Understanding Latin America.

latin america is one of the most forgotten ignored regions in the world it's not as wealthy or powerful enough to be europe or the us it hasn't seen asia's dynamic growth and it's not as war ridden or desperately poor as africa is this means that latin america generally gets left behind in books and politics or history i can't tell you how many politics books i've read that just look at asia and europe and the us or history books that just cover the spanish conquest of the aztecs and incas and then promptly forget the region existed at all people from the eastern hemisphere generally forget latin america or view it as quaint while canadians and americans often look upon it with a combination of horror and condescension this video is my attempt to explain how latin america works and a look at how latin america formed how it's progressed and where it's going let's look at one of the most enigmatic and confusing parts of the world a region of dazzling diversity and color stretching from miami to the arctic civilizations take millennia to build and have a great deal of struggle and adventure that go into them experience some of that with rise of kingdoms a mobile strategy game where you build a civilization with 12 different choices like rome china or france each civilization has its own beautiful architectural style and unique unit characteristics also they're introducing the viking civilization led by ragnar lothbrok and bjorn ironside you collect resources use real historical generals develop technology and build your own dream city train and upgrade armies to crush your opponents create alliances with global players in the same server we can work together to fight barbarians farm and take over the world the world maps huge at 1.44 million square miles with the gorgeous features like real mornings and evenings real terrain and vivid urban landscapes click the link in the description to download the game now use the gift code to claim in-game props also participate in a contest to win an iphone with all this going on you have to download rise of kingdoms in the first video in this series in which i talked about western civilization i left latin america out of that video which turned out to be a controversial decision in which people keep on asking you why i made that call the truth is i don't know or care if latin america is part of western civilization it's sort of like is turquoise a shade of green or blue i'm sure some person has a definite answer to that question somewhere but the only thing i can tell you is that the colors green and blue exist and there's an area in between that's also a color and i don't think arguing over whether or not it's blue or green's worthwhile latin america does have certain aspects of western civilization and certain that don't fit but i find arguing over definitions takes away from actually looking at things for what they really are by shoving them into pre-existing frameworks the point i was trying to make is that latin america is complex and different enough from the rest of western civilization that deserves a video in of itself to explain it the u.s operates similarly enough to germany that you could use the same basic operating system on both meanwhile you would need to code a completely different expansion pack in order to model how say colombia works some of you might say argentina or uruguay are similar enough to what southern italy would be like as an independent country or portugal and that's probably fair but for convenience sake we're going to look at them through the prism of latin america in this video an interesting thing is the philippines could reasonably be considered a cultural part of latin america given that it was colonized by the spanish for centuries during the same era as latin america i mean the philippines are named after the 16th century king philip of spain for christ's sake similarly the native peoples were tribal farmers at a similar level development to roughly colombia i could probably make a fascinating video using the philippines to understand latin america but the philippines is sadly one of the areas of the world where i know the least history about there are generally three continental cultural influences in latin america the iberian in the form of the spanish and portuguese the african and native populations every latin american country has these influences to differing degrees with some nearly entirely missing out in the native or african influence but with iberian culture being the shared characteristic how these forms is the topic of the next part of this video the spanish conquest of the new world was really impressive in sheer military terms in many cases like pizarro's conquest of the inca 200 or so spaniards of the overlooked help of native allies were able to conquer an empire of 11 million people around 600 spaniards in their cortez were able to conquer the aztec empire which had roughly the same population as frances of downwards of 20 million people and whose capital at tenochtitlan would be the second biggest city in europe a couple things allowed this the first of which is the obvious technological advantages much to many people's surprise the biggest spanish advantages weren't with guns but with steel and especially horses which the native fighting styles were in no way adapted for however another very important factor was that these native regimes were often really brutal and disliked although later latin american nationalist historians have tried to rehabilitate them the aztec empire for example was really hated since it was the new world equivalent of assyria which used immense brutality to hold down its subject peoples and the inca although being generally fairly benevolent expanded too quickly and were already suffering crippling civil wars and the spanish arrived the spanish native allies often numbered 90 of their manpower similarly disease was probably the biggest factor killing 90 of the native population which had no immunity to european diseases within a century of european arrival one of the things you need to understand at the spanish colonization