Financing development: successes and difficulties of financial reforms in Latin America

Abstract

Latin America has been for international financial organisms during last six decades a homogenous region, where the plans of stabilization of the IMF have been applied by an unilateral way, entailing to successes and failures. Nevertheless, the history of the region shows great heterogeneity in the social conformation of the State, social classes and production relations, that result in a mosaic of interests, that makes difficult to embrace the Bolivarian ideal. Nowadays MERCOSUR and TLCAN are two projects that hardly could be articulated with ALCA proposals; on the other hand, the Andean Region hardly can articulate its own project in its market where pre-capitalist relations of interchange predominate. Thus, the financial reforms in the different countries deregulated and liberalized the national financial systems causing different results. The objective of this article is to discuss the financial reforms in Latin America and their capacity to financing development.