hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler today I'm chatting with Brian winter let me just give you the introduction from Brian himself he's the editor-in-chief of America's quarterly and a long-standing analyst of Latin American politics with more than 20 years following the region he's lived in Brazil Argentina and Mexico he was a correspondent for Reuters he also has been vice president
of policy the America society and Council of the Americas he's been called the best foreign expert on Brazil of this moment he's the author of several books including why soccer matters a New York Times bestseller co-authored with Brazilian soccer Legend P The Accidental president of Brazil co-authored with President Fernando henik cardoso and long after midnight a memoir about
trying and failing to learn to Tango in Argentina he's a regular contributor to television and radio a host of the America's quarterly podcast and a prolific barbecuer and Chef I very much enjoy following him on Twitter at Brazil Brian and that's Brazil with a z Brian welcome it's such honor Tyler thank you for having me I have so many questions let me start with a simple one why is Brazil
stuck oh my goodness I actually you know I take a longer view on Brazil I've been following the country for uh almost 20 years now and I've seen progress uh this is a country that has its challenges but it is uh one of the hemisphere's most solid democracies uh it is a country that has lifted Millions out of poverty over the last 20 years it's more of a middle class country than it used to be
and I know what you mean by stuck it's an economy that doesn't grow nearly enough uh has this political turmoil that makes headlines every now and then um but if you take that longer view it's a better place than it was when when I first started following it back in the 2000s i' say they just grow at about 2% which has been common lately now that the China Boom the soya boom are over
their fertility seems to be about 1.55 I mean what's the future don't they just shrink and get poorer we might all shrink Tyler uh this is not a question that Brazil alone is facing we're seeing it across the Western world but the danger here is real and it's the same danger that faces China as well it's the danger that these countries will get um old before they get rich uh and this is
an issue we're seeing across much of the developing world what's the future of migration into Brazil so the US might be below replacement rates but we can get a lot of the world's best immigrants Brazil doesn't seem very interested in recreating its earlier early 20th century Traditions when it took in people from across the world why not not is that going to change is it just people coming from Paraguay what's the
future of migration to Brazil it's been as you rightly point out Tyler it's been a long time since Brazil was um you know a real destination for immigrants uh I'm actually working on a book about South Palo right now and revisiting a lot of this history when they had a what they called the immigrants in which received it was in South Paulo and it received thousands of immigrants at a time U
mostly from Italy also from Spain but uh Brazil also has the world's largest Japanese population outside Japan uh so many people came there from um the old Ottoman Empire Today Syria and Lebanon that the mayors of South Paulo over the years have had names like cassab Hadad Maloof I mean it does have that tradition of immigration uh but that ended really with the Great Depression
and the the crash in coffee prices back when Brazil was producing uh as much as 3/4 of the world's coffee it was a real blow to them and kind of changed everything and you're right it's not a big receiver of immigrants today although there are about 500,000 Venezuelans who've come there in recent years fleeing the collapse of the Socialist dictatorship there um it has an equally sized uh population of people
from Bolivia so it still receives not as much as it otherwise might I have to say that Portuguese is part of the challenge here it's a language that not that many people know and so for example even for the Venezuelans that's out of a diaspora of 8 million most of them have gone to other Spanish-speaking countries but the ones that have gone to Brazil have have been pretty happy with their decision
why is Brazilian agriculture not stuck productivity there seems to be very high right what's Brazil doing right in this one area uh well you know having uh a privileged location in the tropics and being able to have two harvests a year sometimes because of the climate and the soil that helps but plenty of countries have that right Brazil's done something unusual well there's an old expression
that thankfully is a bit out of date now that said that held that Brazil was the most efficient farming country in the world until Goods left the farm and what that was a reference to was the fact that the roads infrastructure uh rail ports and so on were not really up to par but there has been an improvement uh not enough but again this is another area where of the last 20 years this soy
that used to travel over uh you know two lane or even one lane mud roads at least now it's paved um in a lot of places and some of these rail links are also uh improving so this is another area where I think if you if you take that longer term perspective things are getting a little bit better what's the economic geography of Brazil going to look like all the wealth the wealth near M Gro and
the north just very very poor or the North empties out or how's that going to work there used to be some modest degree of balance that's true uh most of the population in Brazil and the economic uh Center for sure was in the Southeast and that means really um South Pao State uh which is about a quarter of Brazil's population but roughly a third of its GDP uh Rio as well the state of Min Jer
uh the which has a a name that tells its history that means general mines in in Portuguese that's the area where a lot of the gold came out of in the 18th and 19th centuries um that's gone now so it's not as much of an economic poll you're right Tyler though that a lot of the the the real boom right now the action is in places like matru which in the is in the region of Brazil uh called
