[layman]

I am not from that part of the world.

I am aware of all those things and they are not the root cause. The reason Latin America has underperformed is to do with internal corruption, stability, lack of property rights etc.

Its a bit sad that people can pin all this failure on their norther neighbour. There are plenty of countries that have excelled with far more hotile neighbours surrounding them.

excuses excuses.

[KevlarMind]

Rather than a history of American interventionism against democracy throughout Latin America, the source of hostility towards America is because of those rascally politicians? You really think that?

Yes I think that. Watch their speeches, they don't talk about America kindly. And majority of newspapers and media sources in Latin America are goverment controlled so majority of population belives in what this media says to them.

[Soulflytribe]

The reason Latin America has underperformed is to do with internal corruption, stability, lack of property rights etc.

That's 100% true. To blame the US is just ridiculous.
It's like Greece blaming Germany for their own corruption and uncontrolled government spending.

[KevlarMind]

True. I mean they can't blame themselves for their own problems. It is beneficial for them to blame USA.

[Maas]

I am not from that part of the world.

I am aware of all those things and they are not the root cause. The reason Latin America has underperformed is to do with internal corruption, stability, lack of property rights etc.

The lack of stability is so obviously because the US was the fuel behind the overthrowing of governments all over the Latin America. And its a no-brainer that those US supported ruthless extreme right dictatorships who ruled countries for decades shaped Latin America.

That you claim to be aware of what the US did, but refuse to accept it left any footprint.. is just a laughable opinion.

It's like Greece blaming Germany for their own corruption and uncontrolled government spending.

It would be like Greece blaming Germany for installing a fascist dictatorship that shaped their culture for decades. But that did not happen, and your comparison is a strawman.

A better comparison would be: former east Germans complaining how USSR and its Warschaupact is the cause why they are still are behind on former west Germans in almost all ways.

[Pants-of-dog]

The history of US intervention in Latin America is well documented. Why bother pretending that Latin Americans are playing a victim role when they point this out?

The fact that the US is not responsible for all the problems of Latin America does not somehow excuse the US from the problems it is responsible for.

To answer the OP, the level of anti-US sentiment is actually lower than it is in Europe as far as I know, despite the high level of US intervention.

[work-in-progress]

The communist credo has two basic tenets: You must have an external enemy and you must have an internal enemy. Internal is easy, that't
s 'them' the others, the rich, the blue, the whatever color you name.

The rich....right there, that's the internal and external enemy for the vast majority of people in this world. And what is the strategy of the ownership class? They are outnumbered by the masses of people that they harvest to support their increasingly grandiose living styles, so their strategy to take attention off of economic class divisions is to get the people to focus on their internal divides - religion, race, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation etc.. Thomas Frank's book "What's The Matter With Kansas shows how a wealth class in control of private media can wrap themselves in religion, racial identity and patriotism to motivate people to vote against their own economic interests and in favour of their oppressors.

When most nations break down, they do not succumb to communism or any similar left movement. The fascists are usually the ones who win because they either represent the wealth class or have the rich by the short hairs and squeeze them for money to support armies and brown shirt mobs who have been motivated by nationalist, racist and/or religious propaganda.

The external, why, who else? who else could possibly be drummed into gullible heads as the devil himself? why, the country that has provided the highest standard of living to the greates number and percentage of its population, ever. That place is called the USA.

Find some numbers to justify that assertion! Because everything I've read of late shows that the U.S. is the most unequal developed nation in the world and is becoming increasingly stratified by income. Just the fact that the six heirs of the Walmart Walton fortune have equal net worth to the lowest 40% of the U.S. population says enough about inequality in the U.S.

So is there anti Americanism in Latin America? You bet. Funnily, the place where most Latinos want to emigrate to is ?? You guessed it, the USA.

It's totally assinine for Americans to congratulate themselves for being a destination for desperate refugees that have been created out of U.S. foreign policy.

I have met some of those people who fled to the U.S. and Canada. They have different stories to tell, because these are different nations with different experiences in dealing with the U.S.