of latin america was that it was in many ways an extension of the reconquista or the process by which the north christian spanish kingdoms colonize the south muslim ones it's a little ironic the last muslim kingdom in spain was crushed in the same year as the discovery of the new world by columbus this manifests in a bunch of ways first of all for a lot of the wars of the muslims the spanish would gather local ambitious militias together to conquer the muslim cities without much guidance from the centralized government these enterprising captains would turn power over the central castilian monarchy in exchange for titles of nobility this was exactly the way in which the spanish colonized the new world with the conquistadors acting out of their own free will and acting like private business endeavors the central castilian government accumulated this massive new world empire without real effort on their part it's sort of like if elon musk colonized mars with spacex and used his own money and then turned it over to the us government the largest way the reconquista played into the creation of latin america was sheerly through the immense energy and confliction that was done with while most of europe was in the renaissance era of humanism of painting naked people and borderline atheism spain was still hardcore crusader the reason people like cortez or pizarro didn't declare themselves independent kings upon conquering their massive empires was that there was immense belief in the mission of a united spain that came from the centuries-long conflict with the muslims the spanish did best in the pre-existingly developed kingdoms in the new world like the aztec sarenka these empires were similar to those of the bronze age in the old world with highly centralized god king structures the inca empire for example was one of the very few successful communist states in history with no private property everyone being assigned jobs and the state even assigning brides the centralized kingdoms provided a central nexus that the spaniards could easily base their power out of for example in peru the spaniards easily first enslaved and then ensured the native population they just used the governmental structures set up by the inca to oppress the native peasantry even more in many circumstances the spanish used the native aristocracies who they recognized as legitimate nobility to govern their empires the conquistadors also married into the pre-existing indian nobility at a really high rate in order to maintain their local legitimacy all of this meant that the centers of spanish america were also the native centers in thus mexico and peru it's often shocking the spaniards were able to control such massive realms so outnumbered but you have to remember the spanish annihilated the pre-existing cultural leadership by wiping out the indigenous priest classes who were the teachers historians bankers and community leaders of these societies similarly the spanish argument was that their god was superior and that was very heavily backed by the natives dying at 90 rates to disease with their belief in their own cultures and leadership neutered the indians of the urban societies in the new world became quite subservient subject to the spanish crown the non-profitable areas were generally colonized by the church conquistadors wanted to become lords with serfs but lost interest in the areas where that got difficult the fathers just wanted converts and it was nice if they got serfs as well but that wasn't strictly necessary on the mosquito ravaged coasts of venezuela the deserts of texas or california or the grasslands of paraguay spanish civilization was largely brought by the church brazil and argentina are largely the exceptions to this in brazil which we'll investigate in more detail the portuguese started using it as a way station to sail on their way to the indian ocean both argentina and brazil were settler societies in the mold of the us and canada inhabited either by african slaves or white settlers with little indian influence the spanish crowned a social structure with three main power centers with one supreme over the rest those being the landlord's church and crown the landowners were largely the descendants of the conquistadors in most latin american countries until around the 1970s around 12 to 15 families controlled the majority of all the lands and thus large parts of the economy the spanish crown gave massive tracts of land to a new nobility with serfs in exchange for converting them to christianity the church given lots of land and tremendous amounts of power by a very catholic society that had just defeated the muslims became a huge force in spanish america it was basically the cultural nexus that provided the basic welfare education art banking leadership and investment of the spanish empire the church was the most stable organization in society and was also the thing that the indians trusted the most although the spanish-american church is often brutal and racist in comparison to the landlords who wanted to enslave the native population the church stood up for the rights of the indians and basic human decency the crown was the most powerful element in spanish-american society which was deeply surprising given that the empire was so huge it would take nearly half a year for orders in the crown to reach a place like bogota and colombia and even longer to reach manila in the philippines something that's very key to understand at the spanish empire is that they were clearly consciously trying to model the romans a mistake i read about in a lot of colonial histories is they view the spanish colonial officials as idiotic thugs who were purposely trying to impoverish their subjects that's not accurate the spanish officials were actually remarkably well educated and intelligent studying roman law and greek philosophy some of the best universities in the world but their understanding of the world is very different than ours the spanish were the last of the old school empires in europe what i mean by that is that before the modern world most empires were not economically based instead they try