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malonema1

Nicaragua: Economy >> globalEDGE: Your source for Global Business Knowledge - 0 views

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    This page has statistics on what Nicaragua's current economy situation is like. 
Javier E

Rebecca Solnit: Apologies to Mexico - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics - 0 views

  • drugs, when used consistently, constantly, destructively, are all anesthesia from pain. The Mexican drug cartels crave money, but they make that money from the way Yankees across the border crave numbness. They sell unfeeling. We buy it. We spend tens of billions of dollars a year doing so, and by some estimates about a third to a half of that money goes back to Mexico.
  • We want not to feel what’s happening to us, and then we do stuff that makes worse things happen–to us and others. We pay for it, too, in a million ways, from outright drug-overdose deaths (which now exceed traffic fatalities, and of which the United States has the highest rate of any nation except tiny Iceland, amounting to more than thirty-seven thousand deaths here in 2009 alone) to the violence of drug-dealing on the street, the violence of people on some of those drugs, and the violence inflicted on children who are neglected, abandoned, and abused because of them–and that’s just for starters.  The stuff people do for money when they’re desperate for drugs generates more violence and more crazy greed
  • Then there’s our futile “war on drugs” that has created so much pain of its own.
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  • No border divides the pain caused by drugs from the pain brought about in Latin America by the drug business and the narcotraficantes.  It’s one big continent of pain–and in the last several years the narcos have begun selling drugs in earnest in their own countries, creating new cultures of addiction and misery.  
  • We’ve had movements to get people to stop buying clothes and shoes made in sweatshops, grapes picked by exploited farmworkers, fish species that are endangered, but no one’s thought to start a similar movement to get people to stop consuming the drugs that cause so much destruction abroad.
  • Many talk about legalizing drugs, and there’s something to be said for changing the economic arrangements. But what about reducing their use by developing and promoting more interesting and productive ways of dealing with suffering? Or even getting directly at the causes of that suffering?
  • We give you money and guns, lots and lots of money. You give us drugs. The guns destroy. The money destroys. The drugs destroy. The pain migrates, a phantom presence crossing the border the other way from the crossings we hear so much about.The drugs are supposed to numb people out, but that momentary numbing effect causes so much pain elsewhere. There’s a pain economy, a suffering economy, a fear economy, and drugs fuel all of them rather than making them go away.
  • I have been trying to imagine the export economy of pain. What does it look like? I think it might look like air-conditioning. This is how an air conditioner works: it sucks the heat out of the room and pumps it into the air outside. You could say that air-conditioners don’t really cool things down so much as they relocate the heat. The way the transnational drug economy works is a little like that: people in the U.S. are not reducing the amount of pain in the world; they’re exporting it to Mexico and the rest of Latin America as surely as those places are exporting drugs to us.
  • Here in the United States, there’s no room for sadness, but there are plenty of drugs for it, and now when people feel sad, even many doctors think they should take drugs. We undergo losses and ordeals and live in circumstances that would make any sane person sad, and then we say: the fault was yours and if you feel sad, you’re crazy or sick and should be medicated. Of course, now ever more Americans are addicted to prescription drugs, and there’s always the old anesthetic of choice, alcohol, but there is one difference: the economics of those substances are not causing mass decapitations in Mexico.
  • Mexico, I am sorry.  I want to see it all change, for your sake and ours. I want to call pain by name and numbness by name and fear by name. I want people to connect the dots from the junk in their brain to the bullet holes in others’ heads. I want people to find better strategies for responding to pain and sadness. I want them to rebel against those parts of their unhappiness that are political, not metaphysical, and not run in fear from the metaphysical parts either.
  • A hundred years ago, your dictatorial president Porfiro Díaz supposedly remarked, “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States,” which nowadays could be revised to, “Painful Mexico, so far from peace and so close to the numbness of the United States.”
Javier E

