Latin America and the Global Economy

  The new face of global capitalism is everywhere in Latin America—from fast food chains to superstores, vast new fields of monocrops to massive mining and hydroelectric projects. Despite the global financial crisis, which has severely affected the United States and Europe, Latin American economies have remained relatively solvent. Several countries are experiencing record growth. Brazil has become the world’s sixth-largest economy. China and India have exponentially increased trade and investment in the region. Venezuela and the region’s progressive countries have led the drive to found alternative forms of regional integration without the United States and Canada. This NACLA Report asks why and how, and looks at the grassroots response to the new face of global capitalism in the region.

Summer
2012
Volume: 
45
Number: 
2

Intro

Michael Fox

Open Forum

Updates

Jacob Kushner
A NACLA investigation funded by the Samuel Chavkin Fund for Investigative Journalism finds the Dominican Republic to be openly discriminating against Haitians immigrants only two years after Haiti suffered a devastating 2010 earthquake.

Border Wars

Joseph Nevins
Anastasio Hernández Rojas was born on the wrong side of the boundary dividing people and places of privilege from those of disadvantage. When U.S. authorities deported Hernández Rojas to Mexico and deprived him of his right to be with his family, they effectively denied his right to live. And when they beat and tased him to death, they did so as well.

Activism

César Ernesto Abadía Barrero, Emma Shaw Crane, and Héctor Camilo Ruíz
Since 2006, the employees of Colombia's Mother and Child Institute have been occupying their former workplace, demanding their pensions, legally mandated severance pay, and the months of unpaid wages they were owed when the institute closed. The occupation challenges the profit-led decision to eliminate the most important birth center in the country.

Report

William I. Robinson
The new face of global capitalism is everywhere in Latin America, from the fast-food chains and superstores that dominate local markets to vast new fields of soy run by transnational agribusiness.
Sara Kozameh and Rebecca Ray
South American economies have shown a common resilience in the face of the global economic crisis. There are two explanations: the successful development of the region’s export-oriented extractive industries and the successful creation of domestic markets via greater income equality.
Óscar Ugarteche
South American economies have shown a common resilience in the face of the global economic crisis. There are two explanations: the successful development of the region’s export-oriented extractive industries and the successful creation of domestic markets via greater income equality.
Paulo Kliass
In late 2011, Brazil surpassed Britain to become the sixth-largest economy in the world. But behind the scenes, the reality is far from optimistic. Inequality remains high, and Brazil’s economic growth is not only slower than other emerging economies’ but may not even be sustainable.
He Li
Latin America’s global trade and investment patterns have radically shifted over the past decade, as the region has dramatically expanded its economic relations with the Asia-Pacific countries, particularly China and India.
Ximena de la Barra and R. A. Dello Buono
The inaugural summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in December marked a significant step toward consolidating a system of regional integration that will operate as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States.
Raúl Zibechi
From Peru to Chile to Ecuador, the first three months of 2012 registered an astounding acceleration of the Latin American movements defending water and life against the mining industry, large hydroelectric dams, and monocultures.

Reviews

Roger Annis
Tectonic Shifts: Haiti After the Earthquake, by Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales, eds. Kumarian Press, 2012, 271 pp., $24.95 (paperback)
Bryan Finlayson
Anila Churi
To Die in Mexico: Dispatches From Inside the Drug War, by John Gibler, City Lights Publishers, 2011, 218 pp., $15.95 (paperback)
Roger Burbach
The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left, by Emir Sader, Verso, 2011, 180 pp., $26.95 (hardback)

Letters

Chuck Kaufman, Katherine Hoyt, and Dennis Rodgers

Document

Jeremy Bigwood
Since at least 2004, the Washington-based NGO Freedom House has been clandestinely nurturing and organizing the opposition to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez with funding from the U.S. government, according to documents recently released by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

MALA

Michael Corcoran
In January, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a weeklong tour of Latin America. That the media seem to dismiss the tour as a joke, while at the same time ramping up fears that somehow Iranian relations in the Americas poses a security risk to the United States, only further shows how little credibility there is in the U.S. corporate media coverage of the Iranian–Latin American relationship.

From the Archive