Michael Reid - Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America, Revised & Updated Edition

FORGOTTEN CONTINENT

Michael Reid is Latin American columnist and a senior editor for The Economist. Previously based in Brazil, Mexico and Peru, he has travelled throughout Latin America and reported for the BBC, the Guardian and The Economist, where he was Americas Editor from 1999 to 2013.

Further praise for Forgotten Continent:

Reids cogent and sweeping treatment of Latin Americas place in the world is a must-read.

Ted Piccone, Democracy Journal

Formidably well informed and written with exceptional clarity... It combines all the strengths of journalistic experience with an explanatory energy rarely found in scholarly volumes.

James Dunkerley, Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London

The incoming administrations Latin American decision-makers have Michael Reids excellent work on their must-read list.

Colonel John C. McKay, Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute)

Will captivate experts and amateurs alike. No one who seriously aspires to discuss Latin American politics, economics and culture should go without reading Forgotten Continent.

Jorge Castaeda and Patricio Navia, National Interest

Offers something valuable to both specialists and the general reading public... Reid writes of Latin America with great empathy, intelligence, and insight.

James Brennan, Hispanic American Historical Review

Copyright 2017 Michael Reid

Original hardback edition published 2007

First published in paperback 2009

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017910087

ISBN 978-0-300-22465-8

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Maximilian, in the hope that it will help him understand
part of his heritage

First, we must cure ourselves of the intoxication of simplistic and simplifying ideologies.

O CTAVIO P AZ

The democratic will is vulgar; its laws, imperfect. I admit all this. But if it is true that soon there will be no middle way between the empire of democracy and the yoke of one man, ought we not try rather for the former than submit voluntarily to the latter?

A LEXIS DE T OCQUEVILLE

It is not by chance that reforms are so difficult.

F ERNANDO H ENRIQUE C ARDOSO

Contents

Illustrations

Charts and Tables

Charts

Tables

South America

Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean

Preface

Much has happened in Latin America and the world since the first edition of this book went to press in early 2007. The financial crisis of 200708 ushered in a new and more uncertain period in world history. In its wake, populism, a familiar political phenomenon in Latin America, has arisen in the United States and in Europe. China has consolidated its position as a global economic power. In Latin America, the commodity boom has come and gone, and the political landscape has changed. Both Hugo Chvez and Fidel Castro are dead. Luiz Incio Lula da Silva is fighting multiple charges of corruption in Brazils courts. Latin American societies have changed significantly in the past ten years. So it seemed opportune to revise the book to take account of all these developments, and more.

The original book was inspired by my conviction, contrary to the prevailing pessimism at the turn of this century, that Latin America was undergoing a deep-rooted process of economic reform, democratisation and progressive social change. The outlook for the region is more difficult now. If I have tempered, but not abandoned, that underlying conviction, it is chiefly because of the rise of a politically engaged civil society in much of Latin America.

What follows is based on my own observation and experience of a region I first visited in 1980. I have been fortunate to have been able to view Latin America both from within (having lived in Peru, Mexico and Brazil for a total of 16 years) and as a frequent visitor from a distance. During all these years, I have enjoyed the journalists enormous privilege of being able to watch history unfold at close quarters and ask questions of many of its protagonists.

Forgotten Continent is an attempt to make sense of what I have learned in a more systematic way, drawing on my reporting, especially for The Economist (and sometimes on that of colleagues at the newspaper). It was my original intention that the books narrative would begin around 1980, but it quickly became apparent to me that I would have to start much further back. That decision was in the spirit of the conversations I had each time I ventured into a country new to me in Latin America. A seemingly simple question about some aspect of contemporary politics would lead within a few minutes to an exposition of the peculiarities of that countrys nineteenth-century history. Since history and historical figures are daily invoked by Latin American politicians, I make no apology for having decided to begin the story around 1810, when most Latin American countries began their struggle for independence.

Readers of the first edition will find much that is familiar but much that has changed. In revising the book, my vantage point was Latin America today and the dilemmas the region faces in the post-boom, post-Chvez era. Between 2014 and 2016, I lived once again in Lima, and have included much fresh reporting gathered in that period.

A new introductory chapter sets out what is at stake in the region and why it matters to the world. I have revised Chapter 2, which discusses prevailing explanations for Latin Americas relative difficulty in establishing prosperous democracies, to take account of recent additions to the literature. The three historical chapters that follow are largely unchanged. The rest of the book is radically revised and updated. The next chapter looks at the regions economic record since the 1980s. There follow chapters on the Venezuelan disaster and the varied stumbles of reformists in Chile, Brazil and Mexico. Later chapters include much new material on the changes in Latin American societies, and the struggles of governments and state institutions to respond to more educated, demanding and connected citizens, as well as to new challenges, such as climate change and conflicts over extractive industries. While Venezuela and Nicaragua have slipped into dictatorship, elsewhere democracy has held up in the region, but it is marred by corruption and ossified political structures the subject of Chapter 11. The penultimate chapter looks at what opportunities Latin America might have in the world of Donald Trump, a powerful China and an introverted Europe. The book concludes by assessing what the region needs to do to escape the middle-income trap and achieve the goals of economic development, stable democracy and more inclusive and less unequal societies that have so long eluded it.