Colombia chooses the Venezuela/Cuba way
There’s been an election in Colombia:
Former rebel Gustavo Petro is set to be Colombia’s first leftist president after voters handed him a slim victory in Sunday’s runoff election against Rodolfo Hernández, a political outsider and populist.
Petro had garnered 50.47% of the votes to Hernandez’s 47.25% on Sunday evening, according to preliminary results released by election authorities.
“Rebel” is a euphemism for guerilla.
Petro, who was jailed in the 1980s for his involvement in the defunct M-19 movement, promised a suite of economic reforms during his campaign, including higher taxes, more government spending, and changes to the country’s pension system.
While voters elected Petro on his progressive platform, he will have trouble delivering on his promises due to Colombia’s fragmented Congress.
Colombia is hardly alone in its veer to the left:
Argentina-based analyst Agustin Antonetti of the Fundación Libertad told Fox News Digital: “The triumph of Gustavo Petro is the missing piece, perhaps the most worrying, of this new reconfiguration in Latin America, leaning towards a new wave of leftist governments.”
Antonetti continued, “A region that is in alarming political and economic decline, in a complex global context, with three terrible dictatorships (Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua) that seem more alive than ever and surrounded by a large number of populist leaders, now in power, who they endorse them and are ready for anything. The big question is: Will the institutions in Latin America resist this new wave of governments in a clear rise of authoritarianism?”
I assume that “the institutions” include the military of each country?
More:
Isaias Medina, a former high-ranking Venezuelan diplomat at the United Nations who was one of the first Venezuela diplomats to resign in protest over the Maduro regime, said the U.S. needs to pay attention saying that Maduro and his acolytes were, “tightening the noose around democracy’s neck in Latin America.”
Medina told Fox News Digital, “The American beacon of light and freedom must shine brighter.”
Oh my. That light seems pretty dim right now in the US.
And of course freedom (I much prefer the term “liberty”) and democracy don’t always mesh. Democracy means that people can vote themselves right smack into tyranny – it’s not even all that unusual, especially in Latin America. That’s one of the reasons the Founders in the US designed this country as a republic rather than a democracy, in order to give an extra layer of protection. It’s not perfect protection – where there’s a will to tyranny, there’s a way.
Woody Allen, please pick up the white courtesy phone . . . .
Buy coffee now, cause the price will go up higher and availability will go down lower. A lot of the fruit and vegs sold in the US are from SA like Peru and Chile, not just Mexico. Cut flowers too. Will those countries follow suit? With the US going Socialist will there be any Hope left in the World?
Am I being too pessimistic?
I suspect the major reason for the success of these leftists is the failure of the existing political establishments in those countries. When the history of the United States is written, one of the real black marks against us will be our awful leadership/management of the Western Hemisphere. Mexico’s economy, for example, should be a hell of a lot closer to Canada’s than it is to Libya’s. Think what that would then mean to the U.S. economy.
Mike
well the proximate cause was the lockdowns, who forced the incumbent to raise taxes and cut spending, the same formula that undid chile, a year before the pandemic, the ostensible reason was ‘inequality’ once upon a time the Army would hunt down and kill leftist candidates, you may think that harsh but that’s how they solved problems for 74 years,
Mexico was under the PRI from 1929-2000, 71 years of one party rule. Their choice Bunge.
Ever consider that the Soviets and their proxies in Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador might, just possibly, might have some culpability in the history of Latin America? Blame some one else Bunge.
SHIREHOME,
If the US goes full socialist, hope will depend upon whether enough good men are willing to make whatever sacrifice is necessary. Because as Lenin rightly observed, “The goal of socialism is communism”. Lenin, recognized that socialism is unsustainable without ever more coercion. Until people wake up to discover they have communism. Maduro in Venezuela being the most recent example of the ‘evolution’ of socialism to communism. Communism is tyranny and tyranny does not voluntarily relinquish power.
Last one out, turn off the lights.
I suspect the major reason for the success of these leftists is the failure of the existing political establishments in those countries. When the history of the United States is written, one of the real black marks against us will be our awful leadership/management of the Western Hemisphere. Mexico’s economy, for example, should be a hell of a lot closer to Canada’s than it is to Libya’s. Think what that would then mean to the U.S. economy.
