days:
1. Since arriving in Guate., I've often been enjoying a rapturous
moment amongst the interesting culture and colonial (or concrete block)
architecture, when my mind has been brought back to reality by the
various and sundry security systems arrayed about the walls of the
Spanish-style courtyarded homes here. There are four basic styles of
"security." First, concertina wire or barbed wire run about the
perimeter of the structure, especially along the street. Second, broken
glass bottles set into cement at the top of the walls surrounding the
home. Third, electric fencing (probably the most effective, but far
less intimidating-appearing than the alternatives). Finally, a huge,
angry, mangey dog standing on the roof, barking at passers-by. The
broken bottles are my favorite (the dogs my least favorite--I've been
scared out of my wits on a number of occasions by dogs who were smarter
than I am, who hid in wait for me until I was directly below, then they
suddenly barked, causing me to jump, fall, or shout in Spanish, "¡Ai!
¡Por Dios!"
2. Blond girls in huge sunglasses look even sillier here than in the
states.
3. I've recently been re-reading Mark Mazower's _Dark Continent_, a
history of Europe that Jennifer Fitzgerald assigned in her class on
Western European Politics. Mazower's take on history is to remind us
that Democratic Liberalism, for much of the 20th century, was not the
pre-eminent ideology in what we now assume is a democratic and
capitalist Europe. Mazower notes, briefly, an interesting theme that
touches upon Zane's dissertation topic. Basically, he suggests that
peace needed to be financed--literally, financing needed to be found to
rebuild Europe after both the First and Second World Wars to ensure
long-term, sustainable peace. The absence of such financing, Mazower
claims, was one of the reasons why the First World War led to the
Second. An interesting twist, I think, on Zane's focus on financing
war. Does access to finance make both war and peace more likely?
1 comment:
That's an interesting idea, in some sense the Americans weren't entirely unaware of this problem during the interwar years. The Americans eventually ended up lending a couple billion dollars to the Germans so that the Germans (with Papiermark at something like 4 trillion to the dollar) could pay their indemnities to France and England, who could then pay back the US. Incidentally, the highest denomination of Papiermark was 10^14. The allies learned a pretty valuable lesson after WW2,
don't recreate the financial past when you rebuild a country.
Addison, Lebillon, and Murshed (2001) make some good points about finance in the context of civil war. Financial institutions need to support broad based development, not recreate (or reflect) the social inequalities that existed before the war.
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