Latin Lessons

Hal Weitzman

Description

The mistakes the United States has made in Latin America—and the high price it will pay for them

Could it be that for the first time in history, the United States needs Latin America more than the other way round? Since the early 1800s, the United States regarded the region as its “backyard,” but in the past decade South America’s leaders have increasingly snubbed US efforts to persuade them to adopt free-market economics and sign trade agreements. While Washington has been distracted by military campaigns elsewhere, rivals such as China, Russia, and Iran have expanded their clout in Latin America, and US influence in the region has fallen to a historic low—at the very time that the United States has become more dependent than ever on exporting to Latin America and importing its oil. Combining sharp wit and great storytelling with trenchant analysis, Hal Weitzman examines how America “lost the South” and argues that if the United States is to find a new role in a world of emerging superpowers, it must reengage with Latin America.

• Charts the rise of resource nationalism—in which governments take increasing control of natural resources and squeeze multinational corporations—in South America and across the world
• Illustrates analytical points with vivid stories—such as the disappearance of the Panama hat or the sweater Evo Morales wore throughout a world tour—and interviews with presidents, policymakers, and protesters
• Written by a Financial Times journalist who formerly served as its Andes correspondent based in Lima, Peru

Preface ix

1 How the South Was Lost 1

2 Earthquake in the Andes 23

3 Atahualpa’s Ghost 51

4 Resource Nationalism 75

5 Trading Oil, Drugs, and Insults 100

6 Meet the Street 123

7 Evo, Evo Presidente! 144

8 “For God and Money” 163

9 Power to the People 180

10 Hugonomics 198

11 The Curious Death of the Panama Hat 224

12 A Different Vision 239

Acknowledgments 259

Select Bibliography 261

Index 263

Sujets

• Political Science
• América del Sur
• International relations
• Globalization
• South America
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 30 décembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118140130
• Langue: English

Extrait

CONTENTS
Preface
1: How the South Was Lost
America s Industrial Decline
Riding the Commodity Boom
The Unrequited States of America
Evo s Sweater
America s Addiction
Enter the Dragon
Breaking Away
2: Earthquake in the Andes
America Paralyzed
Death to the Yankees!
Ch vez s Parrot
South America Plays Chicken
Next Stop: Ecuador
Continental Shifts
3: Atahualpa s Ghost
The Burden of History
Plunder and Profits
America s Backyard
Dirty Business
Kennedy, Castro, and Coups
The Washington Consensus
The End of the Experiment
4: Resource Nationalism
Politics Trumps Economics
A South American Tradition
Defying Count Dracula
Economic Xenophobia
Return of the State
5: Trading Oil, Drugs, and Insults
Petro-Diplomacy
Bankrolling Bolivarianism
Coca Crops and Coups
The War on Drugs
Enter Obama
6: Meet the Street
The Bomb That Only Kills People
Ch vismo s Foundation Myth
Washington Contentious
The Social License
The Water War
Evo s Lesson
7: Evo, Evo Presidente!
In the Hands of Indigenous Peoples
The Invisible
No One Wants to Be a Cholo
Give Them the Belt
The Outsiders Come In
Rewriting Constitutions
8: For God and Money
Fujimori, Montesinos, and the Vladivideos
The Pervasiveness of Corruption
Mind the Capability Gap
The Informal Economy
9: Power to the People
Roadblock Culture
The Permanent Threat
The Challenge of Democracy
Community Power
Bypassing Government
The Revolution, Televised
10: Hugonomics
Production Problems
Divide and Rule
Borrowing Public Health
Popularity and Populism
Viva la Revoluci n
11: The Curious Death of the Panama Hat
Exporting People
Money Isn t Jobs
Decoupling
Looking beyond Ch vez
12: A Different Vision
The War on Drugs
The Cuba Embargo
Immigration
Between Domestic and Foreign Policy
Tomorrow s Commodities
Democracy, Policing, and Education
The Meaning of America
An American G4
Acknowledgments
Select Bibliography
Index

