Why South America does not prosper?

The most serious foreign commentators have, in view of the economic and political situation in South America, a generalized impression of surprise, contempt and pity. Neither for them, nor for anyone, it is easy to understand how one of the most vast and richest and best geographically located continental masses of the planet has led, after almost five centuries of predominantly European culture, to economic and political chaos.

Many explanations have been sought for this absurd failure and little by little it is arriving at certain useful precisions for the diagnosis. The failure is not attributable to the lack of natural resources of all kinds: land, water, minerals, climates and privileged spaces for development, nor to the millenary existence of cultures, strange to the mental peculiarities of the West, as has been the in Asia and Africa, because, with different degrees of miscegenation, South America, for several centuries now, has a single cultural base, practically a single language, a set of European mental values and a repeated capacity for creation and action amply demonstrated in the struggle for independence and in the immense presence of South America writers and artists on the world stage.

What seems to be the main cause of the current situation: The blame for the prolonged regression lies, no doubt, in the mismanagement. While the prosperous countries were dedicated to promoting rapid growth on expanding exports, South America created inefficient local businesses, with high protective barriers. State ownership and abundant subsidies directed resources towards unproductive industries. Large budget deficits caused inflation, while current account deficiencies were financed by excessive external loans.

The problem is that simple and for this same reason, its difficulty to correct it is a lot. The political parties that, in the last half century, have predominated in the government or in the opposition in South America have in common many important features that are undoubtedly due to their common ideological sources. Among these features are the following, with a category of true dogmas: the supreme political ideal to which we must aim is socialism; the State must not only direct the economy but intervene directly and predominantly in all economic processes; the presence of private capital is only tolerable within certain limits and under the control of the State; The government's main aim is to alleviate, through subsidies and gifts, the population against the negative effects of the free play of economic forces; the presence of foreign capital is dangerous for sovereignty; The main function of governments is to maintain their strength and presence through all possible forms of distribution and clientelism.

The picture is that simple and painful and therefore it is so difficult to make the necessary amendments because they amount almost to an attempt to change the prevailing mentality. It is, however, what is proposed and to the extent that South America thinkers understand it, there will be a possibility of getting out of this tragic contradiction that threatens the future of all these countries.

A sincere examination of the harsh negative experience of the last ten or twenty years and the accumulated effects of so many errors due to the fatal mechanics of populist politics can not be postponed. This vague and multiple ideology has spread and penetrated in a way that makes it very difficult to replace it with a more modern and more realistic concept of economy and society. What is needed is not to ignore the problem of poverty and the immense deficiencies of the popular classes, but to dispense with the easy and inefficient recipes of paternalism to face them with all seriousness, through a policy that has more in it tells the social reality and the certain possibilities, that it looks for in the education and the preparation for the work what the demagogic impoverishing promises will never achieve. What needs to be satisfied are not the resentments accumulated by so many frustrations, but to seek to that potential force a positive outcome through the change of attitude towards real possibilities.