[FRIAM] unrest in SoAm & Global ideological/sociopolitical/economic alignment...

[Steve Smith]

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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