the center West that's soy country I'm from Texas and mat Gro is virtually indistinguishable from Texas these days it's hot it's flat um the crop is you know like I said is soy there's cattle ranching as well even the music uh you know Brazil has as others have have noted has gone from being the country of bosanova and the samba in the 1970s to being the country of Sanu today Sanu is
kind of a a a Brazilian cousin of country music with accordion but it's sung by um people men mostly in jeans big belt buckles and cowboy hats and so they're importing that not only that economic model but that lifestyle as well what is the great Brazilian music of today mpb's dead right so what should someone listen to well I I have a a guilty love for satano again I've I've revealed myself as a Texan to your
listeners who likes the classics like George straight and Clint Black and you know some of the big names from the 80s and 90s Serano is a bit different but you know there if hip hop is your thing uh Anita 2's is the big artist of the moment but it's not um to the despair of some that that culture today perhaps because it is somewhat derivative of uh country music in the United States it is
not taking over the world in the same way that Jean jilberto and uh jilberto Jil and and so many others did in the 1950s and 1960s how do you think that being a Texan makes you more optimistic about Brazil if you would even accept the claim at all well that's a really good question um I certainly makes me appreciate uh you know the cowboy culture and uh chasu which is the the Brazilian barbecue culture as well I
think you know both places in addition to being you know hot and green are forward-looking um I came to Brazil from Argentina I lived in Argentina for first Argentina is a country that is obsessively focused on its past that's a country that 100 years ago famously was one of the 10 richest countries in the world and today is slipped back well into the middle of the pack somewhere in
the 60s depending on on what indicator you're looking at and so you know Argentina is a Tango it's Nostalgia it's Melancholy and Brazil has always been about the future sometimes to a fault uh it's not a place where people remember precedent uh where they remember lessons of History they're focused on the future and if you grew up in a place like Dallas like I did which is was built entirely for the most part in the 20th
century I think there's probably something of that that resonates with me but is Brazil still looking toward the future so as you know they built Brazilia in the middle of nowhere whatever you think of Brazilia it was quite an achievement it's hard for me to imagine them doing that now I've that Outback Steakhouse is quite popular in Brazil you've talked about rap music derivatives of country and
western where's the real future looking forward-looking element in Brazil where where do you see it I think you see it this may sound a bit hokey Tyler but you you feel it when you talk to people it's it's a country of smiles uh of people who sometimes live just incredibly difficult lives talking about people who live in the periphery of cities like South Pao and Brazil Who
spend 5 hours a day on a bus commuting in and out of traffic in order to work minimum wage jobs and these people enjoy life sometimes more than I would say often more than the people that I live among in Westchester County just outside New York who I look around sometimes on the commuter train and nobody looks happy and I don't want to romanticize things I think that you find unhappy people in Brazil too but there's
a joy in life that people manage to seize upon even when the economy is not doing well perhaps because they're accustomed to this kind of slow growth situation that that we've been talking about here's a question from reader and I quote does the change in the style of play of Brazil's national soccer team over the last 20 years more disciplined and rigorous with fewer players free to
create a result of a change in the National culture or Vibe unquote I think that Brazilians would probably tell you that actually the soccer team has not evolved enough um because I would gently point out uh because I know that there are Brazilian listeners here who will recoil when I say this but it has been 22 years since Brazil won the last World Cup which is uh uh quite serious for a country that
has won five World Cups over the years uh more than any other country and there's a real view that I I hear from people in the country that actually part of the problem is that improvisation and talent are not enough anymore and that uh Brazilian soccer really needs to to professionalize now they continue to produce amazing players um Neymar venicius Jr uh and others but they also
have another disadvantage which is that so many more of their players these days are in they play club soccer in Europe and if you look back at the Golden Age the age with P um these were players who played almost entirely on teams within Brazil who knew each other and perhaps that was an advantage as well but do you think there's something about the Brazilian Spirit or national psyche that
somehow worked better in the world of the 1950s and 60s where improvisation was more relevant maybe more productive in a lot of areas Cinema you have a movie such as black Orphus I'm sure you know it is there anything comparable today that has Global force a Brazilian movie A something what would it be that's a good question Ty and I I to be honest I'm a bit of a at a
bit of a loss and this is something that Brazilian commentators have also seized upon uh this idea that the cool Brazil the one that uh you know people of a certain age uh think of that comes to mind Samba the Beats of boson NOA uh black orus to take another to take the example you cited that's not present today and there's been a lot of soul searching within Brazil as to why that is they watch for example
um the prominence that South Korea has taken on uh in um shows like um oh gosh what's the one on Netflix the really the really violent one that everybody squid game squid game uh a lot of Brazilians saw that in the cultural moment of K-pop and everything else and said that used to be us what has happened to us that we're no no longer in that on the main stage uh to the degree that we were in
