The Restless Ocean of the Nations
“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be erased by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Politics aren't rational, you know? It's emotional, it appeals to instinct, to our animal side. But I think that's difficult to accept for people who tend to be more analytical and intellectual. And just as in the USA, there's a small class of billionaires who are deeply invested in maintaining the government that benefits them; they don't care whether it's left-wing or right-wing. One of the senators here said that the oil companies knew more about the attack in Venezuela before Congress did. What comes before capitalism? Mercantilism.
The Latin American nations are younger nations; the formation of democratic republics is still relatively new. After about 175 years, they are now caught in the churn, along with all the other democratic nations — the restless tides of the ocean of civilizations. Monarchies have their problems, but at least they are stable, paternalistic, and eternal. With republics, you get caught in the pendulum swing of the generations—the word revolution comes from the root "to revolve." If the previous generation was authoritarian, the next generation will want to lean to the left. In the USA, if their parents were liberal (like the hippie parents from the baby boomer generation), young people will want to lean to the right, they will be attracted to fascism. That's exactly what's happening in USA now. As my German History professor always pointed out, young people tend to adopt the radical position, but they're not always on the left.
O quizás hay una raíz más profunda del autoritarismo, los padres, independientemente del partido. Existe este anhelo de regresar a un Edén perdido, a una inocencia… Tengo un amigo en Colombia, tenemos un grupo de lectura; cada semana leemos un capítulo de una de las novelas de Gabriel García Márquez para practicar. Él habla de estos temas, del contexto, y es muy interesante. Dice que hay que comprender la geografía de Colombia, los bosques, las colinas y los valles, para entender cómo cada pequeño pueblo tiene su propia clase de soledad mágica. Puedo ver puntos en común entre las culturas de toda la región, la región hmm bolivariana. Dice que con la llegada de las repúblicas, la gente abandonan el flujo interminable del tiempo. Antes de eso, vivían en un estado atemporal.
Images: Two Views of an East Indiaman of the time of King William III // The Flag of the East India Trading Company // A Japanese print from 1854 describing Commodore Matthew Perry's "Black Ships"
