I do not intend to insult anybody's intelligence, but Latin America is not Mexico. Mexico might be part of Latin America, but neither can be defined by the other.
Before diving into specifics, it is worthwhile to elaborate a bit more on this concept of "Latin America." We oversimplify all the sub-regions - Caribbean, Central America, Andean states, Southern Cone, etc - when we define them as Latin America, as if there were just one nation or many nations under one unifying culture.
Previously known as Spanish America, nowadays the sub-regions are most commonly known as Latin America, which is a 19th century French-invented concept to win the semantics battle against the Spanish empire and thus claim the right and influence over the region previously known as Spanish America. In the 21st century, Latin America generally refers to all the Spanish-Portuguese-French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North, South and Central America, including the West Indies. As one can see, no real sweeping generalizations can be useful for such a diverse set of regions.
An apology is deserved, as I am not trying to be politically correct or reinvent the linguistic wheel. Rather, my intention lies in pointing out that your concept of Latin America is probably very different from mine; and so it goes - someone living in Chile has a very different concept than would his or her neighbors living in Bolivia, Peru or Argentina.
At the macroeconomic level, differences between Chile and other Latin America countries are striking. For example, Chile ranks in the top 10 every year for having one of most open economies in the world, evidenced by its dozens of Free Trade Agreements and its low 6 percent tariff for foreign imports, a figure comparative to the U.S. tariff. While Chile has FTAs with both the U.S. and European Union, other countries such as Brazil have tariffs over 12 percent to protect their domestic industries and trade agreements that are minimally effective. Since 1990, Chile ranks in the top 10 of the fastest-growing economies in the world, easily surpassing the U.S., and averaging over 5 percent growth per year, while its Latin American counterparts with closed economies - Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil - have an average growth rate under 1.5 percent in the same time period.
At the micro level, the differences are even starker between the different Latin Americas.
- Life expectancy: the average Chilean lives to the age of 77, while the average Bolivian does not live to see 67.
- Lunch: both Domino's and McDonalds have pulled out of Bolivia due to bad business while in Chile's capital 24 Starbucks flourish, just like the 74 McDonalds throughout the country.
- Transportation: 14 percent of Chileans own a car, while in Peru and Bolivia less than 5 percent of people do.
- Web: over 31 percent of Chile's population has access to Internet in comparison to Bolivia's 5 percent.
(Just to make it hit home, over 80 percent of U.S. citizens own a car and over 66 percent have daily access to Internet.)
In summary, a bit of caution is needed before we lump Latin American countries into one big basket. At both the macro and micro level, even neighboring countries such as Chile, Peru and Bolivia differ drastically. Of course, to explain these differences is much more challenging than to highlight them. I am just trying to point out an often-overlooked fact, which is frequently oversimplified and ignored as irrelevant.
Considering that about 10 percent of our population is of direct Latin American descent, about 50 percent of our energy security is satisfied by trade within our hemisphere and over 7 percent of our world commerce is carried out with Latin American nations, a better understanding of Latin America's diversity is imperative.
[Fecha de publicación original: 14 de mayo de 2008]