Mexico’s economic deficits and problems vis a vis the affluent occident have been manifest for generations and are less pronounced now than they were 80 years ago. Bad economic policy in Latin America is not a function of American ‘leadership / management’ in the Western Hemisphere (whatever that may be). When a country needs a line of credit from the IMF, they can be induced to do sensible things. And there’s been some incremental learning by Latin American elites. Any actual and informed historian will know that the salient decisions influencing Latin American political economy are made in Rio, in Buenos Aires, in Mexico City, and in Santiago, not in Washington.
MBunge,
Latin American societies are traditionally run by oligarchies Oligarchies are not concerned with the welfare of the peons. Eventually, uneducated peons turn to those to offer them ‘free stuff’ acquired from the ill gotten gains of the oligarchs.
The “awful leadership/management of the Western Hemisphere” is a direct result of the Western Elite’s embrace of Trans-Nationalism wedded to the notion that only the imposition of a world wide democracy controlled and governed by “the best and brightest” can end the awful waste and tragedy of wars.
I’m going to point out that Uruguay put a quondam Tupamaro in the President’s chair about 20 years ago and Brazil installed a chap who is a Marxist in an abstract sort of way (and later impeached him for corruption). The significance of this can be overstated.
Latin American societies are traditionally run by oligarchies Oligarchies are not concerned with the welfare of the peons.
All societies more populous than an agricultural village are run by oligarchies. Oligarchies vary in the degree to which they’re attuned to social reality, in the degree to which they are technically competent, and in the degree to which they are patriotic and public-spirited. Ours in this country was imperfect but satisfactory in 1955. Stinks now.
Eventually, uneducated peons turn to those to offer them ‘free stuff’ acquired from the ill gotten gains of the oligarchs.
Which hasn’t happened in this country. Every bizarre, perverse, and destructive thing in our public policy finds its force and origin in our professional-managerial class and our elites. Working-class people commonly subscribe to a menu of disagreeable or inadvisable notions, but these are not what’s tearing the country apart. (The inadvisable notions are minimum wage laws, hypertrophied school sports programs, a general antagonism to private schooling, an antagonism to road tolls and the like, an indifference to aesthetics in urban development, and fixed retirement ages).
Was in Venezuela serving in Peace Corps in the ’70s, when (relative) sanity ruled. But, the government was more interested in enriching themselves and their relatives and cronies than in building schools, fixing roads, etc., etc. Chavez taking over did not surprise me greatly.
At that time, most of the “working” jobs were done by imported Colombians, while the more highly educated Venezuelans took office jobs w/”cafecito” breaks and other amenities. We lived in the Andes and there were plenty of Venezuelan farmers around, but a LOT of Colombian immigration for low-level jobs in the city.
When we later traveled through Colombia, we avoided certain areas because of the “insurgents” (now elected), and cities were hotbeds of thieves, so one had to be extremely watchful. But, Colombians WORKED….. I suspect they are going to regret their votes in this election, but I doubt they’ll be allowed to vote their way out of it. Blood will have to flow, I think.
but I doubt they’ll be allowed to vote their way out of it.
The commies in Uruguay vacated office uneventfully two years ago.
The “awful leadership/management of the Western Hemisphere” is a direct result of the Western Elite’s embrace of Trans-Nationalism wedded to the notion that only the imposition of a world wide democracy controlled and governed by “the best and brightest” can end the awful waste and tragedy of wars.
That’s not why Latin America has been lagging economically for 200 years.
“Ever consider that the Soviets and their proxies in Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador might, just possibly, might have some culpability in the history of Latin America?” om
A plant cannot grow in highly acidic soil. A society must be susceptible to persuasion. To resist subversion, cultural loyalty to the rule of law with a strong middle class and upward mobility through meritorious advancement must exist. Those are absent in oligarchic S. American societies. People want a better life, if that possibility is obstructed by cultural infrastructure, they will be receptive to the Pied Piper when he shows up.
Art Deco,
Agreed. I was not referring to Latin America but to the Western elite industrialized nations.
Mexico’s economy, for example, should be a hell of a lot closer to Canada’s than it is to Libya’s. Think what that would then mean to the U.S. economy.
