Debt and ecological disaster in Latin America

John Vidal , ' America versus the world', Guardian ( London, 30 April 1992), p. 19.

'The planet's heaviest burden', Independent (London, 23 April 1992), p. 22. This editorial in the Independent, commenting on the Prince of Wales' speech to the UN Brundtland Commission on 22 April 1992, was a particularly fervent example of free market ideology masquerading as fact. It repudiated the 'green' prince's barest hints of doubt about the effectiveness of the marketplace and of economic growth in solving environmental problems.

Ibid.

Walt Whitman Rostow , The Stages of Growth: a non-communist manifesto ( Cam-bridge , 1971).

Cristóbal Kay , Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment ( London, 1989).

For an analysis of the causes of underdevelopment see Elizabeth Dore, The Peruvian Mining Industry: growth, stagnation and crisis (Boulder, Colorado, 1988), chapter 1; and John Weeks and Elizabeth Dore, 'International exchange and the causes of backwardness', Latin American Perspectives (Vol. 6, no. 2, Spring 1979), and 'Reply to Samir Amin', Latin American Perspectives (Vol. 6, no. 3, Summer 1979).

Further analysis of the environmental legacies of mining can be found in Elizabeth Dore, 'Open wounds', NACLA's Report on the Americas (Vol. 25, no. 2, September 1991), pp. 14-21.

For detailed analysis of the ecological impact of Ciudad Guayana, see Maria Pilar Garcia, 'Actores y movimientos sociales en los grandes proyectos de inversión minero-industriales en America Latina', Revista Interaméricana de Planificación (Vol. 23, no. 89, enero-marzo 1990), pp. 223-252. A similar development pole was the Lázaro Cárdenas-Las Truchas iron-steel complex in the state of Michoacán, Mexico.

Latin America Bureau, The Great Tin Crash: Bolivia and the world tin market (London, 1987).

Alejandro Toledo , 'Destruir el paraiso: energéticos y media ambiente en el sureste mexicano', Ecologia: PoliticalCultura (Mexico, no. 2, summer 1987), pp. 15ff.

Cattle raising is the leading cause of deforestation in Latin America. The rise in oil prices, the interest-rate explosion and the debt crisis starved countries of foreign exchange. Governments responded to the crisis by promoting beef exports. By 1978, Central America was shipping 250 million pounds of beef a year to the US, or 15 per cent of US beef imports. This low quality beef, contaminated with pesticide residues, became the billions of hamburgers sold by fast-food chains. For the destructive effects of cattle raising in Central America, see Robert G. Williams, Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1986). For its impact on the Amazon, see Susanna B. Hecht and Alexander Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest: developers, destroyers and defenders of the Amazon (London, 1989).

John L. Stephens , Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan (New York, 1841 , reprinted in 1969 by Dover Press, New York); George Byam , Wild Life in the Interior of Central America (London, 1849); Ephraim George Squier , Nicaragua: its people, scenery, monuments and the proposed interoceanic canal (New York, 1852), and Carl Scherzer , Travels in the Free States of Central America: Nicaragua, Honduras, and San Salvador (London , 1857).

Jeffrey L. Gould , To Lead as Equals: rural protest and political consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1990), and Robert G. Williams , Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986).

Daniel Faber , 'A sea of poison', Report on the Americas (Vol. 25, no. 2, September 1991), pp. 31-6.

John Weeks , 'Losers pay reparations, or how the Third World lost the lending war' , in John Weeks (ed.), Debt Disaster: banks, governments and multinationals confront the crisis (New York, 1989), pp. 41-63. In addition, see Sue Branford and Bernardo Kucinski , The Debt Squads (London , 1988); and Jackie Roddick , The Dance of the Millions: Latin America and the debt crisis (London , 1988).

Weeks, 'Losers pay reparations', op. cit.

Elizabeth Dore , 'Nicaragua: the experience of the mixed economy', in Jonathan Hartlyn and Samuel A. Morley (eds.), Latin American Political Economy: financial crisis and political change (Boulder, Colorado, 1986), pp. 319-50.

This is of virtually no relevance, since Britain was the first capitalist country.

For analysis of structural adjustment, see Weeks, 'Losers pay reparations', op. cit.

Anthony Hall , Developing Amazonia: deforestation and social conflict in Brazil's Carajás programme (Manchester, 1989).

David Cleary , Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush (Oxford, 1990).

Anthony Gross , Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in his own words ( London , 1989).

The plight of the Yanomami Indians of Brazil has received particular attention from Survival International. For the impact of mining on the Indians of Brazil, see D. Treece, Bound in Misery and Iron: the impact of the Grande Carajás programme on the Indians of Brazil (London, 1987).

Les Field , 'Ecuador's Pan-Indian uprising', NACLA's Report on the Americas, (Vol. 25, no. 3, December 1991), pp. 39-44.

Juan Martinez Alier , 'La interpretación ecologista de la historia socio-económica: algunos ejemplos andinos', Revista Andina (No. 15, 1990) and 'Ecology of the poor: a neglected dimension of Latin American history', Journal af Latin American Studies (Vol. 23, no. 3, October 1991).

Internal World Bank memo dated 12 December 1991, subsequently leaked to the public. Central America Report (Vol. 19, no. 8, 6 March 1992), pp. 57-8.

Ibid. Subsequently, José Lutzenberger, Brazil's minister of environment, was asked to resign by President Collor de Mello. This statement and other transgressions displayed his overzealous commitment to his portfolio: defence of the environment.

In his defence, he said the memo was edited in a form that 'deprived [his comments] of their original, highly ironic context', Central America Report (Vol. 19, no. 8, 6 March 1992), pp. 57-8.

Dore, The Peruvian Mining Industry, op. cit., p. 42.