Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts

Monday, September 23, 2019

Capitalism's Flaw: a Cycle of Failure then Possible Rebirth

Sadly, capitalism has become a dirty word in some circles, especially amongst young Westerners. I don't blame them. If my best-case prospect was 30,000 USD in debt (credit, car, and student loans) by the age of 24, I'd be against the system, too. 

But capitalism isn't the problem per se--it's the way adults have engineered the economic system with lenient banks. Too many people fail to realize how much the U.S. dollar--or any empire's currency--has been propped up by military force and the slave trade. 
The United States and Mexico, 1821-1848 ((c) 1913, 1969)
by George Lockhart Rives
Most young people do not know that England occupied Havana, Cuba in 1692 in part because of its strategic port; that Guantanamo Bay and Hong Kong are consequences of superpowers legally occupying weaker countries to perpetuate subservient relationships; that a treaty, Utrecht in 1713, specifically gave the British an exclusive license to take captured slaves to the Americas for sale and labor; that in the next phase of empire handover, Spain hastened its decline by supporting the English against France (choose your allies carefully, especially in wartime, when shifting allegiances are common); that the idea of absolute monarchy only crumbled in 1812 thanks to both French and American Revolutions; or that Mexican law (as of July 13, 1824, before America's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation) prohibited the slave trade; that the March 11, 1827 Constitution of Coahuila (Mexico) and Texas expressly declared, "in the [Mexican] state no one is born a slave"; that America invaded Nicaragua in 1912, Haiti in 1915, and the Dominican Republic in 1916 (because the Dominican Republic owed Wall Street money); and so on. 
Averell "Ace" Smith in Commonwealth Club Magazine (2019)
The American conquest of Mexican territory in 1848 is significant in that it created a playbook for Wall Street involvement: 1) create a pretext to invade; 2) take territory from the weaker country; and 3) force the country to go in debt in your currency. 
Published by Colegio de Mexico
This same playbook backfired severely in Germany when dominant powers imposed financial terms and conditions paving the way for demagogues, who always arrive with scapegoats in hand. (Ironically, it was a German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who created a universal moral law in 1785 that should have assisted future German populations: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.") In those days, the world learned from its mistakes post-WWII, creating a Marshall Plan that led to defeated Germany and Japan becoming superpowers and stable trade partners. Today, no one believes Iraq--attacked and invaded twice by the United States--will ever become a superpower or more than an oil supplier. 
Domino effect on debt non-repayment usually leads to a crisis.
Whither Western capitalism? Within historical context, it's hard to believe capitalism has ever worked an honest day in its life. To recapture the hearts and minds of young people all over the world, capitalism needs honest, sincere politicians, diplomats, and journalists. Currently, all of the aforementioned are MIA. Until that changes, we might as well prepare the obituary of capitalism--and our young. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat

Bonus I: John Swinton, late 1800s: 

I made the acquaintance of Wendell Phillips and found that he, too, had come to similar conclusions. He believed that the capitalist system was steadily undermining the world and bringing his countrymen into a condition quite as wretched as that of the slaves; and he vehemently condemned it.

Bonus II: Wendell Phillips (1861): 

I think the first duty of society is justice. 

The nation which, in moments when great moral questions disturb its peace, consults first for its own safety, is atheist and coward... Slavery has made our churches of Christ to churches of commerce. 

Despotisms are cheap; free governments are a dear luxury--the machinery is complicated and expensive. 

Were safety or security the first objective of human society, this principle, "if unlimited, false... [and] unqualified, it justifies every crime, and would have prevented every glory of history... But grant it. Suppose the Union means wealth, culture, happiness, and safety, man has no right to buy either by crime." 

Look at our history. Under it, 700,000 slaves have increased to 4,000,000. We have paid $800,000,000 directly to the support of slavery. This secession will cost the Union and business $200,000,000 more. This loss which this disturbing force has brought to our trade and industry, within 60 years, it would be safe to call $500,000,000... slavery has been strong enough to rule the nation for sixty years, and now breaks it to pieces because it can rule no longer. 

Bonus III: Alexander Hamilton: "Justice is the end [goal] of government. It is the end [goal] of civil society." 

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Morelia and Queretaro, Mexico

Two of Mexico's lesser-known cities are Queretaro and Morelia. In Queretaro's Plaza de Armas, I visited a building with Victor Cauduro Rojas' murals of significant Mexican leaders, including Miguel Hidalgo. 

I enjoyed Queretaro. It's a large, developed city, the kind you'd want to live in, and it also has a historic center, so you have the best of the old and new worlds. 

I didn't enjoy Morelia as much, but it has two unique sights: 1) the Church of Guadalupe (aka Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe) 
and 2) Biblioteca Publica Universitaria y Fondo Antiguo. 
Puebla city, Puebla continues to be the most underrated city I've visited in Mexico. Its International Museum of Baroque is world-class, and its Biblioteca de Palafoxiana is one of the most unique libraries ever built, starting with a donation of 5,000 books from Juan de Palafox. 

