Traveller’s Reviews > Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America > Status Update

Actually it’s not the people who see USA or any other countries as evil. It’s their government. It’s been always the filthy politics that cause so many stupid problems :)

I’m now a bit doubtful about the word I used “their” as in “their government” since it defines a level of belonging; It might be better if I used “the” (as for, e.g. as an Iranian, here it’s not “our” government, meaning it’s not our choice so it’s not ours); so I wanted to make a little note on my previous comment 😅

:D Heh, sorry Chadi, but I think your clarification complicated things a bit, no worries, the first thing you said was clear enough. Why I'm smiling about it, is because I do the same thing. Being another overthinker, I also often post things that I realize afterwards, might only cause confusion, and then I wonder if I should leave it or fix it, and then I think but if people have already read it, they might wonder why I'm changing it, and so it goes on....

...but back to the subject, yes obviously it's the deciders of foreign policy in the US that did the cynical, self-serving stuff, but the populace voted them in, after all, though a large part of the pop is/was very naive and not really interested in politics. (They were less interested back then, but everybody was afraid of Communism due to propaganda.)

But on the other side, (I mean the populace of the people being exploited) the people on the street probably don't distinguish between a country's people and it's government which is, after all, a natural thing to think of a country with a so-called democracy. I know you're saying that (I think that's what you're saying) they do distinguish, but why should they? The American populace voted that government in, after all, and the American populace believed all the fearmongering about socialism/communism. I suppose that doesn't make them evil, really, just gullible.

Anyway, in the end, like you say, politicians will always exploit the fears of the populace....

Phew! Glad you understand the complexity 😅
BTW, how do you find the book so far? I’ve recently got this urge to read about Latin America. Or you might know any other good book too that you could recommend please?

Chadi wrote: "Phew! Glad you understand the complexity 😅
BTW, how do you find the book so far? I’ve recently got this urge to read about Latin America. Or you might know any other good book too that you could re..."

I'm doing a big book search around that at the moment, because having read and enjoyed quite a bit of Latin American poetry and literature, I realized that my background knowledge on South American history is full of holes.

This book under discussion above, seems to be quite good for giving a nice general overview, but if you don't have a solid background of a subject, it's hard to know if the author is being subjective, so I can't tell you if I think his opinion is biased to one side or another. He does seem to be trying to be as objective as possible, as far as I can see, though.

The book is quite easy to read, it has a nice conversational style, yet seems to be filled with facts, so reading it goes fast. I would say it's a good starting point, especially because it seems to cover the entire South America and doesn't just focus on one country or region.

Once I get a chance to check out some more books on the subject, I will definitely let you know how they compare for me, Chadi!

Thanks a lot, Jenn!
I’ll start with this book then once I get to finish some of my half-reading pile :)