Why Latin America Is in a WAR Against the WOKE Left! – Dr. Emily Brearley

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]There's some interesting, um, experiments, um, that not economists or like behavioral economists have done where they do a game of Monopoly and somebody starts out with twice the amount of money and they throw the dice twice and they start winning the game of Monopoly and they think it's cuz they're brilliant and it's like, "No, no, we gave you a head start." And people just rich people think that they're rich because they're clever and wonderful.

[00:00:25]>> Yeah. And Thomas Piketty, another very cool economist who's alive, smokes Gauloises. I don't know if he does, but I presume he does. He's French. Right.

[00:00:32]Gauloises. Is that a type of cigarette?

[00:00:34]>> yes, type of cigarette, French cigarette. Um, so he said basically people are wealthy because they inherited land and property. Most people are not self-made.

[00:00:42]>> Sounds like a communist. He sounds a bit of a commie, doesn't he? Let's let's be Chris, cut that bit out.

[00:00:48]Not happy with that. No, but it is a bit of everything, isn't it? It's a big world.

[00:00:51]>> Yes. That's the thing. And then whenever people people get too extreme in one way or the other, things start to go nuts.

[00:00:56]As with your chapters on Pinochet and, uh, you know, the, uh, and Videla and the Argentinian and Chilean dictators.

[00:01:02]>> Yes. Yes. Well, and that was really interesting because they did all of the things that Washington told them to do in terms of economic policy, the Washington Consensus, and I saw that it didn't really change much about society.

[00:01:15]The poor were poor, the rich were rich.

[00:01:17]It made the rich a little bit richer.

[00:01:19]They cut all the social programs. Mhm.

[00:01:21]They sort of picked and choose what they wanted. They didn't increase taxes, you know, taxes are still like 15% in a lot of Latin American countries. Wow.

[00:01:29]>> people don't want to pay their taxes.

[00:01:31]>> That's interesting. That's Yeah, it's hard and then cuz I'm so behind sort of what Milei's doing and Musk you were behind what Musk is doing. He's an economist, Milei. And he's got sideburns.

[00:01:40]>> He's got sideburns.

[00:01:41]>> so much for my profession. He makes us laugh.

[00:01:43]>> He swears. He plays video games. Well, and more importantly, he has reduced inflation to the lowest point in a hundred years. Finally, Argentina is a functional economy.

[00:01:53]>> But isn't he doing similar things and isn't Musk doing similar things to what Pinochet and um Videla and other dictators on the right were doing? Yes, they are, but the uh Without the murders. Without the murders. I don't >> were the worst part.

[00:02:09]>> are pretty bad. And people would say that to me in Chile like, "Oh, you got to break a few eggs to make an omelet."

[00:02:14]hell.

[00:02:15]Seriously, they would say that to me. Um did they have to inject Victor Jara's hands with petrol? Oh. He was a a very famous Chilean folk singer. Um no, I don't think they did, and it was vicious, and has a still has a hangover.

[00:02:30]When I lived in Argentina, we would go and egg the houses of all of the military people who are still not in jail, and nothing had happened to them.

[00:02:38]So, you could have been somebody, you know, raped by a military guy, and see him walking down the street towards you.

[00:02:45]There was no sort of you know, um Nobody went to jail for that. They tried, but they didn't.

[00:02:52]>> People know about their families, though. Yeah. Yeah. But, I also think that it was um a process that Latin America went through. It was part of that, you know, you're saying just let these countries figure it out. It was part of their, you know, how is the left and the right going to work together without killing each other, without going to these two extremes, without having a revolution?

[00:03:13]How are they going to come to some kind of compromise? And they're still in that process of compromise. A lot of Latin American countries. Chile now has gone right again, which is interesting.

[00:03:24]Ecuador has gone right. Colombia will probably go right. They'll You know, Petro is very interesting in Colombia.

[00:03:31]He was a guerrilla.

[00:03:32]Um he hasn't been a very good president, but they he tried. He, you know, had his time to be in government and implement his policies, and people don't like it.

[00:03:42]Um but it didn't lead to violence. It didn't lead to a recurrence of civil war. So, that's progress in a way.

[00:03:48]There's just this culture of corruption though that makes everything harder, I guess. When I I was in Argentina at the time when Kirchner, the the the lady president for those who don't know Kirchner Yes.

[00:03:58]hid $10 million in a monastery with the monks for hiding it for them.

[00:04:01]>> Awesome. My first project at the World Bank all the money was stolen by a Catholic priest. Wow.

[00:04:06]>> In Guatemala. Those pesky priests.

[00:04:08]>> But I I have people say this to me a lot. Like people in developing countries, just everyday people say, "Why are you lending money to my government in my name when you know that they're corrupt?" Yeah. Well, that's a great point.