Silent Revolution: The Rise
of Market Economics in
Latin America by Duncan Green, Latin America Bureau/Monthly Review Press, 1995, 266 pp., $16 (paper).
Duncan Green begins his biting cri-
tique of neoliberalism with a vignette
of a Bolivian World Bank official
snidely looking down from the win-
dow of his ninth-floor office in La
Paz at a street swarming with pro-
testers who can be faintly heard
chanting “Bolivia will never belong
to the gringos.” This remarkable
book yokes together those two dis-
connected worlds.
Green shows how-in the name
of implanting a functioning market
economy in Latin America-the
region’s economic output has been
sucked northward in the form of
loan repayments, its “family silver”
has been sold off to foreign capital,
and 60 million more people have
joined the ranks of the poor. In the
process, he makes the intricate con-
cepts of neoliberalism-from infla-
tion to exchange rates, trade
accounts to interest rates-intelligi-
ble to a reader who doesn’t have a
Ph.D. in economics.
The book covers the rise and fall
of import-substituting industrializa-
tion, the way that the IMF and World
Bank used the debt crisis to foist
neoliberalism on skeptical Latin
American nations, the scripted tran-
sition from stabilization to structural
adjustment and export-led growth,
and the human and environmental
costs of the neoliberal model.
Of course, the $64,000 question
is: so what is the alternative? The
book’s final chapter is devoted to an
analysis of other models-from
CEPAL’s “neo-structuralism” to the
grassroots strategies of local organi-
zation and mobilization. “The chal-
lenge,” Green concludes, “is to
determine what margin for maneu-
ver truly exists, avoiding the twin
pitfalls of defeatism or demanding
the impossible which have histori-
cally plagued the left.”
The Mexican Shock: Its
Meaning for the U.S. by Jorge Castafieda, The New Press, 1995, 257 pp., $23 (cloth).
In this collection of essays, Jorge
Castafieda scrutinizes the volatile
events that have unfolded in Mexico
since 1993. From immigration to
NAFTA, from Chiapas to the peso
debacle, from the political assassina-
tions to the rise of Mexico’s drug
barons, Castafieda leads the reader
through Mexico’s murky political
landscape, offering insights into
these separate but related issues.
The book is specifically directed
to a U.S. audience-for whom
Mexico matters and “should mat-
ter.” Castafieda spares no one in his
wide-ranging critique of Mexico’s
powers-that-be. He is unflinching
in his criticism of Salinas, both for
his unwillingness to engage in
democratic reforms and his han-
dling of the economy. He admon-
ishes the United States for down-
playing Mexico’s problems in its
zeal to see NAFTA passed.
Castafieda also takes a number of
jabs at Cuauht6moc Cdrdenas’
Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD) for its inability to unite
Mexican civil society into a coher-
ent opposition force.
In lucid prose, Castafieda makes
the intricacies of contemporary
Mexican politics accessible to the
non-specialist. At times, however,
he glosses over complex issues
with rather simplistic explanations.
Everything seems ultimately solv-
able if only Mexico’s elites would
get it together and make the right
decisions (for the most part, the
ones Castafieda himself has sug-
gested, in his self-styled role of
political advisor). The masses exist
insofar as they exert pressure from
below, but they are not key actors
or decision-makers. In this sense,
despite his concern about promot-
ing democracy, reducing inequality,
and eliminating poverty, Castafieda
has not escaped the very elitism he
so criticizes.
