Conference targets widening gap in Latin America

Conference targets widening gap in Latin America

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

The widening
gap between the wealthy and the poor, particularly in Latin
America, will bring together 20 fellows for this year’s
Americas Project conference at Rice Saturday, Sept. 30,
through Tuesday, Oct. 3.

Developed around
the theme “Boom! To Whom?,” the conference will
focus on the effects of foreign trade and investment liberalization
on poverty and income distribution in the Americas. Two
sessions of the conference are open to Rice students, faculty
and staff.

“As societies
generate wealth through economic growth fostered by more
liberal trade policies in the Western Hemisphere, why should
a few persons benefit greatly while others enjoy no or very
few benefits?” asked Doug Schuler, project coordinator
for the conference at the James A. Baker III Institute for
Public Policy. “The Americas Project wants to explore
this apparent anomaly and its political and social ramifications.”

Established
in 1997, the Americas Project creates a yearly leadership
forum where a group of emerging economic, political and
cultural pacesetters throughout the Western Hemisphere discusses
solutions to some of the most pressing challenges confronting
the nations of the Americas.

The fellows
for this year’s conference were selected competitively
from countries of the Western Hemisphere by the three coordinators
of the Americas Project: Rice’s Baker Institute, the
Organization of American States and the Greater Houston
Partnership. The participants for 2000 include an array
of promising young leaders. Among them are Arturo Carrillo,
founder and executive director of the Colombian Institute
of International Law; Nina Pacari Vega, the first indigenous
woman to hold the position of second vice president of the
Congress in Ecuador; Elizabeth Levy, a playwright, director
and writer from Seattle; Marcela Castillo Villalobos, an
entrepreneur and professor of Spanish from Costa Rica; and
Jose Luis Negrin Munoz, economic researcher for Mexico’s
central bank.

Through team-building
workshops, roundtable discussions, lectures and panel discussions
featuring other experts, the fellows will focus on the social
justice of economic liberalism. At the conclusion of the
conference, participants will summarize their findings in
a study that will be sent to policy makers, business leaders,
journalists, academics and others interested in the topic.

The two sessions
of the conference that also are open to Rice students, faculty
and staff will take place in the International Conference
Facility in James A. Baker III Hall:

• Monday,
Oct. 2, 4-5:30 p.m.—A panel of experts will discuss
“Poverty, Income Inequality and Economic Liberalization.”
Members of the panel are moderator Abraham Lowenthal, founding
president of the Pacific Council on International Policy;
David S. Brown, Rice assistant professor of political science;
Wendy Hunter, associate professor of political science at
Vanderbilt University; Katharine Donato, Rice associate
professor of sociology; Peter Rodriguez, assistant professor
in the international business, public policy and law group,
Department of Management, Texas A&M University; and
Roy Thomasson, principal specialist in the Unit for Social
Development and Education in the Office of the Secretary
General of the Organization of American States.

• Tuesday,
Oct. 3, 5:30-6:30 p.m.—Domingo Cavallo, former minister
of finance and public works of Argentina, will discuss Latin
America and the new economy from the Argentine point of
view. Schuler, associate professor of management at Rice’s
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, cited a number
of statistics that influenced the selection of the theme
for the 2000 Americas Project conference.

Economic liberalism
during the 1990s resulted in greater foreign direct investments
in the Americas, increasing to nearly $20 billion from $1
billion in Brazil, to $122 million from $44 million in Honduras
and to $2.03 billion from $41 million in Peru. Overall exports
in the region from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego increased
8 percent annually from 1990 to 1997.

Yet the World
Bank estimates that the situation for the poor did not improve
in Latin America and the Caribbean during the ’90s.
In 1987, 147 million people representing about 35.5 percent
of the population lived on less than $2 per day; by 1998,
this extreme poverty had increased to 182.9 million people
and 36.4 percent of the population.

“The Americas
Project fellows will want to explore not only the underpinnings
of an economic boom, but also its distribution,” Schuler
said. “Inequities threaten social peace and political
stability—the very institutions that permit economic
liberalization to occur in the first place.”

Ideally, the
fellows will return to their home countries to provide leadership
in rectifying these inequities, Schuler said.

In addition
to the contributions of the sponsors, funding for this year’s
conference was provided by the Starr Foundation in New York
and the Coca-Cola Foundation in Atlanta.