Business and history

Empire has its consequences.

In John Le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man English banker, Tommy Brue, consults an Egyptian scholar (and suspected terrorist financier), Dr. Abdallah, on a business matter.  The truth is never pure and never simple in Le Carré’s world, nor,  in our world,  is history (Quotation © David Cornwell, 2008):

‘That’s one of the great problems of of modern world, you know.  Forgetting.  The victim never forgets.  Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and hel’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed.  Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you.  His child will tell you.  His grandchild will tell you.  And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too.  But ask an Englishman –? ‘ He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. ‘If he ever knew, he has forgotten.  Move on! you tell us.  Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you.  Tomorrow’s another day! But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.’  He still had Brue’s hand. ‘Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see.  That is the point I was making to you.  And by the day before yesterday, too.  To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.  Please.  Take a seat.  You had a safe journey, I hope?’

Substitute the United States for English, and Latin America for the Arabs and Iranians and Irish, and the Dr. Abdallah could be anyone those trying to do business in Latin America might encounter.  Your customer, or advisor, or host will be perfectly polite, but — no matter what you want — he or she is going to remember the past.  Anyone doing business in Latin America should be reading the Latin America’s own history (or at least a foreigner’s guide to that history).