Latin America: the fires immediately died down, because they needed socialism to burn

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Latin America: the fires immediately died down, because they needed socialism to burn

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

So how many middle class Americans do we have now saying wateroverfire is a Nazi for criticizing labor laws and that they clearly know what's wrong with LAmerica better than people who live there? 4? 5?

# ¿ Nov 27, 2014 03:34

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:21

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

England Sucks posted:

I'd also like to point out that such a large percentage of work in South America is informal and has zero government oversight that labor laws are about as effective here as drug laws.

That sounds like a good way to run an economy and a generally desirable situation all in all. Shows those idiots who think the labor and tax laws may have problems

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Nov 27, 2014

# ¿ Nov 27, 2014 04:23

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Zeitgueist posted:

It only takes a few factories burning to the ground with employees inside before people learn.

I'm saying that having labor laws so strict they are unenforceable and drive most economic activity underground is a bad thing

# ¿ Nov 27, 2014 04:27

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

So tell me about the influence of American Libertarians / Austrian Schoolers on Latin American politics. I know they were big big fans of the military dictatorships and all that. Do they have actual support amongst the upper/middle class like I get the impression they do?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 21:36

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

PerpetualSelf posted:

Lol Brazil just basically torpedoed their entire economy and it was not doing well before that but their middle class is all about to go bye-bye.

Middle Class? What is this, a Soviet party meeting circa 1945? Get with the times, man, the middle class is old news

# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 04:27

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

The Mexican government should probably just legalize the sale and distribution of all drugs straight up, because it's 100% the United States' fault that this is a thing and would shift the problem entirely onto us

# ¿ May 5, 2015 23:00

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

bagual posted:

I guess using the national flag in political demonstrations goes back to the military government, but never ceases to be ironic in that most of the anti-PT crowd is liberal (as in neoliberal mixed with evangelical conservatives) while PT has some nationalist roots.

As an American I'd like to apologize for my country siccing its libertarians and evangelicals on you, just as a side

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 19:17

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

i mean i'm as good a leftie as anyone here on SA but peronismo seems like such a clusterfuck disaster even i'm happy this guy won

# ¿ Nov 23, 2015 06:19

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

so from what i've read about dilma it sounds like basically a greek tragedy. progressive reformer devotes her career to taking on the monstrosity that is the brazilian political establishment, almost succeeds, but fails and gets eaten alive by the monster

# ¿ May 12, 2016 15:09

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

German-style MMP is the superior electoral system, pure proportionality gets you Brazil

# ¿ May 18, 2016 00:02

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

glowing-fish posted:

I hope this doesn't sound like an arrogant American, but I think the US system with a separate executive and legislature works really well. Its a very modular system, where each part of the government has its own role. Its kind of a delicate system though, because it depends on sharing powers and a tacit understanding of how far the dynamic can be pushed. In other countries, it might be turned into either gridlock or a dictatorial presidency.

It's dysfunctional in the US and worse than dysfunctional in every other country it's implemented in (basically Latin America). I think the real lesson is that no system can really withstand being full of people who don't play by the rules

# ¿ May 18, 2016 02:56

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

punk rebel ecks posted:

Is there any country with a legitimately good political party to chose from that is a major party? Iceland? Ecuador? Bolivia?

Labour under Corbae, various other insurgent leftist parties in Europe such as Die Linke in Germany, Melenchon's party in France, etc

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 22:01

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

ronya posted:

* both Labour under Jam Man (and John IRON DISCIPLINE McDonnell) and Die Linke are shady atm (and does Die Linke qualify as a major party anyway? its vote share is in the ballpark of UK Lib Dems). Even Die Linke - never mind Corbae's Labour - have a rhetoric of radical economic transformation that is quite distant from the relatively tepid policies

Melenchon's Left Party certainly doesn't qualify as a major party

what do you mean by shady? that they're not Full Communist enough, or something else?

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 00:40

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Polidoro posted:

Such as?

