Review on the film: Garden of Forking Paths: Dilemmas of National Development.
This video exposes various issues on the modern-era development of the countries, politics and economies of Latin America. The main focus of the video is on the Latin American country of Argentina. It explores this nation's quest to become a developed nation as it retells the story of its many political and economic struggles through history. It makes the viewer travel along the road of important Argentinean events through the years, such as the Peronist rule and eventual coup d"etat, the "Dirty War" years, the period of military dictatorship, the Falkland war, and more recent 20th century history.
The video probes to be very useful when trying to understand the reasons behind an Argentinean economy that used to be on the brink of a serious economic depression during the mid 1970s and which now booms as the leader of a more progressive Latin American economy. It does this by exploring the period of time in which Peron ruled an economically unstable country, which was made even more unstable during the military coup and "Dirty War" years, and explaining Argentina's road from this instability to development beginning approximately by the time Alfonsin came to power.
The film explores well the transition from the military junta to a democratic system, exposing both the short term and long term reasons for the failure of the empowered military. For example, the Junta's failure to properly address the economic problems of the country, the widespread human right violations during their period in power, and ultimately their failure in the Falkland Island battle campaign.
Also useful of this film is the fact that it explains well how the Argentinean nation was able to combat the economic crisis, by explaining how the government embarked on a path of trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization all enhanced and enabled by a newly restored democracy in the early 1980's.