Neither Americans nor Canadians have been running the Mexican economy. When US oil companies operated in Mexico, the cry of “imperialism” booted them out. (With some assistance from Pres.Cardenas, of course..) PEMEX then went the way of most other government-run oil companies in the Third World. Can’t blame the US for THAT.
When the history of the United States is written, one of the real black marks against us will be our awful leadership/management of the Western Hemisphere.
The United States is in a damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t situation with Latin America. If the US acts in a live-and-let-live way towards Latin America, it gets damned for tolerating some bad things. If the US condemns something bad in Latin America, it gets damned for interfering.
Consider Cuba’s agricultural production.
Per capita food production
1961 131.4
1989 151.1
2020 73.7
Per capita meat production
1961 123.5
1989 123.1
2020 72.3
After the Soviet Union collapsed, and Cuba no longer had a ready market for its sugar, the state farms let their former sugar cane fields lay fallow, with the VERY PREDICTABLE result that the marabú bush took over the fallow sugar cane fields. (Predictable; C. Wright Mills mentioned the marabú bush in his polemic Listen Yankee., published in 1960. Mills wrote that it could be controlled.) Had the state farms immediately turned the fallow sugar cane lands into other uses, such as pasture or for planting corn, the marabú bush would not have taken over.)
Since 1961, Cuban milk production has increased by about 30%. Latin America’s milk production, for comparison, has more than quadrupled since 1961.
Can’t blame the Yanquis for Cuba’s abysmal agriculture production.
https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QI
Me entendés, pana?
“Strawmen thrive in a land of misdirection.” – om
If he only had a brain. Many people have pondered the ills of Latin America, to boil it down to one kernel of “truth” is nuts.
Gringo:
Thanks.
“Neither Americans nor Canadians have been running the Mexican economy. When US oil companies operated in Mexico, the cry of “imperialism” booted them out.”
Oh, I have no desire to infantilize the Mexicans. Their problems are largely of their own doing and their own responsibility. Likewise the rest of Central and South America.
But, for example, the U.S. southern border has operated for decades now as a sort of pressure-release valve that has allowed awful conditions and decision-making to continue in Mexico and other Latin nations by letting their populations flee to the north. And there’s a fairly good argument the U.S. should treat Mexican drug cartels like the Barbary Pirates and be much more interventionist in other ways with other Central and South American countries. But a combination of anti-colonialism on the Left and “don’t rock the boat” corporatism on the Right has left U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere frozen in place for generations.
I mean, the #1 foreign policy focus for the United States shouldn’t be Ukraine. It shouldn’t be Russia. It shouldn’t even be China. It should be Mexico. It’s a society with a huge population, significant natural resources, and some basic cultural similarities that remains plagued by poverty and corruption America hasn’t seen for a century or more. And it’s right next to us. But America’s elite care more about Latvia or Lithuania.
Mike
Art Deco
I’m going to point out that Uruguay put a quondam Tupamaro in the President’s chair about 20 years ago and Brazil installed a chap who is a Marxist in an abstract sort of way (and later impeached him for corruption). The significance of this can be overstated…..The commies in Uruguay vacated office uneventfully two years ago.
Another example of a lefty President who didn’t turn out to be a disaster was Ollanta Humala, who was President of Peru from 2011 to 2016. He was elected with the support of Hugo Chavez, but once in office made the sensible decision that as the neoliberal economic policies of his predecessors had been rather successful, he would continue them. He realized that if you want to distribute more money, you need to have more money to distribute: social spending needs economic growth.
I have less confidence in Gustavo Petro, who upon the death of Hugo Chavez tweeted that Latin America had lost a great leader. Later tweets indicated that Gustavo Petro supported the Maduro regime. You have to be a die-hard lefty moonbat to support Maduro. 🙂
I have a gut feeling that Gustavo Petro will not go the Ollanta Humala route. But he doesn’t have a big majority to push through a big program. I am reminded of the 1936 elections in Spain, where the Popular Front, victors by a small margin,tried to push through a big program.
