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Post by gwynthegriff on Feb 16, 2021 13:06:35 GMT
I'm aware of that obviously but that hardly answers the question. gwynthegriff 's friend was speculating about what Argentina would be like had that Welsh culture come to dominate rather than the Spanish but the sentence was incomplete. Are we supposed to guess what the answer would be? Conquering the world with Welsh voice choirs? Well, he wasn't a friend so I can't ask him but the implication was that Argentina would have been less chaotic, more northern rather than southern European in character, and thus more stable and prosperous. At least, that's the sentiment I detected. Or perhaps he simply meant that Argentina would have won 3 Rugby World Cups but no football world cups? |
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WJ
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Post by WJ on Feb 16, 2021 13:52:25 GMT
There's not much love lost between Argentina and its bordering countries of consequence (at least historically). What would the implications of an Argentine super power have been for intra-continental dynamics?
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polupolu
Lib Dem
Liberal (Democrat). Socially Liberal, Economically Keynesian.
Posts: 1,261 
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Post by polupolu on Feb 16, 2021 14:13:30 GMT
My sister has spent a lot of time in Buenos Aires.
For what its worth, her opinion is that there is something in Buenos Aires culture which leads to many people being narcisistic fantasists. The Argentines apparently make jokes to this effect too.
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slon
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Post by slon on Feb 16, 2021 15:30:39 GMT
I'm aware of that obviously but that hardly answers the question. gwynthegriff 's friend was speculating about what Argentina would be like had that Welsh culture come to dominate rather than the Spanish but the sentence was incomplete. Are we supposed to guess what the answer would be? Conquering the world with Welsh voice choirs? Singing far too loud, far too often, and flat? |
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WJ
Non-Aligned
Posts: 3,265
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Post by WJ on Feb 16, 2021 16:07:03 GMT
My sister has spent a lot of time in Buenos Aires. For what its worth, her opinion is that there is something in Buenos Aires culture which leads to many people being narcisistic fantasists. The Argentines apparently make jokes to this effect too. I think that's a widespread phenomenon around the world. |
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Post by matureleft on Feb 16, 2021 18:55:00 GMT
Sadly, the UK has had a role in Argentina which I was surprised to see omitted in the FT piece referred to earlier (except for references to the polo obsession and the desire of early 20th Century landowners to send their children to public schools).
Argentina was an important part of this country's "informal" empire up until World War 2. We dominated banking and major corporations and directed investment for example railways followed the need to move meat from the production areas. We worked with a complacent ruling elite focused on comfortable markets for primary production (in the same way in which our elites in that period hankered after the heavily protected Empire markets for our manufactures). Arguably Peron and his foolish economic policies were an attempt to assert a national control of their economy for the first time.
Still, they really should have been able to correct these mistakes by now.
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