China is set to supplant the US as Latin America’s preeminent outside economic power: it remains to be seen if that is a good thing.
Source: AMERICA ECONOMIA
America Economia is Latin America’s leading business magazine, founded in 1986 by Elias Selman and Nils Strandberg. Headquartered in Santiago, Chile, it features a region-wide monthly edition and regularly updated articles online, as well as country-specific editions in Chile, Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico.
Economic growth has brought more people into Latin America’s middle class, a first but insufficient sign of progress in one of the world’s most unequal regions.
Gossip columns and scurrilous TV shows peer into people’s private lives more every day. Not about freedom of information, they perpetuate the social complexes of the Colonial era.
The International Monetary Fund could be crucial providing aid in Ukraine and elsewhere, but much is on hold as the U.S. Congress blocks much needed IMF reforms.
Drones don’t just make news, they are beginning to cover it. Brazil street protests are an early testing ground. But for now, the entertainment press is out ahead of the pack.
Argentina and Venezuela are again trying to wiggle their way out of spending deficits by devaluating their currencies. It’s a short-term fix with long-term consequences.
President Dilma Rousseff’s once widespread popularity is sinking. But if Brazilian protests reignite when the World Cup begins, it could have major consequences on her October reelection bid.
A political and environmental coup de théatre by Greenpeace has drawn attention to the need to protect the melting glaciers in Chile’s southern reaches.
A Latin American writer describes a single moment in time in Miami, where the sad contradictions of American culture were on full display.
CARACAS — The rigid black-and-white vision of a Venezuela divided between government supporters and opponents obstructs any understanding of the multiple identities that have emerged since the start of mass anti-government protests in February. For those looking in from the outside, the media have presented a veritable caricature of events. The situation reminds me of […]
The refusal to give up amid dire political and financial conditions – call it old fashioned Optimism – helped Peruvians turn into a growing economic force.
Producers from Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia have visited the Colombian estates of producers to discover the social, environmental and aesthetic benefits of growing shade coffee.
Restrictive U.S. entry requirements deprive talented people of work opportunity but also drag down the competitiveness across the Americas.
NAFTA has brought about practically everything that is positive about the Mexican economy. Unfortunately, good governance and stability remain elusive.
The battle at hand on the streets of Caracas and beyond may be more fractured than it first appears.
Natural reproduction and the adaptability of genes will always outperform the machinations of multinationals like Monsanto, accused of wanting world domination with GMO crop production.
As the Castro reign lives its final phase, the future of Cuba is uncertain. This is not necessarily good news for Mexico.
Looking at the heirs of Latin America’s major business families, it is the best and worst of times – but it’s just about time for them to take charge.
-OpEd- I too can play the game of “I won’t think about that, so it can’t exist,” like a character tells himself in Delirium, the novel by Colombian writer Laura Restrepo. Indeed, such mental games are a national character trait. The country’s principal cinema chain Cine Colombia refused last December to show a short trailer […]
What will remain of the socialist ideals of Mexico’s 1910 revolution, as the country’s rulers dance to the singular drum of global capitalism and North America’s elite?
SANTIAGO — Believe it or not, food production waste can have more healthy components than the end product itself. That’s the conclusion of Chilean food research institute CREAS, which conducted a joint project with juice-makers Bayas del Sur in which they recovered juice production leftovers to obtain a berries-based concentrate with super-high antioxidant levels. In […]
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Venezuela, A State Of Emergency
The dire state of the economy and vanishing press freedoms are two key signs that Venezuela is a nation on the edge of disaster.
The modern consumer is bombarded by advertising that exploits our “addiction” to visual stimuli. But after the holiday rush, can we still become discerning buyers?
Though physical money will still be around for a while, the spread of digital money is inevitable for four basic reasons: efficiency, hygiene, durability – and anonymity.
