Birth Of The Neo-Atlantean Elite And The Pursuit Of A Hemispheric Golden Age, Part One
A new world awaits...
To read Part Two of this essay, click here…
I. An Elite Unrestrained
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” - John Winthrop
I was born in Kentucky; my childhood there was prosperous and stable– a stark contrast to the calamitous decline some of my extended family suffered in Venezuela. The three years I spent in Mexico at the height of Felipe Calderon’s war against the cartels instilled in me a deep gratitude for the ideals and conditions of the United States. Here was a refuge against the violence endemic to so many other parts of the world. I love this country; my future wife and children will be Americans, and I will always be grateful for the simple fact that it has been a shining city upon a hill for me and my family. For a substantial part of the country and the world, however, this has not been the case.
There is another image from my youth that is perhaps a better reflection of the character of the United States since the resolution of the Cold War– that of the flying city of Laputa from the classic Hayao Miyazaki film Castle In The Sky. The film makes it clear that the levitating city of Laputa, untethered from the Earth through its abundant wealth and scientific and technological capabilities, dominated the planet militarily. In time, Laputan society collapsed due to the unbound lust for power and wealth its elites displayed absent any effective checks on their power from other states. The post-1991 American elite have effectively governed the United States as Laputa. Our possession of vast natural resources and position on the North American continent have allowed us to remain far removed from the harsh realities, conflicts, and constraints that plague other states. Without a true international peer to restrain them, American elites have acted upon their worst impulses, executing a variety of devastating policies that have undermined the unipolar order they sought to uphold. From the evisceration of the American interior’s social fabric via both the introduction of addictive, lethal opioids and the offshoring of its industrial capabilities, to the utter destruction of the Middle East through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their second and third order effects, it is clear that the post-1991 American elite have acted under the illusion of their own impunity. But all decisions have consequences, and we are witnessing– especially with the Russian invasion of Ukraine– the birth of a new, and more volatile, global order.
Navigating this new order successfully will require the ascendance of an elite class capable of overcoming the internal divisions of the American public and acting decisively in the new global conditions at hand. Unfortunately for us, our country, with its vast swathe of citizens inhabiting the political center, is trapped between two extremes seeking to capture the American state apparatus and simultaneously incapable of fulfilling the aforementioned objectives.
It is evident that the movement that has emerged from the extreme left— referred to as the Successor Ideology by American writer Wesley Yang and commonly known as “Wokeness”— is decreasing the quality and functionality of American institutions while embracing anti-white rhetoric. The chief opponent to Wokeness from the other extreme is the white nationalist movement that enthusiastically embraced the campaigns and presidency of Donald Trump. Its proponents do not understand the consequences their capture of elite institutions of culture and governance would bring upon the country. To fully appreciate the ramifications of either extreme emerging victorious in this political conflict, we must look to history across the Caribbean. The story of my family, in particular, is an instructive case because it follows the decline of one ruling class and the rise of another in Venezuela. There are key lessons that must be taken from Venezuelan and, more broadly, Latin American history if the US is to escape the trap that has befallen the region.
II. Había una vez en Boconó…
My maternal grandmother, Blanca Quintero Gonzalo, was born in 1928 in Boconó, Venezuela. Like all of Latin America, Venezuela possessed (and still possesses) a rigid caste structure based on the proportion of European descent one can claim. Boconó was no different, and my grandmother’s family formed part of the upper echelon of its social world. Fortune did not favor her personally, however, as she lost her father and with him, the family’s sole source of wealth, at a young age. She worked to support her younger brother’s education, forgoing any of those opportunities herself. Her sister’s marriage to Saúl Guerrero Rosales, who would later serve as the General Commander of the Air Force, the Minister of Transportation, and the Ambassador to Spain, allowed the family as a whole to maintain some degree of status. When my grandmother married my Costa Rican grandfather, the Venezuelan caudillo Marcos Pérez Jiménez served as the godfather of the wedding. But the family’s fall, while delayed, could not be denied. When the caudillo’s regime was overthrown, my grandmother’s family was spared because their decline in status meant they were no longer perceived as threats to the new order.
