Entendiendo el racismo en Guatemala ¿Qué opinas?

Hace algunas semanas estaba leyendo un cuadernillo de investigación de la USAC titulado “El Terrateniente guatemalteco: una aproximación a su concepción ecológica y a los efectos de su práctica productiva sobre el medio ambiente” y me parece prudente mencionarlo ahora que la gente ha empezado a hablar en demasía con términos abstractos como “guatemala” “guatemaltecos” “nosotros” “ellos” y a veces abusan de los términos vacíos con los que pretenden hacer representaciones de unidad. Continue reading “Entendiendo el racismo en Guatemala ¿Qué opinas?” →

PPs, from Spain to Guatemala

The PP’s have just won the executive elections in two very distinct cultural, political and economical contexts in Spain and in Guatemala.

The PP’s (The Partido Popular in Spain and the Partido Patriotain Guatemala) implemented a ochlocratic discourse with which they won the support of the majorities. In Spain, the Partido Popular discourse appealed to the masses by claiming that the Socialist Party (PSOE) had failed to be responsible in managing the economic crisis and that the solution was a paternalistic leader like Mariano Rajoy who was to bring order. In Spain, the current economic and social crisis raised the unemployment rate from 8.1% in 2006 to a historical level of 20% by 2010 an 21.5% by September, 2011. More so, the increasing financial crisis in the region continued to debilitate the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (PSOE) whose premiership policies of raising taxes and the lack of a coherent economic plan were ineffective to tackle unemployment and reducing the government deficits from two digit numbers.

In Guatemala, the same ochlocratic discourse won the support of the masses by criticizing the Party Unión de Esperanza Nacional (UNE) and its irresponsibility to stop the organized crime elites that control most of the government’s structures (corruption with money from organized crime has captured the local, judicial, legislative and executive powers). Their campaign also identified in the figure of Otto Perez Molina (known as Mano Dura ‘hard fist’) the leader that was going to stop the advance of corruption and organized crime.

Independently of the achievements that either of these political programs will have in their countries; it is evident that the paternalist and populist discourse is again an effective tool to manipulate the masses in moments of economic and social crisis. Unfortunately, these discourses implemented by the “Conservative/Right” movements in their respective contexts have historically failed to solve the problems they aimed to fix. The long-term effects of these discourses have led to an increased disenchantment with the economic elites (usually linked to right movements) and to the reelection of leftist movements after the end of the “conservative/rightist” terms.

The problem with these discourses is linked to one single philosophical concept. That is the concept of Collectivism that has caused for several centuries so much poverty, hunger and suffering around the globe,

“The political expression of altruism is collectivism or statism, which holds that man’s life and work belong to the state—to society, to the group, the gang, the race, the nation—and that the state may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.” Ayn Rand

Let us hope that Spain and Guatemala will find a right philosophy sooner than later.

New center-right Spain leader: Master of ambiguity (sfgate.com)
Spain’s likely new leader: A master of ambiguity (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Spain fears for turning back clock on liberal reforms (telegraph.co.uk)

The Great Narrative and the School of Salamanca

The Great Narrative in regard to 16th Century Spain is focused on the expansion of Spanish Mercantilism in America and in how the Ottomans were defeated at the naval Battle of Lepanto bringing their dominance of the Mediterranean to a close.

Sadly (to a great extent), this Euro-centric perspective started to change and more emphasis was given to the production of knowledge in the Peninsula via the appropriation of the culture and scientific knowledge brought to Europe by the al-Andalus Muslims. The Great Narrative and its “Western exceptionalism” discourse won the battle again and it focused on how “Europe” or the “West” acquired this knowledge and created a “Renaissance of Knowledge” while forgetting the source of it.

This Western Renaissance is today widely know and studied as the School of Salamanca. A School that Western historians like to remember as the product in 100% of Catholic Religion, Spanish rationalist theological work, Western humanism and by the Protestant Reformation that was consolidated in Salamanca with the writings of the Scholastics Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Martín de Azpilcueta (or Azpilicueta), Tomás de Mercado, and Francisco Suárez.

The “non-western” roots of this Renaissance in the Spanish Peninsula are still not well discussed nor researched. There’s still the need for further study the inherited knowledge from the al-Andalus Muslims (who were later known as Mudéjars) and to establish a direct link of many of the roots of “Europe’s Renaissance” in places as far as the Tigris and Eufrates.

Today, my book recommendation will be a great work that exemplifies how this Great Narrative idealized the School of Salamanca as the product of 100% “Western values”. It is worth reading and studying carefully in order to not commit the same mistakes.

The School of Salamanca

Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson’s remarkable classic, The School of Salamanca, posed an extraordinary challenge when it first appeared in 1952. The book is not only a pioneering presentation of this lost school of monetary theory—fantastic thinkers of Old Spain that were more advanced than the English classicals centuries later–it is also beautifully written.