[FRIAM] unrest in SoAm & Global ideological/sociopolitical/economic alignment...
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Jan 13 16:48:31 EST 2023
Ed -
Thanks for weighing in from your current SA location. While I
specifically called out the distribution of places that our members
*live*, I failed to think (much) about how widely traveled (currently
and over a career) many of our members are. I did not know you had so
much experience with South America.
When my sister and young family moved to Santiago Chile (just as
Pinochet was finally deposed) I became aware of the *deep history* of
Santiago in particular the early Spanish colonization (founded well
before Santa Fe, for example)... and the strong role in European
colonization around the world, with Santiago (founded mid 1500s) as a
powerful precursor to what we in the US think of as San Francisco
(founded late 1700s) being.
Unfortunately, their grasp of *contemporary* politics was colored by the
fact that her husband worked for a major Copper Mining company and his
peers in Chile were all pretty much apologists for Pinochet since they
had "grown up" under his version of neoliberalism influenced by the
"Chicago Boys" and (covertly?) backed by the US (e.g. operation
Condor). Before all of this, most of what I knew about the politics of
South America came from an outdated/lame public-high-school world
history class taught by a football coach, and the reactive populist
left-wing movement who was (trying to) calling out the CIA, etc. which I
mostly dismissed as kneejerk-liberal-hysteria. History strongly
suggests otherwise (to the hysteria).
I do agree that references to "Golden Ages" such as the paper I linked
are part of a larger *post-colonial* golden-age period throughout the
part of the world that (at that time) was recently freed from *overt
political euro-american dominance* but was on the rise of multinational
corporations (such as the one my brother-in-law worked for).
I appreciated your categorization of the southern Big-three, the Andean
and the Central American. The main things they would seem to have in
common was the initial Spanish Colonization and the more modern
manipulation by the USA, it's allies and enemies (USSR) for political
and corporate gain.
The main thing I'm interested in *myself* is the question of "what is
next" for the world-at-large, but in particular the huge population tail
represented by the "developing world"... What challenges (and more to
the point, opportunities) do these huge regions of the world represent
(beyond the semi-infinite source of natural resources they have been to
the US, Europe, and China)?
- Steve
On 1/13/23 4:01 PM, Ed Angel wrote:
> Gary, you may remember that I lived in Quito not far from where I
> think you are while on sabbatical; half in Ecuador and half in
> Venezuela. I’ve also spent time in most South American and half of
> Central American countries. This email chain reached me in Argentina.
>
> It strikes me as silly to refer to a "Latin American" Golden Age or
> any other term.
>
> The southern big three (Argentina, Brazil, Chile) are completely
> different historically and culturally from the Andean countries
> (Ecuador, Peru, Columbia, Venezuela) and both are very differemt from
> most of Central America (Guatemala, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua).
>
> What I suspect the reference is about is the period before and after
> WW 2 when the southern three were doing quite well. The Europeans had
> eliminated almost all the native population and all had large numbers
> of European immigrants about the same as the U.S. Because they were
> not participants in WW2 they not only escaped the destruction in
> Europe but were able to profit from exports such the beef from
> Argentina and various natural resources.
>
> Ed
> ____________
>
> Ed Angel
>
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)angel at cs.unm.edu
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
>
>
>
>
>> On Jan 13, 2023, at 11:09 AM, Gary Schiltz
>> <gary at naturesvisualarts.com> wrote:
>>
>> Steve, thanks for the perspective. It's interesting that the authors
>> of the paper dub the period of 1950-1975 as the "Golden Age" and then
>> go on to point out how badly Latin America has failed to exploit it. I
>> haven't read the paper yet (only your quote from it), but it seems
>> they are defining a golden age globally, not for Latin America. I
>> guess that would be the post-WWII era.
>>
>> I'll try to break out of these darned bubbles :-)
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 12:33 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Gary -
>>>
>>> Thanks for the on-the-ground response from the "middle of the
>>> world". I realize(d) you (like all of us) live in a bubble and I
>>> appreciate your acknowledging the two impinging bubbles you
>>> recognize yourself to be circumscribed by: 1) retired folk who
>>> avoid deep political thought; 2) locals without the education or
>>> experience to see much beyond the local community.