I have been reading and rereading about the Allende years in Chile. As Allende never had a legislative majority, the only “constitutional” way for Allende to willy-nilly nationalize hundreds of companies was to operate by legal loopholes, decrees, and fait accomplis. (The legislature voted -unanimously IIRC- for the copper nationalization.) Which helps explain why the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution by a 81-47 (63%) vote that stated that Allende had systematically violated the Constitution, and discussed the military. As Allende said, the resolution was an invitation to a coup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ollanta_Humala
Per capita food production
Units of measure, please. Dollars? Kilos? Bushels? I don’t have the time to burrow through your link.
But, for example, the U.S. southern border has operated for decades now as a sort of pressure-release valve that has allowed awful conditions and decision-making to continue in Mexico and other Latin nations by letting their populations flee to the north.
They’re not fleeing. You have migration streams because you have some sort of shock which generates pioneer migration which is then followed by chain migration. Mexicans and Central Americans come her because they have relatives already here.
These countries aren’t suffering long term decline in living standards. (Haiti the exception). Every place is more affluent than it was 80 years ago. The relative position vis-a-vis the United States (manifest in the ratio of a country’s per capita product to that of the United States) has gone up in some cases and gone down in others. Mexico and Panama have seen l/t improvement in this ratio, for Costa Rica and El Salvador this ratio has bounced around a set point, and for Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, this ratio has declined.
Note, standards of living for the broad mass of the population in terms of real income per capita are for a typical Latin American country roughly similar to those of the United States in the 1940s. Literacy rates are north of 90% and life expectancy at birth is now north of 70 years, similar to that of the U.S. ca. 1985 if not later. What is really distressing about Latin America is the quantum of street crime. (Northern Mexico is one of the most troubled areas in this regard).
Bunge doesn’t grasp that war in Eastern Europe or potential war in the Far East will effect his flyover land. BTW, Bunge, there are more nations involved than Latvia or Lithuania. One is Ukraine, a country at war with Russia (largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world), that he complains about.
It is curious too that the elites care enough about our southern border by ensuring as best they can, that an southern actual border ceases to exist.
We are in the beginning of a major shift in world alignments. The West (Canada, US, EU, UK, Japan, SK, Australia, New Zealand) are now perceived as the enemy of the rest of the world, and they are aligning against us. The Ukrainian-Russian war makes it plain. No country in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, almost all of Asia, and some US allies (Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria, Israel) supports our sanctions program. And it is plain that the sanctions are crushing the EU, and having little effect on Russia.
The next world will be dominated by Russia-China.
Latin America has always had terrible governments going back to the Aztec who had a slave empire and practiced human sacrifice. In more modern times, the Mexican government at the time of the Mexican War was a shambles with twenty five governments in fifty years, or maybe vice versa, I don’t remember. We had already captured Mexico City and the upper class was begging for the US to annex the country to save them from the political insanity when the US ambassador concluded a peace treaty. President Polk wanted to annex Mexico, but communications being slow, his order to take Mexico arrived after the treaty was signed and couldn’t be undone.
It’s hard to know at this distance if it would have somehow improved the political culture of Mexico but it’s interesting to speculate. My guess is that it wouldn’t have without neutralizing the people at the top of society and their culture that were the problem.
Latin America has always had terrible governments going back to the Aztec who had a slave empire and practiced human sacrifice
The Aztecs were a pre-Colombian civilization. Referring to them as part of ‘Latin America’ is an anachronism.
Latin America since 1820 has compared unfavorably to Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes in the quality of its political life. To the rest of the world, not so badly. In regard to Mexico, the country has had two breakdowns in civil peace since 1855 – one from 1865 to 1869 and one from 1913-20. It hasn’t suffered short-term caudillos since the final departure of Santa Anna (in 1855).
“One is Ukraine, a country at war with Russia (largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world), that he complains about.”
Uhh…idiot says what? I mean, you DO understand that if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine leads to any wider conflict or nuclear conflagration it will be because WE helped Ukraine? Absent our assistance, Russia winning is an inevitability while Russia’s struggles to conquer Ukraine make the idea it would be a threat to a properly armed and prepared Germany, let alone all of NATO, absolutely laughable. Meanwhile, Americans are dying RIGHT NOW because of fentanyl coming up from Mexico.
om would be amusing if his sort of invincible moronitude weren’t so very common amongst people who are supposed to know better.
