Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression (Independent Studies in Political Economy) Book

A brilliant and passionate argument for real reform in an economically crippled continent.In Liberty for Latin America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa offers an incisive diagnosis of Latin America's economic woes--and a prescription for how the region might finally get on the road to genuine prosperity. When the economy in Argentina--once a model of free-market reform--collapsed in 2002, experts of all persuasions asked: What went wrong? In Alvaro Vargas Llosa's view, what went wrong in Argentina has gone wrong all over the continent for a hundred years. Chronicling Latin America's economic history, he shows that the revolutions of the twentieth century--populist uprisings, Marxist coups, state takeovers, and first world--sponsored privatization--have all run up against the illiberalism of the elites, who perpetuate what he calls the "five principles of oppression" in order to maintain their hold on power. The region has become "a laboratory for political and economic suicide," while countries in Asia and Eastern Europe have prospered. The only way to change things in Latin America, Vargas Llosa argues, is to remove the five principles of oppression, genuinely reforming institutions so as to reform the underlying culture. In Liberty for Latin America, he explains how it might be done--offering hope as well as insight to all who care about the future of this troubled region. Read More