Latin America and the Challenges of the New International Order

1 Felipe Herrera, President of the Inter American Development Bank at the conference on `El Subdesarrollo y las perspectivas de crecimiento económico', Law School, Universidad de Chile, 8 July, 1960 (mimeographed).

2 See Herbert Meadows et al., Los limites del Crecimiento, Report by the Club de Roma, (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Collección Popular, 1973).

3 See `Tratado Interamericano de Assistencia Reciproca', in Claudio Bonnefoy and Jaime Lagos, eds, Relaciones Internacionales (Santiago: Editorial Juridica de Chile, 1966), pp. 287 and following.

4 For analysis of the conflicts arising in Central America in the late 1970s and in the 1980s see Martin Diskin, ed. Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and the United Sates in the Eighties (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983); Richard Fagen and Olga Pellicer, eds, The Future of Central America: Policy Choices for the U.S. and Mexico (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1983); Centroamérica. Crisis y politica internacional (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1982); Centroamérica en crisis (Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico and Centro de Estudios Internacionales, 1980).

5 For an analysis of the Latin American foreign debt and its consequences, see Andrés Bianchi, ed., La Deuda Externa Latinoamericana (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericana, Programa RIAL, 1985); Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Richard Feinberg eds, Más allá de la Crisis de la Deuda, bases para un nuevo enfoque (Buenos Aires: Cieplan, Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1985); Gonzalo Biggs, La crisis de la deuda Latinoamericana frente a los precedentes históricos, (Buenos Aires, Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1987); Steffany Griffith-Jones and Osvaldo Sunkel, Las crisis de la deuda y el desarrollo en América Latina: El fin de una ilusión (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1987).

6 See Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Estudio Económico de América Latina (Santiago, 1983-1991).

7 See Carlos Ominami, La Tercera Revolución Industrial (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinomaericano, 1987).

8 The Brazilian economist Winston Fritsch has made popular the expression `Belindia' with reference to this phenomenon, attempting to describe the situation of countries in which small sectors of the population who have reached the Belgian standard of living co-exist, without ever meeting, huge masses who live in conditions similar to those of the poor in India.

9 See Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Transformación productiva con equidad (Special Report) (Santiago, 1990). The figures presented in this article are updated to March 1991.

10 See Alfred Stepan, Repensando a los militares en politica: Cono Sur: un análisis comparado (Buenos Aires: Editorial Planeta, 1988); Los Militares: El retorno a los cuarteles? (Buenos Aires: Fundación de Tercer Mundo, GEL); Horacio L. Veneroni, Estados Unidos y las Fuerzas Armadas de América Latina: la dependencia militar (Ediciones Periferia S.R.L., 1973).

11 For a sober yet dramatic official description of this situation in two countries in the Southern Cone of Latin America, see: Nunca Más. Report by the National Commission for the Study of the Situation of Missing Persons (CONALEP) of the Government of Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1986); and the Informe Final de la Comisión Verdad y Reconciliación, designated by the President of the Republic of Chile (Santiago, 1991), 3 volumes.

12 With the establishment of military regimes in 1973 in Uruguay and Chile, two countries with a longstanding tradition of civilian governments, European governments and parties intensified their interest in the political situation of Latin America, sponsoring several conferences and meetings that established direct links between the main political leaders of both regions. In the book Fuerzas politicas y procesos de recambio en América Latina (Mexico: Ediciones de la Unidad de Investigaciones de América Latina (UILA), 1980), we agree with Juan Carlos Portantiero and René Zabaleta in that this phenomenon gave rise to `the internationalization of ideology and politics in Latin America'. For a lucid explanation and its scope, see the correspondence between three of its main inspirers, Willy Brandt, Olof Palme and Bruno Kreisky, La Alternativa Socialdemócrata (Barcelona: Editorial Blume, 1977).

13 See Michel Foucher, Naissance de l'archipel-monde, (Paris: Edition Especiale de Libération, (World Media Project), December 1990).

14 Discussion of the US international hegemony has recently given rise to one of the most fervent debates in contemporary politics. Some key texts are: The Business Week team, The Declining of U.S. Power (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1980); Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage Books, 1987); Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor (New York: Random House, 1990). For a Latin American view, see Luis Maira ed., Hacia una nueva era de hegemonia latinoamericana? (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1986).

15 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sólo hay una superpotencia, in Partido Revolucionario Institucional, El Mundo de los 90, (Mexico: Secretaria de Asuntos Internacionales 1991) p.11.

16 See The Business Week Team, The Declining of U.S. Power, 1980.