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Comment by tirant | Hacker News Reader

Many prominent figures in Latin America and Spain turned away from socialist and communist positions after experiencing their effects: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Octavio Paz (also Nobel Prize), Fernando Savater, Jorge Edwards, Jorge Luis Borges, Teodoro Petkoff...

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Jorge Luis Borges neither started from a socialist position nor ever experienced the effects of socialism, so I don't know what he's doing on this list.

Where were they from? As a South American I'm having difficult figuring out which country is socialist in this continent. Venezuela?

Most (all?) the terrorist groups of Latin America were self-declared marxist/communist, like "Shining Part" in Peru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path

That's true. Which just prove the government of those countries were never marxist/communist.

Not even close. For example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in...

This is much more revealing of how western media reports on Latin America than anything.

Except the most pervasive and deadliest terrorist groups in the history of South America have been the government, in the form of right-wing military dictatorships, often preaching about free market and being backed by the USA. People just forget to refer to them as such.

Argentina's military rulers were not free marketeers. Far from it. They were brutal though.

Is there anyone who both understands what the term free market term entails and still argues for it? Somehow no proponent of free markets has managed both success and influence

Only teenagers think they know what it is and that it is the solution to all problems

And yet, "free market" advocates are boldly positioned in publications across our culture, pitching utopia and delivering dystopia.

How is your reply relevant to my comment? I said the Argentine military rulers were far from free marketeers, and indeed, so they were. Their ideas in economics were very much of the protectionist / populist sort, and not just as to international trade, but in every way. It's almost as though the only difference between them and Perón et. al. was really about who shall govern, not what shall they do, except perhaps that the military rulers were a bit more subtle in their populism in that they were explicitly against cults of personality. Oh, and let's not forget that Perón was a military ruler... Basically it was a turf war -- a brutal one, yes, but let's not pretend that any of them were free marketeers doing what laissez faire American gringo yankee capitalists wanted. They did take training help from the U.S. at various times (don't forget that Argentina had several distinct post-war periods of military rule), and Pinochet in Chile in particular had the support of Nixon and Kissinger and the U.S. government, but the Argentine junta of 1976-1983 did not have Carter's support.

Necessary read (operation condor):https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

Savater has not experienced socialism, Spain has never been socialist, Savater has been always someone in great need of attention and joins anyone who gives him that. And the Spain's fascism has give him that. I've seen it since He was teaching in University In San Sebastian and was easier to find him in certain bars and in the horse races than at his work.

> Spain has never been socialist

This seems like a no true scotsman argument, Spain has been mostly governed by a socialist party since it became a democracy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Socialist_Workers%27_P...

Despite the name and its history, today they are just the Spanish socialdemocrats, from that same link:

> Historically Marxist, it abandoned the ideology in 1979

And you probably think that North Korea is a Democratic Republic too causes it's says so. Look at what they do not at what the say.

They did kill nuns though.

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