DEVELOPMENT, IBD-STYLE One "more" step to destruction • The governors from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the continent’s main champion of neoliberalism, are meeting again to discuss the region’s present and its future • Between what they say, do and plan to do, the only thing that is certain and immediately relevant is the fact that up until now its only achievement is an increase in the numbers of ‘provisional’ poor stipulated in its plans BY ALDO MADRUGA (Granma International staff writer) GOVERNORS of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the continent’s main promoter and protector of neoliberalism, are meeting once again, this time in Santiago, Chile, and the entire Latin American continent—except Cuba—turned their attention towards this capital city with furrowed brow. Inside the Mapocho Cultural Center, where the event is primarily being held, the region’s present and future is discussed once more, to the joy, frustration and sometimes boredom of respectable democratic presidents, entrepreneurs, politicians, some 4,000 businessmen, and representatives of regional and world financial organizations. Along with purely economic themes, other inevitable topics such as unemployment, growing poverty, unequal income distribution and its tendency to constantly increase, social exclusion, discrimination and violence are also on the table. But these rhetorical discussions are stripped of their already diminished worth and humanity when they come up against inflexible policies offered by this powerful organization as a solution to Latin America’s problems. As we all know, the IDB’s magical formula is now old. It boils down to the idea that the poor (who make up much more than a third of the continent’s inhabitants) only have one path open to them to gain access to wealth: to become even poorer in order to pay off a debt that they never contracted, and later, much later—well, exactly what will happen them has never been made clear. In national terms this translates into selling off everything to transnationals and private capital, reducing public spending for education, health, social security (sometimes almost to zero) and using these funds to pay off debts to foreigners creditors. That would give these countries the right to get more credit, thereby keeping their debt alive forever, in an infernal vicious circle. While many of those inside the Mapocho Cultural Center who believe in the Inter-American Development Bank’s formulas tried to win the favor of the region’s neoliberal gendarme and obtain some sort of financial gift, in the streets, hundreds of people defied heavy repression and protested in the name of the true victims of these economic policies: the poor. "We want them to leave, these people who have caused the loss of more than two million jobs, illiteracy, children with no schools to go to, more poverty among the poor and more social inequality," declared one of the protesters. "The wealth created by the IDB in our country is our misery," read one of the placards during the protests, which accused this international financial organization of facilitating inhumane exploitation of workers, helping the rich get richer and increasing injustice in the region. "The IDB doesn’t want to help the poor, but rather the rich," said another protester. "Otherwise they wouldn’t have imposed the condition that in order for countries to borrow money to build hospitals, they have to promise that a large number of the beds will be private." Just hours before the organization’s 42nd Assembly, the Argentine crisis began. That country’s government, following orders from the Inter-American Development Bank and other capitalist financial institutions, announced an immediate cut in public spending of $1.962 billion USD for 2001 and 2.485 billion in 2002, thus alleviating their large fiscal deficit. As the Argentine program to overcome the crisis states, the most affected areas will be education, public health and social security. That means more children and adolescents out of school, more teachers out of work, less doctors and medicines for the poor, disabled people unable to receive benefits and out-of-work parents¼ in short, more hunger and desperation for those that already suffer these ills. The first great truth announced in the meeting’s opening session was that in the year 2000, Latin America and the Caribbean’s economic growth was 4%, a figure that was not only insufficient to alleviate poverty and inequality but served to increase and magnify these phenomena in the region. Despite the ever-growing evidence of the ineffectiveness of neoliberalism as a means to eliminate poverty, the IDB insist on prescribing and imposing it at all costs. Coinciding with the meeting in Chile, Dora Curvea, IDB representative in Quito, did not use a great deal of tact when she reminded the Ecuadoran government that if it did not comply with the adjustment plan, it would not receive the foreign assistance it needs. The reform that Curvea is demanding consists of an increase in the value added tax, to which most of the country’s legislators are opposed. Although the IDB was created in 1959 to help speed up Latin America’s social and economic development, and to promote regional integration, since that date it has done little or nothing to achieve those aims. Its capital worth $101,000 million USD is pursued and gobbled up by the continent’s rich and its plans for "more" development create real terror among the poor, terror that is certainly not unfounded. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