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Travel Lessons: Blind Spots and Distractions

One travel benefit is seeing how others view your "home" country. Mexico is particularly interesting because trade agreements and the strong U.S. dollar have made many Mexican cities (León, Irapuato, etc.) into de facto American and European economic satellites. Within one minute of entering any decent-sized Mexican city, even a one-eyed tourist will notice Hilton, Holiday Inn, and Ibis everywhere, usually with an American restaurant attached--and that's before you visit any major shopping mall. 
When shopping malls are legally-approved, only old buildings will be interesting. Wait...
Despite such Americanization, Mexicans tend to have blind spots about fundamental American facts--a revelation that initially seemed strange until I realized most Americans have similar blind spots about other countries, even ones they've visited. For Americans and Europeans, part of this phenomenon involves the desire to be well-liked, and part of it is writers' need to adapt to average attention spans. For instance, a very smart, well-traveled colleague recently wrote about Cuba's "first class" healthcare system. However, anyone who has actually visited Cuba as an ordinary tourist and ventured into any pharmacy (shelves are almost bare or sell mostly vitamins, though one anti-cholesterol drug seems effective) or seen anyone with hearing aids (they're usually analog, not digital, and similar to ones worn by Americans 25 years ago) will realize nothing is first-class about Cuban medical care above a pediatric or basic level. 

Suppose you're an older, affluent traveler and writer. Which is the easier path? An offhand reference to "first class" healthcare or spending vacation time investigating whether a country's healthcare system matches the hype? Not only is one clearly much easier, but the other option risks the ire of immigration officials as well as nationalistic residents and influential expats. Somehow, modern society has created a situation where telling the truth has massive downside with no clear benefit and taking a simplistic and conformist approach has only upside. Humanity's new religion is optimism, and few people seem to mind that controversy is rarely an optimist's preferred bailiwick.

In any case, Mexican history is incredibly complex--two revolutions in one century will do that--but most people agree true democracy hasn't existed in Mexico very long. Indeed, until recently, Mexico was a one-party state where corruption was assumed unless otherwise proven. Yet, most Mexicans are optimistic about their country's future because they argue they've only had democracy for a short while, whereas Americans have had it for centuries. In spite of Trump's election, Mexicans believe true democracy is the way forward, and America's success is based in large part on giving every member of its society a voice in government affairs. This analysis contains numerous blind spots, but it has captured the public's imagination even though many Americans couldn't vote until 1920, when women finally won the right to vote; minorities were often disenfranchised at the polls (poll taxes, voter registration issues, etc.) until the 1970s; and individual votes are often trumped by groups such as unions, which are more effective at influencing elections as 40+% of Americans have stopped voting, especially in primaries. Such cognitive dissonance got me thinking: what if every single zeitgeist is wrong? What if human beings prefer to eschew simple ideas in favor of delusions of grandeur?

Imagination is a double-edged sword. It allows me to write the previous sentence but also strives towards complexity, even if only to distract ourselves from the ordinary. Mexico's optimism is probably better understood as a function of higher oil prices, currency devaluations making its exports more attractive in an increasingly globalized economy, and family values (who doesn't love Mexican grandmothers or want one?). While no Mexican individual can influence oil prices or force families to stay together, democracy allows everyone to believe and to feel as if they have more choices in creating the future than they actually do. In short, fallacies exist because humanity's need to feel in control allows imagination to run amok, creating distraction after distraction that eventually evolves into something "pack mentality" lifts up and makes into "truth."


Think about why we are inherently suspicious of artificial intelligence and why we talk about love and souls as if they are the most important elements in our lives. We have or think we can have control over finding love and improving our souls, and our imagination generates these abstractions in ways similar to computer code generating virtual reality, but no human being feels as if artificial intelligence programming has a soul, even if it passes the Turing Test. The reason is simple: every single abstraction generated by humanity's imagination is designed to give us the feeling of more control, even if hijacked in negative ways in the real world. Yet, because humanity cannot strip away its imagination's need to strive for greater control even when interests hostile to the original purpose of an abstraction dominate, humanity's instinct is always to maintain the original idea--at any cost

If the aforementioned hypothesis is true, it explains why outlaws, artists, and rebels are so valued--in the abstract--by human beings: buried deep in our software, our source code knows we need them as check and balances on programming's tendency to build around bugs rather than eliminate them. If humanity's most salient feature is its ability to generate distractions, then everything--phrenology, social media, nonviolence, sports, Nazism, capitalism, socialism, racism, etc.--is our attempt to understand the bugs we've generated in this journey we call life--and to pass time. Remarkably, this process of passing time tends to improve conditions for most, as long as imagination and physical mobility are allowed to prosper, and they usually do, whether in Vaclav Havel's plays under Soviet occupation, in Iranian cinema under express censorship, and in America under military veteran and Democratic Governor George Wallace's cries for segregation. Seen this way, my optimistic friend who called Cuba's healthcare "first class" is as right as I am when I demand accuracy and context. If everything is a distraction, why not turn our mind's eye to the pleasant possibilities--and hope to direct humanity's collective imagination towards resolving the gap between reality and the better angels of our imagination? After all, it's just a matter of time--as long as we balance short-term desires with long-term goals. 

Dedicated to Jim Quillinan, who introduced me to Harold and Maude (1971) and many other wonderful distractions