E. Bradford Burns, in The Poverty of Progress, notes the negative effects of the nineteenth century struggle between powerful European elites and the poor people of Latin America. The basis of this confrontation was the European belief that it was a conflict between civilization and barbarism, and that progress was the means of moving the "barbarians" of Latin America toward European-like civilization:
Indeed, everywhere throughout Latin America, the elites proclaimed their mission to introduce civilization. They felt embattled. They feared the barbaric masses might engulf them and drown their cherished civilization (Burns, 1983, p. 23).
Whether by Christianization, or socioeconomic oppression and control, or force, or slavery, the European elites and their Latin American supporters saw the conflict as a sort of war between good and evil, so it is not surprising to find terrible results from that confrontation. As Burns makes clear, the "folk" of Latin America were not barbarians but had their own well-developed "societies and cultures" to which they were loyal (Burns, 1983, p. 154). However, the European elites had the power, the wealth, and the guile to win that war and to keep the folk in weakness and poverty.
The authors in Women through Women's Eyes give some examples of the kind of injustice visited upon the folk of Latin America by European elites, but we must keep in mind that the women authors, especially with an eye on publishing, were not about to be completely honest about the injustices of the world they described:
Keenly aware of European publications concerning their countries and resentful of the patronizing tone of many travel accounts, Latin American elites remain highly sensitive to writings that highlighted their countries' imperfections (Hahner, 1998, p. xx).
This does not mean that the more extreme examples of abuse were always ignored. For example, Adele Toussaint-Samson writes of the cruel ...