to control their societies through hierarchy they tried to maintain religious homogeneity in order to maintain social cohesion centralize power as much as possible in order to maximize their power try to control trade to support their social hierarchies and build societies as cohesive supposedly symbiotic hierarchies rather than maximizing freedom they all trusted that educated gentlemen and nobilities would manage a state better than a bunch of rabble as of the 16th century this is how every successful empire in a european gentleman's collective consciousness had been maintained across history whether the romans persians chinese etc however starting right after the spanish empire formed nuke forms of empire were created those based on financial rather than hierarchical power people were encouraged to work for the empire through market incentives rather than a social superior telling them to do so starting with the dutch and the british and then taking in the french and reaching an apex with the americans empires became structured to maximize outputs and freedom of action so the society could become as efficient and powerful as possible i once read a book written in the 1940s saying that mexico was poor and america rich since the spanish thought one became wealthy by controlling gold and the english thought it was by making stuff these market-oriented societies absolutely wrecked hierarchy-based empires like the spanish ottomans chinese etc as time passed saying this will prevent me from ever visiting spain but it's really more useful to the spanish empire as a midpoint between a muslim empire like say the ottomans and a country like france that honestly does make sense given that the most civilized and developed parts of spain and the parts most involved in the colonization of the new world were heavily culturally arab and muslim not that long before the colonization of the new world started the spanish imperial model was basically exactly the same as the ottoman with a colonial warrior noble class ruling over the empire with a unified crusading religion as the source of political legitimacy and a large centralized absolutist monarchy the native populations were stripped of leadership while the market economy and science were distrusted and attacks on religious authority brutally crushed but back to the main point that i teased the spanish were trying very hard to model the roman empire and succeeded in a lot of ways the biggest similarity is that both used culturally coherent aristocracies to dominate diverse and large regions a quechua indian peasant in the peruvian andes shared nothing with a cowboy in argentina or a congo speaking slave in cuba but their landlords shared a culture that became latin america a wealthy person from mexico city could immigrate more than a thousand miles to lima and experience the exact same culture this was very different from the british colonies in which a trip 500 miles north from baltimore to boston would take one in an entirely different economic social religious model until the revolution the british colonies distrusted each other more than their mother country the spanish were trying very hard to imitate the roman empire of around 100 a.d at its height but instead ended up pretty similarly to how the roman empire worked around 400 with diocletian in its decline in both of these states the centralized government was trying too hard to maintain more power over a region than really made sense both states were trying to get stalin levels of control over their countries when transportation was being done by mueller this resulted in sclerotic bureaucracies which passed lots of legislation that they really couldn't enforce the spanish crown sent around half a million edicts to america during the colonial era most of which were irrelevant didn't work with local conditions and then ended up being condensed around 7 000 laws that made sense spanish america had really complex legal codes which were in fact so complicated that they were only enforced in the breach rather than to the letter since that would have just been impossible this is effects even today with latin america known for being one of the most bureaucratic and red tape based parts of the world which hurts business terribly the spanish crown would send viceroys to the disparate parts of the empire and have them rule like kings for a couple years in order to prevent the provinces from becoming too independent of the spanish crown none of the top positions were allowed to native-born whites with those top positions being controlled by spaniards from spain itself the second someone was born in america they became a literal second-class citizen the spaniards created a system of forced labor and servitude in which indians and blacks had to work for spanish nobility this was pretty similar to diocletian's realm in which a government-based surf economy resulted in profound inequality a strangling of the market economy and declining population growth as so much was extracted from the population that there weren't enough resources for people to have lots of kids spanish america expanded really quickly and then faced economic and demographic decay the borders of spanish america were roughly the same in 1590 as 1790 and the population of mexico in 1700 was 4.5 million or a quarter of what it was under the aztecs for example the little more than a million or so people who immigrated to america and the colonial era bride like crazy and a population of 10 million in 1820. a key point is that spanish america liked spain before it was an urban civilization unlike british north america that was rural a couple spanish landlords would live in the city extracting resources from the white black or native surfs around them speaking to other elites well they shared practically nothing with their serfs and so the society itself was fairly weak something you really need to understand at latin america is that it alongside india are the most multiracial and also ethnically diverse of the main civilizations in latin america a white ruling class installed itself and then a complex caste system developed with