[speaker001:] all right you know like you said I haven't uh been keeping track of what all has been going on in uh Central America myself um and uh
[speaker002:] well other than the Nicaraguan situation where we kicked out the dictator of that country and his case is yet to come to trial and all that
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] I can't say that I've kept up too much with it I know that the Colombians for awhile we were trying to do something to give them the incentive to get out of the drug trade and there was a lot of assassinations and killings and that sort of thing going on down there because they were trying to clean up the mobster crowd
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] uh but uh other than that uh the only thing I ever hear about a country like Brazil or some place like that is advertisements to come enjoy their their beaches and the like and what is it Rio de Janeiro
[speaker001:] yeah yeah yeah I know what is it your talking about um I've I've listened to a lot of things going on I mean uh the Manuel Noriega Panama thing I think was probably the right thing to do I mean the guy was just blatantly going out and shooting Americans
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and uh so I think what they did there was right I'm not so sure about uh what they're doing in some of the countries where we're supporting guerillas that are fighting the communists
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] you know that are in there uh because it never seems to really work we end up throwing in money and a lot of people getting killed and when push comes to shove we seem to back out on the gorillas like we did the Kurds back uh in the late seventies
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and so that that that kind of thing concerns me um it's the things that we're not doing that we should be doing like right now there's a big outbreak of uh of course it's a little further south in South America but there's an outbreak of uh uh what is it cholera in uh Peru and all so it's gotten into Columbia now
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] and it looks like it's going to be pretty serious uh thing there they're talking about it lasting for ten years
[speaker002:] yeah that's right yeah I heard about that that's supposed to be sweeping on up through to the uh Central American American countries too
[speaker001:] yeah and it's it's already gotten into into Brazil a little bit and it has to do with the fact that uh I mean in that part of the world they just dump raw sewage right into the rivers I mean things that we don't do here anymore because we know how bad it is for you
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] yet they're they're you know they're steadily steadily doing it down there
[speaker002:] and their filtration systems I guess haven't kept up with the pace
[speaker001:] and it they actually don't have filtration systems uh some of the major cities do
[speaker002:] oh
[speaker001:] um but for the most part most of those countries flat out pump it right into the rivers and let it float on down and pump it right out into the ocean
[speaker002:] oh um um um
[speaker001:] and that's you know that's how they deal with it and you know they're just steadily polluting that part of the part of the world that way
[speaker002:] um-hum um
[speaker001:] um the other thing is the uh economic assistance uh right now we're starting we're starting to talk about having free trade with Mexico
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and my God this is something we should have done years ago and Mexico is our closest neighbor they've been in financial trouble for years
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and I think we've exploited them I mean when I was in Texas I noticed that uh you know you think of Texas and you have good meat and fresh vegetables and all that
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] well most of the vegetables they sold in Texas came from Mexico and so did the meat
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] the meat that was raised in Texas they sent back east to sell because they had get more money for it
[speaker002:] um-hum um
[speaker001:] and uh
[speaker002:] well I don't think uh I I agree with you I think you're right we have exploited but I I think that the leadership that Mexico has had up until for some phenomenally lucky reason has been a rather than corrupt um feudalistic type of leadership everybody sort of on the take sort of like the way uh the uh uh what what was that bunch that used to run the Philippines
[speaker001:] yeah The Marcos
[speaker002:] yeah yeah so that sort of thing and the guy they got in this last time uh he for once is a tried and true and really you know outright capitalist from the word go
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and he wants to take the government off the peoples backs and really get free enterprise on started and I was reading I think in Newsweek or Time or one of those or US News World Reports one of those mags that uh uh they were having a tough time with the peasant farmer situation being able to compete with uh American farming industry because we have these huge conglomerates
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] well he went out using the governments uh uh finances or or whatever you call it he went out and and gathered together a lot of the farmers who had small farms inside one another and he pulled together sort of like a a commune
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] but yet he let's them each be a free enterprise uh uh person but they work together in terms of what they organize to grow and they grow massive amounts of things that are common to each other in certain areas and yet they vary their crops in such a way that they they uh can be very productive in how many much of these crops they make but they can also roll them over and then they market it altogether as a group as a force
