Quote 34 from "The Other Path"
In The Other Path DeSoto describes the prejudices of the left and righ in Peru:
The romanticism of the left wing makes it generally praise and even venerate ordinary people, provided that they confine themselves to a strictly dependent role and possess neither ideas nor the ability to organize with others. It sees such people as passive objects in need of assistance programs similar to those required by the disabled and unemployed. It is as though left-wingers appreciate workers only when they lack the ability to get ahead on their own. This attitude is little different from the paternalism of right-wingers, who also sympathize with people of popular extraction as long as they confine their activities to loyal servitude, handicrafts, or folklore, but reject them as soon as they open their own businesses and charge for their services, negotiating their prices according to the dictates of the market. Then, the reaction is to say that their prices are “exorbitant” and that the enterprising worker is a “thief” or “rascal.” Both right- and left-wingers acknowledge the right of mestizos from the high plateaus to live among us only as long as they need us to organize or employ them. [pp. 242-243]
This sounds like the way the Democrats and Republicans treat poor minorities in the U.S.