Welfare expansions in Brazil under PT governments were massively successful. I don't know enough to say for sure but my impression is that the Brazilian left-wing government was the most successful by far

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 01:04

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

ronya posted:

they're deliberately and consciously confabulatory on ideological direction; in the context of a question as to which major parties are Good, that should be a concern

The desire for a left alternative to neoliberalism and the inability of anyone to come up with one that works is not deliberate IMO. It's just the curse of being a socialist

I still can't figure out what your actual for real political position is though, literally everything you post is concern trolling leftists about their failure to come up with a working alternative to neoliberalism. Which I can fully support but still, you're a real man of mystery

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Aug 18, 2016

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 09:46

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Friendly Humour posted:

Are there people with names like Stalin Junior and Stallone De PG 20000 running for office in Brazil? Are those their real names? Are those real ads? I'm so confused

they just call him "Junior" normally

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 20:01

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

so they're actually getting rid of dilma?

# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 09:16

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

so what's the deal with argentina, why has their modern history been so totally dominated by hilariously awful peronists? like i can understand other countries in latin america having bad populist management as a result of being insanely unequal societies, but argentina is all germans and italian immigrants and presumably was a much less unequal society? it makes no sense

edit: wow, first version of this post sounded pretty bad

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Sep 14, 2016

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 10:17

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

punk rebel ecks posted:

Was Pinochet's rule really that bad? I ran into one of these reactionaries before and they went on about how before Pinochet, Chile was just like Venezuela and everyone was starving because there was no food. Then Pinochet fixed everything only for a brief depression due to him having to switch away from the dollar. How wrong was this?

Some amount of privatization/liberalization was probably necessary/at the very least Allende's policies would probably have been bad. But Pinochet was absolutely as brutal a dictator as they come, he probably killed ten thousand political dissenters and imprisoned tens of thousands more, and his rule hosed up a lot more than it fixed

Unless you're a libertarian who thinks the Latins need the guiding hand of a brutal dictator to keep them from sloth and collectivism, yes he was very bad

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Sep 22, 2016

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 03:33

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

punk rebel ecks posted:

Is it wrong of me to like Glenn Greenwald?

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 01:52

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

nerdz posted:

Doesn't Haiti still have to pay a shitload of money to France that was basically odious debt to purposely gently caress them up? Apparently what they already paid amounts to billions of euros when adjusted for inflation, which is insane given Haiti's current condition. We'll never know where Haiti would be had it not been saddled with this "debt".

Not that the debt wasn't insanely unjust, but Haiti and the DR were actually just as poor as each other until about 1970

https://twitter.com/InquisitiveMarg/status/951818221878939654

# ¿ Jan 13, 2018 23:37

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

What do people think of AMLO in Mexico? I read this article on him and it was good

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/mexico-elections-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-amlo

Also

https://mobile.twitter.com/pseudoerasmus/status/972064268135862273

I guess neoliberalism was ... bad???

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 00:11

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

ronya posted:

I'll be honest, I am astonished you read that blog. It writes things like this.

What�s astonishing about that blog or that post? He�s not left wing enough for what you take my taste to be?

quote:

"but what if... neoliberalism is bad" is certainly an odd way to read it; neoliberalism is almost totally orthogonal to the tired tussle between ISI and ELI and middle-income traps

If the comparison is between pre-1980s and post-1980s Mexico then neoliberalism seems very relevant, no?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 18:08

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1013608466043277313

# ¿ Jul 2, 2018 07:46

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Has there ever been a for-real socialist government in Latin America, not just left-ISI ones? Outside Cuba of course

# ¿ Jul 9, 2018 11:07

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/1044899694298705920

# ¿ Oct 8, 2018 02:30

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

In case anyone thought American liberalism was capable of confronting fascism to even the most infinitesimal degree

# ¿ Oct 8, 2018 02:32

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

At least 50 years ago centrist liberals had a coherent explanation for supporting right-wing dictatorships, even if it was incorrect and immoral (ACTUALLY they're Authoritarian, not Totalitarian). This time they're just saying that anyone who disagrees with them for any reason is the same. First tragedy then farce I guess

# ¿ Oct 8, 2018 03:07

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Jeet's New Republic may not be as bad as the old one, but Neoliberalism Was Good For Mexico, Actually is still a strange thing to see

https://newrepublic.com/article/152834/lefts-delusions-mexicos-new-president

quote:

The Left�s Delusions About Mexico�s New President
Andr�s Manuel L�pez Obrador is going to save Latin America from neoliberalism, according to American and British leftists. The reality is much more complicated.

