Summary
Latin America is always in the press and the public sphere of the United States. Although this can sometimes mean bad press, it also means ‘’good press’’. Before I jump into the article itself I want to make it clear that by ‘’good press’’ I do not mean something good is happening but rather an issue at hand is being talked about beyond its borders and is having a light shined upon it to other places that should know what is going on as well. That being said, one of the most currently talked about issues right now is climate change. Although climate change is affecting places all around the world, that does not mean all experience the same outcomes. In the US climate change might simply just look like warm weather past the summer months while in Latin American countries it looks like drought and disease. In an article published by ‘’The Guardian'’ in May of this year it states ‘’ The climate chaos, caused by a combination of human-driven global heating and a natural El Niño effect, is continuing with devastating floods in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, which have killed at least 95 people and deluged swathes of farmland after the world’s hottest April in human history… As the climate warms, diseases are spreading across a greater area. The WMO noted that more than 3m cases of dengue fever were reported in the first seven months of 2023, breaking the previous annual record for the region. Uruguay experienced its first cases of chikungunya and Chile widened alerts about the Aedes aegypti mosquito vector.’’ With this in mind we can see how severe the effects are to people living in Latin America. It's not only that the floods and disease are causing suffering to the countries, but also economic loss. This economic loss comes from the lack of agricultural production in one of the world's most important food production regions. Argentina had fallen 30% below the five-year average and other Latin countries have been expected to follow close behind. These disasters that led to destruction, death, food crises and economic loss led me back to an article previously read for class. In ‘’Economic Fault Lines and Middle Class Fears’’ by Louise. E Walker states ‘’This study argues that middle-class political discontent caused serious concern for the Party of the Institutional Revolution (Partido Revolu-cionario Institucional, or PRI). Drawing upon these documents, this article charts the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and the political mobilization in Tlatelolco, which reveals the importance of middle-class residents in the victims' movement.’’ This part of the article made me think back to the previous one earlier because both show how disasters in these Latin American countries are not being handled properly so the severity of the aftermath increases. This showed how the government was unable to respond in adequate time because the lower classes were losing lives, homes and money. In this case it led to citizens stepping up to reform the cities themselves in a time of crisis.
Sources:
Disease and hunger soar in Latin America after floods and drought, study finds by Jonathan Watts, May 8th 2024 (Link: Disease and hunger soar in Latin America after floods and …)
Economic Fault Lines and Middle Class Fears by Louise. E Walker 1985