The Most Important Alliance You've Never Heard Of - Moisés Naím - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • the presidents of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru met with little fanfare in Cartagena last week to seal an economic pact launched in 2012. They call their project the Pacific Alliance, and it will soon include Costa Rica
  • The four founding members are the most successful economies in Latin America; they boast the region's highest economic-growth rates and lowest inflation rates. Together, they represent 36 percent of the region's economy, 50 percent of its international trade, and 41 percent of all incoming foreign investment. If the Alliance were a country, it would be the world's eighth-largest economy and seventh-largest exporter. Its members lead the lists of the most competitive economies in Latin America and those where it’s easiest to do business.
  • the Pacific Alliance has already yielded more results in its 20 months of existence than similar initiatives that have been around for decades. The four countries have eliminated 92 percent of all import tariffs among them. Chile, Colombia, and Peru have linked their stock markets so that a company listed in one of the exchanges can be traded in the other two. Mexico is expected to follow suit this year, meaning this integrated stock market will rival that of Brazil as the largest in Latin America. The four countries have eliminated the need for business and tourist visas for visiting nationals of bloc members. In a break with tradition, the joint communiqués of Alliance presidents tend to be brief and concrete in terms of goals, timelines, and roadmaps.
Javier E

How Brazil's China-Driven Commodities Boom Went Bust - WSJ - 0 views

  • If the biggest economic story this century was China’s rise, Brazil was uniquely poised to benefit from it. Rich in iron ore, soybeans and beef, not to mention oil, Brazil was positioned as a supplier of many things China needed. Its annual trade with China, only around $2 billion in 2000, soared to $83 billion in 2013. China supplanted the U.S. as Brazil’s largest trading partner.
  • Brazil fell under what some economists call the “resource curse,” a theory describing how countries with abundant natural resources sometimes do worse than countries without them. The idea is that the money from commodity sales can lead to overvalued currencies and shortsighted policy-making, leaving such countries badly exposed when the resource boom finally ends.
  • “Unfortunately, the history is that commodity-dependent economies do not catch up with the U.S.,” said Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “Not just oil producers. More countries end up being poorer, compared with the U.S., after they find a commodity than catch up.” Using data going back to 1800, he said commodity-dependent economies typically grow for a decade, then spend as long as two decades wallowing or slipping back.
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  • Buoyed by China trade, nationalist-minded politicians launched a foreign policy meant to reduce the role of the U.S. in Latin America. Brazil blocked a U.S. free-trade initiative for the Americas. They teamed with Venezuela to create a regional security council to supplant one that included the U.S. The foreign minister worked from an office with a huge map of the world upside down, offering the message that the era of emerging markets was at hand. But the world wasn’t upside down. While Brazil tied itself more closely to anti-American governments like Venezuela, Argentina and Iran, some regional neighbors—Chile, Colombia and Peru—went around Brazil and cut individual free-trade deals with the U.S.
  • Anticipating commodity sales, the government spent increasingly heavily. Government banks supplied Brazilians with easy credit. Brazil subsidized energy bills, issued cheap loans to big companies with government ties and built stadiums to host global events such as the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
  • Meantime, Brazil produced far less oil than predicted. Production actually shrank in some years, as Petróleo Brasileiro SA, PBR 12.80 % known as Petrobras, struggled with the enormous task of developing oil fields in extremely deep water.
  • Commodities’ support of the economy allowed Brazilian leaders to put off addressing certain problems that had long bedeviled the nation, such as a political system that tended to breed corruption and a bureaucracy that stymied business innovation. “Brazil became complacent because of the intoxicating effects of China trade,”
rachelramirez

New Access to a Nicaraguan Island - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Search New Access to a Nicaraguan Island
  • The government of Nicaragua is betting that a new $10 million airport will boost tourism on Ometepe Island, a Unesco Biosphere Reserve known for its towering twin volcanoes.
  • But the ship bypassed Ometepe, and Twain never set foot on the island. Fifty years later, the Panama Canal opened, making the old shortcut through the lake to get from the Pacific to the Caribbean Sea obsolete.
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  • The airport, essentially a 1,500-meter airstrip with a small customs building, was due to open more than a year ago, and hopes that other regional airlines like Taca and Nature Air would offer service to the island haven’t materialized.
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    Although this island may be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, the Nicaraguan government seems desperate to cash in on anything the country's natural resources has to offer. The idea seems like a good small one, but would not be useful for giving the economy much 'kick'. Nicaragua has a lot to offer in terms of natural resources, but it is in my opinion that they should not overuse the land.
rachelramirez