Boconó was also home to my paternal grandfather, Epiménides García. Unlike my grandmother, though, he was triracial and born to a single mother in abject poverty. His opportunities for formal education were limited, so he too worked instead to send his younger brother, Samuel, to school. In time, his brother would have an opportunity to demonstrate his talents after receiving an invitation to attend military school in Caracas. As he ascended through the military hierarchy to the rank of colonel, his family’s social and economic status ascended with him. My grandfather, for his part, married my grandmother, a pharmacist trained at the Central University of Venezuela.
Though my grandfather passed away in 1992, his family’s fortunes continued to rise. His second cousin Hugo García Hernández, also from Boconó and my father’s godfather, mentored Hugo Chávez in the military and helped him found the socialist party Movimiento Quinta República (MVR) which swept the previous Venezuelan elite out of political power. My father’s godfather would later serve as the ambassador to Russia from 2009-2012 and the ambassador to Mexico for several years starting in 2013. Familial connections to influential regime leaders were not enough to paper over growing political divides though. My father’s brother was blacklisted by the Chávez regime after protesting its political activities along with other employees of the state-owned petroleum corporation PDVSA. My father has not had contact with that side of the family for many years.
Living in Kentucky, I was largely isolated from the relatives and social context that would have informed me about my family’s history. It was only in adolescence that I began to ask questions about our past. Ultimately, I am thankful my life took this course because it has allowed me to perceive those events– and Latin American history in general– as an outsider.
The reality is that Latin America is dysfunctional because its elite culture, unlike those of Western Europe, the United States historically, Japan, or China, is broken. This manifests itself in two specific ways: a lack of noblesse oblige, the responsibility that the privileged in society bear to act with generosity and compassion towards the poor, and a profound elite selfishness that strangles any aspirations for collective greatness. Both factors stem directly from the experience of the Spanish colonial project.
When the Spanish conquered the Americas in search of wealth and power, they removed Amerindian elites and placed themselves at the top of each social hierarchy. This in and of itself is no great crime and follows the patterns of history closely; they took for themselves the Mandates of Heaven previously held by the Aztecs and Inca, among others. Furthermore, it is logical that trust in a minority-controlled society would be based on ethnic or racial similarity. To ensure control over the empire it had conquered, political power in the colonies was issued to those of primarily Spanish descent. It is fair to say that any other group would have conducted itself in a similar manner. The problem is that this method of social organization has outlasted its initial imperial utility and acted as an enormous constraint on the aspirations of the region for, at the very least, two centuries. After independence from Spain was achieved, a significant portion of Latin America was unable to experience positive economic and cultural development because its elites, having carried over colonial attitudes on race to the nascent regimes, did not perceive the lower classes as belonging to their in-group, effectively destroying any sense of noblesse oblige that could have changed the trajectory of the region. Any elements from the lower classes that rose above their station to produce things worthy of admission to the elite found themselves crashing against barriers to their upward mobility put in place by the ruling classes. Enormous social pressure was exerted on these rising individuals to marry into higher caste (i.e. more European) families, weakening their descendants’ links to the lower classes and perpetuating this caste system– responsible for the region’s dysfunction– into the future. Amongst the public, this phenomenon is known as “mejorando la raza” or “improving the race”.
In his analysis of the work of Vilfredo Pareto in The Machiavellians, James Burnham notes that the most evident barrier to free circulation of the elite– which is necessary for a society to remain dynamic and strong– is the aristocratic principle, that manifests itself most clearly as the children of elites receiving positions of great power and influence at the expense of greater capacity individuals from the non-elite (Burnham p212). If this trend is carried far enough and the “elite becomes ‘closed’ or almost so, degeneration is bound to set in” and the society suffers from poor governance (Burnham p213). Vast swathes of Latin America are governed by ruling classes with effectively closed elite structures that produce terrible governance outcomes. These systems, combined with the mechanisms of racial absorption these structures use to break the links of solidarity that rising non-elites possess with the masses, prevent any positive developments in governance from occurring.
