Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 980.038
EAN: 9780300116168
ISBN: 0300116160
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2008-01-03
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press

(20080323)

Customer Rating:
Summary: A very analytical study
Comment: An intense and concsie study of latin America's political, economic and caste systems defined and discusssed. A very well thought out book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Democracy - and Capitalism - in Latin America
Comment: Michael Reid's task in "Forgotten Continent" is onerous: in one book - a large one, to be sure - he wants to summarize two hundred years of a continent's history, and to argue that Latin America is now ready for a major change: the embrace of Free Market Democracy in earnest for the first time.

The thesis of the book is simple: Latin America is torn between reformers - democrats who support free markets and democracy, and populists - who support neither. Reid argues that although the populists have considerable appeal in the region, the tide has turned against them. Unlike previous eras, the current embrace of democracy and capitalism - augmented with a great deal of redistribution policies - is here to last.

Surprisingly for a journalist, Reid's history of Latin American, in three large chapters which take us from the 1820s to the 1990s, is cumbersome and hard to read. It is only when he gets to economic history that Reid, a correspondent for The Economist, hits his stride; A chapter on the development of the Washington Consensus is fascinating; I've read general economic accounts of 1997-1998 crisis (e.g. Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics) and a specific study of Argentina's woes (Paul Bluestein's And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina), but Reid offers a continent wide survey of the economic liberalization program which started in the 1980s, and offers a balanced evaluation; Unsurprisingly, Reid, like the journal for which he writes, thinks that the reforms were largely successful and positive, and that the responsibility for economic failures in the countries of Latin America lies more in insufficient reform of their economies and institutions and hardly if at all in the malign influence of Wall Street, the US, and the International Monetary Fund.

I was pleased with Reid's decision to dedicate a chapter to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President. I originally bought "Forgotten Continent" to a large extent in order to learn more about the man and the phenomenon. Unfortunately Reid's account, although informative about Chavez's biography (coolest tid-bit: did you know that Chavez has his own TV show in which he dazzles Venezuelan audiences for five to seven hours every week?) but did not really enlighten me about the overall significance of "The Chavez Revolution", for Venezuela, Latin America, or the world. Overall, Reid's conclusion corresponds to the views I held before reading his book: Chavez's Venezuela is less democratic and more corrupt than the very imperfect regimes that came before it. Chavez's entire regime rests on the high price of oil; once that is gone, Chavez, and unfortunately, his country are in for a rude awakening.

Reid's focus is squarely on economics and politics. The chapter on the changing societies of Latin America is short and feels rudimentary. Reid touches briefly upon the region's press (becoming more liberal and open), religion (becoming more diverse, with a decline of traditional Catholicism and the rise of Protestantism) and race relations (becoming more complicated, as the previously hushed reality of racism is brought to the surface, unleashing various forces and counter forces), but doesn't do them justice.

The heart of the book is the description of the struggle to reform: not only the state and the economy, but the law enforcement and education systems. That improving schools is a difficult job comes as no surprise; Investing in education is relatively easy, but making sure that the investment is productive is much more difficult (see William Easterly's The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics and The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good). The difficulties of reforming the law enforcement services owe much to the so-called "War on drugs": US pressure on Latin American countries to destroy coca production causes unnecessary resentment, and is unlikely to effect the availability of crack-cocaine on US streets - the high price of cocaine isn't due to scarcity but to the risks involved in moving it within the market countries, where it is much more heavily regulated (p.256). But beyond the inherent problems in reform, the main obstacle to the spread of effective, free market democracies is the weak economic performances of Latin America. Unlike China and India, which clearly enjoy the benefits of Globalization, the economic performance of most Latin American countries have been abysmal.