The fiasco that is the Nicaragua Canal, explained - Vox - 0 views

  • The fiasco that is the Nicaragua Canal, explained
  • The idea, at least, is that a bigger Nicaragua canal could accommodate the next generation of super-sized container ships that can’t squeeze through Panama’s locks. Nicaragua’s leaders have also promised the project could double GDP in one of Central America’s poorest countries.
  • The consortium in charge — the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Group (HKND), led by Beijing-based telecom billionaire Wang Jing — has little experience with these sorts of projects and was awarded the contract in a secret deal with Nicaragua's Sandinista government.
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  • In its description, HKND says it will need more than 2,000 pieces of major construction equipment, four billion liters of diesel fuel, one billion liters of bunker fuel for the dredgers, 400,000 tons of explosives, and untold millions of tons of cement and steel. The company would have to import all of this stuff into Nicaragua and build entirely new ports and roads wide enough to fit the big equipment.
  • On that, Miranda was much more skeptical the canal could be built in five years for a cost of $50 billion.
  • The section of the proposed canal that stretches through Lake Nicaragua would pass by Ometepe Island, home to an active volcano, Concepción, that spews out ash every now and again.
  • Right now, ships that want to pass between the Pacific and the Atlantic use the Panama Canal, which is currently undergoing a major $5.25 billion expansion
  • The rationale behind the Nicaragua Canal, HKND insists, is that it will be able to accommodate the next generation of super-sized container ships that can hold nearly 23,000 containers at a time.
  •  One company that operates super-sized ships, Maersk, told CNBC that the canal was "not something we have a demand for, and we're not able, at this point, to tell whether we will use it."*
  • Jorge Huete-Pérez, a vice president of Nicaragua’s academy of sciences, told me that Lake Nicaragua is a national icon — a source of fisheries and tourism, but also a key freshwater reservoir for much of the nation.
  • Other biologists have pointed out that the canal’s route will slice through a variety of nature reserves that are homes to some 22 species vulnerable to extinction, from tapirs to jaguars to turtles.
  • One internal assessment obtained by Scientific American said that HKND’s process for acquiring land for preliminary access roads "did not meet international standards."
  •  The Sandinista government still promises that the project will create thousands of jobs and promote billions in investment, but skepticism is growing.
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    Nicaragua's economy appears to be desperate for growth, so desperate that the government is taking the canal into serious consideration. Although the canal seems as though it would be beneficial, in the long run there would be serious environmental consequences. The issue that seems to be subtly highlighted in this article about Nicaragua is their need for more jobs, international recognition and relevance. Although the canal seems to be the solution to the issues of job creation, and international recognition, the canal is a far cry from the most effective solution for this country at this time.
rachelramirez

Indigenous groups pressured to give up lands for doubtful Nicaragua Canal - 0 views

  • Indigenous groups pressured to give up lands for doubtful Nicaragua Canal
  • The meetings, which the Nicaraguan government sprang on surprised community leaders several times over the past few months, are aimed at securing consent to use indigenous territory
  • Community leaders say that the government has not allowed them legal council in the meetings, violating international regulations.
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  • Officials estimate that between 30,000 and 120,000 people will be displaced in total by the canal.
  • They say that the planned route will displace the entire communities of Bangkukuk Taik, Monkey Point and Wiringay, while most other local communities will be indirectly affected by canal support projects.
  • “They keep saying that we don’t need a legal advisor,” Allen Claire-Duncan, the leader of the Monkey Point Kriol community, told Mongabay. “Many people do not know how to read or write, and if the [government negotiators] come to the community they will speak in terms that the people don’t understand.
  • the Nicaraguan government must obtain consent from the nine community leaders as well as the 18 members of the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government (GTR-K) before construction can begin.
  • Community leaders are emphatic about their desire not to sign over their lands, but some leaders say they have been pressured into signing documents of an uncertain nature
  • But in May, government officials transferred 16 members of the GTR-K to Managua where they signed more papers. Shortly after the meeting, Nicaraguan state media reported that the indigenous territories had officially granted consent for the canal
  • Corporate and governmental secrecy have prompted concern from human rights organizations, environmental groups and the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua.
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    Nicaragua is on a dangerous pathway in the pursuit of a canal that may not ever be made; there are human rights violations, environmental violations, and the economy on the line if the deal goes through. Although I am unsure of how significant the indigenous population is in Nicaragua, the canal would require a great deal of land, and the movement of between 30 thousand and 120 thousand people.
Javier E

