Heine in The Global Times on Latin American Discontent
Amb. Jorge Heine, Research Professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an Op-Ed examining the inequality and social discontent behind the political crises currently happening across Latin America.
Heine’s Op-Ed, entitled “Inequality, Social Rift Behind Latin America Discontent,” was published on November 17, 2019 in The Global Times.
From the text of the article:
The fall of President Evo Morales in Bolivia, with overtones of a military coup, is the culmination of a rocky period in Latin America this year. Protests in Ecuador that led the government to provisionally move from Quito to Guayaquil; protracted violent protests in normally peaceful Chile and in usually volatile Haiti; a confrontation between the executive and legislature in Peru, that led the Peruvian Congress to proclaim its own “acting president” (albeit to no avail); the emergence of a narco-state in Honduras; and the critical situation in Venezuela, have marked an annus horribilis in the lands South of the Rio Grande.
What is wrong with countries that at the beginning of this decade showed such promise that the Inter-American Development Bank proclaimed this would be “the decade of Latin America,” and The Economist published a cover with a map of the Americas turned upside down, with South America on top of the world?
Those predictions were far off the mark. Of all regions in the world, Latin America has had the worst performance this decade, with annual growth somewhere around 2 percent, far below Sub-Saharan Africa, at 4.4 percent. According to the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), this year, in fact, the region’s growth will be a paltry 0.1 percent, and exports are projected to fall by 2 percent.
Yes, global trade is down, and the commodities boom is over, but isn’t this a bit too much? Why such a violent reaction?
Amb. Jorge Heine is a lawyer, IR scholar and diplomat with a special interest in fhe international politics of the Global South. He was most recently a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. ( 2018-2019). He has served as ambassador of Chile to China ( 2014-2017), to India ( 2003-2007) and to South Africa ( 1994-1999), and as a Cabinet Minister in the Chilean Government.