different ethnicities performing different roles in society in venezuela for example the castilian spanish were the ruling class the native-born whites controlled a lot of the economic power yield from the canary islands were the merchants and artisans the herders were mixed race white black native blacks worked in the plantations and either mixed race or full-blood natives were serfs i think the most important element for a society's success social cohesion and that people trust that the other elements of the society are trying their best that the rulers aren't cheating the people and other groups aren't free riding japan and america are both very successful societies that share practically nothing in common except social cohesion latin america meanwhile is one of the regions in the world that scores lowest on this metric with latin americans not trusting their governments or even neighbors at all this was accentuated by having different races living together providing different roles while having a literal parasitic ruling class and a docile peasant class completely alienated from the modern world this will have profound effects in the society that we'll discuss later a big factor for latin america is the peasantry and lower classes were basically not represented at all in the social structure there was no system of accountability and feedback loop between the lower and upper classes which turned latin america into a profoundly aristocratic society i was once reading a book written in the 1940s which said that your average mid-level brazilian city would have an opera house and no functioning sewer system and your average american city would be the opposite brazil's sort of a weird twisted mirror to all of this where the portuguese government was way more relaxed than the spanish but it did have a lot of similar policies the portuguese government banned the printing press set up massive aristocratic plantations where people brought slaves in to create a complex white black caste system at the same time the portuguese didn't have as strong a hand as the spanish did but you see similar aristocratic results appearing in brazil as in the rest of latin america a lot of this just comes from the economics of sugar slavery which creates similar results to what happened in latin america i mean look at the roman empire which as it got higher and higher percentage of slaves became more similar to how latin america developed two of the most brutal things i ever read in history books were both about mexican history the first was mexico is one of the few nations that when it was born you couldn't tell if it was an abortion or not and the other was mexico as an epilogue to the spanish empire confused let me explain as i tried to explain before the spanish government set up latin america in order for them to administer it directly and so that the colonies could not act independently this meant that when the spanish colonies did get independence they continually floundered about and failed to act independently of the spanish crown when spain was invaded by france during the napoleonic wars around 1810 each of the spanish-american colonies collapsed into what amounted to civil wars people often talk about wars of liberation but they were really normally just brutal race and class wars as the fabric of society fell apart with one local faction supporting the spanish and the other independents for example about 25 000 people died the american revolution well 400 000 died in the mexican but both countries had roughly similar populations this was since the collapse of spanish power resulted in collapse in society in mexico while the collapse of british power in america was just normal business afterwards the latin american nations formed under caudillos or independent cults of personality as their government these people would normally form factions to back them often interestingly enough pulling from hurting tribes as their followers and then launch themselves into power for a few years until the next dictatorship would gain power after a couple decades the countries furthest from the equator pulled themselves out into coherent centralized states independent from these leaders personalities latin america has always not been very stable and so political fashions elsewhere manifest really strongly in latin america since the aristocratic culture allows cults of personality to manifest really strongly political fashions gained currency for a couple decades allowing some chad to gain power for him and his buddies and then another fashion sweeps over the region when he can't make a real long-term change from 1850 to 1920ish republics of white landowners with voters rarely numbering over 10 of the population dominated the region from 1920 to 1960 the area was downed by dictatorial nationalist technocracies that were a weird mix of right and left-wing policies military dictatorships competed with communists and almost always won from 1960 to 1980. liberal democracies gained power from 1980 to 2000 followed by a shift to left-wing governments until around 2016 shifting back to further right governments it would be an exaggeration to say these ideologies don't matter the countries that supported neoliberalism ended up far better than those that went for communism for example but it wouldn't be a horrific exaggeration for example in both 1900 and today the average latin american and one quarter of the gdp of your average american the region has been moving forward in the last few decades forming a real middle class in large cities for example but the whole world has also been moving forward really fast meaning that latin america has been running very fast to stay in the same spot and relative power in the world stage as it's ever been in fact the rise of eastern europe and east asia makes latin america look downright pathetic and embarrassing latin america clearly has problems anyone especially latin americans realize that they wouldn't be migrating to the u.s or spain in the tens of millions if that wasn't the case countries like brazil and mexico have more annual gun deaths due to crime than deaths