Dr Aparaajita Pandey
In October 2020, a report taking cognizance of the Latin American predicament and speculating on what the area has to look forward to was optimistically titled – ‘A less Apocalyptic Case for Latin America’ by Brian Winter at Americas Quarterly. The title appears like a hassle-free point of starting for an try to comprehend Latin American economics, politics, and society at present.
Presently Colombia is facing enormous protests against tax reforms and brutal repression of these protests, Chile is also seeing protests by people today for access to their pension funds, there are demonstrations in Argentina and blockading of the oil and gas production fields for the want of much better working circumstances, sanitary gear and retroactive payments, there are violent clashes in Brazil involving the police and the drug cartels that has led to about 30 deaths in total in the previous fortnight and an atmosphere of improved worry and uncertainty in favellas, and an armed skirmish involving the Venezuelan military and the FARC on the Colombia- Venezuela border.
The protests in Colombia are emblematic of not just an administrative and taxation program that is in dire want of an overhaul, but also a considerably higher challenge not just in Colombia but inside the area itself. The protests across the area that started in 2019, slowed down in 2020, have now began to gradually awaken in 2021. Colombia is the prominent instance of well known dissatisfaction and aggravation with the administrative set up at present, nonetheless, such sentiments are echoed across the area albeit with various levels of intensity.
The spread of the Covid -19 Pandemic in Latin America and the apathy and nonchalance of some of the leaders has had a devastating influence on the area. The currently overworked well being infrastructure was exposed to a tsunami of patients and a dire want for medical doctors, nurses, healthcare gear, and healthcare employees. While the well being infrastructure in the area has reached its breaking point, the financial influence of Covid – 19 has left in its wake a trail of glaring fallacies in the financial structure of Latin America that have been a visible challenge for decades but has by no means been highlighted to such an extent. It is a properly identified and accepted truth that Latin America is the most economically unequal area in the world. While there have been Conditional Cash Transfer programmes like Opportunidades in Mexico and Bolsa Escola and Bolsa Familia in Brazil in the previous aimed at bridging the gap involving the wealthy and the poor these programmes have had restricted achievement.
The financial recession that the area has suffered from in the previous half a decade and now the pandemic has undone not just the work performed by such social programmes but also the progress made towards racial and gender equality. Another sector that has now taken a serious hit is that of education. It is estimated that there are roughly a hundred and fourteen million students in the area and about eighty % of them have been forced out of their schools due to the pandemic and a tiny more than 3 million of them would by no means return to continue with their education. The statistics are unclear in context of the access to on the net education in schools and/or universities. It is foreseen that such a break in education would have an adverse influence on the improvement of human sources in the area in the extended term. Studies show that students who are in their formative stages of education have begun to unlearn their fundamental math and reading skills. The World Bank has predicted that in a further thirty years, such a break in steady and normal education would lead to a loss of about 1.7 trillion USD which is about ten per cent of the Latin American earnings.
It has been talked about that the Latin American area is one of the most unequal in the world, and this inequality, though most simply manifested in financial terms finds its roots in the Latin American history. The colonization of the area and then the waves of slaves brought in from Africa and indentured labour from India, and later from Java and their interaction with the indigenous communities has led to a racially diverse and usually divided Latin America. The inequality is also conveniently congruent to the racial fault lines. The pandemic has undoubtedly accentuated this predicament the socio-financial influence of Covid is also concentrated amongst the currently underprivileged and people today of colour, which has in-turn stymied decades of progress that the Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes had made in specific communities.
The inequality in the area has permitted the elite to escape unscathed economically and as a result there appears to be a gross underestimation of the predicament with regards to the pandemic and its influence. 2021 would be the year for elections for quite a few Latin American nations but the politicians want to comprehend that their concentrate need to be on healing and rebuilding and not just winning.
(The author is an Asst Professor at the Dept. of Public Policy, Amity University, NOIDA and a PhD in Latin American Studies, from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Views expressed are private and do not reflect the official position or policy of TheSpuzz Online.)