Global Climate Pact Gains Momentum as China, U.S. and Brazil Detail Plans - The New Yor... - 0 views

  • in the joint announcement by Brazil and the United States, the two nations committed to increasing the use of wind, solar and geothermal energy to make up 20 percent of each country’s electricity production by 2030, which would double power generation from renewable sources in Brazil and triple it in the United States. Brazil also pledged to restore about 30 million acres of Amazon rain forest, an area about the size of Pennsylvania.
  • Money is another major obstacle. In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged that by 2020, developed economies would send $100 billion annually, from both public and private sources, to developing economies to help them adapt to the ravages of climate change. This year, the United Nations has sought to establish a $10 billion “Green Climate Fund” to help begin that fund-raising effort.Although Mr. Obama has pledged $3 billion — more than any other nation has offered — Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to appropriate the money.Climate policy experts say that without the money from rich countries, developing economies will not be able to follow through on their pledges.
malonema1

Climate change predicted to halve coffee-growing area that supports 120m people | Envir... - 0 views

  • Climate change is already impacting coffee crops around the world, according to the report
  • Extreme temperatures and unusual high-altitude rains have also sparked costly waves of pests and disease through coffee farms. In 2012, coffee leaf rust affected half of the coffee across Central America – some producers in Guatemala lost up to 85% of their crop.
  • In 2012-13 the damage in Central America amounted to about US$500m and put 350,000 people out of work.
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    This article includes information about how the environment effects the hard-working people of Nicaragua. By having multiple countries come together to help reduce the number of people out of work due to climate change the economy of those countries would prosper greatly.
tristanpantano

The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency - 2 views

  • 5,966,798 (July 2016 est.)
  • mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 69%, white 17%, black 9%, Amerindian 5%
  • Despite being one of the poorest countries in Latin America, Nicaragua has improved its access to potable water and sanitation and has ameliorated its life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and immunization rates. However, income distribution is very uneven, and the poor, agriculturalists, and indigenous people continue to have less access to healthcare services. Nicaragua's total fertility rate has fallen from around 6 children per woman in 1980 to just above replacement level today, but the high birth rate among adolescents perpetuates a cycle of poverty and low educational attainment. Nicaraguans emigrate primarily to Costa Rica and to a lesser extent the United States. Nicaraguan men have been migrating seasonally to Costa Rica to harvest bananas and coffee since the early 20th century. Political turmoil, civil war, and natural disasters from the 1970s through the 1990s dramatically increased the flow of refugees and permanent migrants seeking jobs, higher wages, and better social and healthcare benefits. Since 2000, Nicaraguan emigration to Costa Rica has slowed and stabilized. Today roughly 300,000 Nicaraguans are permanent residents of Costa Rica - about 75% of the foreign population - and thousands more migrate seasonally for work, many illegally.
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  • The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century
  • The Pacific coast of Nicaragua was settled as a Spanish colony from Panama in the early 16th century
  • Central America, bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean, between Costa Rica and Honduras
  • Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America and the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere, has widespread underemployment and poverty. Textiles and agriculture combined account for nearly 50% of Nicaragua's exports.
  • $31.33 billion (2015 est.) $29.98 billion (2014 est.) $28.64 billion (2013 est.)
  • destructive earthquakes; volcanoes; landslides; extremely susceptible to hurricanes volcanism: significant volcanic activity; Cerro Negro (elev. 728 m), which last erupted in 1999, is one of Nicaragua's most active volcanoes; its lava flows and ash have been known to cause significant damage to farmland and buildings; other historically active volcanoes include Concepcion, Cosiguina, Las Pilas, Masaya, Momotombo, San Cristobal, and Telica
  • 2.98 million (2015 est.)
  • 6.1% (2015 est.)
  • the overwhelming majority of the population resides in the western half of the country, with much of the urban growth centered in the capital city of Managua; coastal areas also show large population clusters
  • 9% of GDP (2014)
  • 0.9 physicians/1,000 population (2014)
  • 15 September 1821 (from Spain)
  • highest court(s): Supreme Court or Corte Suprema de Justicia (consists of 16 judges organized into administrative, civil, criminal, and constitutional chambers) judge selection and term of office: Supreme Court judges elected by the National Assembly to serve 5-year staggered terms subordinate courts: Appeals Court; first instance civil, criminal, and military courts
  • $12.22 billion (2015 est.)
  • $5,000 (2015 est.) $4,800 (2014 est.) $4,700 (2013 est.)
  • 29.6% (2015 est.)
  • 1 (2015)
  • transshipment point for cocaine destined for the US and transshipment point for arms-for-drugs dealing
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    This article gave a lot of background on Nicaragua, and a lot of information about their current economy.
horowitzza

