Latin America’s economic outlook

Latin America’s GDP is projected to grow by 5.2% in 2021 and 2.9% in 2022, according to the latest (October 2021) Economic Survey of ECLAC ( UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean)

The growth is coming back after a GDP contraction of 6.8% in 2020. The region is recovering slowly after having  suffered disproportionate deaths and devastation caused by covid.

 

GDP growth:

 

country	2021	2022
Brazil	5.2	2.2
Mexico	6.2	3.2
Argentina	7.5	2.7
Colombia	7.5	3.8
Peru	10.6	4.4
Chile	9.2	3.2
Venezuela	-4.0	1
Central America	5.5	4.6

 

 

Venezuela is expected to show a positive GDP growth of 1% in 2022. 

What a pleasant surprise ! 

What a relief !.. after seven consecutive years of GDP contraction.

Venezuela has suffered an astonishing -124.4% GDP contraction cumulatively since 2014. The economy shrank by a brutal -30% in 2020,  -28% in 2019, -19.6% in 2018, -15.7% in 2017 and -17% in 2016.  

 

The rise in international price and demand for commodities exported by Latin American countries will help in the recovery and growth.

 

Average Inflation of the region was 5.4% in June 2021 on a year-on-year basis. The region has managed to keep the rate of inflation in single digits in recent years. The exceptions are Venezuela and Argentina.

 

Venezuela’s inflation stood at 2719% in June 2021. It has come down from a sky-high 132,060 % in 2019. Argentina’s inflation continues to be in double digits of over 25% in the last several years.

 

Venezuela’s economic catastrophe is compounded by its political crisis and the crippling US sanctions. Argentina is again staring at large external debt and inadequate reserves to meet the payments. 

 

Brazil, which has suffered excessive covid deaths due to the irresponsible policies of the extreme rightist Bolsonaro, is in for political crisis in 2022 when Bolsonaro is likely to challenge his expected defeat in the next year’s elections.

 

Except for Argentina and Venezuela, the other 17 countries of Latin America show relatively positive and encouraging macroeconomic fundamentals.

 

Conquest of Latin America by Chinese capitalists continues...

Chinese acquisitions, investment and projects in six countries of Latin America  amount to an impressive 35.3 billion dollars since 2019. 

The investment is going into power generation, railways, renewable energy and vaccine production..different from the past when they were maligned as predatory extractors of minerals, oil and food crops..

This is is the highlight of an October report of Americas Quarterly 

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/latin-americas-evolving-relationships-with-china/

There has been no significant new investment in Venezuela and Panama, the other two countries covered in the report. They have not published (may be they are still doing the research) information on the remaining 11 countries of Latin America  

Country-wise share is as follows:

 

Peru 7.98 billion dollars

Chile 6.99 bn

Colombia 6.42 bn

Argentina 5.8 bn

Brazil 5.37 bn

Mexico 2.73 bn

 

Of the total 35.3 billion dollars, the power sector has got the maximum of 12.5 billion followed by railways with 9.8 billion dollars.

 

Detailed break-up below:

 

 

ARGENTINA

 

MAJOR CHINESE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SINCE 2019

$2.6 billion	Reconstruction of San Martín cargo railway by China Railway Construction Corp. Ltd.
$1.02 billion	Malal-Hue UTE consortium, headed by PowerChina subsidiary Sinohydro, won the bid to build the Portezuelo del Viento hydroelectric dam in Mendoza province
$816 million	China Machinery Engineering Corp.’s improvement of the Belgrano freight railway
$784 million	Northern Patagonian train line built by PowerChina, linking Vaca Muerta shale reserves and Bahía Blanca port
$580 million	Investment by Ganfeng Lithium in solar-powered lithium plant in Salta province

 

BRAZIL

 

 

MAJOR CHINESE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SINCE 2019

$1.7 billion	China General Nuclear Power Group 2019 acquisitions of Atlantic Renewable Energies and Enel’s Brazilian wind and solar assets
$1.3 billion	China Communications Construction Co. (CCCC) to build a 130-mile railway between Marabá and the port city of Barcarena in Pará state
$1.2 billion	Consortium of three Chinese firms signed a public-private partnership with Bahia state to build a 7.7-mile bridge connecting the capital city Salvador and Itaparica Island
$719 million	China’s BYD company to construct SkyRail monorail system in the city of Salvador
$450 million	CCCC co-invested in a steel rolling mill in Pará state with Brazilian mining company Vale