Mike
It’s a society with a huge population, significant natural resources, and some basic cultural similarities that remains plagued by poverty and corruption America hasn’t seen for a century or more.
To emphasize. If you bracket out production attributable to fuel and mineral exports and apply a fudge factor to correct for its skewed income distribution, Mexico has mid-20th century standards of living. It’s not by any historical or inter-national scale a poor country. The life expectancy falls short of the occidental norm by about five years.
I mean, you DO understand that if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine leads to any wider conflict or nuclear conflagration it will be because WE helped Ukraine?
No, if it leads to a wider conflict, it’s because Russia elected to attack some place else.
Russia winning is an inevitability
They’re taking it slow.
Think about the two million Venezuelan refugees in Colombia all thinking, “Oh, crap! Now where can we go?”
Mexico has drifted between caudillos like santa ana and porfirio diaz and liberal left politicals the former led to the Mexican revolution and the pri for 70 years the pan did not prove much better sadly in the dozen or so years it was in power. Lopez obradors faction morena is even farther left and the green party has gained adherents (hachi machi)
Colombia lasr successful president was uribe trump in a doctors smock, hes gotten the lawfare treatment his successot santos went astray like mike pence (they both belong to the liberal party, but they arent the same) santos kneecapped his opposition arias as mary o grady has chronicled https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203413304577088584132407556
Mexico has drifted between caudillos like santa ana and porfirio diaz and liberal left politicals the former led to the Mexican revolution and the pri for 70 years the pan did not prove much better sadly in the dozen or so years it was in power. Lopez obradors faction morena is even farther left and the green party has gained adherents (hachi machi)
It hasn’t. The era of short-term caudillos fighting over scraps of the state ran from 1821 to 1855. Mexico has not drifted there since. Porfirio Diaz, who was the boss of Mexico from 1876 to 1911, was a singular figure in Mexican history. What ever the PRI’s principles may have been, they certainly were not liveral.
Don’t be a Bunge. He’s that guy.
Bunge can’t recall his Vlad man (love of his life) threatening to nuke any and all that threatened his latest frisks and capers. Because Roosia is destiny, inevitable, the future for Europe.
Bunge has an attitude, wisdom? Whole ‘nother thing.
Bunge, are you feinting for Vlad too?
You do realize that Vlad was F’en around with Denmark’s territorial waters and threatening Lithuania this week about EU sanctions
regardind Kaliningrad this week as well? You didn’t know that Bunge?
🙂
Im using short hand of the philosophical currents the liberals like the radicals in argentina who were waylaid by the coup in 1930 the authoritarians like rosas.
The shambling puppet seems to be possesed by the ghost of either cardenas or carlos andres perez the one who nationalized mexican and venezuelan oil (buckley fils was a victim of the latter) cardenas btw broke the promise made to ambassador morrow about nationalization
Yes lacalle is a rare exception but hes caught in a pincer movement with kirschner and with bolsonaro under threat
Yes lets not taunt our tonya harding exercise as grand strategy.
Carlos andres perez took the opportunity of the 70s oil boom to expand the welfare state his successors in the copei were no slouches when oil crashed in the 80s he promised to restore the safety net and then reneged because of a deal with the imf that created the caracazo in 89, that chavez exploited two years later
Chavez was an enbed from red flag the successor to the previous marxist guerillas that had been dispatched in the 70s in the venezuelan so were many of his associates like the true boss cabello and the keystone caperer general alcala in 2019.
That went seriously pearshaped in a dark bananas way* one merc involved just tried to commit suicide
Alcala was recruited through a contact bolton had with venezuelan oligarch raul gorrio who bought up the last independent voice in that control.
His still wealthy enough to hire gope sleaze david rivera to lobby for him (hes a whole bag of monkeys for him)
Ive been noticing things for about 30 years in the region go from slightly sane to stark raving mad
Bunge:
Here is another clue for you about the Vlad man who is or is not really important:
https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
A Kaliningrad Corridor Crisis?
“Lithuanian authorities said a ban on the transit through their territory to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad of goods that are subject to EU sanctions was to take effect from Saturday.
…
The EU sanctions list notably includes coal, metals, construction materials and advanced technology, and Alikhanov said the ban would cover around 50% of the items that Kaliningrad imports.
