Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Latin America & Caribbean

Economic Debacle In Argentina: The IMF Strikes Again

by | Jan 2, 2002

In the midst of their fourth year of recession, with the official unemployment rate approaching 20%, and with increasing cutbacks of social programs, Argentinians took to the streets in the days before Christmas. Sparked by the government’s latest economic policies, which restricted the amount of money people could withdraw from their bank accounts, political demonstrations and the looting of grocery stores spread across the country. First the government declared a state of siege, but with the police often standing by watching the looting “with their hands behind their backs,” there was little the government could do. Within a day after the demonstrations began, the principal economic minister had resigned; a few days later came the president’s resignation.

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After the Fall: The Argentine Crisis and Possible Repercussions

by | Dec 1, 2001

The inevitable has now happened. The strategy of the government of President de la Rua was to revive the sinking economy by re-attracting IMF credits and foreign capital. To appease the IMF and Wall Street, it chose to remain with a policy triad that had ceased to make sense. This was to defend at all costs a severely overvalued peso exchange rate, keep up full servicing of the oppressively large dollar debt, and balance the fiscal budget in the face of skyrocketing unemployment and falling production.

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Is Argentina the Coup de Grace of the IMF’s Flawed Policy Mission?

by | Nov 1, 2001

The reverberations from the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 enmeshed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a major legitimacy crisis over its recently assumed mission to promote free capital mobility around the globe. The repercussions from the current Argentine crisis threaten to apply the coup de grace to that mission. The mission, which deviates drastically from the IMF’s original function under its Bretton Woods charter, was designed to support the U.S. free market globalization strategy. The mission crisis of the IMF is thus also a U.S. policy crisis.

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The Argentine Crisis as Coup de Grace?

by | Sep 1, 2001

For most of the past decade Argentina had been the poster child of the IMF and Wall Street. No developing country in the 1990s had opened its financial markets more avidly, or privatized its state assets more fervidly. These structural reforms were supported by monetary reforms in 1991 that legally froze the peso/dollar exchange rate and tightly tied the money supply to the changing stock of hard currency reserves. To further gain Wall Street confidence, the Argentine government in 1991 announced a major foreign policy shift from nonalignment to an all-out pro-U.S. position–“in carnal embrace,” Foreign Minister Guido Di Tella sardonically put it.

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The IMF and Argentina’s Spiraling Crisis

by | Sep 1, 2001

“After our trip to Buenos Aires,” the investment firm of Merrill Lynch announced in early July, “our main impression is that the risks of a spiraling of the crisis in Argentina have increased.” Investors took the warning to heart. On July 11, in its efforts to raise funds on the bond market, the Argentine government was forced to offer interest rates of 14% on its three month bonds; only two weeks earlier, investors had demanded only 9% for similar bonds.

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Small Arms Trafficking in the Americas

by | Aug 1, 2001

The Bush administration may think that it has struck a blow in favor of the Second Amendment by attempting to sabotage the recent UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms. But U.S. obstinacy has consequences in all the Americas, most notably Colombia and the surrounding region.

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A Much Wider War

by | Jul 1, 2001

In the coming weeks, Congress will begin to debate the wisdom of sending a billion additional dollars to the Andes region of South America. According to the Bush administration, this money–added to the $1.3 billion the Clinton administration sent–will help the U.S. in its war on drugs.

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Migration Talks Must Tie in to Trade Relationship or They Will Fall Short

by | Jul 1, 2001

Seven-and-a-half years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, the situation of Mexico’s migrant workers in the United States is still being approached as if it were divorced from the two countries’ trade relationship; and calls by labor, human rights organizations, church groups, and progressive political constituents in favor of a policy recognizing migration’s link to trade continue to fall on deaf ears.

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The Conflict in Colombia: Implications for Ecuador’s National Security

by | Jul 1, 2001

The inability of the Colombian State to control its national territory and diverse armed groups is perceived to pose a threat to the other countries of the Andean region. The danger posed by Colombia’s internal strife is not a typical scenario of external aggression or inter-state competition. Rather, violence in Colombia is a post-cold war conflict with multiple actors whose nature and origins vary greatly. Colombia’s case defies traditional scenarios that emphasize the role of the nation state as the leading actor in the international system; in this conflict, many of the parties involve actors across borders, including peasants, military and police forces, guerrilla movements, entrepreneurs and merchants, border populations, human rights organizations, smugglers, drug-traffickers, and illegal crop growers. While some of these actors engage in violence, not all of them do, yet all are deeply affected by the violence raging in Colombia today.

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