-Analysis-
BUENOS AIRES — Colombia’s socialist President Gustavo Petro recently recounted that he had an argument at the recent G20 summit with his Argentine counterpart, the ultra-conservative Javier Milei. On the sidelines of the summit held last month in Rio de Janeiro, the two vigorously disagreed about the respective contributions of private enterprise and the state to human progress.
Petro later accused the Argentine delegation there of hiding footage of the spat, as “there must have been something they didn’t like about what happened.”
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The Argentine government denied this, but relevant reports broadcast in the media, while revealing their respective views, merely show the president’s’ public presentations, which were unrelated to the incident.
Unfair system
At the summit, Petro repeated some familiar views on the need for solidarity, food sovereignty, international cooperation and social justice. The only way to stop South-North migration, he said, was with generalized prosperity and by targeting hunger, whereupon he urged G20 members to aid developing countries without compunction or hypocrisy.
His proposals fit into the Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s project for a Global Alliance Against Poverty and Hunger, now signed by 82 countries and 66 international organizations.
The Argentine-born Pope Francis, whom critics like to accuse of being blatantly leftist, also believes hunger and poverty are not for a shortage of food but an unfair system and unequal wealth distribution.
Global prosperity and poverty
FAO, the Rome-based United Nation’s food agency, is supposed to act as a coordination and backup center for the Alliance. It is curious though how Rome, like Paris, Geneva and New York, is the type of city favored by international civil servants working to aid the Global South!
Progress is the result of collective efforts.
Reports show President Milei speaking at the G20, repeating his equally familiar opinions on the benefits of capitalism and the free market. It is the enterprising bourgeoisie, he believes, that has since the 19th century Industrial Revolution, made possible a virtual elimination of poverty among 95% of people worldwide.
Petro insists, as he said in November, that progress is the result of collective efforts, “by everyone.” Clearly, the bases of prosperity and what must be done to tackle abject poverty and South-North migration remain an ongoing debate among Latin American states.
Yet it is notable to witness the contrast with the Asian nations’ delegations attending G20, who nothing about it.
Perhaps they now consider such debates futile or as infantile as a beer-fueled student debate, decades after the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s liberalizing reforms effectively became an engine of growth and prosperity across eastern Asia.
Nobody expects people like presidents Xi Jinping of China or Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia or India’s prime minister Narendra Modi to beg the North for money to alleviate “social crises” in their countries or better the lot of the millions of paupers that remain a large sector of their populations.
Economic engine
Beyond the cultural reasons that give different meanings to concepts like aid, charity and donations, Asian countries have steadily implemented structural reforms to favor private enterprise, attract investment, create jobs and promote exportation. These changes allowed them to become a chief engine of the world economy, often at Latin America’s expense.
The debate is essentially ideological.
The UN’s ECLAC, an economic agency, expects Latin America to grow by 2.1% in 2024, with a preferential 2.5% rate for Mexico thanks to the benefits of its free-trade pact with the United States.
Meanwhile we are still busy with a debate that is essentially ideological and particular to our overpoliticized region, and seen as resolved elsewhere in the world. Asia is the shining example.
