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21. Latino Immigrant Entrepreneurs: How to Capitalize on Their Economic Potential

Author:
Alexandra Starr
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Latino immigrant entrepreneurs are making important contributions to the U.S. economy. They have founded highly successful companies in the frozen food, construction, financial services, and high-tech industries. Many of these companies owe their success to cultural connections with Latin American markets abroad and U.S. Latino consumers at home—markets that are set to grow rapidly in the coming years. Small-scale Latino immigrant entrepreneurs, meanwhile, have helped revitalize city commercial strips and small-town Main Streets across the country.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Markets, and Immigration
Political Geography:
Latin America

22. Contested Meanings of Corruption: International and Local Narratives in the Case of Paraguay

Author:
Malte Gephart
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
While the current international and transnational anti‐corruption campaign (ITACC) has been successful in calling worldwide attention to the topic, several critics have argued that the term “corruption” and the concepts that underlie it are ambiguous and that corruption and anti‐corruption have various meanings. This paper empirically explores these supposedly divergent meanings by comparing the ITACC with the anti‐corruption discourse in Paraguay. In order to explore not only the tensions but also possible coalitions between the ITACC and the Paraguayan discourse, I have conducted discourse analysis and constructionist interviews. The empirical exploration shows that differences, and thus tensions, exist between both levels with respect to the causes and effects attributed to corruption, as well as with regard to the ultimate goal of the fight against corruption. However, there also is a strong discourse coalition between the ITACC and Paraguay concerning concrete countermeasures, which indicates the dominance of the international anti‐corruption approach in the Latin American country. Very different actors with divergent understandings of corruption are able to act collectively against corruption via this discourse coalition, while still interpreting these actions according to their respective political agendas.
Topic:
Corruption, Economics, Government, International Cooperation, and Politics
Political Geography:
Latin America

23. The Other BRIC in Latin America: India

Author:
Jorge Heine and R. Viswanathan
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
India emerges as a major partner for Latin America.
Topic:
Development and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, and Latin America

24. The Americas Go Glocal

Author:
Saskia Sassen
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
There is little doubt that the North-South axis remains dominant for Latin America's geopolitical positioning. But new relations are emerging and deepening at subnational levels, in turn creating new intercity geographies and challenging that geopolitical notion. These relations are a direct product of economic and cultural globalization. Some examples are the shift of migration from Ecuador and Colombia toward Spain rather than the U.S., the growing economic relations between Chinese businesses and organizations and São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and the emergent relations between these cities and Johannesburg, South Africa. The Internet has allowed a rapidly growing number of people to become a part of diverse networks that crisscross the world. And nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from various parts of the world are establishing active connections over social struggles in Latin America. In other words, beneath the still-dominant North-South geopolitics, transversal geographies are growing in bits and pieces. One trend is the formation of intercity geographies as the number of global cities has expanded since the 1990s. These subnational circuits cut across the world in many directions. A second trend is the growth of civil society organizations and individuals who are connecting around the world in ways that, again, often do not follow the patterns of traditional geopolitics. The New, Multiple Circuits There is no such entity as the global economy. It is more correct to say there are global formations, such as electronic financial markets and firms that operate globally. But what defines the current era is the creation of numerous, highly particular, global circuits—some specialized and some not—interlacing across the world and connecting specific areas, most of which are cities. While many of these global circuits have long existed, they began to proliferate and establish increasingly complex organizational and financial foundations in the 1980s. These emergent intercity geographies function as an infrastructure for globalization, and have led to the increased urbanization of global networks. Different circuits contain different groups of countries and cities. For instance, Mumbai today is part of a global circuit for real estate development that includes investors from cities as diverse as London and Bogotá. Coffee is mostly produced in Brazil, Kenya and Indonesia, but the main place for trading its future is on Wall Street. The specialized circuits in gold, coffee, oil and other commodities each involve particular countries and cities, which will vary depending on whether they are production, trading or financial circuits. If, for example, we track the global circuits of gold as a financial instrument, it is London, New York, Chicago, and Zurich that dominate. But the wholesale trade in the metal brings São Paulo, Johannesburg and Sydney into the circuit, while trade in the commodity, much of it aimed at the retail level, adds Mumbai and Dubai. And then there are the types of circuits a firm such as Wal-Mart needs to outsource the production of vast amounts of goods—circuits that include manufacturing, trading, and financial and insurance services. The 250,000 multinationals in the world, together with their over 1 million affiliates and partnership arrangements worldwide, have created a new pattern of relations that combine global dispersal with the spatial concentration of certain functions often while retaining headquarters in their home countries. The same is true of the 100 top global advanced-services firms that together have operations in 350 cities outside their home base. While financial services can be bought everywhere electronically, the headquarters of leading global financial services firms tend to be concentrated in a limited number of cities. Each of these financial centers specializes in specific segments of global finance, even as they engage in routine types of transactions executed by all financial centers. It's not just global economic forces that feed this proliferation of circuits. Forces such as migration and cultural exchange, along with civil society struggles to protect human rights, preserve the environment and promote social justice, which also contribute to circuit formation and development. NGOs fighting for the protection of the rainforest function in circuits that include Brazil and Indonesia as homes of the major rainforests, the global media centers of New York and London, and the places where the key forestry companies selling and buying wood are headquartered—notably Oslo, London and Tokyo. There are even music circuits that connect specific areas of India with London, New York, Chicago, and Johannesburg. Adopting the perspective of one of these cities reveals the diversity and specificity of its location on some or many of these circuits, which is determined by its unique capabilities. Ultimately, being a global firm or market means entering the specificities and particularities of national economies. This explains why global firms and markets need more and more global cities as they expand their operations across the world. While there is competition among cities, there is far less of it than is usually assumed. A global firm does not want one global city, but many. Moreover, given the variable level of specialization of globalized firms, their preferred cities will vary. Firms thrive on the specialized differences of cities, and it is those differences that give a city its particular advantage in the global economy. Thus, the economic history of a place matters for the type of knowledge economy that a city or city-region ends up developing. This goes against the common view that globalization homogenizes economies. Globalization homogenizes standards—for managing, accounting, building state-of-the-art office districts, and so on. But it needs diverse specialized economic capabilities. Latin America on the Circuit This allows many of Latin America's cities to become part of global circuits. Some, such as São Paulo and Buenos Aires, are located on hundreds of such circuits, others just on a few. Regardless of the case, these cities are not necessarily competing with one other. The growing number of global cities, each specialized, signals a shift to a multipolar world. Clearly, the major Latin American cities have circuits that connect them directly to destinations across the world. What is perhaps most surprising is the intensity of connections with Asia and Europe. Traditional geopolitics would lead one to think that Latin America connects, above all, with North America. There is a strong tendency for global money flows to generate partial geographies. This becomes clear, for example, when we consider foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America, a disproportionate share of which goes to a handful of countries. In 2008, for example (a relative peak of FDI), FDI flows into Latin America were topped by Brazil at $45.1 billion, followed at a distance by Mexico at $23.7 billion, Chile at $15.2 billion, and Argentina with $9.7 billion. On average, between 1991–1996 and 2003–2008, FDI in Brazil increased more than five-fold while tripling in Chile and Mexico. Among the countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region receiving the lowest levels of foreign investment in 2008 were Haiti, at $30 million; Guyana, at $178 million; and Paraguay, at $109 million. Globalization and the new information and communication technologies have enabled a variety of local activists and organizations to enter international arenas that were once the exclusive domain of national states. Going global has also been partly facilitated and conditioned by the infrastructure of the global economy…
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
United States, New York, America, South Africa, London, Colombia, Latin America, Mumbai, Sydney, Ecuador, Dubai, and Chicago

