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Posts Tagged ‘Latin America’

Republican Solutions Would Destabilize Central America, Not Fix It

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2023

Yes, very shocking news: trying to make the civilian population of another state so miserable they choose to try and overthrow the regime doesn’t work.

Geez, if only Washington had known that from repeatedly trying it before…like in Iraq…or Iran…or Cuba…

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/republican-solutions-would-destabilize-central-america-not-fix-it/

by Joseph Solis-Mullen

frontier

Watching the Republican Party presidential debates has been surreal in many ways. Apart from the awkward spectacle of Mike Pence and Chris Christie acting like they have a chance at the Oval Office, perhaps nothing has been more confounding than the new, hottest idea: bombing and invading Mexico to solve the drug crisis. And it gets better! Because while they’re at it, the military will solve the migrant crisis, too.

This really is baffling.

Except for those monied interests who benefit from its continued fighting, the drug war has been a total failure. Pick any metric you like.

So, too, but for those monied interests who benefit from its continued fighting, the Global War on Terror has been a failure on all fronts. Again, pick any metric you like.

So why would a war on “narco-terrorism” be expected to go any differently?

I mean really, taking a step back, does the fact that so many of the migrants are now Venezuelan not strike these Republicans or their voters as in any way odd? No more than the fact that so many of the same migrants headed north thirty years ago were Guatemalan and Salvadoran.

Nor that efforts by each of the previous administrations at intervention and influence operations in Latin America (Honduras in 2009, Bolivia in 2019, or Venezuela in 2020) have all been failures.

It really is strange. One would think that a policy that generated such obvious negative consequences would have surely been abandoned. But it hasn’t. And just as destroying the Middle East and destabilizing North Africa led to the migrant crisis Europe is still enduring, Washington’s focus on isolating and impoverishing an already populous and poor country like Venezuela has prompted many of them to pack up and leave

See the rest here

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Latin America’s Descent into Interventionism Continues | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

Why would “populist” governments impose policies that perpetuate poverty and hurt the people? Interventionism does not aim to increase prosperity but take full control of a nation. The three mentioned policies are aimed at grasping full control of a country and make the population dependent, not deliver growth and improve social conditions.

https://mises.org/wire/latin-americas-descent-interventionism-continues

Daniel Lacalle

The latest estimates from consensus for the main Latin American economies show a continent facing a lost decade. The region GDP growth has been downgraded yet again to a modest 1.1% for 2023, with rising inflation and weakening gross fixed investment. Considering that the region was already recovering at a slower pace than other emerging markets, the outlook is exceedingly worrying.

The poor growth and high inflation expectations are even worse when we consider that consensus estimates still consider a tailwind coming from rising commodity prices and more exports due to the China re-opening.

How can a region with such high potential as Latin America be condemned to stagflation? The answer is simple. The rise of populist governments in Colombia, Chile and Brazil have increased the concerns about investor security, property rights and monetary discipline.

Argentina is expected to post a modest 0.2% GDP growth in 2023 with 95% inflation and a debt to GDP of 72%. Years of monetary and fiscal excess have destroyed the purchasing power of the local currency and dilapidated the prospect of real growth. In Argentina, poverty has escalated to 36.5% of the population and the government policies double down on interventionism, price controls and higher taxes with the expected negative result. Despite the tailwind of high demand for soja and cereals globally, Argentina dives deeper into Venezuela territory, where consensus expects another year of weak 3% bounce after destroying 80% of the output in a decade, with enormous inflation, 132%.

The problem? The new governments in Chile and Colombia are announcing policies that resemble those of the “Peronist left” in Argentina and the Fernandez government in Argentina is looking more like Maduro’s Venezuela each day.

See the rest here

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US has long involvement in Latin America

Posted by M. C. on January 25, 2019

https://apnews.com/8c99384884df4e1293690c797682f0ad

By The Associated Press

Some of the most notable U.S. interventions in Latin America:

1846: The United States invades Mexico and captures Mexico City in 1847. A peace treaty the following year gives the U.S. more than half of Mexico’s territory — what is now most of the western United States.

1903: The U.S. engineers Panamanian independence from Colombia and gains sovereign rights over the zone where the Panama Canal would connect Atlantic and Pacific shipping routes.

1903: Cuba and the U.S. sign a treaty allowing near-total U.S. control of Cuban affairs. U.S. establishes a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

A U.S. Army soldier looks through binoculars while standing on a guard tower at Camp 4 in the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in Cuba. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)

U.S. Marines repeatedly intervene in Central America and the Caribbean throughout the first quarter of the 20th century, often to protect U.S. business interests in moments of political instability.

1914: U.S. troops occupy the Mexican port of Veracruz for seven months in an attempt to sway developments in the Mexican Revolution.

1954: Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz is overthrown in a CIA-backed coup.

1961: The U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion fails to overthrow Soviet-backed Cuban leader Fidel Castro but Washington continues to launch attempts to assassinate Castro and dislodge his government.

1964: Leftist President Joao Goulart of Brazil is overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup that installs a military government lasting until the 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »

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Latin America Has Fewer Guns, But More Crime | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on November 24, 2018

https://mises.org/wire/latin-america-has-fewer-guns-more-crime

The news in Latin America this year has brought two reminders that Latin America’s stringent gun controls have not stemmed the growing homicide problem in many parts of the region.

The first is that homicides reached new highs in Mexico this year , reaching record levels not seen since the country began keeping records twenty years ago.

Secondly, violent crime became a significant issue in this year’s presidential race, with president-elect Jair Bolsonaro running on a platform of fighting crime, pledging to “use the army” if need be.

In both cases, crime continues to soar in spite of the fact that that both Brazil and Mexico are anything but what we might call “laissez-faire” when it comes to gun ownership. Indeed, both employ stringent gun control regimes — as do most of Latin America’s states.

These fact have long presented a problem for advocates of gun control, of course, since their arguments often rely on the idea that reducing gun ownership will bring lower crime rates. Read the rest of this entry »

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