<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">After watching the documentary <i>Our Brand is Crisis</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, it becomes more and more obvious how Americans constantly interfere with economics and politics in South America. What is even more clear is how this interference is usually beneficial for the United States, but not so advantageous for the Latin Americans that are being “helped.” It is obvious in the film that the candidate Carville is helping is extremely under qualified, but his team still does whatever they can to get him elected. They are elated when he does end up winning, knowing that they have tricked the country into electing a man who does not deserve this job title. This kind of corruption can be seen in the neoliberalist boom that is described in John Chasteen’s book </span><i>Born in Blood & Fire</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. The United States is willing to come to the so called aid of Latin America when they know that it will benefit themselves. However, Chasteen outlines many crises happening in these countries that Americans will not lift a finger to help, including extreme poverty and the deforestation of the rain forest. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>America encouraged the ideas of the neoliberalists and their free market economy. This has led to even more widespread poverty, among other serious problems, in Latin America, according to the article, The Slow Death of the Washington Consensus on Latin America” by James Cypher. It seems obvious that these ideas were not revolutionary and would not work just as they had failed in the early twentieth century. As these new implementations are failing in South and Central America, policies like the Washington Consensus, according to Cypher, were telling Americans of the success of all the implementations. This is later seen to be untrue, however it must have convinced many at the time that these were progressive steps that were being taken. One can also see how this benefited the United States with a stock market increase after implementing free trade in Latin America. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Cypher and Chasteen both point out the influence that these types of economies have on the environment, with heavy emphasis put on mining, agriculture, and fishing, among other things. This is not easily reversed and takes massive amounts of money to correct that these countries cannot afford to spare. The election teams that help get these under qualified people into office are partly to blame for financial crises like the ones in Latin America that take years and years to dig out of. Americans must realize what kind of impact that they are having on so many facets of life, politics, economy, and culture when they intrude into Latin America in any way. At least, as Cypher says, the neoliberalism trend is dying out, hopefully making way for a recovery of the South and Central American economies and ways of life. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1328590662320988729-7954990179463149514?l=kmclean5-history475.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
