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<p>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.</p>
<p>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?). <br>
</p>
<p>An interesting comment spurred by an discussion<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_1950s_a_golden_age_for_Latin_America">
on Researchgate</a> is inlined here:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i><span style="color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family:
"Inter Var", Inter, Roboto, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal;
font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing:
normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform:
none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255,
255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial;
text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">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<br>
</span></i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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". <br>
</p>
<p>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). <br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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... <br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/12/23 11:31 AM, Steve Smith wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:cf1ceba6-661e-5d65-e241-cb62820a9b46@swcp.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<p>GaryS, et al -</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.as-coa.org/articles/2023-elections-latin-america-preview"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.as-coa.org/articles/2023-elections-latin-america-preview</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/will-lula-achieve-regional-integration-in-latin-america/"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/will-lula-achieve-regional-integration-in-latin-america/</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>These reflections are partly triggered by this
interview/article produced by WBUR/Boston and distributed via
NPR:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/01/11/8-billion-earth-population-rise-human"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/01/11/8-billion-earth-population-rise-human</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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:<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 25px;
color: rgb(52, 60, 64); font-family: Arnhem, serif; font-size:
18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures:
common-ligatures; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400;
letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start;
text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style:
initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"><strong
style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Jennifer
Sciubba: </strong>"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.</p>
<p class="indent-medium" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin:
0px 0px 25px; text-indent: -0.35em; color: rgb(52, 60, 64);
font-family: Arnhem, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style:
normal; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;
font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing:
normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255,
255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial;
text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;">"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."</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="indent-medium" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin:
0px 0px 25px; text-indent: -0.35em; color: rgb(52, 60, 64);
font-family: Arnhem, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness:
initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;">This passage specifically references aging (individual
and population) but there are other references to
economic/technological disparities. <br>
</p>
<p class="indent-medium" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin:
0px 0px 25px; text-indent: -0.35em; color: rgb(52, 60, 64);
font-family: Arnhem, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness:
initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;">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.</p>
<p class="indent-medium" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin:
0px 0px 25px; text-indent: -0.35em; color: rgb(52, 60, 64);
font-family: Arnhem, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness:
initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;">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.</p>
<p class="indent-medium" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin:
0px 0px 25px; text-indent: -0.35em; color: rgb(52, 60, 64);
font-family: Arnhem, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-caps:
normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: start; text-transform: none; white-space: normal;
widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness:
initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;">- Steve<br>
</p>
<blockquote> </blockquote>
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