The industrialization of contemporary Latin America

We here in Latin America will never see this “industrial revolution”, not least because it happened in the middle of the 17th century (1820–1840). And it has started in other revolutions and here nothing will happen.
Informal employment in Latin America is around 60% and according to UNESCO, Latin America and the Caribbean had 36 million illiterate adults. People could say that this is due to several factors, some prejudiced, such as “the people are rascals”, or “a lazy people” etc. Other factors that are in common sense, less ignorant and prejudiced are: “bad state policy” or “we are late”. And we have those who almost get it right when it assumes about our heritage from slavery. But a neoliberal will shout, “The United States has also suffered from slavery, yet it has become very industrialized and the largest economy in the world.”

The middle class and the statue of liberty

I know some people who traveled to New York, all of them from the Brazilian middle class (which is considered upper class). They usually pay to pass in front of the Statue of Liberty and take a picture smiling to show people. I don’t know if they even look at the statue when they’re there, or if the whole organization to take a good picture prevents them from doing so. I suspect they don’t even see everything there with their eyes. But what I am sure of is that they have no idea what the meaning of that immense is. If they knew, they would not take a picture, after all, that image represents the cut off of the heads of the French bourgeois class like them, and it also has to do with the American civil war that represents the progressive and free side of so-called “America”. The vast majority of the Brazilian, and perhaps South American, middle class is reactionary. And usually stupid. The accumulation of capital is derived from the luck of being children and grandchildren of Europeans and in the vast majority of them being white.

French is spoken in the United States

Yes that’s right! The freedom of “America” was bought by the French who spent fortunes so that England would not do the USA what Europe still does today with the rest of America. The rest of Latin America has barely had a civil war, or any freedom movement unlinked from imperialism.

By sheer luck France had England as its mortal enemy. And it financed the US civil war. In Latin America what we have is: the first world countries financing poverty here. As in the case of Elon Musk and the support to massacre the Bolivian people because of lithium.

Napoleon Bonaparte

In another stroke of luck in the United States, when Napoleon was invading Europe, England chose to protect the country and spend its money on it. Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, did not act with “such nobility”. The king of Portugal, for example, ran away from Napoleon to Brazil where later, the royal family itself declared the independence of Brazil (the self-proclaimed independence of Brazil) so that there was not even the possibility of the people having a purpose to get out of the clutches of the fetid Portuguese bourgeoisie. So, at that time, the United States was already trying to regulate a democracy, since England was no longer in charge. And the rest of Latin America remained under the exploratory rule of enslavement, deriving all the evils we have, such as poor education and low self-esteem.

Effectiveness and professionalism

The other day I read a text that Caetano Veloso wrote about Carmen Miranda in the New York Times in 1991. I really like Caetano, but that text is one of the few mistakes that he made in public life. It exalts a certain “professionalism”, by Mrs. Miranda. As if that was why she was so successful. I don’t know how he felt when he wrote this text. But I think he forgot how good Brazilian engineering is, and even though they are humiliated every day, the poorest and most peripheral class in Brazil 98% wake up 5 am to work and not be late, if that is not professionalism ; what else would it be? Until the 2016 coup, Embraer (Brazilian Aeronautical Company) was one of the most competitive companies in the world, so much so that it underwent an intentional spying process. This example would end the rhetoric of Latin America’s inefficiency. But I will go deeper, Carmen Miranda is a joke. A satire that the countries that are more advanced than Latin America like to do. Carmen Miranda doesn’t sing as much as Clara Nunes. Carmem Mirada is a type of circus clown that everyone likes to see. And that is why she was so successful. Because she was white and made a stereotypical Bahian style, in addition to sexualizing what is Latin. This is all very salable, it was a cultural fastfood.

These days I also saw, a study that became a book, about indigenous constructions. That will serve to improve civil engineering. But the most interesting thing is that the villages surveyed did not receive royalties from the book, nor did the indigenous people who worked to reveal incredible things about engineering were hired. And what will happen is that they will take these ideas out, and then come back here to sell them to us Latinos saying they have the patent. And of course, saying that we have neither professionalism nor effectiveness.

That is, for hundreds of years, our cultural, social, human and monetary capital has been taken from us. We become poor, and being poor, you cannot take risks, and without taking risks you cannot test and experiment, and without experimenting you cannot evolve and get even better at what you do. And so, knowing this, they (non-Latin Americans) say that we don’t do something well. We lack efficiency and professionalism.

The solution

A France resentful with economic capital will not appear to us and will buy us freedom. The only way to do that is to charge our workforce dearly. And that means that there is a need for a hard and merciless war against everything that means not being Latin, black or indigenous. In other words, only by radically valuing what we are will we have the wealth to buy our freedom. This will bring other derived benefits, such as local production being valued; an effort to give value to ancestral wisdoms that can collaborate with production in art and education. The more we are ourselves, the less we will be dominated.

A good example is a restaurant called Mocotó in Brazil, where people are paid well, production inputs come from the local producer, and even then, there is profit. And the secret is to value what we are and our ancestry. China will not be able to make a Baião de Dois as we do. We have to criticize anything given, anything that is imposed. And for that, only a critical education will make us realize.

Education

To solve the problem, we already have the solution for education right here. Isn’t it revealing? It’s called: Paulo Freire. That even this was stolen, used in other countries, mainly non-Latin. And now an “innovative” education is sold that is nothing more than a Paulo Freire fast food.

Learning

So starting today when you buy something, use your criticism with the world. Be wary, read the packaging, look for where the product was made and if it is outside your country; Try not to buy. And if it is; try to buy. Then, research about the company, see if that company collaborates with society. If so, spread the word. If not, try to buy from another one. That helps nature, that helps education, that is cooperative preferably and believe you will learn a lot from this process.

That is to be politicized more than this hatred that lately is produced outside social network. Learn with Paulo Freire, have a critical view of the world, and that would be enough to move towards an industrialized Latin America.