin America \u2013 is currently teaching a seminar at Bowdoin on United States \u2013 Latin American relations, as well as finishing up his latest book on Latin American foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Tulchin, who graduated from Amherst College, did not know he wanted to study Latin America until he began graduate school at Harvard University. During his first year, he took a research seminar which sought to examine global reactions after WWI when the United States refused to join the League of Nations. \u201cThe person in my seminar next to me said \u2018I\u2019ll do the United Kingdom,\u2019\u201d explained Tulchin. \u201cThe young lady down the table said \u2018I\u2019ll do France,\u2019 and so I said \u2018well I speak Spanish a little I\u2019ll do Spain.\u2019 But [the professor] said, \u2018Spain\u2019s not really that useful, why don\u2019t you do Latin America?\u2019, so I did. And I started with A, which is Argentina, and that was it.\u201d Tulchin ended up writing his dissertation on US foreign policy toward Latin America during the First World War.<\/p>\n
Tulchin went on to teach US foreign policy and Latin American history, first at Yale University, and then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. \u201cOver time,\u201d said Tulchin, \u201cI began to sort of grope my way to a discussion of Latin American foreign policy.\u201d He realized, however, that this debate did not actually exist, and began to search for a reason why. \u201cPart of it, of course, was the absence of democracy, but part of it was a historic tradition,\u201d explained Tulchin. So he began to participate in public policy and activist work, with the goal of involving Latin Americans in the comparative study of their own countries and their own foreign policies. This was his main focus during the 16 years he spent as the Director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Public Policy.<\/p>\n
Tulchin recently completed the manuscript of his latest book, From Hegemony to Agency<\/em>. The purpose of the book is to ask why there has not been any definite Latin American foreign policy. Tulchin presents two separate conclusions. The first, explained Tulchin, is that \u201cthe United States comes to hegemony in the region and has no idea, not even today, of how pernicious that hegemonic behavior has been.\u201d The second is that within Latin American agency there are two things lacking. \u201cWell, one thing lacking and one thing that I don\u2019t know what to do about,\u201d said Tulchin. The former is that Latin America is afraid to take its place in the world. The latter refers to the residual anti-Americanism left over from US hegemony in the region. According to Tulchin, \u201cthe legacy of history is powerful,\u201d and as the United States has proclaimed an end to its hegemony, the nations of Latin America must now find a way to exert their own agency.<\/p>\n In his search for Latin American foreign policy, Tulchin has spent a number of years living in countries under military rule, something to which he did not quickly adjust. \u201cThe climate of fear that\u2019s associated with a military dictatorship or a repressive regime is inconceivable to us,\u201d admitted Tulchin. To illustrate his relative naivet\u00e9, Tulchin pointed to one afternoon, shortly after he first arrived in Buenos Aires, when he was having a cup of coffee with a friend. He heard a siren go off and ran out onto the sidewalk to see what was happening. All he had time to observe was a black four-door Ford Falcon driving by and a man with a gun leaning his arm on the open back-seat window, before his friend tackled him to the ground. Unbeknownst to Tulchin, the Argentinian police charged with disappearing people during the \u201cDirty War\u201d drove these \u201cBlack Falcons,\u201d and since, according to Tulchin, \u201cthe streets of [Buenos Aires] are worse than the streets of Boston,\u201d the guns would occasionally go off and accidentally kill innocent bystanders when the car hit a pothole.<\/p>\n And yet, despite multiple decades of travel through dangerous countries, Tulchin claims he has only once come close to experiencing real bodily harm. He was in Bogot\u00e1 in the early 1980s, during the first years of the drug cartels. His colleague, the Dean of Architecture at the Jesuit School in Bogot\u00e1, was driving him to dinner along with a couple of friends from the US. One of Tulchin\u2019s friends had broken her leg and was sitting with it propped up on the back seat. On the way to dinner, they were stopped by a young corporal on duty. The corporal asked to see the Dean\u2019s license and registration, but he had neither and was driving his wife\u2019s car.<\/p>\n Tulchin and his American friends showed the corporal their passports but unfortunately, according to Tulchin, \u201cthe kid was from the country and had never seen a passport, so he thought we were alien agents of some sort, probably guerrillas. We had documents he had never seen before, the driver of the car didn\u2019t have identification, and there\u2019s a lady in the back seat with her broken leg propped up.\u201d So the soldier, who looked to be around 18 years old, took the safety off his rifle. After a significant amount of persuasion, Tulchin and the Dean finally convinced the soldier to contact his captain. They then walked the three blocks to find the captain, Tulchin and the Dean in front with the soldier pointing his rifle into their backs. They finally made it to the captain, \u201cwho it turned out, typical of the Colombian military, was from an elite family and knew the Dean\u2019s brother,\u201d said Tulchin. \u201cAt the moment it was scary, but in retrospect it was pure comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does it [really] mean to live in a military dictatorship?\u201d asked Tulchin. \u201cI could make you read ten books and then you\u2019d go down [to Latin America] and be like a Martian looking around\u2026You have trouble understanding what\u2019s happening and you don\u2019t know where the lines are.\u201d In a career that has spanned several countries over multiple decades, Tulchin has balanced precariously on these lines in a continuous attempt to encourage a debate about Latin American foreign policy, one which he believes it is imperative to have. \u201cIf you look at process, you want discussion,\u201d said Tulchin. \u201cIt\u2019s natural to have debate about foreign policy. You have to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a world where technology has made travel much simpler, it is easy to live abroad and feel safe. Few Americans, however, have dared to reside in countries under military dictatorships. Fewer still have been in a state of siege even once, let alone five times. 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