Alvaro Vargas Llosa: There was never a real free market reform in Latin America. There was only partial free market reform, if at all. And I think the important thing to do now is to explain to people why privatizing state companies by way of just giving out monopolies to privileged entrepreneurs and business people has nothing to do with free markets.... http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/900/921.html Here's an interesting interview on Latin American politics and economics. You can read it or watch the video clip.
I found this interesting: Latin America Should Follow Botswana's Lead By Andres Oppenheimer A new international ranking showing historically poor Botswana ahead of such middle-income countries as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina makes me wonder whether Latin American countries are focusing on the wrong issue. They may be worrying too much about free trade and too little about competitiveness. Much of Latin America is debating whether to sign a 34-country Free Trade Area of the Americas with the United States or similar deals with the European Union. Such agreements could increase the region's exports and encourage investments from companies eager to ship their goods duty-free from there to the world's biggest markets. While the discussion goes on, few are realizing that Latin America is falling farther behind in the world's rankings of the most attractive countries to invest in. We may reach a point where Latin American countries may gain duty-free access to the U.S. market but won't be able to compete with Eastern European, Asian and African countries. Consider the international competitiveness ranking released by the World Economic Forum last week, based on a poll of 8,700 business leaders in dozens of countries. The ranking is based, among other things, on respondents' perceptions about countries' economic environment and the quality of their institutions. When asked to name the most attractive countries to invest in, business leaders put Latin America -- with the sole exception of Chile -- near the bottom of the list. BRINGING UP THE REAR The 104-nation ranking is led by Finland, followed by the United States and Sweden. From then -- except for Chile, which is ranked 22nd -- you see a long list of mostly European and Asian countries, with no Latin American nation in sight. Estonia, Israel, Slovenia, Jordan, Lithuania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Africa, Tunisia, Latvia and Botswana are all ranked above such Latin American middle-income countries as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Mexico, despite enjoying the fabulous advantage of being next door to the largest market in the world, is ranked 48th, Brazil 57th and Argentina 74th, just one place ahead of Gambia. Even farther behind are Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. A separate survey on the Most Attractive Foreign Investment Destinations released last week by the AT Kearney international consulting firm shows that Latin American countries are near the bottom of the study's 25-country list. The ranking, based on responses by 1,000 executives, is led by China, the United States and India. Brazil and Mexico have fallen to the 17th and 22nd places, respectively, from their placements among the top 10 countries last year. ''Unfulfilled reforms in key areas such as telecommunications, infrastructure and energy . . . have led global investors to rethink Mexico,'' the study said. What is Botswana doing that Latin American countries have failed to do? According to international economists, Botswana has had one of the world's highest growth rates since independence in 1966. Its fiscal discipline and sound management have helped Botswana rise from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country with a per capita income of about $8,000 last year. That's more than Brazil's per capita income and nearly the same as Mexico's. STABILITY MATTERS Botswana's secret: It has not made sharp political U-turns or changed the rules of the game for domestic and foreign investors. The absence of uncertainty encourages investment. When I called Augusto Lopez-Claros, the WEF's chief economist, to ask whether there was a mistake in the ranking of Botswana, Tunisia and most Eastern European countries ahead of Latin America's biggest economies, he stood firmly by his study's findings. Lopez-Claros said that in his survey the business community in Botswana complained much less than those of Mexico, Brazil or Argentina about such issues as the quality of public institutions, the evenhandedness of the government in its dealings with private firms or the incidence of crime in the cost of doing business. In other words, Botswana is offering a better business climate than all Latin American countries, except Chile. My conclusion: Perhaps Latin America shouldn't only think about whether to get preferential access to the U.S. and European markets, but also about how to create the right conditions to attract domestic and foreign investments. Otherwise, free-trade deals won't be of much use. http://www.hacer.org/current/LATAM55.php
Who exactly doesn't want Free trade in Latin America? And what alternatives have they found that will develop their economies?
