MACLAS 2011

Mid-Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies Annual Conference

Globalization and Well Being in Latin America

March 17-19, 2011
University of Pittsburgh

Brazil is booming. Soon to host the World Cup of Football in 2014 and the Olympics two years later, the country boasts some 30 million people added to the ranks of the middle class over the past decade. That statistic is often linked to what middle classes have long tied to notions of well-being in wealthy nations — the ability to buy consumer goods, to own a home, and to hold down a well-paying job with benefits. A globalized Brazil, whose economy is expected by many to grow by as much as 7% in 2010 (while equivalent North American and European numbers remain in the doldrums), has been touted as the leading edge of a modernizing, consuming, even wealthy new Latin America — “nobody’s backyard” anymore according to a September 2010 cover piece in The Economist magazine. At the same time, there is ongoing evidence of globalization’s ills and the persistent crises in health, poverty, and governance. Journalists under threat warn of the danger of a failed state in Mexico as a violent drug economy grows exponentially. El Alto, Bolivia is one of many sprawling new cities in the Americas that reflects both new and old problems associated with rapid urbanization. And extreme crisis in Haiti often seems without end. Has globalization brought well-being to the region?

 

 

 

Comments are closed.