the past and um you know I I think some of it is that others have caught up and then perhaps there's a cyclical element to this as well I can tell you that uh Brazil remains a tremendously seductive place to visit you spend time in places like Sal Paulo Rio Salvador and you still see Echoes of that Brazil that that seduced the world Once Upon a Time and continues to do so not necessarily as
part of Pop Culture but certainly to people who visit how is it that you understand the current crime situation in sa Paulo as I'm sure you know the murder rate has dropped a great deal but if you actually walk on the streets it doesn't feel very good in some ways the older more violent sa Pao seemed cleaner or to have few der fewer derelicts what's the the general framework for making sense of what's
gone on there it's a really perceptive question Tyler Sal Pao the crime situation there is it's a complex story and I their homicide rate has actually gone down more than 80% over the last 25 years uh it's a tremendous achievement it was one of the world's uh most violent in terms of homicide uh cities as recently is the late '90s and then that rate now is only about 5 per 100,000
which is lower than the US national average and quite a bit lower than many US cities but and there's a butt here there's a butt um it is a country or city rather where you are still much more likely to be a victim of an armed robbery of a carjacking to have your cell phone uh taken from your hands uh and so a lot of people when they go there either as visitors or members of the economic Elite in South Paulo choose
to have Armored Cars um choose to not pull out their cell phone when they're out on the street as a matter of fact with the spread of uh payment apps and Brazil's digital currency uh which is an amazing story in itself it's called pixs um a lot of Brazilian friends I know have stopped taking their cell phone out of the house at all um because they're afraid that either the phone will be
stolen or they'll be the victims of a kidnapping and made to empty their account so you know that's that's a reality that's serious and so I have you know I've been very interested in the progress that they have made on the homicide front but when you talk to Ordinary People regular people in South Paulo the perception is that violence is not gotten any better and and there's another issue here which you made
reference to which is that the street population has uh by some measures tripled in the last 10 years now some of that is the pandemic but there seem to be other factors as well what do you think will happen with crime in Rio de Janeiro the city well is that even stable can it continue right it seems something has to give Rio in some ways is a repeat of the story that I just told about salth Paulo
but without the progress uh from a security standpoint it remains very worthwhile to visit uh there's it's also an economic Center a cultural center of the country there's a lot more to these places besides just Street crime but the fact is it's a very complicated situation you have these groups that Brazilians call uh milicias which sounds like militias but they're really best
thought of as paramilitary groups um these are groups that are often composed of uh police officers who control organized crime in vast areas of the city and look it's it's another area where Brazil has work to do and these are challenges that are faced all across Latin America I mean what one of the big stories happening in Latin America right now is this spread of organized crime which was
already bad I mean this has always been an issue as long as I've been following um the region but with the doubling in the production of cocaine that we've seen um over the last 10 years and keeping in mind that almost all the world's cocaine is produced in just three countries that's Colombia Peru and Bolivia the smuggling routes lead out of those countries and go touch virtually
every other country in Latin America and the illegality and organized crime that takes root around that is the source of a lot of these issues what do you think is the most significant change of mind or change of opinion you've had in the last 10 years about race relations in Brazil so one reads a great deal about this obviously it's different from America but since you've started what is
it you've changed your mind about what new insights do you have now you didn't have 10 or 20 years ago race is a subject in Brazil that I always approach with humility as an American because we of course have our own amply documented issues and racism in Brazil is different in some ways but similar in others there has been a huge debate within Brazil about identity and the nature of Brazilian racism uh over the last 10
years or so one consequence of this Tyler is that the percentage of people who identify as black or mixed race has gone way up in census data in that time it's gone from I believe somewhere in the upper 40s um to about 56% today and it's not because Brazil became more black or be or had more mixed race people but because people are more inclined to identify themselves as with pride as being part of that group
um and it's all a saga that has been going on for hundreds of years that has echoes in the same history that we have here in the US but in some ways is it happens on a bigger scale in Brazil here's a figure that people are always surprised Americans are always surprised to learn Brazil imported more than 5 million people from Africa um from the 16th century through 1850 that is more
than 10 times the number of slaves that were imported into the United States and so we're talking about you know and issue that has had reverberations that in some ways are far bigger at the same time there was always more mixing of the races in Brazil so uh you know segregation along racial lines was never a thing in part because it was not feasible because there had been so much
mixing um but there was a long tradition in Brazil especially among the elite of claiming that there was no racism in Brazil and I think that the country has come to the grips has come to grips with the fact that that's not true that there was racism that it was different from racism in the United States but racism nonetheless and so people are grappling with that at the same time that they're