Witness for Peace : Informal Economies: Reflections from a recent delegation ... - 0 views

  • In Nicaragua, I came to understand the reasons that poor people, sometimes accompanied by their children, sold newspapers, snacks, and washed windshields while standing in the swirl of traffic
  • observed the many ways that poor Nicaraguans struggled to support their families.
  • Clearly in both India and Nicaragua there are not enough job opportunities with fair wages, and poor people are unable to provide for their families by working in the formal economy
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  • my experiences in Nicaragua changed my perspective. I hope to continue my travels in the developing world, and I want some of those travels to be with Witness for Peace
krystal62

Nicaragua Economy: Population, GDP, Inflation, Business, Trade, FDI, Corruption - 5 views

  • Anti–free market policies
  • populism
  • Mostly Unfree
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  • long-term
  • subject to substantial political interference.
  • Poor protection of property rights
  • widespread corruption
  • domestic access
  • Agricultural goods and textile production account for 50 percent of exports.
  • second-poorest nation in the Americas.
  • Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian
  • the rule of law in Nicaragua.
  • Sandinista judges
  • Private property rights (especially those of foreign investors) are not protected effectively, and contracts are not always secure.
  • . The growth of public spending has outstripped revenue expansion and is likely to continue in 2016.
  • inefficient and inflexible labor market
  • underemployed
  • used cars are restricted
  • The high cost of long-term financing continues to hinder more dynamic private-sector growth.
rachelramirez

The Nicaraguan Firewall: How the Narco Gangs Have Breached It - TIME - 0 views

  • The Nicaraguan Firewall: How the Narco Gangs Have Breached It
  • Nicaraguan military and police leaders insist they've created a "firewall" against the western hemisphere's more than $40 billion drug trade and the ultra-violent narco-gangs pushing in from both the north and the south.
  • the country is a leader in drug busts and has managed to reduce its homicide rate to the second-lowest in the region behind Costa Rica.
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  • Roberto Orozco, a Nicaraguan security expert at the Managua-based Institute for Strategic Studies and Public Policy (IEEPP). "We had already identified narco-penetration in lower levels of government, where municipal and local officials have been bought by organized crime. This is especially true along the principal drug-trafficking routes, where we've seen the worst corruption among police and local judges.
  • Substitute Magistrate Julio César Osuna, who was arrested May 27, is accused of using his government post to smuggle drugs, launder money and sell fake Nicaraguan IDs to foreign drug traffickers.
  • the drug gangs terrorizing Central America's northern triangle are moving into the rest of the isthmus.
  • Those who know the inner workings of the CSE say it's highly unlikely that Osuna, who is accused along with 21 other people who are not public officials, was working alone inside the government.
  • In the final months of Ortega's first Sandinista government in 1990, when party apparatchiks were busily divvying up confiscated properties and other spoils of their decade-long revolution, the National Assembly quietly passed a decree granting Nicaraguan citizenship to some 600 foreign revolutionaries, extremists and other political misfits who were being harbored by Nicaragua as an act of "solidarity.
  • While the Sandinistas' strong central government has slowed the narco-contamination of Nicaragua, the country's democratic institutions are extremely weak and vulnerable to corruption, analysts warn. It remains to be seen how far police will go — or be allowed to snoop — behind the thick curtain of secrecy that has shrouded the Sandinista government for the past five years
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    Although Nicaragua is doing a good job fending off corruption considering where the country is located, corruption is beginning to seep into the government. Based off of this article it seems as if it would be a nearly impossible task to keep Nicaragua from turning into a mini-Honduras or El Salvador, where corruption and gangs rule. Additionally, the government seems divided at the higher and lower levels, as the lower levels of the government have been taken over by gang members, and they have allowed terrorists from numerous countries to gain citizenship. It seems as though the best course of action that Nicaragua could take is unifying the government, and supporting the economy so that the government does not have to play into gang's desires.
Javier E