in actual war zones like syria or iraq many latin american countries like brazil or venezuela are in the worst economic conditions in their entire recorded histories now with millions of the global middle class slinking back into poverty why however this is a question with really painful answers that people generally don't want to have be answered the answers that get proposed are generally just demonstrative of what's self-aggrandizing i will try my best to debunk some of the bad ones and try to propose some better answers one of the arguments you hear coming out of the right is that there's something inherently wrong with hispanic culture that it's too collectivist catholic etc this is clearly false given that firstly spain did quite well once it integrated into the european union and that hispanics have done well inside the u.s miami in real terms is culturally part of latin america as is the mexican borderland and both are quite prosperous similarly you still hear what amounts to the racist argument that latin america isn't successful since it's brown this ignores the immense diversity in latin america argentina and uruguay are whiter than the us and canada there also really isn't a correlation for success and skin tone in latin america the argentines in real terms are just as poor as their neighbors who are dark-skinned and are far worse off than mixed-race chile among immigrant groups in america the largely white puerto ricans are poorer than other darker-skinned groups like the mexicans you get the geography argument which has some validity in that latin america has had horrific diseases for a lot of its history massive deserts and jungles however you also get latin american countries like argentina that have what amounts to a perfect climate some of the best soil in the world in a big river system and they still failed also america was able to get around the south's disease problems the deserts of the west and difficulty farming the great plains through technological advance latin america could have done something similar if it was more technologically developed culture you also hear the argument in the left that latin america is held back by colonialism in the part of either europe or america on the surface level this does make sense given how latin america has been economically dependent on other regions namely britain before world war one and america since however upon scrutiny it just doesn't hold up firstly when you actually read the history involved the local elites often welcomed colonial systems bolivar was practically simping for the british for example latin america sells raw goods to the rest of the global market and exchange gets produced goods there isn't anything oppressive about it all the partners are voluntary almost every economy ever has started with selling raw goods in exchange for produced ones with a more developed economy but latin america never progressed beyond it for centuries the argument generally goes that if an american company would be mining copper and bolivia that would be oppressing bolivia but if the americans weren't there the copper would never be mined in the first place making everyone poorer similarly studies have found that greater trade with america and europe and china actually results in more wealth not less the drug trade is a critical exception to this in which the massive desire for drugs coming out of the u.s destroyed practically every latin country within 2000 miles however to also be fair if latin america was already functioning they'd be able to control the drug trade to a greater degree than they did the british generally left latin america alone politically while the americans launched a couple pinprick strikes in the caribbean basin the cia gets way more credit than deserves in latin america the destruction of leftists in places like el salvador chile and argentina for example was almost entirely locally organized in the us just watched the us does relatively little in latin america especially south of the caribbean basin since it just doesn't care although it does pick factions it wants to win the u.s did make some horrific and atrocious blunders such as the 1952 coup in guatemala that removed a democratic reforming government and a 1916 invasion of the dominican republic but there are other points where the u.s should have intervened and didn't haitians for example begrudged the us in the 1970s for not removing their tyrannical papa dock and i'm betting most citizens in cuba and venezuela would have preferred the us to have a stronger hand the u.s has more leniency in latin america than many people care to admit america for example let mexico liquidate the american oil company in mexico in the 1930s without raising a hand america also wanted castro and allowed him to cease power in his early phases for hope that he'd reform the country until he became communist and anti-american the myth that their problems are due to foreign exploitation is very powerful in latin america and does immense harm any failed latin american dictator will just blame their problems on the us or the west to remove responsibility for themselves latin america has wasted literal decades blaming america on their poverty which just mires them in further poverty the idea that their poverty comes from exploitation is a way of reconciling that many latin americans are taught their nations are rich due to mineral wealth but that they live poor lives the truth however is that wealth has practically nothing to do with resources as switzerland and japan being wealthy with practically nothing in nigeria and brazil with massive resources being poor shows us the truth is that latin america's poor since there isn't a division between legal political and economic power when the iberian conquerors came in they structured everything on an aristocratic basis concentrating economic power in the hands of the landlords and judicial and political in the hands of the spaniards who recently came over who when the spanish monarchy fell apart defaulted onto the landlords this lack of balance of power has allowed a profound sense of corruption and distrust to