The Conference…

NSI Researcher Pablo Heidrich recently travelled to Venezuela to attend the Annual Conference of the Latin American Association of Political Economy which took place in Caracus from October 7^th – 11^th. The conference theme for this year was very timely: “Southern Solutions for a Global Crisis”. These writings contain impressions on some of the presentations heard during the conference, discussions with some of the participants and what was seen, heard or smelled while in Venezuela.

Day 2 and 3

The conference starts for real today. We have 40 participants from 12 countries, mostly from Latin America. Here are a few lines for each of the more interesting ones.

Claudio Katz (Buenos Aires Univ.): the current crisis is not due to lack of regulation but rather to the excessive accumulation of profits in one particular economic sector — the financial one. Such over-accumulation of profit is created through the over-production of goods for consumption, financed in turn by super-profitable consumer debt. It is a systemic crisis and as such, a lesson in capitalism for the people. How it will affect average workers should be the main issue, not how to save the financial sector. Socialism is the way to go now, more urgently than ever, as capitalists will otherwise recover from this crisis by making us all pay for their bail out.

Eric Toussaint (CADTM, Belgium – Comité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde /Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt): now is the time for developing countries to default on their foreign debts. The US-led system is weakened and has no capacity to react. Recall that 12 Latin American countries defaulted on their foreign debts in the 1930s. Brazil renegotiated and got a 40% discount, Mexico obtained a 90% discount from what it owed since 1910, etc. This is also the best time to move forward with nationalizations, repeal of international economic treaties, etc. Mercosur and Andean Pact must be reversed, as they represent subordinated capitalist delusions, ALBA should be promoted instead.

Pedro Paez (Ecuador’s Minister of Economic Coordination): His government envisions a multi-year program to build a people’s economy anchored on public enterprises, cooperatives and some private businesses, linked internationally by the Andean Pact, other bilateral agreements, and ALBA, too. The Bank of the South is a fundamental piece in this project, now so much so that building a people’s economy is the only way to maintain a democratic structure in Ecuador’s politics. If the Bank of the South remains stalled, a tight network of Latin American central banks might be a second best.

Haiman El Troudi (Venezuela’s People’s Minister of Economic Planning): Measures by OECD countries to contain crisis are a cartoonish expression of their lack of understanding of capitalism. Neo-liberalism hopes to save itself by regressing into classical liberalism, a paradigm already proven wrong in the 20th Century. Since Latin America has experienced several financial crises recently, we have a clear understanding of what specific crisis stage the OECD countries are going through and thus, how much time we have left to make our own reforms, strengthen our own systems and prepare for their backlash once they recover.

Jorge Marchini (University of Buenos Aires): We ought to move forward from celebrating the downfall of Wall Street and its vociferous neo-liberalism and from fretting about the possible consequences on our margins of manoeuvre. Instead, we should go deeper in our understanding of the future architecture of global finance in order to both protect our recent social gains, and also to further our autonomy from the dominant Triad i.e. how to maintain fiscal income stability in times of volatile international prices, how to curtail capital flight, how to rein in the international banks with branches in Southern countries, and other similar issues should be guiding most of our attention.

Delfa Narciza Mantilla (Asociaciones Civiles del Ecuador): The crisis of one paradigm does not necessarily strengthen another, it is their own praxis that can carry the day or not. Ecuador’s situation today illustrates this well, as policy changes for the specific material interests of the majority is what is supporting an overall change in the direction of economy. We wasted years or decades pondering over dilemmas imported from the North on what path to follow, just to understand that what the people really want is food, water, sewage, jobs, housing and freedom of expression. Whatever is materially useful in this direction ought to be taken up, the rest might as well go with Wall Street bonds.

There were several other presentations worth summarizing but being a blog, it ought to be a finite amount of text.

Journalists from Venezuelan, Cuban and Ecuadorian TV and radio stations kept on asking for interviews during the breaks, collecting sound-bites and offering more air time if we stayed longer. The Venezuelan government people also asked several of us if we wanted to stay longer as the President had noted his interest in meeting us Saturday evening, after the closing of the event. They did not seem to hear the answer when it was not yes, so they just kept asking…

Day 4

Flight back to Miami. US Homeland Security takes a particular delight in freezing the lines handling the flights from Caracas and Bogota while a rare flight from Habana (via Mexico) is given preferential passage. Cubans are escorted in groups by smiling US guards while we watch them and wait for over 2 hours to be “handled”. Our luggage from Caracas is also thoroughly checked for drugs since Venezuela is, according to the US, not cooperating any more on drug controls.

Given these issues, I miss some flights but eventually arrive in Ottawa.

-siempre Pablo