report back on Crecer a Golpes: Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy in the Shadow of Powerful Men
My first issue with this was the local organizer, Kirsten Weld, who kicked off the conversation by apologizing for starting late, saying that “we’re on Latin American time”…white people doing a few PhD trips to South America, what do y'all know about Latin American time?..please stop pretending you are a Latin@.
Moving on, the conversation about the “shadow of strong men” is mediated by…4 men of strong characters–big surprise!
At various point throughout the talk, the bickering and personal jibes amongst the men reached a level of comedy–it reminded me of that moment from the last CreativeTime Summit, when Chido Govera sat on a panel with several arguing men, jokingly remarking: “well, the men are doing their thing…”
There were some really wonderful analyses of the history of Latin America though, and I plan on researching these men and their writings further. The general attitude of the panel was that Latin America continues to feel the processes set about by their various dictators (one of the authors equating it to feeling “damp” long after a rain shower), and that whether right/left, both style of dictatorships employ similar authoritarian-democratic techniques–contributing to the complex affect later on of nostalgia in the popular culture for authoritarian rule "with results".
Some highlights:
- (in reference to the West/the US) “architects of hegemony, cannibals of minorities”
- (the USA) “depends on a viagra of debt to keep the flag flowing”
- Latin America is lacking a concept of “rule of law”
- “Chávez is Perón resurrected…Perón without hands” (referring to the posthumous amputation of Perón’s hands)
- (on Uribe of Colombia and his use of paramilitary groups to commit atrocities on the population) “clever use of terror, and a country who was willing to look the other way”
- the idea that Latin America goes through waves of feeling nostalgia for dictatorships–an audience member from the Philippines confirmed that this is also the case there, in “the most Latin American country outside of Latin America”, where there is a resurgence of popular sympathy for the Marcos era
- the brilliant claim that Latin America might be the only grouping of countries with several currencies named after “strong men”: the Venezuelan bolívar, Costa Rican colón, Bolivian boliviano, Nicaraguan córdoba, Honduran lempira