Is Latin America Western?

Originally posted by pebbles ...Nowhere in America reminds any European of it's Europe or Britain.1950's was the last decade of Eurocentrism in America.   I've read countless comments written by British and continental Europeans that they felt like in an " alien " culture or " foreign " country during their visit in the USA.

Edited by pinguin - 19-Mar-2009 at 13:11

Originally posted by Mixcoatl With Spaniards there is no problem. We are buddies. So that's why they regularly beat up Ecuadoran immigrants in Spain?

Edited by pinguin - 19-Mar-2009 at 13:44

That's wasn't what I meant.

Originally posted by edgewaters Now I'd understand a bit if you were talking about the Americans, being as Latinos are an underclass as the US and there is a good degree of socioeconomic and geopolitical conflict between Latin Americans and US Americans but ....

Originally posted by pinguin   Originally posted by Bulldog The thing is, the UK, U.S or any other Western country isn't fixated about being "Western", they don't need to prove their Westerness to anybody.   If you have to try an "convince" people your Western, there is obviously a problem. Anyone that has to try and "prove" their place in a club is never really a part of that club.   Originally posted by Bulldog   Not being Western is not an insult or discrimination, anybody who thinks it is has an inferiority complex.         That's a fallacy. I could say "anybody that thinks Latin America is not Western is an ignorant".

Edited by pebbles - 20-Mar-2009 at 12:37

Latin America is Latin America. There isn't really any point in trying to categorize it as "western" or "eastern," both because it really isn't--it's a melting pot, in many ways even more so than North America--and because those classifications are fundamentally flawed in and of themselves.

Latin America is what happens when you mix Amerindian, Spanish, Portuguese, African, and a vast number of other cultures together.

If you mean "western" in terms of the stereotypical "individualistic, revolutionary, dynamic" ideal, then yes. But it's rather pointless to compare the world in terms of West and East. And it allows too much polarization.

Originally posted by pinguin Interesting oppinion. However, in our point of view, Latin America is Western and period

Suppose I can't argue with that. The very idea that there's some nebulous "type" that is "western" out there has always seemed strange to me, however. There's enough difference in culture between Kansas and Washington to classify them as different; the gulfs between even countries that are both supposedly "western" is even larger. 

I have to wonder, Pinguin, if the answer would be the same across the board in Latin America. No offense, but Chile is not necessarily representative of the whole. If I had to pick the MOST "western" countries in Latin America, Chile would definitely be somewhere near the top of the list--so there may be a little bias (not the bad kind) on your part.

Then again, I'm a native of the Northwest US. What do I know? :D

Edited by TheARRGH - 24-Mar-2009 at 18:18

Originally posted by pinguin Curious. In southern South America, where I live, we still remember when we received the "poor" of Europe by the million. Well, I guess they want to forget us now.

Probably people do not necessarilly know that dozens of millions of people in South America are of European ancestry. I am not an expert but I wonder if people ever know half Mexicans are part Spanish, they're always regarded as exotic people with stereotypes just like Cubans.

I cannot talk for all Europe, but in France countries like Bolivia, Mexico, or Peru, or any non-White countries, are not seen as part of the Western World at all, at least in the medias. Even Latin America is synonym of a foreign thing in the medias, like the ethnicity Latino.

Brazil seems very exotic too to us, and it is one of the biggest symbol of South America, I do not mean Europeans are racist but to many of them if not most of them, Black and mixed people who do not have an European culture are alien to the Western world.

By contrast, a country like Argentina seems to have a similar statut as that of Eastern Europe, a "White state" but poorer and "less democratic", many Eastern European states became part of the West after the collapse of USSR by joining the European Union while they were once considered as alien communist entities.

It is as you said both poverty and the non-White blood that make people see them as non-Western, unlike Canada and the U.S.A, Australia, and new Zaeland.

By the way, I wonder if all people from Northern Europe see Spain and Italy as Western people.

The Carribeans are also a region of South America that contribute to make people see it as non-Western, Black countries like Haiti, Dominican Republic, or French Carribeans and French Guyanne are not very Western in term of culture, actually they're not Western at all I think, based on the images we see of them (my sisters also recently traveled there and told me about it).

My opinion, but it is only personal, is some countries in Latin America are European in culture, some are not.








Edited by goldenstar - 24-Mar-2009 at 19:14

Originally posted by pinguin The most pathetic thing is that Germanics are newcommers to Western Civilization. And now they dictate the rules about who is and who is not. Pathetic.

It is true, the original Western world was Southern Europe, Rome and Greece, but today Northerners have the monopoly of this expression.