Latin America In The Age Of Billionaires
UnpublishedMay/June
1997
Volume:
30
Number:
6
Article
Judith Adler Hellman
Social movements have long been a fixture on the Latin American landscape. Indeed, at the very time that NACLA was founded in 1967, highland Peruvians were invading public lands in Lima to establish their highly organized squatters' com- munities, liberation theologians were organizing ecclesial base communities in cities and villages from El Salvador to Chile, Paulo Freire and his followers were using literacy programs to stimulate the Brazilian poor to engage in collec- tive struggle for land and social jus- tice, and impoverished Jamaicans were joining their neighbors in "share-pot" groups in the country- side and in Kingston slums.
Daniel Lazare
When Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the alleged boss of Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel, granted a rare interview to the press back in 1991, he protested that he was an honest businessman whose only crime was his all-too-obvious success. "I was chairman of the board of directors of a bank in Colombia and president of the board of directors of a bank in Panama," he said, when he first incurred official dis- pleasure.
Melina Selverston
When Ecuador's Congress voted to impeach Presi- dent Abdalh Bucaram on the evening of February 6 by declar- ing him "mentally unfit to govern," it was responding to political pres- sures welling up from virtually all sectors of society. After months of sporadic protests against neoliberal austerity measures, a broad spec- trum of social movements had called for a nation-wide 48-hour strike on February 5 and 6 to demand the President's impeachment.
Susanne Jonas
On Saturday night, December 28, 1996, the eve of the signing of Guatemala's his- toric Peace Accords, Guatemala City's central plaza was the scene of unprecedented-previously unimaginable-popular ceremonies and celebrations. At the plaza's acoustic bandstand, supporters of the country's guerrilla movement, the Guatemalan National Revo- lutionary Unity (URNG), held a public rally.
Stephanie Rosenfeld & Juan Luis Marré
While a few conglomerates have gotten fabulously rich from Chile's neoliberal reforms, a full-time job no longer guarantees an escape from poverty. Two decades after free-market reforms were implemented, the Chilean economy works, but it doesn't work for everyone.
Great fortunes," say the editors of Forbes Magazine, who are paid to keep track of such things, "are made in times of rapid social, technological "and economic change by those who grasp the meaning of the change "early on." The number of Latin Americans on Forbes' list of billionaires now stands at 39, up from eight in 1991 (though down a few from just before the Mexican meltdown of 1994).
The Dominican Republic Your March/April report, "The Dominican Republic After the Caudillos," nicely conveys the complexity of contemporary life in that country. Several of the authors seem to suggest that personalism and patronage in Dominican poli- tics can be attributed to the legacy of Trujillo and the personal style of Balaguer, but these prob- lems are common in other Caribbean nations.
Strong Showing by FMLN in Congressional and Mayoral Elections SAN SALVADOR, APRIL 1, 1997 Six years after laying down arms and becoming a legal political party, the Farabundo Martf National Liberation Front (FMLN) enjoyed a strong show- ing in congressional and munici- pal elections held on March 18. The FMLN won the mayoralty of San Salvador-the most important political office after the presidency-as well as other key departmental municipalities, including Chalatenango City and Santa Ana.
Carlos Reyna
When speak- ing of the oligarchy in Peru or elsewhere in Latin America, one automatically thinks back to the beginning of the twentieth centu- ry. Until the late 1920s, Peru's eco- nomic, political Corporate headquarters of the Banco de Credito, Peru's largest financial group, in Lima.
Globalization and its Discontents: The Rise of Postmodern Socialisms by Roger Burbach, Orlando Nufiez and Boris Kagarlitsky, Pluto Press, 1997, 196 pp., $49.
FR
Workers of the World, UNITE! For every Mexican, Central American or Caribbean work- er who migrates to the United States, another is hired by a U.S.
Carlos Marichal
A small number of aggressive businessmen have accumulated huge fortunes in record time-abetted at every stage by influential politicians of the ruling party. Today's powerful bankers and financiers are not the same people who owned Mexico's banks two decades ago.
Cali drug lords Gilberto and Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela rose to the top of the cocaine trade the old-fashioned way. They got rid of the competition.