There have been attempts to break the hold of the past to forge new futures worthy of global admiration. Both Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan revolutionary who dreamed of the liberation and unification of Spanish America under a single state, and Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan liberator of South America who sought to create a powerful, multiracial state in the form of the Gran Colombia, were foiled by the selfishness of local colonial elites too invested in the racially exclusive social structures inherited by their countries after the Spanish-American revolutionary wars. It is my belief and fear that, regardless of the victor and absent an alternative, the current contest between the extreme left and right factions vying for control of the United States could condemn us to the adoption of an elite culture or structure that mirrors either that of the Latin American present or its past. Such a result must be avoided at all costs.
The rising elite that carried Hugo Chávez into power in Venezuela may have seized the Mandate of Heaven from the primarily European-descended class previously in control, but it has done virtually nothing worth admiring or even respecting. As Venezuela collapsed at their hands, they looted the country, seemingly convinced that their actions were fair based on the centuries they spent kept from the halls of power. Their primary motivation was vengeance, not justice, and I see many of those same undercurrents within the Woke faction amongst whites and non-whites alike. A functional and flourishing society cannot be built on vengeance and resentment. Would the capture of America’s institutions by this faction lead to a similar outcome as that which we have seen within Venezuela? This is a question we should not wish to answer.
My concerns regarding the Woke movement’s opposite are focused not so much on perceptions of their desires for vengeance against an elite they feel has betrayed them– though intense vindictiveness is certainly something one should be wary of– but the fact that their potential capture of the national apparatus and insistence on the importance of white control of institutions could recreate the closed, stagnant caste structure that has plagued the countries of Latin America for centuries. The danger here, additionally, is that this faction often disguises beliefs in white superiority and purity under the guise of arguments in favor of merit and fairness to appeal to a white majority that does not share its extremism. No one can deny the impacts, both positive and negative, of European contributions to global civilization, but the emphasis on purity is ironic and farcical given what our study of ancient DNA has revealed. Europeans themselves are Mestizos and Pardos, having been forged from the admixture of three separate racial groups thousands of years in the past: the Western Hunter-Gatherers of Europe, Early European Farmers migrating from Turkey, and the pastoralists of the Indo-European migrations. I find it likely that the reassertion of a notion of white superiority and control in a country as diverse as the United States would recreate the low-trust, extraction-based model of public and elite relations first imposed on Latin America during the Spanish conquest. This development would also fly in the face of the overwhelmingly positive demographic trends presently occurring.
Intermarriage rates across all ethnic and racial groups in the United States are rising. These statistics represent a strong signal that the psychological boundaries of the ingroup are expanding more and more to encompass a wider variety of Americans. Just as the Catholic Church in Western Europe was able to generate greater pro-sociality and solidarity amongst Europeans by eviscerating the clan structure of Europe’s tribes via the banning of cousin marriage– a fascinating subject explored in Joe Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World– voluntary love marriage has the capacity to achieve the same within the United States. To do so, however, Americans must stop holding up the European world as the pinnacle of civilization. Instead, we should view it as a parent, one whose influence is profound, but who is ultimately distinct from the child. And shouldn’t the desire of the father and the natural destiny of the son coincide on this mission: the pursuit and accomplishment of great feats by the youth that are grander than those of the previous generation? A Western Hemisphere that finally recognizes that the most defining aspects of its many cultures arise from the delicate interplay of European, Amerindian, African, and Asian influences is one that can begin to move confidently in the world, secure in its identity. What I called the Neo-Atlantean identity in my first essay a year ago is, at its core, Afro-Eurasian or, put simply, American. Shifting the way people across the hemisphere view their relationship to the Western world should not be too difficult of a feat. After all, the history of the West is the history of civilizational succession–with the clearest examples being the transitions from Greece to Rome and Rome to Christendom. Charlemagne was a Frank, not a Roman, and yet he still inherited the title of Augustus and emperor long after the western empire had fallen.
Part Two of this essay will be released on April 6, 2022.