more inclined to identify themselves as black which is a fascinating thing to watch for you which is the most interesting ethnic small town in southern Brazil ethnic small town you're referring to like the German communities and places PA maroda somewhere like that which for me was fascinating I I I'd like to hear your story of papara but I I I have to say my favorite example of an ethnic Enclave in
Brazil is actually in sou Paulo it's a neighborhood called liberi uh which means freedom means Liberty uh and this was the poll for the Japanese community that came to Brazil starting in the 1900s and has as I said ear is the biggest Japanese Community outside Japan um they have integrated themselves exceptionally well into the country you walk through this neighborhood and you see sushi
places ramen restaurants and then um coconut water and tropical juices this neighborhood is also notable uh for other reasons and uh it it prior to becoming a um a Japanese neighborhood in the 17th and 18th century uh well the name tells it all liberi it was one of the first neighborhoods where freed slaves in Sal Pao lived um and it has that whole history that is also being
uncovered kind of as we speak as this part of this moment of racial Awakening that I already described for me parara was so boring it was interesting incredibly F North German architecture the dialect maybe almost sounded like plat do I'm not sure sure uh people didn't believe me when I said I was an American it just none of the categories made sense to them people were friendly uh it felt German this was the
1990s and uh it was like a Time Warp more than anything nowhere in Germany would be the way pararo was in the 1990s there are also Brazil has that there are dishes and dances uh that of the old Japanese community that have been preserved in Brazil in a way that they were not in Japan so it's a country in part because of that rich tradition of immigration that we were discussing earlier that has all kinds of enclaves
like that that are uh fascinating to visit where's the best Chasco in Brazil at somebody's Ranch if you can manage let's say in commercial markets I would say outside of quba in some of the suburbs but uh I'm not sure there's plenty of Parts I've never been to it's hard to go wrong I've had some amazing uh chasu in South Paulo but also up in the the new cattle country up in mat Gro
you know they they bring it well I assume a lot of your audience has been to the the the all you can eat roizo of Brazilian barbecue here in the US it's it's basically like that but what you don't always get here in the US is these vast buffets of other things where you can get your your pic which is the classic they they always translate that as rump stake which is makes it sound
terrible but it's it's it's the best most classic Brazilian cut but that to then line that up with uh hearts of palm that are sometimes almost the size and uh diameter of like a flag pole those are my favorite yeah moreable than the beef yeah that's right oh some some questions about other countries if we look around Latin America one can see that nicar AA and Cuba are quite safe uh
the cost of getting there is has been way way too high right they're not successful countries but does that strengthen the case for buay that in essence there's not any simple way to a safe Latin American country if you start out dangerous well what you say is true in the sense that um police States can be quite safe and Nicaragua and Cuba are places where no type of is tolerated today El Salvador it's not
there yet um I think it's fair to wonder whether that is what naib Buel has in mind of course na Buel being the you already named him the the very charismatic Millennial El Salvadoran leader with the backwards baseball cap what he has done is throw more than 1% of his country's population in jail um to give you over the course of a year and El Salvador is not a big country so
to put that in proportional terms to do the equivalent thing in the United States that would be putting more than 3 million more people in jail in the course of 12 months that's that's how dramatic what bukele has done um and so far it has met with success in terms of reducing homicide numbers El Salvador's official homicide index is now lower than that of the United States there's some question
about whether those numbers are accurate but there there's there's certainly the trend is real is very clear the problem of course is that he's done that without in many cases due process for the people who he's put in jail um but a better alternative well I I think yes but it takes time uh it involves bu building up your police forces professionalizing your Judiciary um and you know sending people
the old-fashioned way to jail by putting them on trial first for societies that are not willing to tolerate that that don't have that patience because they think that they're going through a crisis an emergency I I have to say I mean I I understand why bu has an approval rating upwards of 80% because the results are real and uh the history of the world is full of death societies including
Democratic societies that have been willing to suspend civil liberties in the name of a National Emergency uh we did that here in the United States during the Civil War um with the suspension of Abus Corpus we did it with the internment camps um of the World War II era with the Japanese population and you know we as a society almost always regret these things after the fact but they're seen
as necessary at the time the the real debate for me about that Buell awakens is we may think I may think that what bukel is doing is is anti-democratic but if he just was voted a second term as president with a huge mandate then arguably El Salvador's Society has a democratic Sovereign right to make that decision and to sign off on what he's doing which is again sending a lot of people including almost certainly
innocent people to jail and if that's a cost that Salvador and his Society is willing to to take then perhaps they have a right to do that um it remains to be seen how exportable that model is to other countries in the region you hear a lot of politicians saying nice things about buele but no other country really has yet gone down that path Ecuador Honduras are trying a bit but
