Latin American governments are also charac-
terised by instability, which, in the past, has dis-
couraged investment – the local elites simply sent
their money abroad to safer havens. It is instruc-
tive to compare the heavy indebtedness of Latin
American nations with the estimated flight of
capital abroad from 1982 to 1988. Nevertheless,
state sponsorship and foreign investment since
1945 are gradually transforming Latin America,
and large-scale industries have been established in
all the major Latin American nations, Mexico,
Brazil, Argentina and Chile. As in industrial
Europe, there has been a shift from agricultural
pursuits to manufacture, from rural society to
urban. But the forced pace of rapid industrial
development has left many Latin American states
burdened with huge debts to the West which
most have no prospects of repaying at high inter-
est rates. The expectation that with modernisa-
tion, with the expansion of a professional middle
class, with the growth of an urban skilled work-
force, their standard of living rising, and with
increasing education and literacy Latin American
authoritarian politics would give way to Western-
style democracies is not yet being fulfilled. In
Latin America, as in other developing regions,
there is no such automatic and inevitable link
between economic progress and democracy.
In many Latin American states in the 1980s,
the military handed government back to demo-
cratic civilian rule. But frequently this represented
an improvement only on the surface. Amnesty
International publishes an annual survey of
human-rights violations. It makes salutary read-
ing. Torture and killings were still widespread in
the exercise of political power against opposing
groups. During the 1970s and early 1980s this
barbarism probably reached heights not witnessed
before in modern Latin American history and, one
hopes, not to be reached again. At least 90,000
people simply ‘disappeared’; no one knows for
certain how many were picked up from their
homes or in the street, never to be heard of again.
At the trial of the Argentinian junta chiefs in
1985, it was estimated that 9,000 had disappeared
during the six years of military rule from 1976 to
1982; in Guatemala, Chile, Haiti and El Salvador,
torture and executions without trial by ‘security
forces’ or death squads were widespread.
In the 1960s a powerful new voice of pro-
test against oppression made itself heard. The
Catholic Church, which for centuries had been a
pillar of conservative society, ceased to give
unconditional support to the ruling elites. But the
Vatican and Pope John Paul watched with con-
sternation any Marxist leanings of bishops, priests
and nuns amid the social tensions and political
struggles of Latin America. In its most extreme
form, ‘liberation theology’ looked to Marxism for
an explanation of poverty and oppression but
rejected atheism. But mostly the Church was
simply speaking out against the extreme inequal-
ities of wealth and against the unjustified and
indiscriminate use of force.
This became clear to the rest of the world in
1968 when the bishops of Latin America met at
Medellín in Colombia in the presence of Pope
Paul VI and published a most remarkable decla-
ration which read in part:
Latin America still appears to live under the
tragic sign of under-development... Despite
all the efforts that are made, we are faced with
hunger and poverty, widespread disease and
infant mortality, illiteracy and marginalism,
profound inequalities of income, and tensions
between the social classes, outbreaks of vio-
lence and a scanty participation of the people
in the management of the common good –
Complaints that the hierarchy, the clergy, the
religious are rich and allied with the rich also
come to us.
1
THE WORLD OF LATIN AMERICA 683
Accumulated foreign debt (US$ billions as percentage
of Gross Domestic Products)
Foreign debt Foreign debt as percen-
tage of GDP in 2000
1988 2000
Brazil 120.0 238.0 36
Mexico 107.4 150.3 33
Argentina 59.6 146.2 55
Venezuela 35.0 38.2 37
Chile 20.8 37.0 51
Peru 19.0 28.6 54
Colombia 17.2 34.1 39