…
Sandwiched between EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad receives supplies from Russia via rail and gas pipelines through Lithuania.”
….Russia isn’t all that happy about it either;
Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, further escalated tensions on Monday by threatening a response to what he said was an “illegal move”. He said: “This decision is really unprecedented. It’s a violation of everything. We consider this illegal. The situation is more than serious … We need a serious in-depth analysis in order to work out our response.”
You see Bunge you may not care about Vlad, but he cares to get what he wants. You may want to be his kept boy, others don’t fancy that role.
@ Roy > Think about the two million Venezuelan refugees in Colombia all thinking, “Oh, crap! Now where can we go?” —
Most are probably already headed toward the US.
https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2022/6/13/23165865/migrant-caravan-in-mexico-going-to-us-border-biden-new-immigration-policy-summit-of-americas
It’s pretty clear by now that no matter how much foreign aid is doled out to poorer nations and no matter what US policies are towards other nations, nothing at all will move them to a locale where they simply do not want to go, irrespective of where the USA – or any other nation – wants them to go.
It’s a cultural thing.
The governments of some nations actually believe in the ideal of representative democracy and that the role of govt. is to try to improve the lot of the average citizen. These governments are reflections of the culture of their citizens.
Note that the wealth of many of these nations are not derived from an abundance of natural resources (see Holland, the Baltic nations, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Iceland etc.) but from the work ethic and cultural mores and traditions of their citizens.
Some cultures are simply not compatible with representative democracy; see many (most?) of the Arab nations , many (most?) of the African nations. Russia has been ruled by strongmen (Czars, Bolsheviks, presidents for life), for the last 1000 years.
Many Latin American nations have long traditions of single party (e.g., Mexico) rule or rule by “caudillos,” (the best example, of course is Fidel Castro). It seems par for the course in many Latin American nations that those in power are there to line their own pockets.
How much money in foreign aid has the USA provided over the last 50 years to nations in Africa or Latin America?
And what has been the result of this?
Well, for one thing, the Swiss bank accounts of many foreign govt. officials have appreciated enormously, while the citizens of those nations have minimally, if at all, benefited.
It’s about time that the USA cease sending off taxpayer $$$ to these “needy” nations; it is an absolute waste of money and has produced very little in positive results. The money can be far better spent here in the USA (or better yet, not spent at all).
As Einstein said; “stupidity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.”
Here in the USA, representative democracy is hanging by a very thin thread. Many in our govt and many citizens here despise the Constitution and aim at getting around it in an effort to achieve absolute power.
And they are succeeding (by legislating via the courts, via federal agency diktats, by executive orders which nullify existing laws and by changing election laws).
Of course, the blame for this ultimately rests upon the shoulders of the voters.
Voters can vote for a national suicide (e.g., Venezuela, now Columbia, and of course, joke Bidet) .
You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. But all it takes is fooling them just one time, so massively and completely, that a nation falls into an abyss from which escape will not be possible for 50 or 100 years (see Cuba, the USSR, N.Korea, China).
Yep, it can happen here too in the USA.
Gooder and harder. Mencken wasn’t always wrong.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-ancient-democracy-you-see-you
Many Latin American nations have long traditions of single party (e.g., Mexico) rule or rule by “caudillos,” (the best example, of course is Fidel Castro). It seems par for the course in many Latin American nations that those in power are there to line their own pockets.
Rule by and abiding political machine was characteristic of Mexico from 1920 to 2000, by Cuba since 1959, and by Venezuela since 1998. Not found in the rest of Latin America. There’s a considerable history of freebooting caudillos in Latin American history from 1810 to about 1970, but that particular political form was never omnipresent and it has ceased to appear. A few post-war caudillos were able to build abiding political organizations which were not wholly personalistic in character (Peron, Castro, Torrijos, Chavez), or build hybrid regimes (Stroessner). The rest were quickly displaced. The military in Latin America after 1929 took on an increasingly corporate personality and military chieftains derived their power from their institutional position and were subject to supervision by other officers (something particularly manifest in the Southern Cone). (After 1980, institutional military regimes disappeared as well).
How much money in foreign aid has the USA provided over the last 50 years to nations in Africa or Latin America?
