From: delval@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Alvaro del Val)
Subject: Re: RFD: soc.culture.latin-america.soc.culture.latin-america
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 22:33:58 GMT

In article <jabba.714088011@deathstar> jabba@deathstar.Stanford.EDU (Richard Charles Graves) writes:
>
[...]
>I think the best thing for everyone would be to create a
>talk.politics.latin-america, which would take much of the
>new influx of posts and allow s.c.la to return to its
>charter.  t.p.la would be for news, comment, and discussion
>of political issues relevant to Latin America.  Unlike
>s.c.la, t.p.la would have as one of its primary goals the
>discussion of political economy and U.S. foreign policy in
>the region.  I would expect that most ips posts would go in
>the new group.
>

[...]

>To clarify what I see as the difference between the groups,
>I went to the trouble of making a table:
>
>soc.culture.latin-america      talk.politics.latin-america
>------------------------------------------------------------
>audience is primarily latin    primarily u.s. audience
>americans and                  interested because they
>hispanics/latinos interested   care about U.S. policy; also
>in their country of origin,    europeans and latin
>plus americans/europeans       americans interested in this
>interested in this point of    point of view
>view
>
>articles about Latin American  <no equivalent>
>society, culture, religion,
>language, literature, etc,
>written primarily by and
>primarily for latin americans
>
>social posts, some polemics    polemics
>
>avoid third-person narratives  third-person narratives and
>and news articles about latin  news articles about latin
>america                        america
>
>discussion of Latin American   discussion of U.S. and
>policy towards the U.S. and    European policy towards
>Europe                         Latin America
>
>how latin americans see        how americans and europeans
>themselves and the world       see latin america
>
>spanish and english            english
>
><no equivalent>                general issues of U.S.
>                               foreign policy or
>                               theoretical issues which
>                               may in some way affect
>                               Latin America
>------------------------------------------------------------

>
>--
>| rich graves, stanfd res affairs mac tech, and occasional senior, poli sci |
>| jabba@deathstar.stanford.edu     88C Escondido Village     (415) 497-1573 |

Though I generally agree that a split between sc.la and t.p.la is a
good idea, if only because the amount of posts from IPS has quickly
become somewhat overwhelming, I think you are defining both groups too
narrowly. In a nutshell, I think that everything related to LA
politics can fit in t.p.la, not just US policy towards LA. Given this,
your comments about the intended audience and posters are out of
place: anybody interested in LA politics will read and post to the
group, obviously. You seem to want to make the split along "how
latinamericans see themselves" vs.  "how others see Latin America"
lines, and oddly enough, politics is supposed to be restricted to the
"how others see Latin America" group, which surely makes no sense.
Finally, spanish, portuguese and english should be the languages for
*both* groups. Because of the IPS posts, english *might* turn out to
be the dominant language in tp.la, but the group's charter should
certainly not include a restriction to english.  As for
soc.culture.latin-america, I would simply define it as "anything which
doesn't fit in t.p.la."

Alvaro