The Latin America thread (VE, BR, AR, CU, MX...)

Wasn't expecting to find anti-Mexican sentiment even here.

As far as I know in Brazil, Mexico is perceived as another nation bullied by the US and one that is bullied extra hard for being right next it.

At worst we joke they're all Mariachi-playing banditos but that's about it as far as Mexican stereotyping goes.

just look at the google searches and stuff like this

clickies◊

Most ideas around them revolve around them being perceived as exceedingly arrogant. I mean. If the Argentinians didn't take that arrogance up to eleven, Im sure Mexicans would be perceived as the most arrogant latinamericans :P

edited 12th May '17 5:52:53 PM by Aszur

Excuse me, we are not arrogant, we're just better than every other Latin American country put together.

Falkland Islands, not Malvinas.

¡LAS MALVINAS SON ARGENTINAS, CARAJO! NO ME IMPORTA NADA, NOSOTROS TENEMOS BORGES, EL PAPA, DULCE DE LECHE, EL TANGO, MESSI Y LA REINA DE HOLANDA ¿QUÉ TIENEN USTEDES?

edited 12th May '17 6:06:15 PM by IFwanderer

The Mexican POV on Argentina: Italian snobs/Arrogant Italians pretending to be Spanish in a South American country.

(Mexican here who'd love to live in the Southern Cone if the US goes full Trump)

edited 12th May '17 6:19:26 PM by MadSkillz

Octavio Paz (Mexican Nobel Prize in literature) said it like this: Argentines are Italians speaking Spanish who believe they're French. And I agree with that perspective.

Argies are fucking hilarious.

They do sound like Italians.

edited 12th May '17 6:27:38 PM by FireCrawler2002

I'll take that as a compliment.

There was a lot of Italian immigration to Argentina during late XIX and early X Xth century (and that's reflected in our dialect of Spanish), to the point it's more common to find people with Italian surnames than Spanish surnames here.

Argies have Les Luthiers, that's all they need to be cool.

Yeah, Les Luthiers are awesome. I remember going to see their 2009 show live when I was on vacation in Mar del Plata (Uruguay).

edited 12th May '17 7:07:29 PM by IFwanderer

But yeah, another way to look at it is look at cultural exports:

Many stereotypes are reinforced from what is culturally perceived and ingrained in other people, hence why 'mericans are seen as gun toting arrogant fuckers since thats what they end up being in their movies.

What are Mexican cultural exports? Loud drunken guitar wielding singers and el canal de las estrellas

You can guess why few people will like you after watching that channel.

Mad Skillz summed up the perception of Argentina pretty accurately in Brazil too.

The rivalry between Brazil and Argentina is comparable to England and France (originally military and economic, now it's mostly cultural), and much like the England-France dichotomy England/Brazil views Argentine/France as a bunch of arrogant pretentious snobs.

A lesser, but more disturbing notion is that among the community I hang around Argentinians are infamous for being virulently racist (several black friends of mine traveled to Buenos Aires, and one was kicked out of a bar for his skin color the moment she walked in). But I'm told that's mostly a unfortunate Buenos Aires trend.

But I never had any bad experiences with Argentinians. Though to be fair I never let any of them alive long enough to create bond.

@wanderer Not much Italo-Mexicans in Mexico. But the short-lived French conquest of Mexico at a time when Mexico had a low population brought a lot of French blood into Mexico.

So every other Mexican has one French ancestor from the 19th century. But it's not really reported on because they've assimilated so well and those French bastards made kids but didn't raise most of them so their father's culture didn't stick with them. The official numbers of French descended Mexicans are hugely under-counted as a result.

Gonna reiterate. French bastards!

edited 12th May '17 7:45:19 PM by MadSkillz

@Gaon Your comment reminded me of the Polandball graphic that explains Brazil and Argentina's relationship. ◊

@wanderer Truly Argentina is a son of Spain.◊

That is a pretty accurate summary of the relationship, yeah. It's actually funny reading about the Paraguayan War because you can tell that at one point Dom Pedro II of Brazil and Bartolomé Mitre of Argentina were like "man I'm kind of sick of this war shit, let's just stop fighting in this continent, period, deal?" "deal." and THUS EVER-LASTING PEACE!

As for Italian descendants: Brazil also has a massive Italian-descended population. I'm one of them, in fact (though pretty distantly: my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side was Italian. Everyone else is Portuguese).

Yeah, I'm also italian on my mother's side.

I'm Greek from my mom's side. Sinaloa(a state in Mexico) has scattered Greek colonies around the rural areas. My mom's from one of those colonies.

@Gaon Why did Brazil/Argentina never annex all of Paraguay? At that point there were only 28,000 men left in the whole country by the war's end. Seems like easy land to gobble at that point.

The war really exhausted the resources of both Brazil and Argentina. Too many dead, too much money lost. It was the single biggest, bloodiest, most expensive war of South American history (and remains so). By the time the war ended annexing Paraguay would be more trouble than it's worth for basically everyone involved. People just wanted this horror to end. Dom Pedro II kept the war running literally by his own will when the entire body of the government wanted to end this after it ravaged so much. Dom Pedro II had to go full dictator mode and shut down his equivalent of the parliament about five times during the war, because people just wanted it to end that much.

I think Mitre had plans to annex Paraguay, but ultimately Dom Pedro II disagreed on that. Dom Pedro II had also promised to retain Paraguayan sovereignty and he wanted to keep that promise. Besides, hostile takeover was never the Empire's style. The Empire of Brazil was always more fond of indirect, British-style manipulation and Let's You and Him Fight when it came to foreign meddling. Brazil fucked with Uruguay's sovereignty for pretty much its entire 19th century history but it always tried to do it via indirect support rather than active takeover.

There wasn't all that much to gain from annexing Paraguay, really. The primary interest of the Triple Alliance in the whole situation was the Plata River and who controlled it. With the end of the war and that settled, there was no other major reason to annex Paraguay.

It's often overlooked that the war being so messy and destructive kickstarted the anti-Imperial movement that eventually led to the Republic. This is how much people hated the Paraguayan War.

edited 12th May '17 8:38:26 PM by Gaon

Speaking of Argentina and racism, I have a friend who as a kid went to buenos aires and at the hotel he stayed a little girl looked at him like he was a novelty, given his dark skin tone. Also, Mickey Vainilla is a character for a reason

kinda makes the whole ''Argentina is white'' meme a bit hilarious given how anally retentive some Argentinians can be over their pure European heritage.

Specially when I've seen Argentinians act like Argentina is an European country stuck in South America.

edited 12th May '17 10:26:14 PM by AngelusNox

What was that joke again?

That Falklands don't consider themselves latinamerican but european, and given that argentinians are like this as wel, latinamerica sees no difference between argentina and the falklands.