Look toward the future, not the past
THE MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Tue, Oct. 26, 2010
BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER
www.firmaspress.com
Andres Oppenheimer has done it again. Some years ago, he published Saving the Americas, and the book became a best-seller almost instantly throughout the region. His description of China’s booming economy — which in 1985 was the size of Brazil’s and now is the world’s second-largest, surpassed only by the United States — was (or should have been) a kind of wake-up call for Latin America’s conscience.
Now Oppenheimer has returned with an even more important work: Basta de Historias! (Enough of History!): Latin American Obsession With the Past and the 12 Keys to the Future. It was released by Debate Publishers in Mexico and most probably will become an essential component of the oldest and most vivid of all our conundrums: why Latin America is poor and underdeveloped. Ever since Uruguayan writer José Enrique Rodó published Ariel in 1900, we have been exploring the topic without finding a universally satisfactory answer.
The discussion has been joined by absolutely all the relevant Latin American figures, from Octavio Paz to Hugo Chávez, from Carlos Rangel to Juan Domingo Perón. Some armed themselves with words, others with guns, but all were convinced that they knew the deep-rooted reasons why the inhabitants of Switzerland, a multiethnic country without access to the sea and thinly populated, like Bolivia, have a per-capita income 15 times greater than the people in that Latin American country.
Oppenheimer’s theory has, like the god Janus, two faces. In one direction, it sees the cultural roots, generators of an impractical attitude to life. It is a society rich in lawyers and humanists that graduates a lot more psychologists than engineers or specialists in computer science. In that sense, paradoxically, the book is in the tradition of Ariel, but while Rodó endorsed the spiritual component of Latin American man, contrasting it with the contemptible materialism of the Anglo-Saxon Caliban (archetypes that Rodó extracted from Shakespeare’s The Tempest), Oppenheimer finds that feature, so predominant in Spanish America, lamentable.
Is there a remedy for Latin America’s relative backwardness? Yes, Oppenheimer postulates, but only if a profound and lasting educational reform takes place. That’s the other warhorse that runs through his book, chapter after chapter. Instead of continuing to discuss the evils of colonialism or the old and continuing errors of the republic, we need to carefully observe how the Finns, owners of the world’s best educational system, teach and learn; what the Israelis have done amid the desert to build a prosperous, free and highly developed society; what are the secrets of little Singapore, a geological excrescence in the Pacific overrun with people, whose per-capita wealth exceeds that of the United States.
Because Oppenheimer has a practical mind, he takes seriously only the results. He does not waste time examining theories. He knows that in a globalized world ruled by competition, in the full civilization of knowledge, the winners will be the wisest, most productive and organized people, the most innovative and creative, so long as they have adequate institutions. Lamentably, those people are few in our lands.
In all international school tests where students match their knowledge of mathematics, Latin Americans invariably end up last, almost always next to the Africans. How are we going to adequately compete against the Europeans, Americans, Chinese or Indians if our masses are notably less educated and our upper classes fail to understand the importance of science, technology and original research?
Is there a Latin American country that will separate from the pack and show some elements of educational excellence? According to objective data, no. Not even Chile, which today is at the head of the continent. None. Not a single Latin American university appears among the 200 best schools on the planet, and barely three or four rank among the top 500.
Israel, a small state, annually copyrights more scientific patents than all of Latin America, with its 550 million inhabitants. It is true that the Brazilians manufacture airplanes, but that achievement does not make it a driving First World power.
Where do we begin to repair this secular failure? A banker friend of mine, an incorrigible enthusiast, has bought 20 copies of Enough of History! to send to Latin American presidents. I hope they read the book. Above all, I hope they understand it.
(C)2010 Firmas Press
good points and the details are more specific than somewhere else, thanks.
– Mark
last week our class held a similar discussion about this topic and you point out something we haven’t covered yet, thanks.
– Lora
http://www.greenmediagraphics.com
hace 11 años CAM comentaba
hace 10 años
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I served under Preisdent Clinton and was quite honestly disgusted, yet I did my duty for the time I was in (thru 7/96). So we sent people to Yugoslavia, to help the wrong side, and see Europe pretty much ignore ethnic cleasning in their own back yard. Oh, yeah, we lobbed a few Tomahawks at targets that did us no good. Theres an applicable use of force: Half hearted and based on two year old intelligence, yet we scream bloody murder at President Bush for acting on intellegence that, when the truth was found out, was false. We call it intelligence, and not truth for good reason, we dont know it to be the truth. Also, did you know President Clinton sent our Military aboard more than any other president? And to think that was after he pounded President Bush so hard about the Gulf War.
Problemas tremendos en http://www.elblogdemontaner.com. Estoy muy satisfecho con compañeros de su artículo. Muchas gracias y estoy mirando hacia adelante para tocar. Será tan amable de enviarme un correo?
hace 11 años 11 personas comentaron en ingles.
en cambio, en los últimos años, sobran los dedod de una mano para el total que lo ha hecho en esa lengua: por lo que las publicaciones en ese idioma suelen llenarse de comentarios en español
hace 10 años
http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/idval/v64n159/v64n159a01.pdf
me quedo con esto:
Because Oppenheimer has a practical mind, he takes seriously only the results.
a esto me refería yo hace algún tiempo cdo hablaba de dogmatiscmo, axiomas.
cdo ud se casa a una ideologia, cualquiera, Dios, Marx, el Liberalismo, etc. ud ya esta sesgado, ya se enganchó unos lentes de cierto color, ud ya asumió principios, axiomas, dogmas, presupuestos, basamentos, sobre los que levantar su estructura y ud suele anquilosarse, forjar un matrimonio con esa estructura de la que es indisoluble, o duramente indespegable de ella: ud es rígido, está cosificado con la cosa en si, cerrado, obtuso, apasionado, enamorado, sesgado, torpe, trate, testarudo.
“como andres es una mente practica, el sólo se toma enserio los resultados” es de un pragmatismo atroz, al que muchas veces se le ha atribuído el enorme éxito de los gringos en mas de dos siglos de existencia, y a fidel castro en 61 años del exito de su mini imperio del mal: sus resultados, como el de la gran China, esta china de los ultimos 40 años avalan, son evidentes en si mismos de que han recorrido el camino correcto puesto que prevalecieron, no se desmoronaron ante ningún reto.
Tener un pensamiento libre, pragmático, fluído, es ir con los tiempo, con los elementos, con el desarrollo constante indetenible, imparable, siempre cambiante de TODAS las variables sin necesariamente estar siempre fijando axiomas, presupuestos para la acción, para entender el pasado, el presente, para hacer planes, sino irlos haciendo sobre una marcha con el énfasis constante en el ensayo-error, en la certeza de que no hay verdad fija, eterna, invencible y que todo presupuesto es momentaneo y maleable, que son todos gelatinosos y escurridizos, que NADA es constante
desde el momento en que ud decide casarse con un cúmulo de verdades, que son selfevident, y no hay Dios que le saque de ahí, ud está condenado a vivir alejandose caprichosamente de alguna eficiente, práctica, productiva, exitosa, verdad