permeate latin america since there just isn't any competition to behave better once power centralized to this degree anyone who really tries to change system gets crushed behind the force of entropy and various weird special interests that don't want things to change the powerful have no interest in not being corrupt until the system rots inside revolutions have failed to reach their stated goals in latin america since generally what happens is the revolutionaries just filled the shoes of the pre-existing oppressors and changed the name since it's so easy and profitable the revolutions that claim to be wiping out the landlords frankly just became new landlords it's interesting given that the american stereotype went from the lazy mexican for when mexicans were in mexico to mexicans being really hard working and stealing american jobs in america in mexico one wouldn't work hard since one wasn't incentivized to since the landlord would just steal it rule of law is the main thing missing from latin america and that no one can trust that the law will behave properly and so people can't be ambitious for fear that someone more powerful than them whether a government official local drug lord or wealthy neighbor might predate on them all of latin america's main issues really spring from the iberian aristocrats desire to totally control their societies turning everyone else into docile surfs for example both the spanish and portuguese band with some exceptions the printing press in their colonies and tightly controlled the flow of books and ideas this is part of the reason why latin america's educational system is so weak which weakened equality and social mobility the strongly economically unequal society meant that wealth never trickled downwards to have a capitalist revolution similarly the iberians discouraged economic innovation with bans on banks and local trade between colonies latin america as in all things continued the precedent the spanish set spain is a very interesting precedents in a lot of ways it was heavily isolated from the rest of western civilization spain purposely missed out on the enlightenment scientific revolution and reformation it's an interesting trend in anthropology that colonial societies tend to be extreme versions of the societies they came from and that's true for latin america which in some ways is a parody of the spain of that era spain is also quite interesting economically in that when the north spanish crown conquered the south in the middle ages they kicked out the productive local muslim farming class in around the 13th century replacing them with underpopulated ranch land similarly the spanish evicted their jewish and muslim merchant classes in the 15th century the muslim degree of development was higher than the christian and this resulted in economic stagnation as spain became a highly aristocratic society spain in the 15th century was the poorest least industrialized and most inequal part of western europe exchanging raw goods for produced ones from the netherlands and italy again as we've seen latin america took this to an extreme interestingly enough latin america's lack of wars has been a major liability latin america has been consistently the most peaceful part of the world over the last 500 years this is partially since the countries for the most part aren't organized enough to wage massive wars of conquest but also since the borders here make too much sense as the opposite of africa latin america's borders make a lot of sense with most countries being organized around a fertile heartland with some sort of harsh terrain to demarcate a border with another country the lack of war means that there isn't a great deal of competition between countries that would force them to improve in a place like europe latin american countries would be torn limb by limb by germany or france and would either have to reform or die but no such desperation exists in latin america meaning the countries just keep on existing if we look at the most successful countries in latin america such as uruguay chile and costa rica they're all the regions that the spanish government practically forgot about and didn't impose powerful hierarchies on hell the spanish didn't even acknowledge the existence of costa rica or uruguay similarly all those countries are generally pretty homogeneous with the rulers enrolled being the same ethnic group more importantly all these countries have had stable rule of law and democracy which is what matters in general i would say not a lot but i can figure a way out the main vector through which latin america could gain institutions is through proximity to the us tens of millions of hispanics immigrated to america and so the connections are strong and getting stronger similarly american industries relocated to mexico to an immense degree industrializing the northern part of the country this is the only part of latin america that's competitively industrialized this is how society's become more successful almost every time by proximity often lasting centuries with other more successful societies i'm not sure if this is going to work yet it's the main way i can see latin america pulling itself forward maybe some genus will be born who can bend the centuries of corruption and parochialism but that sounds unlikely to me maybe wars will start ripping across the southern cone forcing mass competition between nations sparking progress but i also don't find that likely latin america's way forward in my opinion is that cuba and mexico industrialized due to american influence and if other latin american countries try to copy them what a faultist and thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video please like comment subscribe or stay tuned for additional content or alternatively check me out at patreon where i've got my cultural history of america and history of the world as always thanks so much for watching and have a great day

Channel: Whatifalthist

Views: 760,354

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2019, fafa

Id: efz4Aket2ao

Length: 31min 14sec (1874 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021