For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market.
  • while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.
  • residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.
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  • Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily — pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.
  • “There is this energy here, this feeling that anything can happen,” said Lesley Téllez, a Californian whose three-year-old business running culinary tours served hundreds of clients here last year. “It’s hard to find that in the U.S.”
  • more Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.
  • If the country of 112 million people can harness the energy of foreigners and newly educated Mexicans, become partners with the slew of American firms seeking alternatives to China, and get them to do more than just hire cheap labor, economists and officials say Mexico could finally become a more equal partner for the United States and the first-world country its presidents have promised for decades.
  • “There’s been an opening to the world in every way — culturally, socially and economically.”
  • global trends have been breaking Mexico’s way — or as President Enrique Peña Nieto often puts it, “the stars are aligning” — but there are plenty of obstacles threatening to scuttle Mexico’s moment.
  • The challenge, he said, is making sure that the growing interest in his country benefits all Mexicans, not just newcomers, investors and a privileged few.
  • Mexico has failed to live up to its economic potential before. “They really blew a moment in 1994 when their currency was at rock bottom and they’d just signed Nafta,”
  • The number of Americans legally living and working in Mexico grew to more than 70,000 in 2012 from 60,000 in 2009, a number that does not include many students and retirees, those on tourist visas or the roughly 350,000 American children who have arrived since 2005 with their Mexican parents. For DiscussionWhy did you decide to move to Mexico?Please share your story in the comments below.
  • closer ties with Mexico’s beloved and hated neighbor to the north, through immigration and trade, have made many Mexicans feel less insular. Millions of emigrants send money earned abroad to relatives in Mexico, who then rush out to Costco for more affordable food and electronics.
  • “Europe feels spiritually dead and so does the United States,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “You end up wanting something else.”
  • “We are now more certain about the value of sharing certain things.”
  • Some of the growth is appearing in border towns where foreign companies and binational families are common. American retirees are showing up in new developments from San Miguel de Allende to other sunny spots around Cancún and Puerto Vallarta. Government figures show that more Canadians are also joining their ranks.
  • More and more American consultants helping businesses move production from China are crisscrossing the region from San Luis Potosí to Guadalajara, where Silicon Valley veterans like Andy Kieffer, the founder of Agave Lab, are developing smartphone applications and financing new start-ups. In Guanajuato, Germans are moving in and car-pooling with Mexicans heading to a new Volkswagen factory that opened a year ago, and sushi can now be found at hotel breakfasts because of all the Japanese executives preparing for a new Honda plant opening nearby.
  • Mr. Pace, bearded and as slim as a Gauloises, said he moved to Mexico in 2011 because college graduates in France were struggling to find work. He has stayed here, he said, because the affordable quality of life beats living in Europe — and because Mexico offers more opportunity for entrepreneurship.
  • Some Mexicans and foreigners say Europeans are given special treatment because they are perceived to be of a higher class, a legacy of colonialism when lighter skin led to greater privileges. But like many other entrepreneurs from foreign lands, Mr. Pace and his partners are both benefiting from and helping to shape how Mexico works. Mr. Rodríguez, the former Interior Ministry official, Cuban by birth, said that foreigners had helped make Mexico City more socially liberal.
  • Many immigrants say Mexico is attractive because it feels disorderly, like a work in progress, with the blueprints of success, hierarchy and legality still being drawn. “Not everyone follows the rules here, so if you really want to make something happen you can make it happen,” said Ms. Téllez, 34, whose food business served more than 500 visitors last year. “No one is going to fault you for not following all the rules.”
  • compared with South Korea, where career options were limited by test scores and universities attended, Mexico allowed for more rapid advancement. As an intern at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency here, he said he learned up close how Samsung and other Korean exporters worked. “Here,” he said, “the doors are more open for all Koreans.” He added that among his friends back home, learning Spanish was now second only to learning English.
  • There were 10 times as many Koreans living in Mexico in 2010 as in 2000.
  • Europe, dying; Mexico, coming to life. The United States, closed and materialistic; Mexico, open and creative. Perceptions are what drive migration worldwide, and in interviews with dozens of new arrivals to Mexico City — including architects, artists and entrepreneurs — it became clear that the country’s attractiveness extended beyond economics.
  • Artists like Marc Vigil, a well-known Spanish television director who moved to Mexico City in October, said that compared with Spain, Mexico was teeming with life and an eagerness to experiment. Like India in relation to England, Mexico has an audience that is larger and younger than the population of its former colonial overlord.
  • “In Spain, everything is a problem,” he said. “Here in Mexico, everything is possible. There is more work and in the attitude here, there is more of a spirit of struggle and creativity.”
  • it was not a country that welcomed outsiders; the Constitution even prohibited non-Mexicans from directly owning land within 31 miles of the coast and 62 miles of the nation’s borders.
  • He struggled to make sense of Mexico at first. Many foreigners do, complaining that the country is still a place of paradox, delays and promises never fulfilled for reasons never explained — a cultural clash that affects business of all kinds. “In California, there was one layer of subtext,” Mr. Quemada-Díez said. “Here there are 40 layers.”
  • Mexico has allowed dual nationality for more than a decade, and among the growing group of foreigners moving here are also young men and women born in Mexico to foreign parents, or who grew up abroad as the children of Mexicans. A globalized generation, they could live just about anywhere, but they are increasingly choosing Mexico.
  • Domingo Delaroiere, an architect whose father is French and mother is Mexican, said Mexico’s appeal — especially in the capital — was becoming harder to miss. When he came back here last year for a visit, after two and a half years in Paris, he said he was surprised. “Art, culture, fashion, architecture, design — the city was filling up with new spaces, things that are interesting, daring,” he said. He soon decided it was time to move. Compared with Mexico, he said, “Nothing is happening in Paris.”
Javier E

