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Comment by sebmellen | Hacker News Reader

Well, yes and no.

You’re right everything is relative, but I think US media often gives off the impression of South/Latin America as a completely poverty-stricken landmass that people can’t wait to escape from so they come by foot or boat from Honduras or Cuba or Venezuela or Ecuador or Nicaragua or something.

Also, I know people who own large properties in Colombia and a friend of mine owns a 500 cattle ranch in Bolivia (called La Pradera)... These folks are very well off, even by international and US standards. There is significant wealth in South America if you look in the right places.

And many parts of Colombia are very metropolitan and modern, which has come as a surprise to people I know in the US/Europe.

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Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world back in the early XX cent thanks to their beef industry (Mexico was also relatively well off at the time), on the other hand Finland and Norway for example were quite poor back then. Things can change and they do.

Things change, for sure. To say things change is probably an understatement... Just look at the history of the Middle East. From vast, wealthy empires to barren destruction, the Levant has seen it all.

True but people and nations have more agency than people give them credit for. Finland was invaded and at the mercy of imperial Russia, they also were under Swedish control, etc. in other words subject to imperialism. They suffered famines in the XX cent., not too long ago.

People think, oh, imperialists messed with you, no wonder you’re poor!

No, it’s local mismanagement. Look at Panama. From banana republic to a democratic republic. People have to work for it. Their government has to be more honest than not. Eliminate corruption as much as possible.

Conversely look at San Francisco. So much money and so much corruption and waste. A decent government and it would be such a better place for everyone, including the poor.

Agreed! There is a sort of belittlement that’s baked into the “overly compassionate” view of the world that robs people of their agency.

Things can usually be fixed at a more immediate level if one can absolve everyone else of blame and do the hard work oneself.

That’s not to say there aren’t large-scale problems which require collaboration to solve, though.

When I think of imperialism I often see the exact opposite. A more advanced society is (often violently) forcing modern customs upon the invaded population and when the imperialists leave a lot of those modern customs get lost and the country turns into a backwater again. The imperialists might be evil, but they clearly knew what they were doing.

Colombia

Hey, thank you for the note. I just bought an iPhone and the autocorrect turns lowercase “colombia” into “columbia.” It does the opposite for cased versions of both words (Columbia -> Colombia).

Either way, both spellings come from the same person (Christopher Columbus/Cristoforo Colombo).

Ultimately both commemorate Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo and/or Christophorus Columbus respectively).

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