Latin America’s Crime Tax

By Guillermo Ortiz

Even excluding lives lost, communities displaced, and families ravaged, the economic costs of organized crime in the region produce a bleak picture, shaving 0.5–2 percentage points off annual GDP growth in the most affected countries. That, too, represents a hefty human toll.

Latin America almost certainly pays the world’s highest economic price for organized crime. According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), crime costs Latin America and the Caribbean an average of 3.44% of GDP annually, equivalent to 78% of all public education spending across the region. But there are significant discrepancies across LAC. Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico stand out both for the scale of the problem and how organized crime operates.

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Can Latin America Escape Its Second Lost Decade?

Image: Project Syndicate

By José Antonio Ocampo

Latin America’s economies continued to be the worst-performing in the developing world in 2023. To boost economic growth, the region’s political leaders must increase their investments in science and technology, foster regional integration, and reaffirm their commitment to democratic governance.

Latin America has come to the end of its second lost decade of development. Average annual growth hovered just below 0.9% for the 2014-23 period – worse than the 1.3% rate in the 1980s. GDP per capita, however, is projected to be slightly higher in 2023 than in 2013, owing to slower population growth. By contrast, it was not until 1994 that the region’s GDP per capita returned to its 1980 level. Still, Latin America has a severe growth problem.

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Russia is Re-Engaging with Latin America. What Does This Mean for the Region- and for the U.S.?

By Laura Schroeder

As violence continues in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, more light has been shed on Russia’s presence across the globe over the past decade. In Latin America, Russian efforts to expand its influence to challenge the hegemonic power of the United States have revealed a decades-long reassessment of its strategic interactions in the region. After the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Latin America in the 1990s, Russia has gradually been reengaging with the region, from rekindling former political ties to investing in new partnerships to deftly employing soft power.

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Película de monstruos en América Latina

Por Andrés Velasco

Los latinoamericanos tenemos muchos talentos. Uno de ellos es la notable aptitud para gobernarnos mal, como lo ha puesto de manifiesto la pandemia. Seis de los 20 países con más muertes per cápita del mundo a causa del Covid-19 se encuentran en América Latina. Perú encabeza la lista y Brasil ocupa el octavo lugar.

Sin duda que la pobreza, la escasez de camas en los hospitales, y las hacinadas condiciones de vivienda, contribuyeron a la diseminación del virus, pero estos factores por sí solos no explican por qué la región lo ha hecho tan mal. Muchas naciones de Asia y de África padecen de los mismos problemas, pero sufrieron menos muertes per cápita. Incluso países que vacunaron a su población tempranamente, como Chile, –o que al principio de la pandemia parecían exitosos, como Uruguay– han terminado con un desempeño mediocre.

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Colombia’s Triple Crisis

People take part in a new protest against the government of Colombian President Ivan Duque, in Cali, Colombia, on May 19, 2021. (Photo by Luis ROBAYO / AFP) (Photo by LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images)

By Mauricio Cárdenas

Colombians need political leadership that responds to the current anger in the streets with effective strategies to tackle the country’s social and fiscal crises, while relying on increased vaccination to defeat the pandemic. But with the radical right and populist left on the rise, expecting this anytime soon is wishful thinking.

While the United States and other advanced economies are returning to normalcy, Colombia reported its highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths to date during the last week of June. Since early May, the country has been recording one COVID-19 death per 100,000 people per day – three times India’s rate.

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¿Qué está pasando en Colombia?

Por Nicole Tirado, Paula Gamboa, Tatiana Valenzuela, Yuliana Aborda, Roxanna Barrera y Diana Carolina Ortiz

Nuestra profesor de historia dice que los ciudadanos del siglo XXI ya no se mueven por partidos políticos; ahora los mueve la reflexión de conceptos y narraciones que los constituyen como sujetos políticos, ciudadanos con voz y derecho. En este orden de ideas, hablar de reflexión implica hacer conciencia y esta permite no olvidar que en la historia colombiana el miedo ha habitado el territorio como un ciudadano más. Parte del origen colombiano ha sido la violencia y con esta el miedo; lo sabemos los que reflexionamos y también los que gobiernan. Por eso actualmente vivimos un Paro Nacional con el lema del miedo. La historia que se está entretejiendo de este hecho no es otro que la repetición de la historia colombiana: miedo a la muerte; los desaparecidos cuyas madres lloran su ausencia; cadáveres sin responsable; y discursos que aprueban la violencia por parte de la fuerza pública que defiende el bien público, pero no al público, el cual es su mismo pueblo.

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What’s happening in Colombia?

By Nicole Tirado, Paula Gamboa, Tatiana Valenzuela, Yuliana Aborda, Roxanna Barrera and Diana Carolina Ortiz

Our history teacher says that, in the twenty-first century, citizens do not engage with political parties because what moves them now is the analysis of concepts and narratives that shape them as political subjects—as citizens with voices and rights. This implies awareness and the memory that, in Colombian history, fear has lived with us as another citizen. Part of Colombia’s origin has been violence, and with it comes fear; we know this, as do those who govern us. For this reason, nowadays we’re going through a national strike whose main slogan is fear. Current events are nothing other than the repetition of Colombian history: fear of death, missing people whose mothers mourn their absence, corpses that cannot be identified, and speeches that endorse violence by armed forces, who profess to defend the public good but not the public, not the people of their own country.

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