World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [35]
In Brazil, which I’ll say more about in a moment, 50,000 (less than .01 percent) of the country’s 165 million population still own most of the country’s land. Again, the latifundio owners are unmistakably white; the peasants, however, are typically descendants of African slaves. The bodily differentiation between higher-class and lower-class Brazilians in the countryside is not marked solely by skin color and facial features. In the sugar-producing Zona da Mata, many of the dark-skinned plantation workers have lost a limb or several fingers due to the gruesome dangers of caning. Moreover, according to the late Brazilian nutritionist Nelson Chaves, even slaves were better fed than the contemporary sugar workers of the Zona da Mata. “[T]he rural worker of today,” Chaves wrote in 1982, “is primarily a carrier of worms, and his stature is diminishing considerably over time, so that it is actually approaching that of the African pygmy.”
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Latin America’s Immigrant Entrepreneurs
The other form of white market dominance in Latin America stems not from plantation wealth but from the entrepreneurial energies of relatively recent immigrant groups, who are dramatically overrepresented among the region’s business elite. Thus, a study from the 1960s found that of Mexico’s thirty-odd outstanding business leaders, almost half reported a foreign paternal grandfather. Similarly, a 1965 survey of Bogotá executives revealed that although Colombia has had relatively little immigration, 41 percent of the country’s leading entrepreneurs were foreign born.
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Some of Latin America’s most stunningly successful immigrant entrepreneurs have been Lebanese or Jewish. In terms of numbers, both groups are tiny, representing almost negligible minorities in their countries of residence. In terms of economic dynamism, however, both groups have been extraordinary. In addition to Slim, a surprising number of Latin America’s wealthiest businessmen are Lebanese. Moreover, Lebanese Latin Americans have held high-profile political positions. Both Ecuador’s recently ousted former president Jamil Mahuad, for example, and Argentina’s recently ousted former president Carlos Menem, were Lebanese—and avid proponents of privatization and market reform.
From the 1890s on, most Jews entered the countries of Latin America as poor peddlers. In Judith Elkin’s words, with “packs on their backs and account books in their pockets,” they trudged the streets of major cities and towns, selling small items of mass consumption such as matches, razor blades, scissors, sandals, cloth, tableware, and jewelry. Even the mountainous Andean countries were tackled by the indomitable Jewish peddler. As one foreign visitor observed in 1940:
In Bolivia you see the Eastern Jew who does not attend courses to learn Spanish, but who speaks the dialect of the Indios. They appear in the most outlying villages, where hardly any Europeans have ever been, and manage to eke out an existence, sleeping in their wagons under the stars. Hardly a German immigrant has dared or would dare to do this. . . . Without wishing to be critical, but to complete the picture, I must say that the first care of each German is to get an apartment. As far as the German is concerned, an apartment must have a bath.
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Jews are no longer peddlers in Latin America today. In a matter of a few generations the Jewish communities of Latin America have transformed themselves from struggling immigrants into financially powerful businessmen and professionals. In 1994 nearly 53 percent of employed Jews in Mexico identified themselves as directors, managers, or administrators while another 26 percent identified themselves as professionals. Throughout Latin America the rate of upward social mobility among Jewish communities has been astounding over the last century. In Brazil, the Jewish Klabin and Lafer families, linked by marriage ties, are among the wealthiest