Why has Latin America's economies (with few exceptions such as Chile) performed so badly? It's hard to say. The great differences in size, population, geography, system of government, availability of natural resources, etc, guarantees that challenges would always be launched against any single "one size fits all" explanation. Regardless of the cause, Reid argues that Latin America's improved economic policies in the 1990s and 2000s would lead to improved economic outcome, and thus the reformers (and not the populists) would win the "Battle for the Soul of Latin America". Let's hope he's right - a poor Latin America dominated by quasi-socialistic dictators, as in the 20th century, would be a grim reality for the 21st.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: An Indispensable Guide to the Latin America of the 21st Century
Comment: Mr. Reid, a writer for The Economist magazine, arguably the best magazine in the world, delivers us an extremely concise, well-written book on a region that America turned its back on after fostering democratic reforms in the 80's, but one which has now been cast to the forefront of world affairs due in large part to the huge commodities boom, the flood of investment into their capital markets, leading to the emergence of a new type of 'Caudillo': the Hugo Chavez-esq 21st Century descendent of Fidel Castro, bolstered by the price of oil sitting above $100 per barrel.

Mr. Reid adroitly explains to us the historical, political, cultural and ethnic differences between the countries in Latin America with just enough historical reference to make his points without getting the reader bored. Latin America, often viewed as a land who's ground is rich, but the places that have been blessed by nature have been cursed by history. But where John Perkin's conspiracy-theory-laden (but highly entertaining) "Diary of an Economic Hitman" blames the big, bad Gringo and our multi-national corporations and local (LatAm) corrupt politicians and a bureaucratic IMF and World Bank for the continent's centuries of under-achievement which the likes of Hugo Chavez have used to great success (and which have much merit), Mr. Reid takes Latin Americans to task and assigns some of the responsibility, at least, to them. This is a welcome balance to the overplayed 'dependency theory' heard so much today.

Most Americans limit their knowledge of Latins to the illegal immigrants who bravely struggle to get here, doing the jobs that Americans won't while sending much of their earnings back home. Reid reminds of staggering facts: some as simple as Brazil alone being geographically as large as the continental 48 US states, and that in 1913, the standard of living in Argentina was higher than that of France, Germany, Italy or Spain. Buenos Aires was the 2nd largest city in the Americas after New York, had more sewers than Paris and more telephone service than Japan. Also, that by 1551, universities had been founded in Peru, the Domican Republic and Mexico, almost a full century before our esteemed Harvard University.

Whether it be for a businessperson who is new to the region; or someone trying to understand the great undying dichotomy that is Latin America in almost all ways, Mr. Reid's book presents a timely but historically rich study on this diverse region, but never lets the reader's mind wander and does his work with skill and balance. Highly recommended.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: To be expected
Comment: Michael Reid's Forgotten Continent is a tiresome repetitive report on the Economist's already well known distrust for Chavez and the rest of the Latin American left in the new Millenium. It is not academically researched or based on interviews and therefore is mostly an account of Reid's (and the Economist's) opinions on the region's center-left trends; the basis of which is that liberal capitalist democracy is the answer to everyone's woes. This is not a useful book for anyone wanting to know more about Chavez or the center-left trend in Latin America. I would recommend Ronnie Munck's essay in Twentieth-Century Marxism: A Global Introduction (2007) if you are interested in a short synopsis of trends in ideology for the left in Latin America.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: biased cherry picking
Comment: Would anyone writing for the Economist have an opinion other than demonizing Chavez' "populist challenge", condemning the "debt-ridden dictators" while defending Globalization as some kind of reform movement?
Would he explain how the ultra-corrupt, pseudo-democrat President Menem took Argentina into disaster as Washington's Golden Boy? Would he highlight how the coup against Chavez, crafted and directed by Washington, was beaten back by popular and rank-and-file soldier support which continues today after a dozen FREE elections? Would he dare to mention the rapacity of numerous corporations against workers' rights, environment, water supplies, etc in virtually all countries in the region? Would he approve perhaps of Exxon (yes, that company which still has not paid for the legal damages it was assessed for its Alaska mishap) trying to embargo the wealth of Venezuela's national oil company? The Economist is a shrill for worldwide corporate rule and writers like Reid only do their best muffling the worst sounds of their injustice. That's the reason for the two stars: he is a very good at writing fine deception.

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