The same stories are told in Mexico and Brazil about "imperial" vocations that were thought to exist at the time of birth, stories about a promising future squandered in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and so on. Today, those same iconic buildings are surrounded and occasionally occupied by cartoneros struggling to make ends meet daily. Argentina created the first jet plane in Latin America and the ninth in the world in 1947. At the time, its buildings were the best in the region, and Europe didn't have much to offer. When you walk around Buenos Aires, you can see that there was a time when the city thought of itself as an example of global development. Looking at all Latin American countries, from Colombia's to Brazil's new left governments, is like looking at different rooms in the already battered Titanic. My parents are business owners and excellent financial managers, but they, like many experts, failed to predict the Ecuador 99 crisis. This, sadly, mirrors what is occurring throughout Latin America. This shortened version of the story shows how Ecuador's government has been bad at running its economy for decades, if not centuries, and how it won't lead to prosperity. Ecuador's Sucre died that year, taking hundreds of thousands of small businesses and all entrepreneurs' and investors' savings, including my parents' savings. A political and economic crisis caused most commercial banks to go bankrupt, and 25,000 Ecuadorian coins (called sucres) were worth one dollar. It was an Ocho Escudos, which were issued in Ecuador between 18 and were worth $16 at the time (about $500 today) (a single coin).īy 1999, things had gotten much worse. sees me a whale with a white head, a wrinkled forehead, and a twisted jaw, will have this ounce of gold." The captain spoke as he inserted the colorful coin. The Captain of the ship in the novel Moby Dick, obsessed with hunting the mythical whale, sticks a very valuable gold coin in the ship's mast and declares, "Whoever.
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