{"id":25,"date":"2020-11-03T19:01:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T02:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/?p=25"},"modified":"2020-11-03T19:01:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T02:01:57","slug":"week-9-commerce-coercion-and-americas-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/2020\/11\/03\/week-9-commerce-coercion-and-americas-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 9: Commerce, Coercion, and America&#8217;s Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weeks reading raised a question which I often ask myself and others: has globalization been more beneficial or detrimental to the world? From this week&#8217;s readings, globalization came to Latin America in the form of aid and modernization with its intention set within a capitalistic agenda. But this is nothing new to Latin Americans or history repeats itself. The Bolivard dream of a united Latin America is so appealing to latin Americans because it is the only way Latin American&#8217;s could combat the American demagogue, which is primarily aimed to those of the upper class or with power. This week&#8217;s reading only encourage that thought of idealism but because of the global market and the western hemisphere&#8217;s dependency to the United States, that ideal will never come to pass unless everyone is willing to sacrifice everything. Again, easy to say from someone living in a country where the government gives out loans for this type of free speech to discussed. But, this is just how I feel.<\/p>\n<p>The conformity factor is something we all must ask ourselves. Has the system influenced my being? It is a hard question to ask and be asked. I can empathize and sympathize with Carmen Miranda&#8217;s intersubjectivity with the capitalistic hydra of temptation, fame, and fetishization; furthermore, just as the hydra, the capitalistic monster of the global waters keeps surfacing more demagogic heads that lure global citizens more to the shore line while the high tide approaches.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I understand everyone wants to come live a more comfortable life. That is the reason why so many flee to the United States in an illegal manner. When I lived in Mexico, the life was hard. In one moment, I worked three jobs and still didn&#8217;t have enough money to save or to invest in small productive things. The thought of returning to Canada was of course very present, though I had intended to live in Mexico for the purpose of understanding more about my Mexican roots and also to understand how the people live. In the end, I still needed help to survive. That&#8217;s a huge part of the Latin American lifestyle and is also something that Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos mentioned in last week&#8217;s reading, that Latin American&#8217;s possessed more spiritual virtue than of their Northern neighbours; this could be presented in several ways not just religiously but in the spiritual form of service and transparency with your fellow being. Knowing your neighbours is a virtue in Latin America, one that is not common in Canada, not sure about the United States. If only Latin American&#8217;s could only raise a bit of the spirituality, to raise their spiritual consciousness to confront with the &#8220;modern&#8221; methods of hegemonic and capitalistic systems, to understand that helping your neighbour can become a powerful method of solidarity, then maybe, just maybe, can the Latin American people claim their own land as their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weeks reading raised a question which I often ask myself and others: has globalization been more beneficial or detrimental to the world? From this week&#8217;s readings, globalization came to Latin America in the form of aid and modernization with its intention set within a capitalistic agenda. But this is nothing new to Latin Americans [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75208,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[70,66,68,71,69,67],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-9","tag-combat","tag-conformity","tag-hegemonic","tag-intersubjectivity","tag-modernization","tag-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/americalatina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}