Nationalisation of industry, and educating the poor and making life better for working people seems to have worked well in venezuala
This guy makes good point about why golbalisation is so bad Are You Paying to Burn the Rainforest? Filed under: * farming * environment If you’re buying Brazilian beef, the answer is yes By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 18th October 2005 For the past five years I have been at war with Farmers for Action. These are the neanderthals who have held up the traffic and blockaded the refineries in the hope of persuading the government to reduce the price of fuel. It doesn’t matter how often you explain that cheap fuel, which allows the supermarkets to buy from wherever the price of meat or grain is lowest, has destroyed British farming. They will stand in front of the cameras and make us watch as they cut their own throats. But through gritted teeth I must admit that they have got something right. In January the caveman-in-chief, David Handley, warned that foot and mouth disease had not been eliminated from Brazil, and that imports of meat from that country risked bringing it back to Britain(1). The buyers brushed his warning aside. In the first half of this year, beef imports from Brazil to the UK rose by 70%, to 34,000 tonnes(2). Last week an outbreak was confirmed in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. You would, of course, expect British producers to throw as much mud as they can at cheap imports. You would expect them to question their competitors’ hygiene standards and social and environmental impacts, and Mr Handley has done all of these things. But, to my intense annoyance, he is on every count correct. Unlike him, I do not believe that British beef farmers have a God-given right to stay in business. We shouldn’t be eating beef at all. Because the conversion efficiency of feed to meat is so low in cattle, there is no more wasteful kind of food production. British beef producers would be extinct were it not for subsidies and European tariffs. Brazilian meat threatens them only because it is so cheap that it can outcompete theirs even after trade taxes have been paid. But if it’s unethical to eat British beef, it’s 100 times worse to eat Brazilian. Until 1990, Brazil produced only enough beef to feed itself. Since then its cattle herd has grown by some 50 million, and the country has become, according to some estimates, the world’s biggest exporter: it now sells 1.9 million tonnes a year(3). The United Kingdom is its fourth largest customer, after Russia, Egypt and Chile(4). One region is responsible for 80% of the growth in Brazilian beef production. It’s the Amazon(5). The last three years have been the most destructive in the Brazilian Amazon’s history. In 2004, 26,000 square kilometres of rainforest were burnt: the second highest rate on record(6). This year could be worse. And most of it is driven by cattle ranching. According to the Center for International Forestry Research, cattle pasture accounts for six times more cleared land in the Amazon than cropland: even the notorious soya farmers, who have ploughed some five million hectares of former rainforest, cover just one tenth of the ground taken by the beef producers(7). The four Amazon states in which the most beef is produced are the four with the highest deforestation rates. Cattle ranching, if it keeps expanding in the Amazon, threatens two-fifths of the world’s remaining rainforest. This is not just the most diverse ecosystem, but also the biggest reserve of standing carbon. Its clearance could provoke a hydrological disaster in South America, as rainfall is reduced as the trees come down. Next time you see footage of the forest burning, remember that you might have paid for it. Many Brazilians, especially those whose land is being grabbed by the cattlemen, are trying to stop the destruction. The ranchers have an effective argument: when people complain, they kill them. In February we heard an echo of the massacre which has so far claimed 1200 lives(8), when the American nun Dorothy Stang was murdered – almost certainly by beef producers. The ranchers believed to have killed her were, like cattlemen throughout the Amazon, protected by the police(9). For the same reason, and despite the best efforts of President Lula, the ranchers are now employing some 25,000 slaves on their estates(10). These are people who are transported thousands of miles from their home states, then – forced to buy their provisions from the ranch shop at inflated prices – kept in permanent debt. Because of the expansion of beef production in the Amazon, slavery in Brazil has quintupled in ten years(11). So a government which – despite its best efforts – has failed to stop slavery, murder and environmental catastrophe, expects us to believe that its farm hygiene standards are as rigorously enforced as those of any other nation. Anyone who has worked in the Amazon knows that there is no certificate which cannot be bought, and few local officials who aren’t working for the people they are meant to regulate. If foot and mouth disease is endemic in the Brazilian Amazon – most of which is now registered by the government as “safe” – the ministers in Brasilia will be