half-heartedly right and it may be an all or nothing thing if you're going to make it work otherwise gang members just train other gang members well look we do have examples in history a recent history imperfect examples of countries that uh reduced violence and that broke the grip of drug gangs under democracy uh I would cite Colombia of the 2000s now this was a period that saw many
abuses human rights abuses um a military a Colombian military that uh we now know killed thousands of innocent people but to the extent that it's possible to say but after a declaration like that um homicide rates did dramatically all and it's a very different feeling country than it used to be so point is buele is not the only route but I I agree with you when you say that there is no easy
fast Democratic route to improving security when you're dealing with cartels and organized crime groups that have the resources that some of these groups do with their pockets filled with the dollars of customers of cocaine in the United States Europe and other countries around Latin America speaking of Colombia I have a question about the country I've never understood this so if
I look at the history long term it seems not seems it is quite violent even by Latin Standards if I look at the history of economic growth in Colombia it's actually fairly smooth and steady is there any single theory of the country that can account for both of those facts I'm always skeptical of simple neat theories but I would point to uh geography Colombia in a way is unique uh it is a country where the capital is
on top of the mountain in Bogata Columbia is a country of plateaus um it is a very difficult territory for any Central authority to control some have compared it and by by some I mean development agencies of the UN and others have compared it in terms of its geography to Afghanistan uh with areas that are just completely separated from each other the story in Colombia over time has been that of a
competent government in Bogota that does not control all of the national territory uh that has and it remains true today they vast pockets of the country that Federal Authority simply does not get there uh and that has been a big reason why they never had it was one of the very few Latin American countries that never defaulted on its debt in the 1980s they never had a hyperinflation their economy Tyler as
you noted has always almost always consistently grown but yet they've had these huge problems with Guerilla movements and general lawlessness partly because of geography and partly because of a let's say a lack of political will to go and dominate subdue bring rule of law to these parts of the country that were not under the federal um it's not just about geography it's about
political will as well but a good civil service right a breathtakingly competent Civil Service uh a certain consensus around the need for sound fiscal management which anyone who follows Latin America knows is not something you should ever take for granted so no like a lot of these countries uh they have things that they've done well and things that areas where they still need to improve what's
the most interesting lesser-known part of Colombia to visit oh gosh um I I'm not sure it's lesser known I I I am quite taken with carda as as many visitors are um mein the land of the Eternal spring uh monteria is an area I've been to that looks a lot like the mat Gro and the the cattle country in Brazil that we were discussing earlier it's a it's a beautiful place I I would say having uh stuttered
around this a little bit my favorite place is the Sierra Nevada uh which is unique in the global context it's as the name suggests it's a Snowy Range of mountains um from which you can see the Caribbean Sea the fact that there is a mountain range where you can simultaneously see the Caribbean and sometimes there is snow on the ground never ceases to amaze me it is a beautiful place one of these
troubled parts of the country where uh for a long time and intermittently you know Federal Authority kind of comes and goes but if you can ever manage to go and and and feel safe it's it's there's few places in the world quite like that you know I'm bringing my sister for bird watching to Santa Marta in May which is not so far from there right what's what are your favorite Birds what are you
hoping to see while you're there it's really a trip for my sister she's a well-known amuter bird photographer she's heavily into bird watching I'm not but I'm heavily into Colombia and I've been enough places that I feel I can bring her around and she wouldn't go on her own so we're doing it good for you yeah Argentina why is the Jockey Club so popular in buus Artis I'm sure you've
noticed this I have noticed this well I think two reasons one is that Argentina is regarded even today by many as is the heart of Polo culture and horse culture globally uh I mean it's it's really people say it's it's Florida and and provin woses are are the main places to be uh but a lot of this also Tyler as I was saying earlier uh everything or almost everything in Argentina ends up
being about past glory and past wealth and the Jockey Club is really one of those places still left in the city where you can you can look around and sort of squint a little bit imagine it's 1920 and that this is still the quote unquote Paris of South America um it's not the only place that's like that uh it's actually the city itself looks good uh it looks better than it did when I
covered Argentina's economic meltdown in my first job out of college more than 20 years ago but the economy you know today speaking of things that are cyclical you've got inflation above 27 % so it doesn't take long even at the Jockey Club to realize that that not all is well in the country right now I agree with your Nostalgia point but as I'm sure you know there's so many very good
startups from Argentina though they may leave the country go to Brazil go to Mexico uh why is there this mix of creativity and Nostalgia well I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive I I would say I would I would frame it slightly differently the intellectual capital and Firepower that you see in Argentina is still very strong um I've always believed as someone who's probably spent too many hours of my life thinking about
