Saving the Americas

Saving the Americas by Andres Oppenheimer

Andes Oppenheimer does yeoman’s work in Saving the Americas, his rollicking socio-political treatise on US-Latin American relations. Oppenheimer’s story is not necessarily a sad one, though he does convincingly portray Latin America as an increasingly irrelevant global player; it is the story of a host of characters who face a forked path, one way which leads to prosperity and the other which leads to slow ruin. And while these characters linger at the crossroad, biding time or quarreling with one another, Oppenheimer reminds the readers that the decision of which path to take has been made before, to the success of some and the detriment of others. These characters are clearly the leadership of Latin America, and their option is to clean up their internal violence, reinvest in themselves, and compete in the world economy or to wallow in complacency and to hold the ludicrous fantasy that commodity borne wealth will last indefinitely. For Oppenheimer’s taste, too many Latin countries have been stalling or choosing complacency. To be sure, these questions have been raised before. In a defining touch, Oppenheimer rises above the simple criticisms and offers solutions, real solutions, solutions which have been implemented before and were used to drive the success of Ireland and China. Perhaps Oppenheimer’s most trenchant observation is that success often depends on making decisions that will cause suffering to increase at first until things begin to get better. “Many countries in the region have yet to break out of their peripheral blindness and realize that while they are blinkered by ideology and obsessed with the past, rapidly-growing Asian and Eastern European countries are driven by pragmatism and committed to the future.” To be taken in equal doses, Oppenheimer prescribes:

1.) Get into free trade agreements and give up the stronghold on stodgy industries. Just because these industries offer jobs immediately does not make them the wise place to allocate ones resources.
2.) Stop making it easy for people to major in sociology. Latin America needs more engineers.
3.) Create incentives for universities to pursue commercially viable technologies.
4.) Create incentives for nationals to repatriate money they keep offshore.
5.) Create a rock-solid legal framework that protects foreign investments.
6.) Regional trade agreements must include the creation of agencies that enforce the trade contract. There must be real accountability.