Comment by raverbashing
8 hours ago
> There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe
No, not really. Unless you believe the Hollywood view that everything south of the US border has a Sepia filter
Intra-Canada commerce is a PITA in itself
Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries? (Mexico being North America, yes I know)
Yes, yes really. No I don't believe there's some color filter south of the border - that's your baggage/perception of Mexico/Central America.
> Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries?
Did you mean How do I think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the Central American countries? If so I'd say it's nuanced and many people in those countries have their own views and their own various problems to solve, just like folks in France have a different view on immigration than, say, Switzerland, or how Germany and France can't agree on a fighter jet project and are looking at different industrial policies, or how Spain has a lot less interest in Ukraine than Latvia does.
Of course South America is incredibly culturally diverse, but I think it's a lot more homogenous than Europe is not just in terms of policy but culturally too. But hey if you disagree, sure make your case if you'd like. I'm just discussing the topic based on my own perceptions. The EU has something like 27 official languages and an Americas block would likely have 3 or so - that itself is the kind of thing that makes integration a lot easier.
It's amusing to see a European cite the linguistic result of European colonialism (assuming your three languages are Spanish, English, French - or maybe Portuguese) - and the destruction of thousands of spoken languages - as an argument for the cultural homogeneity of North and South America that they are unwilling to apply to their own continent.
I'm not European (not that this matters anyway) - and the three languages I mentioned were Spanish, English, and Portuguese just because those are the primary languages spoken across the hemisphere.
In Europe a lot of people speak English as a second language but by and large many member states speak predominantly more languages - Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Portugal, French in France, Italian in Italy (there's 4 different major language groups right there) and when you add in economy size, prominence on the global stage, geopolitical interests, history, and more it seems to me, in my opinion of course, it's a bit more difficult to wrangle, say, Germany and France together who have collectively killed millions of each others citizens versus, idk, Mexico and Colombia who are certainly distinct and have their own rich national and regional cultures (just like the United States even) but speak the same language and, in my view, get a long a little bit better.
I'm not arguing that there isn't a vibrancy in culture or that these countries are entirely homogenous. I'm arguing it would be easier to wrangle them together in a bloc of sorts than it was to get (and keep) the EU together.
For what it's worth a lot of cultural differences are becoming increasingly (unfortunately) minor differences at best because of globalization and the Internet and other communication technologies.
> and the destruction of thousands of spoken languages
Eh thousands of languages were destroyed by war and destitute and colonialization of various sorts throughout history. I'm not going to put a random assortment of them on a pedestal to get angry about just because they happened to be more recent (400 years ago). But anyway isn't China currently destroying spoken languages in places like Tibet and Xinjiang?
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