The general sentiment of the replies to this thread seems to be: "there
is no reason to characterize anything like a 'golden age of Latin
America' beyond perhaps the post WWII boom in economies participating in
the rebuilding of Europe with a natural advantage to those who did not
participate in receiving the destruction of that war.
I have tried to take this to heart and understand what I was trying to
understand with the possibility (likelihood) that the idea of a "Golden
Age of Latin America" is probably the superposition of several
projections, some innocent, some perhaps not. I also heard the tone
that the paper I referenced might have an element of "blame the victim"
suggesting that Latin America had somehow failed to manifest the destiny
we imagined for them. A significant element in the limited economic
and political stability that has happened in "Latin America" during this
period has been the (barely disguised) interference of major
(super)powers around the world, in particular, the US, USSR and China
(probably in that order of magnitude?).
An interesting comment spurred by an discussionon Researchgate
<https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_1950s_a_golden_age_for_Latin_America>
is inlined here:
/I would understand the 1950s as some kind of "take-off" phase in
state-building, economic development, education, etc., strengthened
in the 1960s by on the one hand the Alliance for Progress, on the
other by first attempts of import-substitution. In this view, the
50s appear as a golden age because they were, in many parts of the
continent, the first moment of political engagement with pressing
issues. For the moment, that was great. Seen from today, not so
much. I am thinking about the forced industrialization and
indigenismo that were big in the 50s and can be critizised quite
harshly now. - Philipp Altmann
/
In the same spirit of Glen's recent (excellent) summary of the spectrum
(and need to embrace and traverse it) from Concrete to Abstract: I do
believe that collective entities (such as (sub)cultures, peoples,
countries, regions, etc) can be described across the same spectrum.
Individuals (GaryS's indigenous neighbors) are probably mostly
experiencing *very* concrete things (like when the garden you depend on
for sustenance fails or stutters because of drought or flood or ???)
while scholars (and politicians and private buttinskis like me) in the
US or Europe (or even higher education *in* those regions) are smearing
(by aggregation and statistical measures) and abstracting (with
forced/adopted ontologies) the "burrs" away, leaving their observations
and judgements likely to at best only obliquely relevant to what is
"really going on".
Unfortunately, in the spirit of Harari's "intersubjective reality", as
those who wield high-leverage power come to accept and believe and act
on these "obliquely relevant" observations and judgements, then they
become in some painful way an over-arching "reality" that effects the
concrete reality of those trying to grow crops or prevent their homes
from being burned down or washed away by natural processes (sometimes
set akilter by the actions enjoined by the aforementioned out-of-touchers).
The current (continuing) battles between Lula de Silva and Bolsanaro
(and their many faithful followers) as well as our own Left/Right
Authoritarian/Liberal divides are fought in terms of these higher level
"intersubjective realities" which are the antithesis of what our own
politicians like to dub (dismissively or divisively?) "kitchen table"
issues.
I just saw a recent set of reports on the Pegasus Phone-Hacking software
which convinced me that such tools (that one in particular) are now a
mainstream part of the global intelligence/security apparatus (and their
shadows, however you find your way to aligning the "good guys" from the
"bad guys", etc. This may feel like a tangent, but the ability to tap
directly into the global "nervous system" and monitor (and manipulate...
see discussions here on chatGPT for example) individual (and therefore
also collective) behaviours has risen significantly since my time in
this business (trying to be righteous with it at the time) in the first
decade of this century...
On 1/12/23 11:31 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
GaryS, et al -
I was recently trying to make a little more sense of the larger
sociopolitical situation across central/south America and realized
that your location in Ecuador might provide some useful parallax.
https://www.as-coa.org/articles/2023-elections-latin-america-preview
I was (not?) surprised to read that there was a renewed interest in
"regional integration". This article references Lula and Obrador
and several other Latin American leaders who might be attempting a
broader ideological (and economic) alignment/cooperation across the
region.
https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/will-lula-achieve-regional-integration-in-latin-america/
With the unrest of the summer triggered? by energy/fossil-fuel prices
it seems like Ecuador has become (temporarily, modestly) unbalanced
which seems like an opportunity for change, whether for better or
worse. I see in the first article (Elections Preview) that Lasso has
a very low approval rating and the upcoming (February) elections might
include/yield a recall for him?
I lived on the border of AZ/MX as a teen in the early 70s and the
recent memory/residue of the Golden Age of Latin America was still
evident. The Mexican border town (Agua Prieta) still had moderately
grand facilities and institutions (e.g. A huge library with elaborate
fountains on the grounds, etc) even though they were not able to
support them in that grandeur... So I think I still have an ideation
that Latin America has many of the resources or (hidden) momentum to
achieve a resurgence of some sort.
These reflections are partly triggered by this interview/article
produced by WBUR/Boston and distributed via NPR:
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/01/11/8-billion-earth-population-rise-human
Which reminded me that while we *do* have a total-population problem
with our 8B and rising numbers (and 90+ % of land animal by mass being
human or human domesticates), the *distribution* of people, and more
to the point the demographic fecundity/fertility distribution is very
uneven and in fact seems to be inversely proportional to various
features of human civilization ranging from GDP to education to
technological development. Some (like DJT) turn this into a
judgement and a reason for resentment/fear (e.g. S*hole country
labels) but others have a more progressive view. An excerpt from the
WBUR interview/article:
*Jennifer Sciubba: *"We're moving toward this aging and shrinking
world, and we are worried because we can't sustain that same huge
level of economic growth in the past. And we do need to think
about what that might look like, so we can look relook at concepts
like retirement. We can look at concepts like what is work life.
We also, though, have to start thinking about family and marriage.
And, you know, we're talking about a paradigmatic shift.
"That means we have to look at the world through a completely
different lens than we've looked at the world in the past. But all
of our theories about the good life, our economic theories, our
political theories, those were all developed under conditions of
population growth and economic growth, as William said. So it's
really hard to get a paradigmatic shift and say, what if we try to
look at the world in a different way? Can we look at an aging and
shrinking society as a good thing? Can we look at growing older
individually as a good thing? We've not been good at that. And so
we're kind of taking that negativity and applying it at the
societal level."
This passage specifically references aging (individual and population)
but there are other references to economic/technological disparities.
I also defer here to others who have an international POV (e.g. Pieter
in South Africa, Sarbajit in India, Jochen in Germany, and I believe
we have someone from Cuba, I think we lost (off the list) Mohammed
from Egypt a few years ago, etc.) as well. We are not a very
demographicly representative group here but still offer a somewhat
broad samplying by some measures.
I realize this is yet another of my rambly maunderings but I'd be
curious to hear what others are observing/thinking about these issues
in this current time of global flux.
- Steve
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