Tag Archives: latin america

in english

The RBD phenomenon

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There is a pop band that is famous all over the American continent.  It has filled venues in Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Colombia and Mexico.

Their name is RBD, and they're a marketing offshoot of a very popular opera by Televisa, "Rebelde".

Their music is rather plastic (as is the "band"), but they are a money-making machine.  They have been involved in a series of scandals, such as when 3 people died in an autograph-signing session in Sao Paulo in 2005, and when one of their singers confessed to being gay a few months ago.

Why do I talk about them, if their music (and the overall concept) seems to me rather bad?  Because, firstly, I believe they're a perfect example of the power of telenovelas and the marketing around them as a mostly Latin American phenomenon with an expanding reach.  Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised they would cross-over to the English-language worldwide market, as was the case with Shakira and Ricky Martin.

in english

When will Latin American governments get it?

As said in some of my previous posts, I was at the Creativity World Forum in Ghent this week and I was really surprised by one thing, but let’s start from the beginning.

The event itself was organised by the self-proclaimed Districts of Creativity, an association of what I can only term regions-state borrowing from Kenichi Ohmae’s term. These districts of creativity include Flanders (Belgium), Qingdao (China), Shanghai (China), Lombardy (Italy), Nord-Pas de Calais (France), Karnataka (India), Maryland (USA), Baden-Württemberg (Germany), Rhône-Alps (France), Catalonia (Spain), Scotland (UK) and Québec (Canada).

I was at the Karnataka booth (Bangalore, the IT capital of India is in this state) and I was pleasantly surprised by the attitude of the government representatives there. Regardless of the fact that I am a student and I don’t have anything to bring to their country they really explained to me what are they all about and invited me to come. I couldn’t help but contrast it with the attitude prevalent in most of Latin America that Foreign Direct Investment is the devil and we are so much better without it, and how the Indians really try to attract as much as they can but not only stay at the lower end of, in this case, software production, but keep on repeating their matra of “moving up the value chain” (no pun intended).

When will our governments start doing that?

en español

Constitución de Cádiz

Juro que no sé por qué siempre que hablo con algún amigo catalán o valenciano que conozca un poco de historia siempre terminamos hablando sobre la Constitución de Cádiz. Ésta fue la primera constitución liberal en el reino español, la cual reconocía “Las Españas” como partes integrales del reino, ya estuvieran éstas en la península o en ultramar. ¿Por qué es esto importante? Porque algunos historiadores piensan que si la constitución de Cádiz no hubiera sido prohibida por Fernando VII, las colonias americanas no se habrían independizado (p.ej. algo que muchos mexicanos no saben es que la guerra de independencia de México empezó como una protesta contar el rey, no contra España), y sin forzar demasiado la imagiación se puede llegar a pensar que viviríamos en una especie de confederación, en lugar de ser el cúmulo de países descoyuntados que somos. No sé si sea plausible dado un entorno histórico que contiene tanto la revolución francesa como la estadounidense ni tampoco si estuviéramos mejor o peor, pero es interesante pensarlo.

in english

Geography of the Americas for the uninitiated

I’ve stumbled with this issue so many times that I decided to post about it.

Highlights:

*America doesn’t necessarily mean the United States (even though in English it usually does).
*Mexico is not part of South nor Central America but North America. It is, however, part of Latin America. Latin America is a cultural subdivision rather than purely geographical.
*Mesoamerica and Central America are not the same thing.
*The continent (or continents) is very, very big. Even “smaller” countries such as Colombia or Ecuador are larger than most European countries. Flying from Mexico City to Sao Paulo is like flying from Mexico City to Frankfurt.

en español, in english

Rock en Español

Taken from Wikipedia:

“Spanish language rock and roll (Spanish: Rock en Español) borrows heavily from American, British, Irish, and Australian rock and roll music and from traditional and popular music of Spanish-speaking cultures (cumbia, ranchera, rumba, tango, etc) and has evolved from a cult-like music movement to a more well established music genre. Today, rock en español includes bands from all over Latin America (with especially strong rock scenes in Mexico and Argentina), France, Spain, and the United States.”

During the next few posts I’ll try to give an introduction to Rock en Español for the uninitiated.