The budget of the Agency for International Development is currently about $27 bn. The Defense Security Co-operation Agency’s budget fluctuates around a set point, currently about $35 bn. Miscellaneous small agencies and the State Department’s slush funds add a few billion more. Not a lot of it is going to Latin America at this time.
It’s about time that the USA cease sending off taxpayer $$$ to these “needy” nations; it is an absolute waste of money and has produced very little in positive results.
Actually, there has been a marked increase in both literacy rates and life expectancy in Africa. If I’m not mistaken, important innovations in agriculture in India were stoked by international agencies. And, of course, there is activity undertaken for reasons-of-state.
Colombia has had very close relations with Israel over the years – look for that to end.
Art Deco @ 1:14;
Re: literacy rates in Africa:
It’s just as likely to have improved even if the USA or any other nation had not sent $1 of aid.
As for India, they seem to have enough money to buy all sorts of Russian military equipment.
It’s not the job of the American taxpayer to aid impoverished people that their own govt. will not aid.
The continuation of aid allows irresponsible governments to avoid dealing with the real needs of their own citizens.
As for Latin America in general:
check out the portfolio holdings of the vast majority of International Equity funds (index or managed). Latin American representation in these funds is pathetic, an indication of the economic importance, or more precisely of the economic non-importance of these nations.
Aside from Brazil, which you will find represented within the top 10 nations of many of these International equity funds, you will find greater equity investments in the tiny nations of Switzerland, Hong Kong , Taiwan, and Singapore than other Latin American nations.
As for Africa, you will find S.Africa typically within the top 20 of invested assets, but generally of no sub-Saharan nation.
It appears that whether or not a Latin American caudillo runs the show (this includes Danny Ortega of Nicaragua) , some nations never seem able to get off the economic ground.
What is interesting is that prior to about 1980 or so, ex-Japan, much of Asia was in the same sub-par economic boat as Latin America.
Not any more.
And what changed?
Why did many American and European mfrs decide to open facilities in Asia, but not so much in Latin America or even less so in sub-Saharan Africa?
Culture is everything. American and European firms , for whatever reason, saw opportunity there that they did not see in other parts of the world.
Why this is so, I do not know, though perhaps it has to do with economic incentives given by the host nation or by the political environment or by the lack of corruption or ??
No amount of money or cajoling or even installing a western style political systems can persuade a nation to fundamentally change the way they operate.
50 years of doling out aid nor the long history of colonialism has definitively proven this.
I recall reading an article by Theodore Dalrymple about his days as a doctor in a hospital in Kenya? Nigeria? (I forget which), when those nations were still British colonies.
At the hospital he worked out, white and black doctors earned the same salaries, but the black doctors always seemed to be in a state of penury.
After a while he learned that their tribal culture demanded that the wealthiest member of an extended family (including cousins as well) was responsible for the economic well being of the entire extended family.
So a salary easily able to support a “normal” sized family, was totally inadequate to support a “giant sized family.”
As for culture being the prime determinant of the success or not of a nation, an analogy can be drawn to the social welfare programs here in the USA, in which the original goals of the Great Society programs have utterly failed in their objective. Recall the objective, as LBJ stated back in 1969? or so, was to eliminate poverty in our lifetime.
Well, trillions of $$$ later, poverty is still exists in the USA.
If this sort of aid does not work here in the USA, why would anyone think it will work if aid is provided to a poor foreign nation?
Doling out $$$ to those who seek to improve their lives and will work at attaining their goals, will benefit from aid.
Those that accept the $$$ and who have no intention of improving their lot in life will be forever poor and forever on the dole.
Culture is everything.
John Tyler:
In general counter factusls and negatives are very hard to prove.
Regarding foreign aid, specific programs such as improved rice, wheat, and disease (parasites (Ivermectin), Malaria (still worth pursuing) example are worthwhile IMO. Regarding India, the have Pakistan and China to deal with, or have you forgotten. If the buy their arms from the US or EU is it all good? Or should they like Ukraine just not have their own national interest or soverienty.
Regarding culture, don’t crow about the west as the wokesters do their damnedest to obliterate it piece by piece.
It’s just as likely to have improved even if the USA or any other nation had not sent $1 of aid.
