Mommy, what will be better than 'globalization' ?

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

The ruins Tony Blair should visit

Forget Cancun, globalisation has destroyed the real Latin America

Special report: globalisation

Isabel Hilton
Wednesday August 8, 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?