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

Fri Jan 13 18:20:12 EST 2023

Unless I missed it Mexico wasn't mentioned.  I've been there multiple times
and I cultivated friendships with university students and young employees
in the early 90s.  Although I initially contacted these people via internet
Debby and I eventually met a number of them and their families during our
trips there.  Two of them came to Pittsburgh to work or study at Carnegie
Mellon.  These interactions led to our adopting a Mexican child.

An observation:  most of those people have 5 or 6 siblings but only 2 or 3
children.  With a couple of exceptions they are substantially more educated
than their parents.  Perhaps a new Golden Age is looming, at least for
Mexico.  The narcotraficantes aren't helping.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 2:49 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> 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 an outdated/lame public-high-school world history class taught by a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>
> <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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