Argentine decline cultural and intellectual Capital erodes less quickly than economic capital and you still see these amazing centers of excellence in Bueno CES and what these entrepreneurs will tell you the founders of these companies that you mentioned like mercal lib or globant that have really become World beaters on the global stage uh I mean mercal lib at this point is one of
the biggest e-commerce countries uh companies in the entire world uh competes with Amazon um what these Founders will tell you is that actually starting their businesses in such an uncertain macroeconomic environment has made them incredibly lean disciplined and ready to go out into the world world and dominate the idea being that if you can make it in Argentina where you know conditions can dramatically change from
one day to the next almost like the weather then you know you can survive damn near anything and that has been one reason why a lot of these companies have had so much success on the global stage I mean I you look around Spanish speaking Latin America and the big Tech Giants the ones that really dominate with some exceptions they tend to be Argentine why is psychoanalysis still so popular
in buenus artist a lot of people it's a very popular question it's not just popular it is according to several studies it is the world's highest per capita rate of um psychoanalysis you know Freud was very big there over the years um and having lived there for four years myself I never um I never saw one but virtually every Argentine friend did and they spoke about it in a way that
was very natural like I I went to the gym this morning and then I went to the supermarket to buy um some bread and after that I went to see my analyst for one and a half hours because we're reconstructing my personality and people would say that with a with a just a in the most natural way as if there was nothing to it why has the Uruguay success story so accelerated recently Uruguay is a
fascinating story Tyler it's a country of just 3.3 million people that I think a lot of people If we're honest with people would struggle to find it on a map um but it is despite its uh small size has been a real success story it was always different in a Latin American context it was it was Latin America's first welfare state 100 years ago but and so you know I've been a big
proponent of the ugu story I wrote a an article about it for America's quarterly more than a year ago and and a lot of people dismissed it and said oh well you know Uruguay it's so small and it's always been so wealthy that it's not really an example for the rest of the region but that's not true um 20 years ago when Argentina's economy melted down the last time it had a huge contagion
effect on Uruguay and poverty in Uruguay was actually 50% this was a country that was just flat on its back and um today that percentage is in the low double digits it's uh it's around 10% and there's back to this discussion we were having about crime and security there was no Silver Bullet what happened was they came out of that crisis 20 years ago and they realized that there were certain things that needed to be
done they needed a consensus around fiscal management around sound management of the economy they needed to bring better regulations to their Banks and sadly but probably correctly They concluded that they needed to reduce their dependence on their neighbors that they needed to depend less mainly on Argentina and diversify they're still undergoing that process today it's
interesting this is a country that has been knocking on furiously on the door of the White House for several years now trying to do a trade deal um with the US uh met with for the most part unreceptive um ears uh in in in Washington but they are that's what they're trying to do it's a solid democracy it does better than the United States and some of these rankings of solid democracies uh that get put
together by The Economist intelligence unit and others and um and the beaches are beautiful too so you know one day when I have to go fleeing to Exile because of something I've said or done uh Uruguay is definitely on the top of my list let's say you're 30-year-old couple husband and wife you have two kids you all speak Spanish or Portuguese and you have to relocate somewhere in Latin America which city do you
choose maybe not permanent but ongoing you know not six months five or 10 years gosh what a what a what a great question Tyler um you know I think in terms of the best combination of Economic Opportunity relative safety integration with the world the possibility of upward Mobility I would say sa Paulo I really would despite everything that we were saying earlier about the security risks
the crime um that is with with Mexico City those are the two truly International cities in Latin America um there are other places that are great hubs I mean I love buenos Iris uh Santiago is also in Chile is it has great quality of life but if you're a citizen of the world if you're trying to do business the issue that Argentina and Chile have is that they're far you know the these are this is
really you know they're they're at the very extreme end of the continent salth Pao is a bit more Central and it's also a place Brazil r large but sal sal Pao specifically where it's very easy to integrate yourself into local Society I speak Portuguese but with an accent it is the only place in Latin America where I can go to the Corner Bakery and order my favorite juice which is a sukul Jim
which is a papaya with orange juice that identifies me right away as a gringo uh those vowels that I just said every Brazilian will hear them and say this guy is not from here but I never felt um I never felt like a foreigner in sou Paulo in part because it has that tradition of people from all over the world and also all over the country keeping in mind that Brazil is is a country that's even bigger than the
continental United States so if you balance all those things I I I would choose I would choose salpo I like saalo but doesn't it worry you or I find almost all of the city ugly it's so ugly yes and I and that would get that that would get on my nerves I'm tempted to say Panama City for myself well the name of the book that I'm working on about sa Paulo right now that I mentioned earlier you'll
