Palo Alto: Mark Weisbrot on "Latin America's Independence"

Latin America, often referred to as the United States' "backyard," has undergone profound, epoch-making changes over the last decade. Most of South America is now more independent of the United States than Europe is. Although this is viewed with concern in U.S. media and foreign policy circles, the majority of people in countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, and others have benefited from this increased political and economic independence. These new democracies are often misrepresented in the media, but they represent some of the brightest spots in the world today for progressive economic and social change.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. (http://www.cepr.net). He is also President and founder of Just Foreign Policy, an organization dedicated to achieving a just foreign policy based on cooperation, law, and democracy. He writes a column on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over five hundred fifty newspapers and is a contributor to The Nation, Z Magazine, and The Guardian.

"Mark Weisbrot's lucid, informed, and incisive commentary and analysis have been an invaluable source for understanding the truth about the exciting developments in Latin America, for unveiling the reality that lies behind conventional fairy tales about the miracles of the market in this hemisphere and the world generally." - Noam Chomsky

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