25. Ask the Experts: The New Brazil and The Changing Hemisphere

Author:
Kevin P. Gallagher, Arturo Sarukhan, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Kurt G. Weyland
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Do traditional models of international relations apply in Latin America?
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
Brazil, Latin America, and Mexico

26. Latin America: Then Now

Author:
Luis Moreno Ocampo, Susan Segal, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Carlos Chamorro, Enrique Krauze, Alma Guillermoprieto, and Dolores Huerta
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Reflections on a changing hemisphere.
Topic:
Cold War, Development, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Cuba and Latin America

27. Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings edited by Kurt Weyland, Raúl L. Madrid and Wendy Hunter

Author:
Eduardo Silva
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Latin American Left experienced an extraordinary revival, especially in South America. By 2009, eight South American countries and two Central American nations had elected left-wing governments. Is this revival a harbinger of a progressive renaissance or a throwback to failed experiments? Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings attempts to answer this question by analyzing the extent to which these governments have improved the livelihoods of their citizens. The seven essays that make up the volume, written by distinguished U.S. and Brazil-based scholars, provide a sharp, scholarly comparison of the outcomes achieved by governments of the moderate left and what coeditor Kurt Weyland of the University of Texas at Austin calls the “contestatory” or more radical left, in an introduction that lays out the theoretical framework. This book, which was also edited by Raúl L. Madrid and Wendy Hunter of the University of Texas, fills a critical gap in the burgeoning literature on the subject.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Brazil, and Latin America

28. The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon by John Paul Rathbone

Author:
Rafael Rojas
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
A common assumption is that the Cuban economic elite was universally opposed to the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro from the time it took power in January 1959. But The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon shows otherwise. In his book, John Paul Rathbone, the Latin America editor at the Financial Times, paints a more nuanced picture of the Cuban bourgeoisie and, in particular, of Julio Lobo (1898–1983)— the great Cuban sugar tycoon of the first half of the twentieth century. Reading like an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel with scenes reminiscent of an Elia Kazan film, the book paints vivid descriptions of Lobo's life and Cuba in general with action on every page.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Cuba and Latin America

29. Sports Populism

Author:
Simon Kuper
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Fans like their teams—but not necessarily the politicians who support them.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Brazil, Latin America, and England

30. Covering Sports in Latin America

Author:
Lisa Delpy Neirotti and Jeffrey Bliss
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Latin America