>>>
>>> In some ways this feels like a template for many of our own
>>> bubbles... sort of a 1) personal/professional/socioeconomic
>>> bubble; 2) geolocal bubble . There are probably more and they may
>>> or may not overlap significantly. I use FriAM to try to force some
>>> of my own bubbles to impinge on one another, or perhaps to explore
>>> the interstices between the otherwise natural impingements...
>>>
>>> I'm not a regular (only dropped in once or twice) vFriam
>>> participant, and I don't know about Merle, I think she may make a
>>> better effort than I and could probably be drawn into making an
>>> appearance for a topic *like* this if you were interested. I'll
>>> ping her offline as well to see if she might be interested/available
>>> to vFriAM up on this (or some vaguely related) topic next week?
>>>
>>> - Steve
>>>
>>> Regarding "the Golden Age of Latin America", I found this (working)
>>> paper which moderately reflects what I think of as "the Golden Age".
>>> I think they acknowledge (and maybe even explain) what you have
>>> experienced/observed/believe about "keeping Latin America dirt poor":
>>>
>>> On the Latin American Growth Paradox: A Hindsight into the Golden Age
>>> Giorgia Barboni∗and Tania Treibich† November 12, 2010
>>> https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/89360/1/64049434X.pdf
>>>
>>>
>>> In 1950, Latin American countries’ capabilities were promising:
>>> however, some other countries starting at the same level, or even
>>> below, made a better use of their initial endowments. At the time,
>>> countries like Argentina and Venezuela had a higher GDP per capita
>>> than other European countries belonging to the developed world today
>>> (Italy, Spain...) and many East Asian countries that have managed to
>>> catch up with the Western World in the last decades (see Figure 1
>>> below). Indeed, the data on GDP per capita over the last 60 years
>>> reveals that since 1950, Latin American countries have diverged from
>>> the Western World. With a GDP growth rate between 4 and 5 percent,
>>> they have fallen behind Europe which economy has reached a 20,000
>>> dollars per capita level today. The Latin American countries grew
>>> slowly until 1980 and, from then, their GDP per capita growth has
>>> been stationary. The only exception would be Chile which after a
>>> period of slow growth started an expansion period in 1980s,
>>> converging to the highest levels. Asian countries in comparison
>>> followed a convergence path, starting way lower and reaching the
>>> European levels of GDP per capita after fifty years of catching up.
>>> Castaldi et al. (2008(16)) point out that this divergence can also
>>> be measured by the widening productivity gap between Latin America
>>> and the international frontier in the last decades. Other indicators
>>> of education and science may also support the hypothesis that back
>>> then, Latin American countries had a big potential for convergence.
>>> Argentina, for example, was thought to be so promising that it could
>>> join the innovators’ club (Castaldi et al., 2008(16)). Then, what
>>> happened during the Golden Age (1950-1975) that prevented South
>>> American countries to exploit this potential for growth?
>>>
>>> Which is naturally just one perspective, but provides the basic idea
>>> of what said "Golden Age" was/is/might-be.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 1/13/23 9:33 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>>>
>>> Despite living here in the middle of the world, I'm afraid I don't
>>> give these ideas enogh serious thought these days. I interact mostly
>>> with people who are retired and avoid deep political thought, and with
>>> locals who don't have the education or experience to see much beyond
>>> the local community. I REALLY MUST make myself make it a priority to
>>> start attending the VFriam meetings on Thursday. It might be valuable.
>>> I wonder, does Merle ever tune in? She seems the most socially
>>> concerned (maybe even hopeful?) person on the list.
>>>
>>> By the way, I wasn't aware that there ever was a "Golden Age of Latin
>>> America". Care to elaborate? My view (shaped perhaps too much by
>>> reading "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" in the early 2000s) is
>>> that Latin America has always been dirt poor, just like the more
>>> developed world wants it to be. First under the thumb of the USA and
>>> USSR/Russia, and now China. No wonder dictators thrive here.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 1:31 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> 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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