Green Shoots Lurk in Latin America’s Lost Decade
Better government, social justice and transparency in government poke through the gloom.
Things may look better once the smoke clears.
Photographer: Claudio Reyes/AFP via Getty Images
Most anywhere you look in Latin America, ruin prospers. Violence? South and Central America and the Caribbean are home to 44 of the world’s 50 most murderous cities. Economic torpor? Latin America clocked its lowest growth in seven decades from 2014 to 2020. If currencies are a nation’s share price, then Latin America at year’s end looks like a global penny stock.
Blame Latin America’s paltry labor productivity (a quarter that of its emerging market peers) or its dismal schooling (15-year-olds are three years behind their counterparts in rich-world OECD countries). Never mind inequality (only 16% of Latin Americans see wealth distribution as fair), where the nations from Mexico to Chile are world-beaters. No wonder the headline across Latin America is of yet another lost decade.