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

Peru reached over 1000 cases of Covid-19 .

And to think it could be worse...

Edited by KazuyaProta on Mar 31st 2020 at 2:08:15 PM

(Insert bad joke about Ecuador taking advantage to press border claims, or vice versa.)

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 12:09:44 PM

Personally, I think we rather should invade Bolivia

I suppose they can justify that with the ultimate goal of restoring the old confederation and the dream of Santa Cruz.

Though my overall opinion of Fidel is still pretty damn low on the whole because of his authoritarian streak, and it's probably worth pointing out that some of my extended family are chino-cubanos, I am willing to concede that he's a lighter shade of black compared to many of the other more prominent Marxist-Leninist ilk. His aide to the anti-apartheid forces in South Africa seemed sincere and thus commendable enough, and though I feel that someone else less authoritarian could've also boosted literacy after ousting Batista in his place and that it's not a particularly unique virtue of his, it's not a mark against him either.

I don't think there's any real need to praise anything he did. Anything remotely positive is kind of overshadowed by the awful shit he did.

Well, again, that's your neoliberal point of view.

Quite remarkably, there was a time when Fidel was part of a political party.

Personally I'm busy writing a paper on the urban underground of the Cuban Revolution and their contributions, which have been overlooked until recently. They were using similar tactics then, and now in Hong Kong you can see the same patterns.

I was educated in a British-run international school in Hong Kong, where in senior year I began finding my feet in studying one-party states and their leaders.

The British, like the Americans, haven't had a history of dictatorship in their region. So they find it interesting to study them. So it was Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Mao.

In college I looked in my own time at Chiang Kai-shek, Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Fidel and Ho Chi Minh.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 12:34:19 PM

Seriously, wtf is that supposed to mean, "neoliberal point of view"?

I just don't approve of authoritarian crap.

Personally I just have trouble holding Castro or most of his ilk in particularly high regard when they were not only authoritarians who committed many human rights violations to their own people, but also poisoned any kind of vaguely leftist politics for generations of immigrants and their families which makes it more difficult for countries worldwide to make necessary reforms.

Neoliberal at this point is just "Not leftist"

Edited by KazuyaProta on Mar 31st 2020 at 2:37:08 PM

That was not really meant to be a jab at you or anything, actually, just me categorizing your perspective.

I have Asperger's, and ADHD, and like fitting things into neat little categories as a side effect.

It's the view that the world can only function well with a free market and liberal democracy, and that is the ideal state of things.

Problem is, it takes a very specific state of conditions and many years of hard work to build towards that, and often it's difficult to do.

But those same people will defend the rights of the individual as fiercely as they defend the rights of the market. There is a respect to be held in that.

Honestly, I never liked arguing, or getting into debates. It's why I stick to only a handful of threads here.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 12:36:34 PM

The anti-apartheid stuff I can probably give him some personal credit for, but like I said, nearly everything else he did could've been accomplished by someone else less authoritarian and power-hungry as part of general backlash to Batista's ultraconservatism. Perhaps not as rapidly since authoritarianism does convey some benefit in terms of rapid mobilization in certain areas, but probably with less cost to human rights on the whole.

Not unlike when people praise the CCP for broad reforms that yes, they were technically responsible for, but easily could've been accomplished by the majority of non-rightist groups with a fraction of the bloodshed, and whatever changes the CCP ideology were directly responsible for were either quickly undone anyway or detrimental on the whole.

Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 31st 2020 at 3:43:26 PM

Thank you.

On a better note, Cuba's hero is Jose Marti the poet, whose love and respect for the American people is unparalleled.

Funnily enough, Argentina's national hero is Jose de San Martin, and Peru's as well.

Their names are very similar, which can cause some confusion when you're studying Latin American history.

Also, turns out when the Peruvians speak of Tupac Amaru, it's Tupac Amaru II, not the last Incan emperor.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 12:48:28 PM

Some people just really seem to want to believe that authoritarianism has some merit.

The US is offering to lift Venezuelan sanctions in exchange for a power-sharing agreement.

