This is the essay I wrote last night for an online university course I am taking through Coursera. It is about Latin American culture. This is an interesting course but the pages are dreadfully designed, easy to get lost on and the links often do not work. There have been many complaints from students about this. For me it is not a huge issue because I do not need the university credits, being now well into my fifties and not really interested in graduating in anything. A client I had coffee with today perspicaciously put it when he said that instead of wanting to devote a lot of time and expense to an uncertain course in university I would rather enjoy my remaining good health and travel. On the other hand I might morph into a super senior and still be trekking in exotic wilderness while studying Hispanic Literature in forty years (when I am ninety-eight).
Urbanization has helped Latin American countries develop in certain directions, especially economically. Mexico City has been rapidly growing since after the Second World War and more quickly in the past twenty years as campesinos and small town dwellers have been moving to the Distrito Federal in search of better employment and education options and a better quality of life. This dynamic has particularly increased since the ratification of NAFTA in 1994. Other major cities in Mexico and elsewhere have been undergoing the same kind of migration: Monterrey and Guadalajara in the case of Mexico, Lima in the case of Peru, Santiago in the case of Chile. Particularly Mexico has been undergoing a sizeable emerging middle class because of this new prosperity and there is a flourishing of business and commerce in the city with a near explosion of shops, boutiques, restaurants and chain stores and elsewhere, for example in Puebla with the Volkswagen plant.
However the economic blessing has not been evenly distributed and there remain sizable populations and social classes in Mexico City that are not feeling the love. Although Mexico may boast of a cradle to grave welfare state it is not strongly enforced and there remains a significant lack of infrastructure. Neoliberal economics have made quality health care the province of the moneyed and privileged classes while the poor have to settle for health care of a substandard quality in community health clinics and hospitals. Mental health care is particularly absent in Mexico City. There are institutions and mental health care workers but the tendency is to lock mental health sufferers in institutions and keep them isolated from society.
I have noticed in my travels in Mexico, especially in my visits to Mexico City, Puebla and San Cristobal de las Casas a large population of child, mother and child, family and grandmother beggars. In the case of the grandmother beggars they have usually been physically abused by their children and or abandoned by their own families--in many cases their sons and grandsons have had to emigrate to the US and Canada as economic migrants and the existing social infrastructure has not been sufficiently strong or enforced to be able to help them and they have to fend for themselves begging on the streets. I have often encountered child beggars on the streets and child vendors on the subway as well as mothers with children and entire families begging or vending on the sidewalks. It is very clear that the new prosperity has left them untouched.
I do find it difficult when Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba are widely condemned for leftist and anti-trade policies while seeking to improve the quality of life for their own people in terms of housing, education and health care, but these reforms often occur at the expense of economic development and trade inversion. There is also the question of a lack of basic rights and freedoms in some of these countries, notably in Cuba.
What needs to be grasped is there is more to development than a prosperous economy. The wealth needs to be fairly and justly redistributed to guarantee that no citizen is left behind. Even though equal opportunity is good and laudable room also needs to be made for less unequal outcomes, otherwise crime and social deterioration will fester and the general quality of life index for the country is going to lower considerably.
Urbanization has been great for generating income and creating business but does virtually nothing to improve the general quality of life for all citizens. For this to happen it is essential to develop a strong state with strong institutions that guarantee the protection and wellbeing of all citizens and the rule of law.
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