 

 

CHILE

 

 

MAJOR CHINESE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SINCE 2019

$3 billion	State Grid bought CGE, the Chilean subsidiary of Spanish company Naturgy
$2.2 billion	State Grid bought U.S. firm Sempra Energy’s Chilean business Chilquinta Energía
$922 million	China’s Joyvio Agriculture Development Co. acquired Chilean salmon producer Australis Seafoods
$804 million	Consortium of CRCC International Investment Co. Ltd. and China Railway
$60 million	Sinovac Biotech to build a vaccine production plant in the Santiago region and a research and development center in northern Chile

 

 

Colombia

 

MAJOR CHINESE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SINCE 2019

$4 billion	Consortium of two Chinese companies to build the elevated 15-mile metro line in Bogotá
$1 billion	China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation to build a tram line connecting Bogotá to its suburbs
$1 billion	Zijin Mining Group bought Canadian firm Continental Gold, gaining access to the Buriticá gold project in Antioquia department
$418 million	China Development Bank’s financing of the $652 million Mar 2 highway project connecting Medellín to the country’s port

 

Mexico

 

MAJOR CHINESE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SINCE 2019

$1.8 billion	CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive to modernize Line 1 of Mexico City’s subway system and add 30 new train cars
$630 million	A consortium including China Communications Construction Company to construct a section of the Maya Train on the Yucatán Peninsula
$300 million	Zhongtong Bus Holding Co. Ltd. and Mexican firm Golden Star 400 to build a plant in Nuevo León state to produce buses that run on natural gas

 

Peru

 

MAJOR CHINESE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY SINCE 2019

$3.59 billion	China Yangtze Power Co., Ltd. bought U.S. firm Sempra Energy’s Peruvian assets, including a 83.6% stake in Peru’s largest power utility company, Luz del Sur
$3 billion	Chinese-Peruvian consortium constructing Chancay port north of Lima
$1.39 billion	Consortium led by China Three Gorges Corp. bought Chaglla hydroelectric power plant

 

record number of illegal emigrants at US-Mexico border despite the covid risk

1.66 million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the Mexico-US border by the US Border Patrol in the 2021 fiscal year, which ended in September.

608,000 arrestees (36.6%) were Mexicans

308,931 from Honduras

279,033 from Guatemala

95,930 from El Salvador

95,000 from Ecuador

57,000 from Brazil

50,000 from Nicaragua

48,000 from Venezuela

45,000 from Haiti

38,000 from Cuba

2,600 from India

The large numbers from Brazil, Ecuador and Nicaragua are new and surprising.

More than 90,000 people entered Panama via the deadly Darien Gap from January to September including hundreds of people from Bangladesh, Ghana, Nepal and other distant countries.

There are no numbers of how many died, got killed and were lost in the gang violence at the US-Mexico border and attacks from venomous snakes in the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama.

The number of illegal entrants stopped at the US border in 2021 is the highest ever since 1960. The earlier record was 1.61 million in 1986. The number was around one million in most years between 1983 and 2006. After this, it declined to between three and four hundred thousand until 2018. It jumped to 851,000 in 2019 but decreased to 400,000 in 2020.

It is heart breaking that so many people took the deadly risk of migration journey even at this dangerous covid times.

Such large numbers is also indicative of the booming business of the human trafficking agencies.

Sources:

Forbes 22 October report, based on US government statistics.

US Border patrol https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2021-Aug/US59B8~1.PDF

Intense Chinese engagement with Latin America is instructive for India

The second high-level academic forum and the sixth think tank forum between China and the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States (CELAC) held their meetings on October 12-13 at Beijing. 
 It was organized by the Institute of Latin America Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Beijing in collaboration with the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC based in Santiago), the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, the China Institute of International Studies, the China Foundation of International Studies and United Nations. Roberto Escalante Semerena, Secretary-General of the Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education of Latin America and the Caribbean (UDUAL) also participated in the event.

 

The event was sponsored by the foreign ministries of Mexico (current president of CELAC) and China. Experts, officials and entrepreneurs from both sides participated.