My old friend who fled with most of his family from Guatemala were given no choice in the matter: either move before the death squads arrive or die. The night he and his family fled their village, his oldest brother went off looking for his girlfriend and her family, and none of them were ever seen again...their bodies were likely burned or left rotting in the jungle. Most of his family is still living in Mexico, some were able to emigrate legally to Texas, while he decided to wait for a chance to move to Canada to start a new life. Like most Central American refugees and migrants in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, they did not have a burning desire to leave the lands where they lived....especially the Mayans, who have a history going back thousands of years. Their countries of origin became hell-holes mostly because of U.S. backing of local and foreign despots and the way the U.S. has prosecuted drug wars over the last 30 years.
The death squads were Guatemalan soldiers conveniently out of uniform and trained by the CIA and other special ops for their "counter-insurgency" campaign after they decided that the Mayans living up in the hills were unhelpful or uncooperative.

[Social_Critic]

There is some anti USA feelings in the world in general, mostly because the USA behaves in such an arrogant fashion and is two faced. I don't think it's unusual behavior, strong nations have a tendency to behave this way as long as they think they can get away with it.

We really shouldn't mix communism versus capitalism in this equation. Chinese communists had absolutely no problems invading Tibet and treating Tibetans like animals. When I was living in Russia I visited and talked to northern natives such as nenetsky and Khanti and they related very sad stories about soviet abuses.

Young communists - and I sense PoFo is full of 20 to 30 year old commie intellectuals - tend to idealize communism and really believe the bullshit about "capitalist abuses". Those of us who have lived under communism realize its a bit different. It's "human abuses". What makes communism so awful is its economic I efficiency coupled to the way it centralizes power, which allows a few "communist oligarchs" to rule and abuse power in ways most of you can't imagine.

When I lived in Moscow I lived in a residence built for a very high level KGB officer. It had a 100 meter by 50 meter lot, surrounded by a tall fence, except the side where it overlooked the Moscow river. It had about 500 square meters of living space, 5 bedrooms, 7 baths, a sauna in the basement...this is how the nomenklatura lived.

I also saw how the working class lived outside, in the mining and oil towns. In some places I saw professional engineers and their families living in terrible conditions, a family had a 10 by 4 meter hut and used communal bathrooms which really stank. This was the result of 70 years of communism.

And I know all the excuses communists give. I've heard them for 50 years. All of these excuses are bullshit. So please remember there are those of us who have been there and done that. And we are going to remain and will teach others to become your deadliest enemies, because you communists are the enemies of freedom and a true scourge for mankind.

[work-in-progress]

There is some anti USA feelings in the world in general, mostly because the USA behaves in such an arrogant fashion and is two faced. I don't think it's unusual behavior, strong nations have a tendency to behave this way as long as they think they can get away with it.

Don't try to paint this as resentment against Americans or the Nation itself, many of those who harbour anti USA feelings, are educated and are aware of the fact that the U.S. throughout its history has been an empire and not some bastion of democracy for the rest of the world to emulate....as the b.s. propaganda fed to Americans tries to tell them! The U.S. began its imperial era by creating a doctrine of Manifest Destiny and ethnically cleansing its way to the Pacific Coast.

Until the post-WWII period, the U.S. portrayed itself as anti-imperial on the world stage and castigated its European brethren for their colonialization of Africa and most of Asia because America was still largely empty and full of untapped resources. The U.S. was a world unto itself and had much less need of international trade than the Europeans.

But, after WWII, the U.S. begins to realize that their superiority over Europe and the rest of the World is based on an oil economy, and they will not have enough oil in the future without securing international supplies of their own. And voila! We have this strange long running partnership with the feudal Saudi regime in Arabia and the creation of corporate colonies through international banking policies of the IMF and World Bank. The power of corporate colonization becomes increasingly solidified in the past three decades with the creation of GATT and "free trade" agreements which are giving corporations the power to sue governments for denying them business opportunities they feel they are entitled to.

At present, and into the future, the U.S. is no longer able to dictate policy as the oligarchy becomes internationalized and begins to view the U.S. merely as the tool of enforcement...which is why America today stands for arms production and sales, and sending armies and proxy armies to do battle with non-compliant governments....as I've said elsewhere, it's only a matter of time before they move on Venezuela!