That’s just silly. Even at the end of the colonial period, these were societies which had literacy rates in the realm of 5-10% and life expectancies under 40 years.
The rest of your post is 600 words worth of assertion and rumination, poorly formatted.
The next world will be dominated by Russia-China.
Russia, which has a productive capacity which exceeds that of the Ukraine by a factor of 7.5, has been able to sustain operations in five of the Ukraine’s 24 regions, and make no more than incremental gains. They’re not going to be an agent of domination any time soon.
and they are aligning against us.
Thanks for the issue of your imagination. So educational.
most of the foreign aid goes to ngo’s like the ones who directed the persecution of the bitkovs and the guatemalan presidents,(another pet peave of mary o’grady who spread antiwestern values, through out the economy, and of course, arms suppliers and other parties, how much reaches the people, well you can measure that with a magnifying glass,
so the atlantic council which funds crowdstrike and other outfits, push certain parties to be funded certain media, and then they get a cut, and alternate parties are cut out,they work with various alphabet agencies, which protect them, see vindman, as prototypical example,
Foreign aid, see Green Revolution and international programs for improving yeild if rice, wheat etc. Famines are now political not as much natural (Ukraine as a coming Roosia induced famine).
It was Norman Borlaug’s development of high yield, disease resistant crops that allowed many nations to become self-sufficient in agricultural products, esp. India, Pakistan and Mexico.
This did not require that the USA send billions of $$$ of taxpayer money to have these nations adopt high yield crops.
In fact, the governments of these nations could have purchased these crop seeds with a minimal amount of foreign aid.
When the US spends money at home, the citizens expect it to be spent efficiently and wisely (which, unfortunately, is rarely the case). But this expectation is valid.
So why is it when the USA sends money as foreign aid, such an expectation is derided and any attempt to find proof of the efficacy of foreign aid is considered off limits??
If foreign aid actually improved the lot of the poor in other nations, there would be no need to continue it beyond the first, say, 25 to 30 years.
But here we are, still spending the citizen’s WAGES, for foreign aid to many of the same nations that have been receiving aid for at least this long.
At the end of WWII, the Marshall Plan, brought back much of Europe from the dead. This aid to Europe lasted for what ?? 5 years?, 10 years? at most.
They then got back on their economic feet.
(true, the US taxpayer supplies a totally disproportionate share of NATO’s defense budget).
If a nation needs foreign aid for more than ,say 25 or 30 years, that is slam dunk evidence that that form of aid does NOT WORK and that there are other factors – political and cultural – that are maintaining that nation in a state of economic under performance.
Actually I find it astonishing that anybody does not see this.
IIRC those high yield Green Revolution crops were developed at the University of Minnesota with a variety of funding sources over decades, those sources included the Feds IIRC. There just might have been some foreign aid monies involved getting those third world farmers to adopt the new seeds and such. Or just maybe some foreign aid involved for “field trials” of the new varieties, just maybe.
It is pretty sure that most of the foreign aid didn’t do any of those maybe things.
There are a few ex foreign service type readers here who may know something if they care to share.
This did not require that the USA send billions of $$$ of taxpayer money to have these nations adopt high yield crops.
Borlaug’s research was financed by public agencies, some domestic, some inter-governmental. Its adoption was promoted by these agencies. The issue of your imagination is interesting to you. It’s not of interest generally.
If a nation needs foreign aid for more than ,say 25 or 30 years, that is slam dunk evidence that that form of aid does NOT WORK
And you came by that judgment just how?
FYI – Colombia’s presidency is term-limited to a single term.
I think two terms now. Used to be just one.
That’s not why Latin America has been lagging economically for 200 years.
It has been lagging because most (except Brazil) were Spanish colonies. The culture that was embedded was not the Protestant ethic that built, England, Holland and America.
John Tyler we see the neocon drive to spend money on everyone but our own citizens.
Art Deco on June 24, 2022 at 10:36 am said:
If a nation needs foreign aid for more than ,say 25 or 30 years, that is slam dunk evidence that that form of aid does NOT WORK
And you came by that judgment just how?
Centuries of experience ? We had our own experiment with LBJ.
There is a simple easy “answer” to most problems, unfortunately it isn’t correct. (Will Rogers?)