LASA 2010 – Discussing Our Way Out of Financial Turmoil

This month Toronto, Canada hosted the Latin American Studies Association’s annual conference, LASA 2010, where academics from all disciplines came to give hundreds of lectures on their latest research and meet others who have contributed to research and teaching on Latin America from all around the world. This year’s conference focused on Crisis, Response, and Recovery following a better than expected economic recovery for most countries in he region, with several academic explanations to why Latin America fared better to an international contagion this time around, than in previous years, and what the future might be for a Latin America who has fared better than expected and owns one of the next Super-economies, Brazil.

Lectures I attended concerns the relations Latin America has with Europe, China, the US and even India. US involvement in Latin America, as expected, was low, especially for Mexico. Mexico was seen to have suffered the worst out of the major Latin American economies due to its trade relationship with the US and the manufacturing base which shared many of the economic struggles with the US and is essentially in direct competition with China. European economic ties with Latin America also were affected, especially since the near collapse of Greece and the cut in European investment with the potential crisis in the Mediterranean region still not in the mode of recovery. Some advice for Greece was noted in the conference, but a lot of the focus of why Latin America has been doing relatively well is the resource rich and investor friendly China being in need of raw materials for its strong growth before and after the economic crisis. Funds made from Latin American exports to China in the form of raw materials created an economic windfall for many of the region’s economies. Mexico, while also a producer of agro products and oil, still was in the red due to the shock to its manufacturing sector and lack of policy innovations to curb losses during the 2008-2009 great recession. South America on the other hand has made some significant progress, as traditional raw materials producers, a direct benefit came from the needs of China for their natural resources.

The future of Latin America’s economies were not seen as a positive, as noted by many key economists, including Chilean Professor Ricardo Ffrench-Davis who mentioned that while current growth is positive, except for Mexico and Venezuela, the lack of innovative policies and a lack of political will to build on current profits might lead to a crisis in Latin America in a few years time. At this point the option is available to create a stable long term growth trend, but the policy initiatives seem to exist only in the short and medium term.

To find more information on LASA 2010, including papers, conference topics and information on the next LASA conference, please see the link here.