...

Mexico, for all the catastrophizing by politicians, the media, and NGO researchers, remains a country in flux rather than crisis. Its violent crime rate, while the source of horrific massacres and mass disappearances, is lower than those of Venezuela, Brazil, or Colombia. Its burgeoning high-tech and manufacturing sectors are the most productive and innovative in Latin America. And its current economic performance�relatively low, if consistent, growth�while disappointing to many, can be considered an improvement on the 20th century when Mexico lurched from crisis to crisis, depending on oil prices.

...

Yet this is generally not the discussion being had on the left with regards to Latin America. Many in western academia and journalism continue to consider neoliberalism the region�s primary problem. This posture was first adopted by the left in the 1990s during the alter-globalization movement, itself partly inspired by Mexico�s 1994 �Zapatista� uprising, and has endured as the foremost leftist critique of Latin American governments to this day. While many of the criticisms of the rapid implementation of liberalizing market policies were justified, they rarely appreciated the context of the times or distinguished between positive reforms and negative ones.

Mexico�s market reforms, after all, were spurred by serious problems. While the Mexican economy, propelled by oil revenues, grew rapidly during the mid-20th century, state-backed monopolies filled with political cronies only served to suppress innovation and entrepreneurship, while state intervention in the economy through land reform and price controls simply maintained one-party hegemony, culminating in the disastrous Latin American Debt Crisis of 1982. Notably, Mexico today is growing more robustly in its north, which has been quicker to embrace industrialization and global trade, than its rural and politically volatile south, which only seems to fall further back.

AMLO�s policy proposals are not so much radical or innovative as retro. Steeped in nationalist symbolism, his economic plans in particular echo the country�s leftist leaders of the 1970s, whose profligate spending contributed to the 1982 debt crisis. Specifically, he has suggested considerable public reinvestment in Mexico�s corrupt, unwieldy energy giant, Pemex, implicated in the region-wide Odebrecht scandal; a revival of the agricultural sector, which was in steep decline even before the market reforms; and increased public spending. After decades of financing development via oil revenues and foreign loans, such increased spending cannot now occur sustainably without tax reform�something AMLO so far has resisted.

...

The key point made by AMLO�s critics, many of whom would identify themselves as moderate, or even progressive, is lost: For decades, Mexico�s great mistake has been to believe that there are shortcuts to sustainable development. In reality, prioritizing cheerleading for a candidate over the slow but vital work of institution building, sustainable budgeting, and rigorous anti-corruption enforcement has led to patchy results. Enthusiasm for a new leftist hero shouldn�t obscure either the particulars of Mexico�s needs or its new president�s very obvious shortcomings.

Mexico's problems are all the fault of feckless and irresponsible Left Populists interrupting the Slow Boring Of Hard Boards.

Didn't neoliberalism itself drive the shift away from manufacturing and back to natural resource extraction? And didn't the whole post-80s neoliberal reform movement itself degrade and destroy many of the corrupt-but-stable institutions of the pre-neoliberal era? If what you want from Mexico is stable institutions and a manufacturing based economy, wasn't that literally what the PRI was?

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jan 8, 2019

# ¿ Jan 8, 2019 02:15

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Today's NYT hit piece on AMLO

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/world/americas/mexico-migration-trump.html

quote:

Mexico Is Carrying Out Trump�s Agenda Along Much of the Border

By Azam Ahmed and Kirk Semple

March 1, 2019

MEXICO CITY � Mexican officials are carrying out the Trump administration�s immigration agenda across broad stretches of the border, undercutting the Mexican government�s promises to defend migrants and support their search for a better life.

