Aviation

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Aviation

Beginning in 1910, Latin American, European, and U.S. aviators in small but growing numbers pioneered airplane flights in Latin America. In aviation's early barnstorming and aerial pathfinding phase, flying in Latin America was characterized by several factors that were natural consequences of the times: the relatively few Latin American aviators came from wealthy families, such as the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, who in 1906 made the first airplane flight in Europe; and most planes were imported from Europe or the United States—the latter factor would persist indefinitely. As elsewhere, fatal accidents often occurred in the flimsy and underpowered planes of aviation's infancy.

Mexico was the site of several milestones in military aviation. Early in 1911 the regime of Porfirio Díaz, faced with spreading revolution, hired two French barnstormers to fly reconnaissance over rebel forces, the first known combat sorties of an airplane anywhere. As most factions in the revolution came to possess small numbers of planes, almost every facet of aerial warfare, if in microcosm and isolation, was recorded either preceding or concurrent with developments in World War I in Europe—besides reconnaissance, air-to-air combat, tactical air support, and the bombing of population centers occurred. Two noteworthy events occurred in 1914: a Constitutional plane piloted by Gustavo Salinas Carmiña scored a near miss on a Huertista warship off the west coast and U.S. Navy planes flew reconnaissance over Veracruz in the first use of aviation in a U.S. intervention.

In 1915 the Constitutionalists formed what was later the Fuerza Aérea Mexicana; it was soon conducting training, and manufactured a respectable number of airplanes of its own design after World War I restricted foreign supply. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Uruguay created military air arms before or during World War I.

From 1919 on, most Latin American countries developed air arms with the aid of foreign military missions. They were equipped mainly with hand-me-downs from Europe and the United States, and their operations were for the most part noncombat: training, surveying, security watch. Like their army and naval counterparts, air officers sometimes engaged in volatile politics, a notable example being Marmaduke Grove, who was briefly head of state in Chile in 1931. Periodically Latin American air arms engaged in aerial warfare after 1919; leading examples were operations of the air arms of both Bolivia and Paraguay in the Chaco War (1932–1935); operations of U.S.-equipped fighter squadrons from Mexico in the Philippines and from Brazil in Italy in World War II; and the gallant but doomed fight of the Argentine air force against the British in the South Atlantic War of 1982. Helicopters and strike aircraft hunted guerrillas in the 1970s and 1980s.

Nonexistent until 1919, civil air transport in Latin America stemmed from the failure of surface transportation to blanket an often difficult and diverse geography. It was spurred by an international rivalry with martial implications and was fostered by nationalism.

The international rivalry pitted three non-Latin American groups against one another: Germans, who created airlines in South America, most notably Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aéreos (SCADTA), in Colombia in December 1919, the first lasting airline in the region; U.S. officials, fearing the implied threat to the Panama Canal, and private interests, recognizing a most fertile field for air transport, the latter launching Pan American Airways (1927), which with unprecedented government aid monopolized all U.S. international airline business until World War II; and French private interests, whose heavily subsidized airline Aéropostale developed the world's longest route system, including routes in much of South America, by 1930. The rivalry featured three of the great pioneers in air transport history—Juan Terry Trippe of Pan American; Peter Paul von Bauer of SCADTA in Colombia; and French-born Marcel Boulloux-Lafont, who resided in South America. In the end, von Bauer secretly sold controlling interest in Depression-weakened SCADTA to Trippe (1931), and Boulloux-Lafont lost Aéropostale when the French government forced it into bankruptcy in 1931 by withdrawing its subsidy.

During World War II, the Germans lost their airlines when Latin American countries, under pressure from the United States, nationalized all German enterprises.

Lines both domestic and international multiplied in the 1930s, some fading as others took to the sky. It was increasingly clear that air transport filled special needs in a region struggling to modernize, but also clear that airlines helped maintain the dependency imbalance. One line, Compañía Mexicana de Aviación (CMA), will serve to illustrate. It was founded in 1924 by U.S. entrepreneurs to fly payrolls to oil fields. With the help of some well-connected Mexicans, CMA added routes and diverse cargo. In 1929 it became a Pan American subsidiary in Mexican guise in order to carry PAA mail and cargo, something foreign lines could not do under Mexican law. CMA became truly Mexican after World War II, in a general trend to divest lines based in Latin America of foreign control, even though these lines still depended on outsiders for equipment such as the jets they began to acquire in the 1960s.

A number of Latin American air forces became involved in air transport. In 1929 Línea Aeropostal Santiago-Arica (later Línea Aérea Nacional, LAN) was founded by Comandante Arturo Merino Benítez as a division of the Chilean air force to carry mail and passengers, in part to counter the presence of PAN-AGRA, the jointly owned subsidiary of Pan American and the U.S. conglomerate W. R. Grace. It soon became a civil line, and ultimately the major Chilean domestic and international carrier. Other air forces, for example, Argentina's, developed transport divisions to serve sparsely settled areas, such as that from the Pampas to the Chilean border, that would not be profitable for a private-sector airline. Another dimension of Latin American air transport is that it is no longer the preserve of the well-to-do. After World War II it began to be more available to the less affluent with the rise of low-fare airlines.

Deregulation of the airline industries in the 1990s helped make air travel even more accessible to the general population. When governments lifted restrictions on prices and allowed full competition, ticket prices dropped dramatically. Lower fares helped more people to fly but also caused strains in the air infrastructure of many countries. Brazil suffered two of its worst airline disasters in 2007, and many experts believed that old equipment, an understaffed air traffic control system and crowded airports contributed to these crashes.

Other Latin American nations privatized their national airlines in the early 1990s to pay off large public debts. A mix of national and international investors bought the firms, with mixed results. LAN, Chile's former state-run airline, was bought by the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and successfully expanded into other regions of Latin America. For instance, by 2005 LAN took over Ecuador's former state-run airline Ecuatoriana, which had fallen into bankruptcy after its sale to the Brazilian airline VASP in 1995. In 1990 Iberia, a Spanish airline company, purchased Aerolineas Argentinas, which fell into bankruptcy in 2001. Also, many analysts believe the privatization was corrupt, believing that Argentine officials received kickbacks from Iberia. Despite these problems, Aerolineas Argentinas emerged from bankruptcy, and as of 2007 another Spanish firm, Vieja Marsans, operates it. The Bolivian airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano collapsed as a private company; VASP bought a controlling interest in 1995, but by the early twenty-first century both VASP and Lloyd Aereo Boliviano encountered financial difficulties. Bolivian investors took over VASP's share but the airline ended service in 2007. Thus, privatization and deregulation have brought, at times, more competition, but also disruption to service.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Significant works covering one or more aspects of aviation in Latin America are Wesley Phillips Newton, The Perilous Sky: U.S. Aviation Diplomacy and Latin America, 1919–1931 (1978).

Marylin Bender and Selig Altschul, The Chosen Instrument: Juan Trippe, Pan Am, the Rise and Fall of an American Entrepreneur (1982).

R. E. G. Davies, Airlines of Latin America Since 1919 (1984).

One of the best reference works dealing with the world's air forces (including those of Latin America), their histories, and their relative statuses is Mark Hamish et al., Air Forces of the World: Illustrated Directory of the World's Military Air Powers (1979). The British periodical Air International has monthly updates on both military and civil aviation around the world.

Many Latin American countries have produced their own historical literature on their aviation. Those on Mexico include José Villela Gómez, Breve historia de la aviación en México (1971).

Enrique Sandoval C., Historia oficial de la fuerza expedicio-naria mexicana (1946), on the Mexican fighter squadron in the Philippines.