In this talk, hosted by the Institute for the Study of the Americas (ISA), independent consultant and journalist Colin Harding offered an insightful analysis of the 2006 presidential elections in Ecuador, in which Rafael Correa was elected as president. Harding described Correa as a good speaker who had appeared as a new face representing the promise of change. In the first part of his campaign, he said, Correa focused on denouncing the inequalities of the system and arguing the need for a new constitution.  His campaign gained such momentum that he was expected to win outright; the ...   more »

Former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) was in London this week giving a talk on NAFTA at the London Business School. The argument of his presentation was that NAFTA was intended to be an instrument to making the Mexican economy more competitive and robust, not an end in and of itself. He presented a number of statistics which demonstrated that Mexico had lost competitiveness in the decade since NAFTA on a number of metrics, and was highly critical of the lack of progress in reforming the Mexican economy further during the Zedillo and Fox administrations...   more »

On Saturday 2nd Dec 2006, a conference entitled ‘Latin America 2006: making another world possible’ was held at Congress House, organised by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, Justice for Colombia, Venezuela Information Centre and the T&G Latin American Workers Association. The conference brought together trade unionists, academics, NGOs and progressive movements from Latin America and the UK to explore recent political and social developments across Latin America. In particular, it explored the effects of US policy on the region and the current wave of progressive changes seen most notably in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Speakers at the conference were:

WAYNE ...   more »

On the 11th Dec, the International Policy Network (IPN) held a lunchtime meeting on ‘Elections in Latin America – the way forward’. IPN (www.policynetwork.net) is a London-based charity and think tank which educates the public about the role of liberal institutions in economic and social development. The meeting featured Paulo Uebel, President of the Instituto de Estudos Empresariais, Brazil.

Participants at the meeting were: Dan Lewis (Economic Research Council), Maria Alemendra Mc Bride Perez, Diana Geddes  (The Economist), Penelope Anthias (ODI), Carl Mortished (The Times), Alec van Gelder, Ellen Bisnathm and Mark Baillie (International Policy Network) Graeme Levin, ...   more »

On 30 October, ODI’s Andrew Lawson (Head of the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure) interviewed Guillermo Perry on two recent World Bank reports ‘Poverty Reduction and Growth: Virtuous and Vicious Cycles’ and ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’s Response to the Growth of China and India’ and the discussion focused on key development issues in Latin America.  You can read a full meeting summary and listen to a recording of the meeting here and use this space to continue the debates started at the meeting.

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Last Monday, Overseas Development Institute hosted a public meeting on UK Development Assistance in Latin America: Lessons from Peru. Read the meeting summary here: The meeting comes 18 months on from the closure of DFID’s Lima office and the decision to scale back DFID operations in middle income countries, ODI’s Latin America and Caribbean Group organised an event to discuss UK development assistance in Latin America with a specific focus on lesson-learning from Peru. The event brought together both British and Latin American speakers ...   more »

Blog.  The LAC blog is written by researchers at the Overseas Development Institute.  You can leave comments in English or Spanish.  If you think we should be blogging about a particular issue, you can send us short items and we will consider them for posting.  Email us about blogs.

 

Events.  Send details of your events (title, date, time, location) and we will advertise them. Email us about events.

 

Papers, policy briefs and other publications.  Send us pdfs or links and we will add them to our resources sections. Email us about ...   more »

Two major conferences being held in London on Latin American economics and politics last week, one at the London School of Economics (jointly with the Institute for the Study of the Americas) on 1-2 June, and one at the London Business School on 2 June. Both reinforced the fact that Latin America is very much in the news and on the minds of politicians, policy makers, academics and business owners. They also reinforced that perceptions of Latin America are quite divergent (and perhaps more divergent than they have been in recent memory). While some emphasised the region's improving macroeconomic performance and political pragmatism, others lamented lack of competitiveness vis-à-vis China (and Asia more generally), the rather tenuous inroads of regional integration and the lagging process of democratic consolidation.   more »

Between December 2005 and December 2006, 12 countries in Latin America will hold elections, with important implications for regional politics and economics. The purpose of this meeting series is to discuss what the effects of these elections will be on the region as a whole, and on particular countries, with a focus on Brazil , Mexico and Peru . It will serve as a discussion session for larger issues on the quality of democracy, governance, institutions and economics in Latin America , and the comparative lessons that might be drawn from the democratisation process the region is experiencing.

 

The ...   more »