The Mexican authorities are blocking groups of migrants at border towns, refusing to allow them onto international bridges to apply for asylum in the United States, intercepting unaccompanied minors before they can reach American soil, and helping to manage lists of asylum seekers on behalf of the American authorities to limit the number of people crossing the border.

Breaking with decades of asylum practice, the Mexican government has also allowed the Trump administration to send more than 120 men, women and children to Tijuana while they await decisions on their asylum applications in the United States. The program could be expanded to other border crossings as soon as next week.

Officials inside the administration of Mexico�s new president, Andr�s Manuel L�pez Obrador, have called his stance on migrants a strategic decision not to anger President Trump.

He doesn�t believe he can change Mr. Trump�s mind, they contend. Furthermore, the officials say, Mr. L�pez Obrador has not wanted to jeopardize other aspects of the deeply interconnected relationship between the two countries, ranging from elaborate regional trading arrangements to information sharing on border security, transnational crime and terrorism. So he has avoided a bruising and potentially costly public fight over the issue.

A lifelong defender of the poor, Mr. L�pez Obrador often refers to his plans for Mexico as a grand transformation, placing his ambitions for the nation on par with those of its great leaders.

He has burnished his everyman credentials by cutting government salaries, flying coach around the country and opening the opulent presidential palace to the public. He has also vastly reduced the number of Central American migrants Mexico deports from its soil.

But not everything has transformed.

Exhibit A is the Migrant Protection Protocols, the Trump administration�s policy to require asylum seekers to remain on the Mexican side of the border while they await decisions on their fate. Rights groups contend that it dumps migrants in an increasingly violent Mexico and impairs their access to legal counsel and family support in the United States.

Mr. L�pez Obrador�s administration, which came into office saying it would not cooperate with Mr. Trump�s anti-immigration agenda, has gone along with it on several fronts, including accepting women and children despite earlier promises to take only adult male asylum seekers.

But for Mr. L�pez Obrador, giving in to some of Mr. Trump�s border demands and rarely saying a word against the American president in his daily press briefings carries little political cost at home.

To many Mexicans, the fate of migrants is secondary to domestic concerns about jobs, security and corruption. Mr. L�pez Obrador retains an 80 percent approval rating, despite his government�s willingness to take back migrants applying for asylum in the United States.

�If we have to accept a handful of people back into Mexico, that�s not really a problem for us, not even politically,� said one official who was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. �What we really want to avoid is a public fight with Trump.�

But in its effort to avoid a cross-border fight, the Mexican government has chosen politics over its humanitarian ideals, critics contend.

�Mexico is continuing to play the role that the U.S. thinks it should, which is to contain the migrant influx, period,� said Melissa Vertiz Hern�ndez, who coordinates the Working Group on Immigration Policy, a network of civil society and rights groups in Mexico.

The delicate balance with the United States has left the Mexican government without a clear, consistent immigration policy, so Mexican states and municipalities along the border are often in the position of fending for themselves under pressure from their American counterparts.

In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, for instance, almost no one is allowed to cross the bridge to apply for asylum in neighboring McAllen, Texas. They are typically blocked or apprehended by Mexican officials, forcing migrants to try their luck in other towns.

In the city of Piedras Negras, officials rounded up hundreds of migrants who arrived in a caravan in recent weeks and kept them under tight watch in a shelter with limited access to outsiders, advocates say. After a public outcry, the center was closed and many were bused to other cities and towns along the border.

The mayor of Ciudad Ju�rez, meanwhile, has threatened to sue a neighboring governor for shipping migrants to his town. It has become a game of political hot potato, with desperate Central Americans who are fleeing poverty and violence caught in the middle.

Elsewhere along the border, shelter officials say they manage lists of asylum applicants by name, nationality, age and documentation to assist Mexican officials who are complying with American border patrol mandates.