 The Latin Americans had expressed appreciation to China which had given to the region 241 million doses of covid vaccine out of the total Chinese supply of 946 million doses to the world. 

 The academic forum and thinktank tank forum are part of the larger China-CELAC Forum established in 2014. These hold meetings at various levels and in different subjects as follows:

Summit Meeting

Ministerial Meetings

Meeting of National Coordinators

Dialogue of Foreign Ministers of China and the "Quartet" of CELAC

Subforums in Specific Fields

• China-LAC Agricultural Ministers’Forum
• China-LAC Scientific and Technological Innovation Forum
• China-LAC Business Summit
• China-LAC Think-Tanks Forum
• China-LAC Young Political Leaders' Forum
• China-LAC Young Scientists Exchange Program”
• China-LAC Infrastructure Cooperation Forum
• China-Latin America and Caribbean Region People-to-People Friendship Forum
• China-CELAC Political Parties Forum
•  China-LAC Legal Forum
• China-LAC Local Governments Cooperation Forum
• China-LAC People-to-People Friendship Forum
• China-LAC Cultural Classics Translation Program
• China-LAC Civilization Dialogue Mechanism

 

In July, 2014, President Xi Jinping announced that China would provide CELAC countries with 6,000 governmental scholarships, 6,000 training opportunities and 400 opportunities for on-the-job master degree programs in China between 2015 and 2019. In 2015, China officially launched the ten-year training program for 1000 young leaders from both sides entitled the “Future Bridge”.

 By the end of 2015, China has opened 39 Confucius Institutes and 18 Confucius Classrooms in 20 LAC countries. There are more than 100,000 Latin American students enrolled in the Chinese language and culture programs of the Institute.

 Detailed, clear and impressive information on China-CELAC activities are given in the link

http://www.chinacelacforum.org/eng/ltjj_1/P020161207421177845816.pdf

 

These elaborate structures, regular meetings and systematic follow up are done mainly by the Chinese side who take the initiative and finance the  projects and activities. 

India held its first Indo-CELAC Troika Foreign Ministers meeting in New Delhi in August 2012, within a year after the formation of CELAC in December 2011. In fact, the CELAC Troika visited New Delhi before Beijing. In this meeting, the two sides agreed to set up a India-CELC Business Council and a India-CELAC CEOs Forum, Energy Forum, Agriculture Forum and Science Forum. There have been a few more meetings at the level of foreign ministers during the Un General Assembly. But India has not sustained its engagement with CELAC in the way China has done so impressively and comprehensively.

China's trade with the region in 2020 was 315 billion dollars as against India’s trade of 28.8 billion dollars. China has given credit of 160 billion dollars while India’s credit is just under 500 million. China’s investment in the region is 110 billion dollars which is 11 times bigger than Indian investment of about 10 billion.

 Obviously India cannot ever hope to match the Chinese scale in trade, investment and credit. But India can certainly learn from the way the Chinese cultivate Latin America seriously and systematically through so many channels and intense engagement. 

The Latin Americans are keen for partnership with India as part of their strategic policy to reduce over dependence on China and diversification. They are appreciative of India's annual supply of a billion dollars of affordable generic medicines which has helped reduce the cost of healthcare of the Latin American people and governments. They are impressed by the 10 billion dollar Indian investment and especially employment of 35000 Latin American staff in the two dozen Indian IT companies operating in the region. India has become a top export destination for Latin America in recent years.

 It is heartening to see that the Ministry of External Affairs of India is attaching more importance to the region in recent years and has taken a number of initiatives to reach out to the region. There have been a number of visits of Indian dignitaries, ministers and officials covering all the countries in the region. India has increased its technical assistance and development partnership. India has just opened two more embassies in Paraguay and Dominican Republic adding to the ten embassies in the 19 countries of the region.  

 

More things for consideration by MEA:

-Revive India-CELAC engagement besides proactive subregional interactions with Mercosur, Pacific Alliance and Central American SICA group.

-open embassies in Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador.

-Increase the strength of diplomatic missions in the region. At the moment most embassies operate with one and half diplomats..ambassador plus a trainee diplomat

- set up cultural centres in more Latin American countries to project soft power. At the moment, only Brazil and Mexico have Indian cultural centres.