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and as a result uh it said that since they started the program of course it went sort of kind of kind of uh rough at first but apparently since they got the program going that they uh the amount of money and the uh uh profit and standard of living that they're able to to reap from it has gone up almost tenfold from this
[speaker001:] that's great
[speaker002:] and so uh this guy may be actually going to finely turn the uh the country on I mean it's always been tough for the southern or or lower latitude countries to be as productive as the higher latitude countries to be as productive as some reason another and as the higher latitude countries I've often wondered if that does have something to do with the the climate being uh so warm that it tends to make work harder to do
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] I don't know but it does seem like that there has always been a preponderance of countries in the middle latitude zones that uh uh seem to always lack in their ability to to develop industrially uh as well as even agriculturally
[speaker001:] yeah yeah that that that probably has some bearing on it
[speaker002:] I don't know
[speaker001:] um also there's uh a uh tradition of just doing enough to get by
[speaker002:] um yeah yeah
[speaker001:] they're they're not as motivated as uh as we are and
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] people farther south
[speaker002:] um-hum um
[speaker001:] now you know once you you get down into Chile and Argentina and those kinds of areas I mean their climates are pretty much the same as ours
[speaker002:] um-hum  yeah and and they have been uh they have had spurts at times I know I think it was Chile uh that has been fairly capitalistic that have has spurts of times when they did rather well and then they sort of reverse because they have some sort of a military take over or something like that and they go into a dictatorship for awhile and
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] and it would just sort of go downhill but uh uh I don't know that that they don't seem to be able to keep any particular stable regime for any particular long period of time in their capitalistic type governments
[speaker001:] yeah and while we're sitting here talking about it I'm thinking you know we know every darn thing that goes on everyday in Europe
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] you know I mean we know what's going on in Poland we know what's going on in Romania we know the Germanies are getting back together we didn't you know we all know what's going in Europe
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] but we never here anything about what's going on down in South you know in South and Central America
[speaker002:] yeah unless they have a coffee strike or the drug problem gets out of uh proportion like it did for awhile
[speaker001:] or unless we're sending thousands of troops down there to kick somebody's butt I mean
[speaker002:] that's right or or unless they're kicking the British's butts like they did in the Falkland Islands something like that where it involves one of our allies
[speaker001:] yeah yeah we just don't pay any attention to them
[speaker002:] then you're you're right and um I wonder why that is
[speaker001:] yeah it's it's you know it's it just doesn't make any sense I mean we're in the same uh hemisphere spo to speak I mean you know the same side of the earth I mean
[speaker002:] could it possibly be because of they're they're little third world countries and they are all independent from one another where as if they had of somehow or another from their past history formed into a larger country like our continental United States did and uh developed uh uh a free enterprise capitalistic type of economy with a common form of government that they could have uh uh been a force in the world though
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] I don't know I I I ask what what went wrong what was different they certainly have the climates in the southern hemisphere uh uh to have been easily as productive and I certainly think they have rich enough land I don't think uh the continental of South America as I recall my geography that's been along time ago as being any particularly different or or lacking in terms of agricultural or industrial or river
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] rivers that were naturally there or so forth that they could not have developed developed a uh a pretty uh uh uh by today's standards modern type of economy
[speaker001:] yeah yeah I mean it doesn't it really doesn't make sense to me I don't know you know it's I mean they've never really been a real force in the world I mean uh we heard about Argentina only when it tried to take over the Falcons and England had to go down there and kick their butt
[speaker002:] yeah um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] um so it's it's like really strange that we never pay that much attention I I you know I just find myself lacking in in a lot of knowledge about South America
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] I'd like to think I know a lot about a lot of things but you know I have something is amiss here as far as the amount of information that's available
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] uh I don't know if it's intentional on the part of you know the the powers that be or whether no body really cares
[speaker002:] I think that's kind of it I mean I certainly don't tend to think about it like out of the site out of mind uh myself uh in general unless there's some sort of a controversial thing going on that either affects me or the country at large one way or the other politically