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To: X Y Zebra who wrote (10535)	10/1/2001 10:50:22 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

I don't have an adequate explanation for the failure of the US to engage more fully with Latin America. My guess, and it's only a guess, is the historical tendency of Latin American economies to sort of self-destruct causing massive defaults on bonds and loans. Latin American economies are more volatile that European economies. But of course there is a lot of economic activity between Latin American countries and the US, and there will be even more in the future, especially as Hispanics in America go higher up the economic scale. I think it's hard to convey to someone living outside the USA how apathetic the ordinary American is to foreign affairs. It's always been that way. People are motivated by their own self interests. What possible interest does the ordinary American have in which Chinese won a revolution in 1937, or which particular bastard wound up in charge of Guatemala? Try to imagine getting citizens of your own country interested in the politics of, say, Manitoba, or Liechtenstein. If World War I seems stupid to the British, the French and the Germans now, you can't imagine how stupid it seems to Americans. What the hell were we doing there? I have never had an adequate explanation. Only slightly less stupid than Viet Nam. If the USA was not the world's biggest economy, people wouldn't expect so much from us. Just think of us as much like you, only with more money and more guns. We aren't any smarter, probably know a lot less about you than you know about us, although what most people around the world know about the US they saw in a movie or on TV. Same as us. We saw some quaint customs in the National Geographic or the History Channel and some people burning one of our politicians in effigy or storming one of our embassies but that's all we know about the rest of you.