Chapter 10 neoliberalism

Neoliberal governments started after all the failure provided by the nationalistic dictatorship previous government. The neo Liberals appeared to be the salvation of the moment; they emphasized free trade, export production and comparative advantage.  Neo Liberals were not nationalist at all, they embraced all the free market ideas, like privatize state corporations and social services, also reduced subsidies on basic foodstuff.

A lot of countries in Latin America were already in debt since the 1980’s, which created high oil prices and also countries were refinancing their debts. The external debt was rising, Brazil and Mexico external debts were the highest.  Obviously the IMF was a huge supporter of Neo Liberalism policies, since they were the provider of huge quantities of money to poor Latin American countries.

The neo liberal leaders were able to tame problems like inflation in Brazil and Argentina. , create some trade agreements and cuts in social spending. This was the real problem; consider the idea of hyperinflation and social cuts in the same government, the poor suffered the most with these policies.  Also the neoliberal policies really hurt the producers, there was no creation of employment within the local industries and the majority of the people from lower classes did not benefit from the neoliberal policies.

There were also the Maquiladora which, was almost like exploitation in my opinion, were women had to work assembling imported parts in Mexico. These workers which like I said were mostly women, had little rights and got paid very little. Obviously they chose to have the maquiladoras in Mexico because it was just cheap labor and little regulation.

Basically the neoliberal policies were not beneficial at all to the lower classes, since providing the basics like water and electricity to the people was not considered profitable many governments just did not care.

One of the most important movements created against the neo liberals policies was in Mexico; the Zapatistas rebelled and demanded land reform. The Zapatistas were also focused on helping the indigenous communities that also suffered with the lack of investments and opportunities.

The changes started in Latin America with the election of leaders like Chavez, Lula, Morales and etc. that had nationalist roots, turning into more socialist economic policies to help the people.