Our Brand is Crisis
This weeks film entitled Our Brand is Crisis, is a documentary following the Campaign of former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante aka “Goni”. The film follows an American firm, led by the legendary John Carver, that specializes in foreign elections, as they do their job. Many times throughout the film there are scenes that show the inner processes of the political campaign that Latin American countries with diverse ethnic populations undergo. At the beginning of the film the results of Goni’s time in office are revealed, showing the political strife
The First reading which is chapter ten of John Chasteen’s Born of Blood and Fire: a concise history of
The second reading for this week entitled; “The Slow Death of the Washington Consensus on Latin America”, also gives better insight about the political forces that exist in Latin American Countries. Officials such as Goni who embrace opening trade in order to produce wealth for their countries have historically been met with challenges. While it seems that opening trade would produce “capital flows” for Latin countries; the reading suggest that only a few individuals actually benefit. Moreover, many times throughout history financial deregulation in Latin Countries seems to produce only failure. In Goni’s case by allowing free trade to take place he angered his citizens to the point of rebellion. Whether the country would have actually benefitted by this, Bolivian citizens were aware of the historical trends that followed when foreign investment was allowed to take place. To them it seemed as if Goni wanted to take away