Copyright 2012 by Hal Weitzman. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Weitzman, Hal, date.
Latin lessons : How South America stopped listening to the United States and started prospering / Hal Weitzman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-48191-2 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-14011-6 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-14012-3 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-14013-0 (ebk.)
1. Latin America-Foreign relations-United States. 2. United States-Foreign relations-Latin America. 3. Latin America-Foreign economic relations- United States. 4. United States-Foreign economic relations-Latin America.
I. Title.
F1418.W323 2012
327.8073-dc23
2011042286
For Lorna
PREFACE
In December 2009, I took a trip from Chicago, where I was the correspondent for the Financial Times , back to Peru, my previous posting for the newspaper. It was not the best of days for the Windy City. The financial crisis had hit hard. The unemployment rate in Chicago exceeded the national average. The city had a $14.5 billion hole in its pension funds and a $650 million budget deficit. On my way to the airport, I drove past apartment complexes half-built and abandoned, haunting reminders of the construction boom that had started to bring buyers back downtown from the suburbs. The Chicago Spire, an ambitious project to build the tallest residential building in the world, on the shore of Lake Michigan, was nothing more than a deserted hole in the ground, having collapsed amid debt, lawsuits, and acrimonious squabbles between the developers. To add insult to injury, two months earlier Chicago had lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics, which the city had trumpeted as a way to bring investment and development to blighted areas of its south side. Much to the dismay of the assembled crowds watching the voting on giant screens in Daley Plaza, Chicago was eliminated in the first round of voting.
Lima could not have been more different. In many ways it was the same city I had left a couple of years earlier-dirty, chaotic, and sprawling-but where Chicago was struggling, the Peruvian capital was more vibrant than ever. The country had quickly brushed off the global economic downturn, and its economy was growing at a brisk clip. The signs of this activity were everywhere-in the furious shopping, enthusiastic eating, the better quality of cars on the streets, and, most obviously, in the swarms of workers putting up residential buildings at a blistering pace.
I should not have been surprised. The contrast between Lima and Chicago pointed to a much bigger geopolitical trend: Latin America was on the way up and the United States was in relative decline, at least in economic terms. This was nothing like the Great Depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash, which had a devastating effect on Latin America. Back then, exports slumped, countries defaulted on their debts, and there was a surge in civil agitation by radical groups; a rash of military coups and attempted coups swept across the region, and a wave of populist nationalism was unleashed. Now Latin America had emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis prompted by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street investment bank, in September 2008.
In 2010, the economies of Latin America would grow at an average rate of 6 percent-twice as fast as the United States. Paraguay grew at 10 percent, Uruguay and Peru at 9 percent, while the economies of Brazil and Argentina expanded at a rate of 8 percent. Unemployment across the region fell to about 7.6 percent, while joblessness in the United States hovered near 10 percent. The previous year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 19 percent-a welcome advance considering the losses endured in the prior two years-but positively snail-like next to the 104 percent advance in Argentina s stock exchange, 101 percent growth in the Peruvian bolsa, and 83 percent growth in Brazil. The International Monetary Fund, which had so often in the past warned Latin America that the end was nigh, even started to fret publicly that the region might be growing a little too fast for comfort. The biggest corporate takeover of 2010 was the $28 billion purchase of Carso Global Telecom, a Mexican telecom company, by Am rica M vil, an even bigger Mexican telecom company. Money managers in Argentina and Peru ran the year s best-performing emerging markets funds.
While Peru was a remarkable story, the headline-stealing star of Latin America was Brazil. It had been the last country to enter the Great Recession that began in 2008 and the first to leave it. It was poised to overtake France and the United Kingdom to become the world s fifth biggest economy. It was the world s biggest producer of iron ore, and the top global exporter of beef, chicken, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Its companies were transforming themselves into global titans. Vale, headquartered in Rio, was the world s second biggest mining company. Gerdau, based in Porto Alegre, was the leading producer of long steel-used in construction and infrastructure-in the Americas, with operations across Latin America as well as in the United States, Canada, India, and Spain. Embraer of S o Jos dos Campos was the world s third biggest aircraft maker. BM FBovespa of S o Paulo had become the second biggest financial exchange in the world. In September 2010, Petrobras, the state oil company, conducted the biggest stock sale in financial history, raising $67 billion from eager investors. Eike Batista, a mining and oil baron once married to a Playboy cover girl, was by 2010 the eighth richest person in the world, with a net worth of $27 billion, according to Forbes . Batista predicted that he would soon be the world s wealthiest man, an ambition that would see