-Caveat Lector-
Alamaine spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to
http://www.guardian.co.uk
The ruins Tony Blair should visit
Forget Cancun, globalisation has destroyed the real Latin America
Special report: globalisation
Isabel Hilton
Tuesday August 07 2001
The Guardian
Tony Blair is unlikely to be troubled on the beaches of Cancun in Mexico - where he is
taking a much needed holiday - by any challenge to the vision of global prosperity
that he promoted in his brief tour of Latin America. Cancun is an affluent resort,
much favoured for Latin American summits and well endowed with that combination of
natural beauty and comfortable surroundings that our leaders favour when they gather
to order our lives.
But perhaps the prime minister might notice that the benefits of the economic
liberalisation that most countries in Latin America have pursued over the past 15
years are less evident to those around him than he might hope. In fact, as a senior UN
development programme official put it two years ago: "For the millions of poor, the
slum dwellers, globalisation now has the face of cruelty, of unemployment and
marginalisation..." The distribution of wealth and income in the region is the most
unequal in the world and "the rise in daily criminal violence ... continuing
drug-related problems, as well as the incidence of official corruption [are], in part,
a manifestation of the unequal pattern of development."
It is not a great moment for advocates of globalisation in Latin America. Argentina,
for instance, was until lately a country cited as a fine example: it had a president
who, despite his Peronist label, had implemented the policies of the free market,
pegged the local currency to the dollar, controlled inflation and carried out
wholesale privatisation. Argentina appeared to blossom and bankers and financiers sang
the praises of Carlos Menem from New York to Zurich. Now, though, ex-president Menem
faces criminal charges, Argentina's external debt has reached a staggering £90bn,
unemployment stands at 18% and the country is bankrupt.
In Brazil, things are only slightly better. There, too, the president is a
liberaliser, but after a promising start, the economy has been plagued by recurring
crises. Two years ago, with inflation running at nearly 20% and a general collapse in
middle-class incomes, more than 100,000 people marched in Brasilia to demand the
resignation of the president and an end to IMF reforms.
Then there is Peru - another case of a promising start gone wrong. Alberto Fujimori's
regime ended last year in chaos, but he also was once the darling of international
finance - a man who appeared to have tamed inflation and was liberalising the economy.
Today he is hiding out in Japan, a country of which he recently admitted to being a
citizen. (If he had owned up 10 years ago, of course, he would have been disqualified
the presidency of Peru.) His government collapsed in a corruption scandal of
breathtaking proportions and he is reduced to posting messages on his website, singing
his own praises.
Colombia also has a president who is keen on liberalisation - but his main
preoccupation is the fact that his country has become, with Plan Colombia, the latest
arena for the theatre of American military illusions.
Plan Colombia has notched up the achievement of uniting most Colombians against the
environmental disaster of enforced aerial spraying of toxic chemicals and further
victories are in the pipeline - a growth of paramilitary human rights abuses,
escalation of military activity and the likely export of Colombia's problems to her
neighbours are all on the cards.
But there is one major Latin American country that is bucking the trend of
liberalisation: in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, the still popular president of the country
that boasts one of the largest oil reserves in the western hemisphere, offers an
interesting exception to the general rule.
In most of Latin America it is the poor and the newly impoverished middle classes -
the teachers and health workers who no longer have jobs, the pensioners who no longer
have pensions - who articulate the opposition to economic liberalism. They have the
bad grace to point out that, so far at least, it has brought dramatic increases in
inequalities in the distribution of incomes and assets.
In Venezuela, though, it is the president who says so. Chavez is an old-fashioned
nationalist caudillo who prefers the company of Fidel Castro to that of George Bush
or Tony Blair. Chavez seems determined to introduce to Venezuela some Cuban-style
social control though, so far, this does not seem to have dented his domestic ratings.
He's a wild card who might not matter but for those oil reserves.
In the 50s and 60s, behaviour such as Chavez's would certainly have invited
destabilisation and a military coup to save his electorate from the communist menace.
The menace is not what it was, so I trust that the rumours circulating in Washington
about US encouragement for a coup against Chavez are ill founded. Otherwise, it might
seem as though democracy is to be encouraged only in countries that elect leaders who
are willing to make the world safe for globalisation - and that can't possibly be what
Mr Blair and his new friend President Bush believe, can it?
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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