[sergiomattei]

I wouldn't say there isn't admiration, at least where I grew up.

It's just a general lack of role models. It's not often massive, inspiring companies emerge from Latin American countries.

Entrepreneurship is really hard in LatAm: bureaucracy, lack of venture capital, grounded business thinking (investors down here are likelier to invest in more grounded, less technological companies over bigger moonshots).

We just have no frame of reference to dream big. Add to that the fact that most LatAm countries are exceedingly poor, there isn't much room to take the kind of financial risk entrepreneurship entails.

There is hope: things are changing. Governments are investing in startup communities and the last decade brought us the first Latino tech unicorns. But we're a long way to go still.

TLDR: LatAm is generally poor, risk-averse due to culture and has problems generating the feel-good success stories first-world countries mass produce.