MEXICO CITY — Roberto Servitje, co-founder and former president of the Mexican bread and pastry giant Bimbo, is upright and elegant at 85 years old. He has plenty to stand tall about, having started a company with his brother 68 years ago that remains successful and in the family. At a time when Mexican producers […]
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governed Mexico, at times with an iron fist, for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000. It returned with Enrique Peña Nieto’s victory in this year’s presidential elections. But have politics changed in Mexico? Will the PRI resort to its old ways, asks Luis Rubio,* or will it […]
SANTIAGO – Latin America has a long and checkered history of technological innovation spreading with the confusion and occasional lawlessness of the Wild West. This is particularly troubling now with the spread of drone technology, as more and more of the unmanned craft are hovering around the region with no regulations to speak of. In […]
-Op-Ed- MEXICO CITY — I am no energy specialist, but after reading and listening to experts in recent months, I have learned about the fundamental requirements that should drive any major energy-sector reform. Can smart energy policy become the most powerful platform for Mexico’s economic growth? Ramón Espinosa, an analyst at the Inter-American Development Bank […]
KUWAIT CITY — Juan Valdez coffee shops, as familiar in some Latin American cities as Starbucks is elsewhere, opened their first franchise shop in Kuwait this month. The inauguration heralds the firm’s arrival in the cash-rich market of the Middle East, a region also believed to be key in cultural and branding terms. The chain […]
Some 100 million people have emerged from poverty since the 1980s. Is that enough?
If the once popular Socialist become President a second time, as polls predict, Chile may be in for some major changes. What will it mean for the so-called ‘Chilean Model’?
MEXICO CITY — Dr. Emmett Brown takes banana peels, leftover beer, and some other pieces of garbage from the trash to charge his car — a DeLorean equipped with the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor. Although in this scene from the movie Back To The Future (1985), the technology was invented in 2015, energy generated […]
-Editorial- SANTIAGO — What’s happening in the United States, with the partial federal government shutdown and the threat not to raise the country’s debt limit, is perhaps the most serious political crisis the country has seen in more than 100 years. There are those who downplay these developments, because the government has been shuttered before […]
-Editorial- Ten months after taking over the presidency of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto has found himself at a critical moment. His ambitious project to reform practically all Mexican institutions is meeting opposition from the right and the left, at a time when his popularity is beginning to wane. The right opposes his proposal to increase […]
-Editorial- The fact that Dilma Rousseff decided to postpone her official visit to Washington, which had been planned for Oct. 23, has clearly illustrated that the United States’ decision to spy on the Brazilian president was not in the best interest of the United States. Washington has very little to gain from reading Rousseff’s emails […]
-OpEd- GUATEMALA CITY – In Guatemala, we know about the damage done by gangs and drug traffickers. We see them paraded across the national and international media as the embodiement of “evil,” with their steely glares and tattooed arms. But too often, simply blaming the gangs and drug trade ignores the complex set of elements […]
-Essay- BOGOTA — Have you heard? Your phone is spying on you, Apple isn’t as friendly as you think, and Facebook is getting scarier by the day! Today, information is an increasingly valuable currency, not only because it allows companies to generate strange intangible assets that are so difficult to replicate, but also because what […]
BOGOTA — After a long, drawn-out build-up, Starbucks has confirmed it will be coming to Colombia. The arrival of Howard Schultz’s company’s in the South America country famous for its coffee production will be the start of a very interesting showdown with local chain Juan Valdez — as well as all the small coffee shops […]
–Editorial– SANTIAGO — The fallout from the failed 2012 population census in Chile is huge, even though the country has yet to grasp its full impact. A recent report from an investigating committee advises that the results shouldn’t be used for official figures, and recommends that the census be repeated correctly in 2015. Though the […]
– Op-Ed – SANTIAGO — Recent findings from the World Bank and the Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) confirm that the middle class is now the majority in South America — and it will continue to grow. Without wading into the quagmire of defining “middle class,” a dicey topic with many nuances and interpretations, it […]