Transcript
Mauricio Cárdenas: I would say that if you look back to history, Latin America has been, to a large extent, a very peaceful region. Today’s borders are very similar to the borders in 1840, and that’s not happening in any other region of the world. If there is something characteristic about Latin America it’s the lack of what experts call total wars. And the total war measured by, say, it’s a degree of lethalness, the involvement of the entire society, the deployment of massive resources. Those have been very exceptional events in our region. I would just, I think, think of one war, which is the War of the Triple Alliance, which could be considered as a total war.
But things can change, and I think the question is whether we are at a juncture where change is taking place. Are we leaving behind the Latin America that is relatively peaceful from the point of view of interstate wars and entering a new phase where there will be more aggression? And I think that’s an interesting question because there can be arguments made in both directions.
One thing we know is that at the political and ideological level there is somewhat -- there is something that is very reminiscent of a Cold War. We have two clearly defined ideological camps. There is, at the very least, a war of words. And there is also the presence of some of the expressions of a Cold War in terms of trade embargoes, for example, like the one Colombia is now experiencing from Venezuela. So do these things escalate into something else? Do these things stop there? Those are the questions that I think we should ask ourselves. Is this ideological war of words going to get worse or is this just something that will go away?
Those are some of the issues that I think we should be discussing today.
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