The Mexican government is resisting Mr. Trump in some ways, the official in Mr. L�pez Obrador�s government insisted. Even acquiescing to the Trump administration on the Migrant Protection Protocols was done strategically, according to the official and two others briefed on the plan.

By allowing the program to start in San Diego and Tijuana, the Mexican officials argued, legal challenges to it in the United States go to the federal courts in the Northern District of California, which are generally seen as liberal. This matters at a time when many Americans are focused on how to beat Mr. Trump in the 2020 elections, in particular by leveraging the Mexican-American vote.

But many activists are far from confident that a legal challenge will put an end to the program.

�I think it�s an incredibly risky move,� said Stephanie Leutert, the director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin. �I don�t think you should put your country�s foreign and migratory policy in the hands of a civil society organization in another country.�

On Feb. 14, that civil society organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, and several other advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration�s policy. A decision on a temporary restraining order is expected in the coming days.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 11 asylum seekers who were returned to Mexico in recent weeks, accuses the Trump administration of violating federal and international migration and human rights laws.

Advocates contend that by forcibly sending asylum seekers to Tijuana, the Trump administration has plunged them into an unfamiliar and dangerous environment where their lives may be in jeopardy.

Killings in Tijuana have skyrocketed in recent years because of a turf war in the local drug market. In 2018, the city suffered its deadliest year on record, with more than 2,500 killings.

The Trump administration first announced the new policy in December, and on Jan. 28 the head of Mexico�s migration agency said the Mexican government had imposed restrictions on its enactment.

But Mexican officials have backed down from many of those initial restrictions, including its refusal to accept women with children. Trump administration officials have said they plan to expand the program to other ports of entry along the border. The L�pez Obrador administration has said little publicly about the changes.

In Tijuana, several of the returnees � three single men, a single woman, and two mothers each traveling with three children � described their confusion and dismay at finding themselves in Mexico once again.

�I have no idea how I�m going to survive,� said Yanira, a 34-year-old migrant from El Salvador who feared being pursued by the people she said she was fleeing in her home country.

Yanira said she left El Salvador with her three children � ages 8, 11 and 12 � after a local gang tried to recruit her middle child and threatened violence unless he agreed.

When she stepped onto Mexican soil again after being led back across the border by American officials, she broke down.

�I cried and cried,� she recalled.

Mexican officials have said they cannot provide shelter and care for the returnees, essentially leaving them to a network of community groups in Tijuana and elsewhere in the state of Baja California.

But the shelter network has been under extraordinary pressure from the almost-continual arrival of migrants traveling in caravans, who have pushed the centers beyond capacity.

Sister Salom� Limas, a social worker at the Instituto Madre Asunta migrant shelter in Tijuana, said it is currently housing about 120 women and children � in a space designed for 44.

Among the migrants are several families who are seeking asylum in the United States and were returned in recent weeks under the Trump policy.

Sister Salom� said the shelter can house the families until their first court date in the United States, in late March. After that, she is not sure.

�What�s going to happen to them?� she said. �We don�t know.�

In true American liberal fashion, the goodness or badness of the foreign society is purely a function of how it reflects America, and literally nothing else

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Mar 1, 2019

# ¿ Mar 1, 2019 23:07

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:21

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

The WaPo is basically a European center-right paper like the German FAZ, and doesn't make much pretense to be progressive. The Times is doing this weird contortionist act where they have to convince themselves and their upper-upper-middle class readership that they are in fact woke and progressive while at the same time supporting the class position of such people, which necessarily means undermining and opposing in practice progressive policies. IMO the Times is clearly worse than the WaPo, although I wouldn't pay to subscribe to either. It's honestly probably worse than the Guardian, because I think Britain has a clearer history of distinction between a social/progressive liberalism and socialism, which makes the Guardian's support for the former and hostility towards the latter clearer and less confused

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Nov 12, 2019

# ¿ Nov 12, 2019 22:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Latin America: the fires immediately died down, because they needed socialism to burn