After watching the documentary Our Brand is Crisis, it becomes more and more obvious how Americans constantly interfere with economics and politics in South America. What is even more clear is how this interference is usually beneficial for the United States, but not so advantageous for the Latin Americans that are being “helped.” It is obvious in the film that the candidate Carville is helping is extremely under qualified, but his team still does whatever they can to get him elected. They are elated when he does end up winning, knowing that they have tricked the country into electing a man who does not deserve this job title. This kind of corruption can be seen in the neoliberalist boom that is described in John Chasteen’s book Born in Blood & Fire. The United States is willing to come to the so called aid of Latin America when they know that it will benefit themselves. However, Chasteen outlines many crises happening in these countries that Americans will not lift a finger to help, including extreme poverty and the deforestation of the rain forest.
America encouraged the ideas of the neoliberalists and their free market economy. This has led to even more widespread poverty, among other serious problems, in Latin America, according to the article, The Slow Death of the Washington Consensus on Latin America” by James Cypher. It seems obvious that these ideas were not revolutionary and would not work just as they had failed in the early twentieth century. As these new implementations are failing in South and Central America, policies like the Washington Consensus, according to Cypher, were telling Americans of the success of all the implementations. This is later seen to be untrue, however it must have convinced many at the time that these were progressive steps that were being taken. One can also see how this benefited the United States with a stock market increase after implementing free trade in Latin America.
Cypher and Chasteen both point out the influence that these types of economies have on the environment, with heavy emphasis put on mining, agriculture, and fishing, among other things. This is not easily reversed and takes massive amounts of money to correct that these countries cannot afford to spare. The election teams that help get these under qualified people into office are partly to blame for financial crises like the ones in Latin America that take years and years to dig out of. Americans must realize what kind of impact that they are having on so many facets of life, politics, economy, and culture when they intrude into Latin America in any way. At least, as Cypher says, the neoliberalism trend is dying out, hopefully making way for a recovery of the South and Central American economies and ways of life.
The answer to fixing the economy of Latin America appears pretty evident to me. Countries can not borrow their way into prosperity. It never works and fails time and time again. Governments are not profitable and these countries must stop depending on the U.S. and international organizations such as the World Bank. They must develop their own markets and produce their own capital. Countries cannot get rich over night and the incredible amount of lending these countries do is only detrimental to their existence. It is also not the job of the United States, any other country, or any organization to make these countries rich. Any human will do what is best for them so demonizing private companies will do no good in the end. I agree we should get out, but for our own self interests. A non interventionist policy will also allow these countries the chance to become prosperous on their own.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. Although it was pretty America bashing I agree that alot of the problem is American interference. I will admit that the readings were difficult for me, a novice economist, to understand. But it was easy to gather that outside intereference in Latin America has caused more harm than good. I like that you point out that Americans campaigned for a candidate simply because they were paid to do so, not beacuse it was best for Bolivia. If America continues to interfere in these ways, Latin America will never be able to stand on its own. Really great including the readings, and it really helped me understand the film better. Good post!
ReplyDeleteI agree that the firm was only there out of their own interest, but of course they were. That's what they were being paid to do! I mean they said that in the beginning they were caught up in Goni and truly believed in him, but seeing as he was more interested in talking than listening it did not take very long to see he was not the best thing for Bolivia. With that being said, firms such as those "trying to help" need to realize that things that work here will not work on a global level, such as in Latin American countries. They cultures are just too different with much different problems.
ReplyDeleteThe american free-trade policies that have been implemented in Latin American countries have been exploitive in nature since the beggining. If we want countries such as this to truly develope non-interventionist strategies must be implemented.
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