Maduro will step down and the transitional council will govern until elections. Knowing Maduro, he's going to say no.

Oh, and M84, I really did mean no offense. Wonderful stubborn ox you are, but your impassioned defense of my homeland and Taiwan is still deeply appreciated. You're one of the few proper forum personalities we have on here, and we take your signature with pride.

I merely wanted to share what I liked to study. I didn't mean to cause any fights, and I've never liked arguing.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 12:47:15 PM

For the record, I don't think the free market and a liberal democracy are ideal per se. Mainly because a truly ideal world wouldn't even require politics or an economy in the first place.

Mmm, interesting. Thank you for sharing, that'll be good food for thought.

Anyway, I prefer to bring up Emiliano Zapata instead regarding revolutionaries, as he died a hero, his agrarian reform worked well enough to influence Mexican agriculture after his death, and he ideologically wasn't a Marxist at all. If anything, he would have rejected it, for he was a peasant leader, and the peasants were loyal to their church and village and plots of land over the Mexican national identity.

Perhaps most celebrated of all is that Zapata never once sought the Mexican presidency, or craved power. When he met with Pancho Villa during the one time they entered Mexico City, he proposed burning the presidential chair as it was a symbol of dictatorship and cruelty to him.

In Mexico, Zapata is their most enduring protest symbol.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 1:00:20 AM

I really don't get why people are always immidiately so defensive when people talk about controversial figures in a nuanced way, not even a positive one.

Discussion for another time, really. I suggest going to a general Politics thread to put that question up.

But I want to bring the discussion back to the region.

It is a heartening thing to see that the Central American nations have mobilized so quickly and done so well. Why, Honduras sent a million masks over to Hong Kong.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 1:02:56 AM

In the case of Castro, because his shadow lived on with Chavez and his cronnies, so speaking of him carries the baggage of nowadays Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia to name a few.

Don't get me wrong, the regime of Batista and the status of unofficial colony of the USA that Cuba had to end for the good the cuban people, and I do give Castro a point in that the influence of the USA is nocive to the region; that doesn't justify though his actions in the long run.

@ Wild West

Tupac Amaru I belongs to the line of the Incas of Vilcabamba, who in turn were leaders of the incan resistance against the spanish conquest in Peru, a chapter of our history that is only being brought back to light in recent times since the republican history omitted parts of how the conquest was done in the first place. This in turn lead to the falsehood that Atahualpa's execution meant the immediate end of the Tawantinsuyu.

To give a summary of the events, the conquest of the Tawantinsuyu after Atahualpa's death took years and saw various factions involved in the war, between the loyals to Pizarro, those to Almagro, the remnants of the Tawantinsuyu who stood against Spain, the incan nobility that sided with Spain, the amerindians that stood with the conquistadores to throw off the cuzquean yoke and those that simply fought to be independent of everyone else. In the end, the conquistadores who were loyal to Almagro were victorious only to be met with the forces of Spain itself as their crimes during the conquest earned the ire of Carlos I of Habsburg.

The descendents of Tupac Amaru I, which would lead to José Gabriel Condorcanqui aka Tupac Amaru II, were scattered across the American Kingdoms, although it must be noted that given the byzantine system of nobility in Hispanic America and the fact that Tupac Amaru II was an amerindian noble at the time of his rebellion, they were probably given minor titles and land to govern.

And Ecuador's Health System seem to have collapsed. Hard.

Link on spanish

Fascinating. Tupac Amaru II is mainly remembered as the hero of the Peruvian struggle for independence, or at least one of them.

As I mentioned earlier, Jose de San Martin is also the great hero of Peru, and of course, Bolivar for almost all of South America, at least in the Andes.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Mar 31st 2020 at 4:14:25 AM

There are bodies on the streets of Guayaquil

Just a heads up, Simon Bolivar has a mixed legacy in Peru as he weakened our country in favour of Gran Colombia.

Ah, right, so that's why his name doesn't come up as often over there. I see.

Typically he's best described as the South American Napoleon.