Book Review: The New Latin America

Abstract

In some ways, since the Second World War, Latin America has evolved in accordance with the pattern set out by the much-derided modernization theories of that period. The region has gone through the demographic transition from high death/high birth rates to low death/low birth rates; the Catholic Church has lost sway over culture, personal morality and religious observance; women have joined the (paid) labour force on a massive scale and have achieved parity or even superiority in education at all levels, if not in all disciplines; a substantial middle class has developed. But the region has also fulfilled the doomsday predictions of modernization’s leading critic – dependency theory. Capitalism has continued to dominate, inequality has deepened and raw materials exports continue to be almost the only engine of economic growth, which itself has been unstable (as predicted) and sluggish. China and South Korea, which at least on conventional measures of per capita GNP, were a long way behind Latin America in the 1950s, have long since leapt ahead, and China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty even while its inequality has also increased. Latin America also exhibits persistent inequality, but without the ‘saving grace’ of lifting such a high percentage of the population out of poverty.