Young communists - and I sense PoFo is full of 20 to 30 year old commie intellectuals - tend to idealize communism and really believe the bullshit about "capitalist abuses". Those of us who have lived under communism realize its a bit different.

Since I'm new here, I want to point out that I'm no young idealist! I'm 55 years old and have never read enough about communism to judge its merits or whether whatever communist country you came from would even fit the description of being a real communist nation according to Marxist political theory. From what I understand of the early Soviet period in Russia, its populist period did not suit the tastes of those like Stalin, who wanted order and conformity....or maybe Stalin was the inevitable power-hungry despot who jumps to the front of movements to advance their goals of personal aggrandizement.

I've read that there was an old Russian saying in the Soviet days that's translated something like:"Marx was right about everything he said about capitalism and wrong about everything he said about communism." Sounds like it could be true, and I have to wonder if the communist country you left is really better off today under capitalism? Russia has exchanged a communist dictatorship for a Russian Orthodox theocratic dictatorship. At least the former regime didn't have thousands of homeless and elderly left to die on their streets! Sure the revolution of Yeltsin and Putin has benefited some: especially the oligarchs who "bought" state enterprizes, but is it really better for the average Russian? I'd especially like to know the answer to that question after the oil runs out, since Russian oil production has peaked and is on a course of steady decline. The other former Soviet nations like Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan for example, have been a great benefit for U.S. oil and war policies in Central Asia. These new nations are client states of the U.S. military and that's about all they have going for themselves today. The Baltic states were hailed as great achievements for free market capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union by libertarians at the Cato Institute. But that was before they discovered that they were on the front line of the international banking ponzi schemes that are now raiding the economies of southern Europe. Now they are total economic basket cases, without the social infrastructure that they had under communism. Hungary....my sister-in-law is from Hungary, and doesn't talk politics often, but the last time she went with my older brother to visit her relatives back home, she noted that things are generally getting worse and the country is becoming an ecological nightmare on top of its debt and economic problems. So where are the great achievements of capitalism in former communist countries?

The difference between myself and the communist foils that you like to fence with is that I am an anti-capitalist who has become an anti-capitalist within the last 10 years, and that has occurred out of the simple realization that is never discussed in our media that a capitalist economic system can only succeed while it is able to grow. Once resource and/or environmental limits restrain further growth, the capitalist system will consume itself....or actually begin consuming the lower economic classes on behalf of the rich who run the businesses. This system will become increasingly ruthless as it spirals downward, and if I am looking at communism, or anarchism, or no-growth economic theories, or full reserve banking ideas of the monetarists, it's because I understand enough to know where the present trend will lead us and I'd like to encourage a change of direction before it's too late!

[Maas]

This is really surprising for me. I thought these rates would be closer to those in Middle East countries.

Apperantly in 2007, when asked flat out what do you think about the United States... well argentina made the top 10 of the world with their anti-America opinion. Such a question matters and not if they are doing a swell job on terrorism... something that doesn't really touch their lifes.

It was published by http://www.pewglobal.org/


Not really shure how credible that site is.
But they got a whopping huge amount of data from polls about all kinds of shit.

[Soulflytribe]

well argentina made the top 10 of the world with their anti-America opinion. Such a question matters and not if they are doing a swell job on terrorism... something that doesn't really touch their lifes.

The Argentines hate pretty much the entire world.

They will also make the top 10 of the world with their anti-Chile opinion, their anti-Brazil opinion, their anti-Mexico opinion, their anti-UK opinion, anti-Spain opinion etc etc.

[Sithsaber]

Well no shit, their zeitgeist still remembers the economic and military ass kicking their nation has received.

[Social_Critic]

I think people are pretty polite when they run into Americans and say "well, it's your government". When I meet with people who don't realize I'm a US citizen because I look like a 6 foot tall Yoda, then they unload. You should have heard the shit I have. Because I happen to be opposed to US foreign policy in general, it's easy for them to talk because I'm the one who opens fire first anyway.