Economy of Haiti - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

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    Before Haiti established its independence from French administration in 1804, Haiti ranked as the world's richest and most productive colony.
Javier E

Eduardo Galeano Disavows His Book 'The Open Veins' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • For more than 40 years, Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America” has been the canonical anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist and anti-American text in that region
  • now Mr. Galeano, a 73-year-old Uruguayan writer, has disavowed the book, saying that he was not qualified to tackle the subject and that it was badly written. Predictably, his remarks have set off a vigorous regional debate, with the right doing some “we told you so” gloating, and the left clinging to a dogged defensiveness.
  •  ‘Open Veins’ tried to be a book of political economy, but I didn’t yet have the necessary training or preparation,” Mr. Galeano said last month while answering questions at a book fair in Brazil, where he was being honored on the 43rd anniversary of the book’s publication. He added: “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it
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  • “Open Veins” has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has sold more than a million copies. In its heyday, its influence extended throughout what was then called the third world, including Africa and Asia, until the economic rise of China and India and Brazil seemed to undercut parts of its thesis.In the United States, “Open Veins” has been widely taught on university campuses since the 1970s, in courses ranging from history and anthropology to economics and geography. But Mr. Galeano’s unexpected takedown of his own work has left scholars wondering how to deal with the book in class.
  • “If I were teaching this in a course,” said Merilee Grindle, president of the Latin American Studies Association and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard, “I would take his comments, add them in and use them to generate a far more interesting discussion about how we see and interpret events at different points in time.” And that seems to be exactly what many professors plan to do.
  • “Reality has changed a lot, and I have changed a lot,” he said in Brazil, adding: “Reality is much more complex precisely because the human condition is diverse. Some political sectors close to me thought such diversity was a heresy. Even today, there are some survivors of this type who think that all diversity is a threat. Fortunately, it is not.”
  • In the mid-1990s, three advocates of free-market policies — the Colombian writer and diplomat Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, the exiled Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Peruvian journalist and author Álvaro Vargas Llosa — reacted to Mr. Galeano with a polemic of their own, “Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.” They dismissed “Open Veins” as “the idiot’s bible,” and reduced its thesis to a single sentence: “We’re poor; it’s their fault.”
  • Mr. Montaner responded to Mr. Galeano’s recent remarks with a blog post titled “Galeano Corrects Himself and the Idiots Lose Their Bible.” In Brazil, Rodrigo Constantino, the author of “The Caviar Left,” took an even harsher tone, blaming Mr. Galeano’s analysis and prescription for many of Latin America’s ills. “He should feel really guilty for the damage he caused,”
Javier E