appreciate then is the title is the ugliest city you'll ever love and it it goes through this whole uh Arc that I just spoke about and and says why even though it is a place that sometimes seems to be chasing away visitors you come out of the international airport in South Paulo and you immediately pass not one but two high security prisons uh and a sewage treatment plant and then you
spend the next 30 minutes driving along uh an extremely polluted river which is the the the hi um and it doesn't um not everybody falls in love with it right away but it is there is so much um there's such a great Vibe it's you feel so welcome there as a foreigner and if you like this may sound strange but if you like work and I like work salth Pao is a great place to be as well it's a place
where people take pride in what they do without being being totally consumed by it it's a it is still Brazil and so people also know how to party and have a good time I take it you agree with the standard view that most Latin American countries are fairly happy relative to their income levels that has been borne out by surveys again and again uh it goes back to what I was saying earlier about these
people who sometimes endure great hardship um and are there exceptions to that I think there are a few exceptions tell me what what are the exceptions I don't think Guatemala is very happy and I think significant parts of Bolivia are not so happy again this is relative to income levels yeah these are country you're naming two of the poorest countries in the region and I do think that there's a
point where and this is something else that has been outside of these happiness surveys that we always see which I always find funny the notion that uh you know the scandin the countries of Scandinavia are the happiest in the world maybe maybe so um but you know look as someone who spent 10 years of my life living in Latin America as a reporter and continues to follow the
region as part of my job um just speaking for myself there's there's several reasons why I do this I'm very interested in the question of why Nations fail or succeed um but I also I love these places I love these countries I love the happiness uh the sense of humor the value that people place upon family and friends uh and it's tough sometimes because from my day job I Live Now in New York and I engage
with the region so often now through a purely political lens sometimes it feels like exactly the wrong lens to be engaging with the region when during the pandemic in particular when I was uh still writing about politics day-to-day but stuck here in New York it was really tough because I had to keep reminding myself there is so much more to these places than just the dysfunctional politics and
um now that I'm able to travel again I I I see that every time I go do you still read fiction from Latin America I to be honest with you I the truth is not as much as I should and not as much as I used to I maybe some of that is age and some of it is also the need to try to keep up with a extremely VAR region um of almost 600 million people from New York I mean look I'm in Latin America all the time um I travel you
know several weeks months out of the year but that challenge of trying to keep a finger on the pulse means that unfortunately I I have not read books like um torto aru uh which is winning all kinds of that's a Brazilian book that is winning all kinds of prizes on International circuits right now most of your time you spend writing editing commissioning articles assuming
you're not in Latin America what what is your day I still have the habits of a Old Wire reporter Tyler I'm 46 years old but I started my career very young in Argentina um I was 22 years old my first job was covering the economic collapse of Argentina in 2001 and 2002 that was a period that saw five presidents in two weeks a default on the sovereign debt a 70% currency devaluation uh it was a baptism by fire
and it was really what showed me the importance of politics and of policy and in some respects that experience has never left me something else that has not left me is that need to begin my day by obsessively reading uh newspapers in uh in Argentina in Brazil Colombia Chile those are the countries that I follow most closely it's impossible to follow all of them uh and then I you know then
I make my way to my work uh next to you know the the the miserable looking commuters who I I mentioned earlier and um and we sit here in our office here on Park Avenue and and do our best to try to make sense of of what's happening in this region and you know Focus not only on the challenges but but talk about some of the successes as well what's the hardest thing to teach your writers
humility circumstances have changed so much uh since I started doing this I have to say with a certain degree of embarrassment that it's partly a function of you know what's happened in world history over the last 25 years since I started doing this Anglo American correspondents in Latin America 25 years ago wrote with this certitude this this certainty that that these countries needed to learn from the
example of the United States Andor England I worked for Reuters for many years and not everybody was like that of course but that was a kind of prevailing View and you know keep in mind we were coming out of the 1990s which was the peak of the uh postc Cold War period and the end of history and Washington consensus and everything like that but everything that's happened over the last
several years um from the Great Recession of 2008 to things like the Iraq War the problems that the US has had in our own democracy um in that time have really I think in impacted the way that journalists everywhere write about everything I would hope but specifically um Latin America which used to be treated you still see shades of it every now and then with a kind of finger
wagging paternalism that not only turns people off in the region there's there's no quicker way to shut Latin American readers off than when they sense that happening but it's also you know I think it's important for us to know that recognize that that all of our countries are are imperfect um and facing some of the same challenges uh in terms of democratic erosion Rising inequality um addiction to drugs and all
