Thank you for your interest in my presentation and I do regret my points weren’t expressed sufficiently clear.

Of course, you are right, most difficulties -some of which I mention in my paper- for sustainable development in SouthAmerica are not caused by and trascend well beyond markets. I referred quite extensively about markets because they were signalled at the background section of the Conference call for papers, as one of the major “missing points” in the “development dialogue” but in southern countries we can’t expect from markets any progressive roles since they are greatly dominated by oligopolistic players.

Anyway, what I express about markets in my presentation is nothing but a (long) digression. My point, putting it in different terms, is that the special decade we are experiencing in South America, where by disobeying neoliberal economic dogmas we are acheiving economic growth whith the socioeconomic betterment of the usually-have-nots while the brotherhood of the peoples is a very present invocation, is not leading to a sustainable development path having the (South)American peoples cultures as the heads of this development process. Thus, we are loosing an unique opportunity, at the current critical moment of global capitalism, for deepening this american development into a more indigenous and sustainable way. A lot of people are mobilized by SouthAmerican political leaders, many resources are also mobilized but the compass doesn’t show a clear-cut and sound direction as where to head to.

I’m pretty glad to read a paper coming from Latin America.

Sorry, but I think I couldn’t get the point of the paper. It seems to describe very particular situations that, being common in most countries of L.A., are not exactly a product of market action solely, i.e. the migration boom from country to cities was actually encouraged by the exporting substitution policies on the last century.
Additionaly, I can’t understand if your aim is to develop an strong and dynamic middle-class industry, with multinational goals, or to develop local markets with respect to the local values and customs. Of course, I pretend your complaining showed in this paper is not neutral.

To explain myself, I’m not making an apology of the market, which has lots of failures, but I want to understand precisely you claim and your proposal.

Thank you,

DFRF

On top of this, the political opposition is trying to capitalize on this social conflict allegating that -in contradiction with its own definition- the plurinational government doesn’t matter about (those) native peoples lives and cultures. On this behalf and from inside the political struggle Garcia Linera strikes on environmentalist NGO’s (easily coopted by the political opposition) and by the way with the protection of the environment which he claims to be a hypocritical foreign-led cause.

There are diverse opinions supporting both sides but the political struggle excessively permeates the discussion which easily turned into reciprocal accusations while leaving each side more entrenched.