Mexican Leader, Facing Protests, Promises to Overhaul Policing - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Some of his proposals never made it out of Congress under predecessors, including putting local police under state authority. Yet he has had success pushing through other broad changes designed to improve the economy, and as much as anything he aimed to restore the public’s flagging faith in his governance.
  • The case has pushed Mexico’s chronic problems with organized crime, impunity and lawlessness back to the forefront and forced Mr. Peña Nieto, who had tried to prioritize the economy, to act.
  • “This shows a change from a government that thought that economics will fix security issues, to one that acknowledges that security — and rule of law — is needed to allow economic growth to happen,”
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  • “The real question is whether the Mexican people, who have been promised investigations, overhauls, special commissions, anti-corruption campaigns and institutional reorganizations by this president — and nearly every other authority since the Mexican Revolution — will believe these latest promises,”
  • Analysts said many of the proposals, if not new ideas, were needed, but questioned whether Mr. Peña Nieto had the credibility to pull them off because of scandals under his watch.
  • “You can’t announce credible strategies to deal with corruption without facing his own scandal of his wife’s white house, whether the conflict of interest is real or not,” said Fernando Dworak, a political analyst and columnist. “He needs to give the message, it starts with himself.”
  • Some analysts saw reining in municipal police as a crucial step but questioned whether state forces were any more up to the task, given their own histories of corruption and drug ties.
  • On Thursday, the decapitated bodies of 11 young people were found in Guerrero State, the same state where the students went to school and disappeared. The governor also said reports of a mass abduction before the one in Iguala would also be investigated.
Javier E

Venezuela's crumbling economy has forced millions to leave for other countries. - The W... - 0 views

  • Peru is no promised land. Sand-colored shantytowns mar its cities, and rural life can be backbreaking. A fifth of the population lives in poverty. Yet more than 517,000 Venezuelans have arrived here so far this year, on top of the 100,000 who came in 2017 – making it the region’s second-largest host for Venezuelan migrants after Colombia. As many as 2 million Venezuelans will empty out of their country this year, and more than 1,000 cross the Peruvian border each day.
  • For them, even Peru is a paradise.
  • A nation that was once the richest per capita in South America – and one of its best educated — has an estimated poverty rate near 87 percent. Malnutrition and disease are spreading unabated.  Hyperinflation has broken supply chains, putting food and medicine out of reach for millions.
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  • When the Venezuelans came knocking, Peru opened its doors, offering, until recently, fast-track work permits. It wasn’t strictly humanitarian.  For Venezuela, the loss of highly skilled people  is a crippling brain drain. For Peru, it’s a bonanza.
  • Peruvian authorities are especially thrilled about Venezuelan doctors and are designing a program to bring them to cities and towns  facing chronic staff shortages in clinics and hospitals. But for the doctors, it costs nearly $200 to take the national medical equivalency test – a king’s ransom for Venezuelan physicians who in many cases earned about $12 a month at home.
  • Perdomo’s father, an electrician, embraced Chávez. His mother, a teacher, hated him. “She saw through his lies. So did I,” Perdomo said
  • Cases had grown more desperate as the crisis deepened. He tended to two children who’d died of malnutrition. “We just never had that before, not in Venezuela, not starvation,” he said.   But the case he could not get out of his head was that of Geliana Obregon. Flies had laid eggs in her head. With no medication for treatment and no running water at home – now a constant problem in  Venezuela – maggots had infested the little girl’s scalp.
  • “I picked 123 worms out of her,” he said.
  • He got a break the night before. His roommate’s employer, a dermatologic firm, was looking for a clerk at one of their Lima clinics. He’d rushed over for the interview. After 20 minutes, the owner hired him on the spot. The salary: The equivalent of $267 a month. Minimum wage in Peru. An incalculable fortune in Venezuela.
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