the effects that that has on organized crime we're much less different um from people in this part of the world than many of us believed uh 20 25 years ago speaking of humility is Malay going to succeed or fail I wish I knew Tyler I he's such a fascinating story and um you know I think that Javier mle has the right ideas uh he he understands that the essence of Argentina's problem is fiscal
that it's a country that spends more than it earns it has for decades and it's part of this whole story of decline where you know it's a country that where the accounts are always a little bit out of balance or sometimes a lot out of balance it has over the years financed that Gap through uh one of two mechanisms either by borrowing um but then when these sources of financing run
out as they periodically do they print money and that's the reason that they have one of the world's highest inflation rates right now upward of 270% so you know mle understands the nature of problem I think his diagnosis is correct most mainstream economists agree with that the problem is and there's several problems one of them is to bring things back into balance under democracy is something that only a few
countries have been able to do um well Brazil has done it right Brazil has done it uh Brazil passed the real plan back in the 1990s under democracy and they managed to bring inflation under control but you look at the economic stabilization uh programs elsewhere in Latin America uh the one that Mexico had in the 80s and 90s of course that was still During the period of one party
rule in Mexico it was not exactly it was not a dictatorship but it was certainly not a democracy and then the you know the the stabilization program that we saw in Chile uh in the 1980s the first part of that happened under dictatorship Alo the second part happened under democracy in the 1990s Peru similarly Fuji Moi closed the Congress in the 90s anyway um Argentina has to Argentine democracy is very strong
and so mle has to operate within that system that's a good thing um can he do it does he have the temperament to do it does he have the political support these are questions that all of us including 45 million argentines are asking ourselves every day uh and it's in many ways unprecedented and um I'm rooting for Argentina because I there would be nothing better and more gratifying for
me given what I lived through 25 years ago than to see that country succeed why Chileans use so many bad Dairy sauces on their Seafood surely this has occurred to you um you know what really what I admire about the Chileans is how they put guacamole on everything the I'm trying to think the dairy sauces on the seafood I'm I'm explain so often I I'll be in a Chilean City I'll go to a nice restaurant it's
never what I order but there'll be some amazing fish dish where the quality of the natural ingredients is high and there'll be some kind of cream based Dairy sauce on it which ruins it now you can order something else I like the food in Chile quite a bit often the Peruvian restaurants say in Santiago are though better than the Chilean restaurants or you might get something like Canto you
know in the the Town Market just because it's different and there's not going to be a dairy sauce on it I I think Tyler what we need to do is go on a culinary tour I will order for you and make sure you don't get any of that Dam sauce on your seab bass how's that that's that's very good A lot of the best food I've had in Chile it will just be like avocado or strawberries or the eggs are
amazing it's the best mashed potatoes I've eaten anywhere but there are just these odd mistakes that appear random but they're also systematic well Argentina might be the place for you because that is they are just averse this has evolved a little bit over the years but they're they're so averse to sauce and specifically spice I had Argentine friends when I lived there who believed that ranch dressing was too
spicy and they they they have a point they say you know why would you want to take away the actual Taste of the food why is there so much more noi in Argentina than say anywhere in Italy why is it noi that's been transferred you know there's a long tradition around nooki which is that people people ate it on the I believe it was the 29th of the month I think I think that's right because uh traditionally uh in part
because of this history of inflation uh it was hard by the time you got to the end of the month you didn't have much money left to feed yourself or your family and so on that day of the month you went out and bought noi uh and that term is also used nois to describe um people who are on government payrolls but don't actually do anything and they're called that because the only day
of the month that they show up to be on the job is at the end of the month when they're going to get paid little stories like that that tell you a little bit about the political and gastronomical culture of a place very last question where in Latin America do you wish to explore and learn about next I Tyler there is a Omission for me which is indigenous culture I have and it's
partly a function of the places where I've lived buenos Ires Sal Pao these are not Mexico City even this is a little bit different but these are cities that uh especially the first two that are not deeply in touch with indigenous culture and we are learning so much even today about the wealth and intellectual uh depth of some of these civilizations that lived in the Amazon you know there was this long-standing
view that uh the that Brazil in particular was empty when the Portuguese landed there in the in 1500 and yes there were some indigenous people uh but it was not like the civilizations that the Spanish found in Peru and Mexico the you know the Incas the Aztecs the Mayas that there was no real equivalent in Brazil and we're now finding out that that was not the case that there were
perhaps as many as six million people um at the time of Conquest in the Amazon and so I that for me in in a region that has so much depth so many different cultural strands that you can tap into that is one that is obvious in some ways but that I I I'm stimulated and excited by the fact that we continue to discover new things Ryan Winter thank you very much thank you Tyler it's been a real pleasure