I heard many say the US public isn't exactly innocent because they vote for their leaders. And when their leaders go do their thing, they seem to cheer. For example, I remember Clinton bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 and everybody in the US feeling real good about it. I also remember the pro-war jingoism in 2003, when Bush pulled his lies out of the hat to justify invading Iraq. So I'm not buying the "innocent US public" bullshit.

The key for Americans is to realize that human nature takes us to abuse power when we think we can get away with it. This is not uniquely American. I'm sure the Mayas, if they could have, would have invaded Europe, enslaved the population, and sacrificed a ton of people on pyramids Maya style. We are the survivors of tens of thousands of years of warfare, the gentle ones are all dead, and those of us who are here descended from really mean sons of bitches. Face it.

[Moustapha]

I think people are pretty polite when they run into Americans and say "well, it's your government". When I meet with people who don't realize I'm a US citizen because I look like a 6 foot tall Yoda, then they unload. You should have heard the shit I have. Because I happen to be opposed to US foreign policy in general, it's easy for them to talk because I'm the one who opens fire first anyway.

I heard many say the US public isn't exactly innocent because they vote for their leaders. And when their leaders go do their thing, they seem to cheer. For example, I remember Clinton bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 and everybody in the US feeling real good about it. I also remember the pro-war jingoism in 2003, when Bush pulled his lies out of the hat to justify invading Iraq. So I'm not buying the "innocent US public" bullshit.

The key for Americans is to realize that human nature takes us to abuse power when we think we can get away with it. This is not uniquely American. I'm sure the Mayas, if they could have, would have invaded Europe, enslaved the population, and sacrificed a ton of people on pyramids Maya style. We are the survivors of tens of thousands of years of warfare, the gentle ones are all dead, and those of us who are here descended from really mean sons of bitches. Face it.

good to see that at least some americans think this way.

[Social_Critic]

Moustapha, I'm sort of different. I usually joke I must have the KGB, CIA and the Chinese already buried in my computer and sniffing my garbage. My sister is on a nofly list because she runs pro palestinian sites, my daughter was in china peddling breach the firewall software and i had so many weird relatives i could not qualify for a security clearance when i tried to become a nuclear submarine engineer. And I don't live in the USA, I lived there for only 1 year since the Soviet Union was dying and I went over to help put an ice pick into the head of that communist godless empire.

[Sithsaber]

Dual citizenship? I thought you were based in Spain

[Social_Critic]

Can't have dual citizenship if you are a naturalized USA citizen. I think that's reserved for Jews, who got a special law passed. I did tell you I was born in Cuba, right? I am based in Spain. From here I can fly easily when I have to work on site. But lately I'm just doing paperwork and writing my book. You should see the shit Spanish commies write in Spanish. They are really funny, they sound like they came out of a time warp.

[Sithsaber]

I think it has something to do with living in a state that is the direct descendent of fascists and economic depression.

Ps: The monarchy is quickly loses all legitimacy, all hail the Republic!

[Smertios]

This is really surprising for me. I thought these rates would be closer to those in Middle East countries.

The level of anti-americanism varies a lot from country to country, but it is definitely greater in Spanish-speaking nations than it is here. Truth be told, Brazil is the least Latin American country in all of Latin America (something that is fortunately changing quickly — we can't remain isolated forever). The linguistic barrier has proven too strong to be overcome that easily.

While anti-americanism is strong in places like Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela, it is quite weak in Brazil and Chile.

BBC conducted a poll in 2010 (you can see the results here: [1]), that showed that some Western European countries are actually more anti-american than Brazilians.

Here is a copy from the table that is in Wikipedia:


And if you think well, it makes perfect sense that Brazil is one of the most pro-American countries in the region. The US has never really interfered in internal political issues in Brazil, except once. That was during WW2, when the US invested heavily in the industrialization of the country, in exchange for us joining the Allied Forces in the Italian campaign. Totally worth it, and the results couldn't have been better for Brazilians, in general.

And honestly, Brazil and the US have always been close friends. In 1876, when the US was celebrating their independence centenary, there was only one foreign Head of State present: the Brazilian Emperor. He had gone there to attend the Centennial Exposition, and the Emperor and the US President ended up opening the ceremonies (both the exposition and the centennial celebrations) together.

