together, easy victims of agitation andnmass culture. The buildings themselvesnare mostly nondescript, factorylike,nfar from the Oxford-Sorbonne-nHarvard style—another indicationnthat universities in the post-1945 masssocietiesnare now subject to the requirementsnand mentality of the industrialnsociety. Universities no longernstand out proudly with their architecturenrivaling churches and palaces;nthey are parts of the system of production,nof sociological transformations,nand of the political game. In SouthnAmerica, too, students now think innterms of job opportunities and takencourses that lead to employment, regardlessnof deeper personal and culturalninterests. Engineering, business,nelectronics are the preferred subjects,nas well as that much of culture thatnfacilitates entry into politics. Undernthe circumstances, it is a miracle that Instill met interested and cultivatednyoung men and women. At the Catho­nHispanophobianThe long-standing North Americannprejudice against Latin Americanis only one chapter in a 500year-oldnantagonism towards allnthings Spanish. Say Spain, and immediatelynyou conjure up a visionnof Philip II—the Spanish Inquisition;natrocities in the Netherlands;nthe heroic William of Orange; then”murder” of Philip’s son, Don Carlos;nthe massacre and exploitation ofnthe Indians; the exploits of thosenlovable English seadogs whom anyonenbut an Englishman would callnpirates; and — finally—the greatnsaga of gallant England’s defeat ofnthe Spanish Armada. If this imagenof the brutal and bigoted Spaniardnhas little basis in reality, it nonethelessnhas continued to infect Americannattitudes in the 20th century.nWhat else explains the systematicndenigration of Francisco Franco,nthe gentlest of despots, or the bizarrendecision to aid Mrs. Thatchernagainst Argentina during the Falklandsncrisis?nAs Philip Wayne Powell explainsnin Tree of Hate: Propaganda andnlic University of Santiago, where Inwas guest professor for the month ofnNovember (19th-century politicalnthought, with emphasis on Tocqueville),nthe public of students and visitorsnput the hardest questions and enterednthe debate engendered by thenprevious guest professor, Guy Sorman,nFrench author of the ConservativenRevolution in America. Sorman’snpurely liberal/capitalist theses clashednwith my own, and I would say that thenaudience was divided about half-andhalf,nalthough I may have had 51npercent of the votes since I (unlikenSorman) spoke in Spanish. The “debate”nwas the more attentively listenednto as Chileans are now preparing anchangeover to democracy when PresidentnPinochet steps down as expectednin 1989. This political context lent thenlectures some added public interest,nsince the nation’s mind is not quitenmade up on which regime to choosenover the other. But all, or almost all,nREVISIONSnPrejudice Affecting United StatesnRelations with the Hispanic Worldn(Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books,nrepr. of 1971 Basic Books edition),nthe “Black Legend” of Spain wasnconcocted by a varied group: enviousnItalians, ambitious Dutch politicians,nEnglish rivals, and expellednSephardic Jews. His well-documentednand powerfully argued booknis a necessary corrective to all thenschoolbook slanders against thenConquistadors and Spanish rule innLatin America.nFor rhetorical reasons, Powellnleaves out the most interesting Englishntourists in Spain — GeorgenBorrow and Robert Louis Stevenson,nboth of whom expressed annenthusiasm for the country and itsnpeople. He also omits the considerablenHispanophilia displayed bynCatholic rightists in the U.S. Anmore serious failure is Powell’s refusalnto see the Black Legend as anweapon in the ongoing struggle betweenntwo cultures: ProtestantnNorth Europe and the CatholicnSouth. (Northern European Catholicsnare caught in the middle.) Evennif most of the indictments againstnnnunderstood that each regime meansnvery different things, not only politically,nbut also economically, morally,nreligiously, even aesthetically. OverridingnSorman’s general economism,nmy emphasis was on those other motives.nI soon understood, not only in Santiagonbut at other universities in otherncountries, that the lecturer’s words arenweighed on the balance of grave localnchoices: between revolution and stability,ndemocracy and the authoritariannregime, military intervention and civiliannrule. In other words, the professornand his course are not heard asnmere scholarship but are expected tonbe engage statements, or at least pointersnfor concrete, here-and-now suggestions.nFinally I concluded that this politicalncontext gave my lectures, and lecturesnby others, the kind of piquantnflavor they do not have in sociehesnwhere political discourse and debatenSpain arc deliberate lies, it is somewhatndisconcerting to find annAmerican taking up the cudgels fornwhat has been the “other side”nsince the days of Elizabeth I.nApart from its very great value innsetting the record straight. Tree ofnHate performs a useful service innreminding us of the dangers of politicalnmyths and manufacturednideologies. William of Orange’sncalumnies may have been onlynpolitical propaganda, but they havenhelped to poison the mainstream ofnhistorical thinking in Europe, thenU.S., and Latin America. Deliberatenfalsehoods are not myths, becausena good myth is always true innits essence. But there is nothingnessentially true in the vilification ofna noble and honorable people, andnthe end result may be ProtestantnAmerica’s failure to understand itsnmost important neighbors and allies.nWhat, in the end, is all thenState Department’s cant aboutndemocratic progress in Latin America,nif not one more episode in ournunremitting war against Spanishncivilization? (TF)nAUGUST 1987 / 35n