The problem is that, historically, intellectuals in the Spanish-speaking world love excluding average people from participation.

So the most interesting discussions happen in closed circles not in the open.

It is a shitty way of building a society that has its roots in colonial times.

I' am Spaniard and you are half right. We aren't in Franco times. And, no, most right or left wing journalists and writers are not "interesting discussions". Maybe themselves think they are interesting, but no, not even close. All of them are really mediocre, no matter which side you choose. On proper people from an academic mindset:

- La pizarra de Yuri

- Naukas

- La Aldea Irreductible

These have been since ~y2k or close.

The newer ones came from http://cienciaes.com

Avoid political/philosophical discussions with people from Liberal Arts. They are full of ego's.

Also the fact that the Spanish Empire did not see themselves as an empire of intellectuals set on a mission to expand the frontiers of knowledge.

They were about wealth extraction and draining others as fast and unsustainably as possible.

The movements of independence had their origin in Masonic lodges. University founders were either part of the Roman Catholic church, jesuits or masons. All of them known to exclude people for different reasons.

If you were a brilliant woman you would be excluded by masons.

If you were a brilliant person but did not have your sacraments or you were an illegimate child then a Roman Catholic university would likely tell you to go somewhere else. In fact, it is likely that if you died you could not even get a marked grave in a cemetery.

So if you were not wealthy, ethnically european, male or connected to the church or masons then the chances you would be someone in life, and part of the historic record, let alone an intellectual with published works were shit.

And if you somehow surpassed all those barriers and published something then who would buy it? nobody. Because haciendas paid with food, nobody except the Patron would know how to read and the entire continent was all haciendas with indentured servitude until land reforms changed that.

The elites that govern Latin America are not necessarily more altruistic than conquistadors. The difference is closer to Pepsi and Coca-Cola, a bunch of aggrandized cowards that exploit, marginalize people and spend all their day devising new ways to implement structural violence.

Fast forward to 2023, the generation that could make a difference is wasting their time playing Minecraft and Fortnite, or making a stupid TikTok video in their Huawei phones. That is more comforting than getting stabbed in the street.

So yeah, Spanish-speaking Internet is a reflection of that legacy and it is in many cases a sewer of the mind. It is getting better, and there is hope, but we have to say it.

Read about the 1st and 2nd Spanish republics, and the Constitution of Cádiz. The closest we would ever been to the French. Even further, with the 2nd republic, revolutionary and avant garde for its day (1931).

The old-Regime lovers screwed up with the Spanish people against the classical liberal constitution with Ferndinand VII, the biggest turd ever before Franco.

> Avoid political/philosophical discussions with people from Liberal Arts. They are full of ego's.

This isn't exclusively true of the Spanish speaking world though. The more I see the people of my generation who have achieved prominence in the academic humanities, the more I've concluded the main qualification is ego, tribalism, being a controversialist and titanium self-confidence in your genius. Actual intellegence or intellectual rigour is a handicap.