AT&T made a dramatization of the event, in 1930:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQd3H8AmtP0&t=5m10s

This is a matter for a different topic, but just a curiosity related to the event: the Emperor befriended Graham Bell and bought a telephone, installing it in Brazil, making the country the second in the world to have a telephone line.

Anyway, the 1876 events and the WW2 deals are just two examples from the last 200 years. The countries have always had friendly relations. When the Civil War ended, many Confederate refugees came to Brazil, as well, making us one of the countries with the oldest American immigrant colonies in the world. Now, Dilma Rousseff's and Barack Obama's governments are discussing the possibility of visa-free travel between our countries, for a simple reason: Brazilians love the US and Americans love Brazil. People in both countries want to visit one another as tourists, spend money and come back. Its really silly to ignore that because the US has a problem with illegal Mexican immigrants.

They may like our consumerism and spending their cash in fl but Brazilians for the most part support a political paradigm far different from our own.

Indeed. Brazilians are much more conservative than Americans. They don't like abortions or gay marriage, for instance. A huge majority of seats in the Brazilian Congress is in the hands of conservative parties.

Other than that, I don't see any different "political paradigms" at all...

The Argentines hate pretty much the entire world.

They will also make the top 10 of the world with their anti-Chile opinion, their anti-Brazil opinion, their anti-Mexico opinion, their anti-UK opinion, anti-Spain opinion etc etc.

I usually take an anti-Argentina role in these discussions, to contribute to the stereotype, but to be fair, the Argentinians I know are not like that at all. The country has had many historical conflicts with their neighbors (Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay), with Spain (the independence campaign), with the UK (about the Falklands) and recently, with the US. And they are culturally more reserved and closed, I agree, so that creates the notion that Argentinians are obnoxious and hate everyone. But honestly, most Argentinians I know actually like Brazil and Brazilians a lot.

I think it has something to do with living in a state that is the direct descendent of fascists and economic depression.

Ps: The monarchy is quickly loses all legitimacy, all hail the Republic!

Yes, because Italy, Portugal etc are doing so much better than Sweden and Norway.

Also, despite the ridiculous recent issues that the King was part of (seriously, how is a Head of State allowed to leave the country to go to a safari in Africa without anyone knowing?), the monarchy is still quite popular in the country.

[Gletkin]

BBC conducted a poll in 2010 (you can see the results here: [1]), that showed that some Western European countries are actually more anti-american than Brazilians.
Here is a copy from the table that is in Wikipedia:

According to that chart, 40% of Americans themselves either don't care about or even hate the USA.


I'm sure there's varying degrees of anti-Americanism south of the border. I've heard the USA is commonly referred to as "the Colossus of the North".
As S_C stated, it's not necessarily a "socialist" thing. This stretches back the "the Monroe Doctine" plus all the "Banana Wars" plus the way we seized Puerto Rico and unilaterally postponed Cuban independence without bothering to consult them.

All this well before the Bolshevik Revolution.

Even during the Cold War, we supported anti-communists that were so rabid and corrupt, they made communism look good.
In countries like El Salvador 30 years ago, you frequently couldn't be a social democrat or even a modern liberal without being smeared as "communist". Hell, two AFL-CIO advisors were murdered by Salvadoran National Guardsmen for being "communist".
So it's not surprising that outfits like the FMLN flourished. Most of the people who joined them probably would've been happy with a local version of someone like Romulo Betancourt if their country's elites weren't so damned homicidally McCarthyist.

Thus, the whole "Chavista" thing didn't surprise me at all. I figured if the Red Flag were to rise again anywhere in the world, it would be in Latin America.
Of course by now, they've had their chance and largely blown it.

It did contradict our purported liberal values to hunt these people down even when they abided by "democratic" rules...at times even outright destroying democracy itself like in Guatemala and Chile.
But the "Chavistas" indicate that any serious attempt to build "socialism" will, for the umpteenth time, end in failure.

So anyway yeah, we do sort of have a bit of a history down there.
It can't be too surprising that some might hold a grudge against us.