the last to know. When the disease last hit the UK, in February 2001, it was blamed by the British government on meat imported by Chinese restaurants. But in April of that year, we discovered that the farm on which the outbreak started, at Heddon-on-the-Wall in Northumberland, had been taking slops for its pigs from the Whitburn army training camp near Sunderland(12). The army had been importing some of its beef from Brazil and Uruguay, two of the strongholds of the type O strain which infected our herds. The ministry of defence insisted that it came from “disease-free regions” of South America. One of them was Mato Grosso do Sul, the state in which foot and mouth has just erupted. So who, in this country, has been buying it? Tesco says that “well over 90%” of its beef comes from the UK. It has stopped buying Brazilian since the outbreak last week, but can’t tell me how much it bought before then, because that’s “commercially sensitive”(13). I went round one of its stores and found that all the fresh beef was labelled “British” in big red letters. But six of its own-brand processed meals (generally the cheaper kinds) contained “South American beef”, three contained “South American/EU beef” and one just “beef”. Most of the brands supplied by other companies contained only “beef”(14). Sainsbury’s admitted to buying 5% from Brazil until the disease was reported(15). The man from Asda told me his chain bought “less than 2%” of its beef from Brazil this summer and nothing since(16). The main market, he claimed, is restaurants and pub chains. I tried Mcdonalds and Burger king: they both say they don’t buy from Brazil. So does the pub company Wetherspoons. Punch Taverns doesn’t buy food, but its tenants are supplied by catering companies such as Brake Brothers. Brake Brothers admits to buying Brazilian beef, but the volume is, again, “competitively sensitive”(17). This doesn’t necessarily mean that any of these firms have been buying beef from the Amazon: but buying beef from elsewhere in Brazil creates a hole in the domestic market, which will be filled by the growing production in the rainforest. So, given that we’re importing tens of thousands of tonnes a year, where has it gone? Where’s the beef? Perhaps the Guardian’s readers could help me locate it. Unlike other meat, fresh beef’s country of origin must – because of BSE - be printed on the packet. So, with a little detective work in shops and supermarkets and round the back of pubs, schools, hospitals and barracks, it shouldn’t be too hard to trace. Once you’ve found it, I suggest you back away. www.monbiot.com
" New buildings, new cars and new shopping centers provide ample evidence that, for the wealthy at least, Chile's new economic system is a resounding success. There's also evidence of a new middle class. Central planning and government-owned industries are out. Instead, it's privatization that's brought prosperity, and, as a result, virtually every developing country in the world, except North Korea and Cuba, has adopted at least some variation of Chile's free market economic model. Has Chile found the answer? Last month, the leaders of all 34 Western Hemisphere nations, except Cuba, met in Santiago to pay tribute to the Chilean model and to reaffirm their commitment to free trade and free markets throughout the hemisphere..." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/lati...chile_5-26.html " In Latin America only Chile has managed to cut extreme poverty by half..." http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=6014
there are indigenous people, tapistas, in the rainforest, selva lacondona...they are resisting globalisation...its not a case..oof simply being good for the economy and growth of a country...they do not wish to be a part of hypocrisy and greed. this is the thing sabout america [an corporations] they assume everyone will want to be like them...and if they dont, then they provide the means...or do it themselves,...they get rid of the ones who oppose their ideals...all under the pretence of saying..it was for the poeples benefit..well...no, actually, it was for money, becuase in the process they kill indigenous people...and destroy the rainforest...which actually, destroys the planet, in turn, will destroy human life..so yeah... 'for the people' WHAT. EVER.
I hear that indigenous people are the poorest in Latin-America. What do they want to see happen to reduce their poverty?
they would like some HELP.... things that they NEED to atsrt creating their own way of life...but they donspecifically dont want to sell out... theyve fought for their freedom for too long to be slaves to america... its not too much that they just ask the world to help them to their feet, without having to be owned.
No matter what government is imposed it will indeed change the peoples beliefs somewhat. However, buddhists don't care who controls them, and it's because the afterlife is so, so much better.
Well that's all very nice but most people actually do care about the here and now. Venezuela is apving the way in latin america, as the protsetss at ftaa showed, the woking class in latin america wants socialism not free trade. The socialists are poised to come to power in nicaragua, mexico and bolivia.