- persuade the Commerce Ministry to revive its Focus LAC programme which had helped in the past in encouraging and supporting Indian exporters to explore the business opportunities in Latin America.

-The annual India-LAC Business Conclave needs to be scaled up and organised regularly by pooling and coordinating the efforts of CII and FICCI and other trade bodies and export promotion councils with substantial financial investment by the government.

-Announce a credit of a billion dollars to the region spread over 5 years

-Join the InterAmerican Development Bank so that Indian companies can participate in their projects

-sign FTAs with Mexico, Colombia and Peru which are major destinations for India’s exports in the region

- encourage Indian universities and thinktanks to open Latin America study centres and Spanish and Portuguese language studies. China has over 60 centres to study Latin America. Spanish language departments in Chinese universities have jumped from 12 in 2000 to more than 80. There is only one (Goa) university in India which has a Latin America studies centre.  There are, however,  a few good quality Spanish language courses run by universities and private institutes.

The action by the government of India needs to be supplemented by organizations outside the government sector. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) have been proactively promoting business with Latin America. The Indian Council for Cultural relations (ICCR) is active in cultural exchanges with Latin America. The India International Centre, New Delhi is planning to organize an international conference "Connected Histories, Shared Present: Cross-Cultural Experiences between India and Latin America and the Caribbean" on 22-25 February 2022.

Venezuelan currency Bolivar undergoes yet another surgery for removal of zeroes

Venezuelan currency Bolivar undergoes yet another surgery for removal of zeroes
 
The Venezuelan government removed 6 zeroes from its currency Bolivar on 1 October.  The surgery became necessary when the currency lost its value to ridiculous levels causing massive inconvenience to people. A loaf of bread was 7 million Bolivars and bus ticket was 2 million Bolivars. So it became a mathematical nightmare for people to calculate and pay for high value items. It was nothing but magical realism. Every Venezuelan was a millionaire but quite a lot of them were “poor millionaires”.  Since the currency notes were also scarce like all other essential items, people had to queue up in front of banks for many hours. And they were allowed to take out only 20 million Bolivars a day. It was nothing but a nightmare.

One million Bolivar (equal to 25 US cents) has now become just 1 Bolivar with the issue of new currency notes called as Digital Bolivars.

 
This is the third time that the Venezuelan government did surgery for removal of zeroes. In 2008 President Chavez removed 3 zeroes and introduced Bolivar Fuerte (strong). His successor Maduro deleted 5 more in 2018 and called the new currency as Bolivar Soberano (sovereign). So it is a loss of 14 zeroes in 13 years ! Quite a record..
 
Besides the zero surgery, the government had introduced in the past several different exchange rates for imports of essential items, travels etc. This gave rise to large scale black market, corruption and abuse by those close to the authorities.
 
The currency devaluation and change are just small part of the larger tragedy. The GDP of the country has gone down by 80% since 2013. The country has the highest inflation in the world. It was 3000% in 2020 and 9500% in 2019, according to the Venezuelan Central Bank. The inflation in 2021 is forecast to be 1600%. There is acute shortage of food, medicine and essential items. People have to queue up for hours in front of supermarkets and pharmacies. There are frequent power cuts and shortage of water. Most international airlines have stopped flights to Venezuela due to payment issues.

Crime and violence is rampant in Caracas which has one of the highest murder rates in the region. Poverty has increased dramatically. There are more poor people today than before Chavez came to power in 1999.

 
Unable to tame the inflation and currency devaluation, the government has quietly allowed dollarization of the market. Seventy percent of the transactions are done in US dollars, according to some estimates. Many shops display prices in US dollars. Since the dollar revenue from the main exports of oil has been crippled by the US sanctions, there are not many dollars to go around in the market. The new source of dollars is the remittances from the 4 million Venezuelans who have fled to other countries of Latin America, US and Europe. 
 
The Venezuelan government has tried crypto currency experiments too. In December 2017 the government  announced the launch of “Petro”, a cryptocurrency, backed by the country’s oil and mineral resources, unlike the other crypto currencies which are mined online. The authorities decreed it mandatory to pay with Petro for government document services and fuel for planes flying international flights. In Feb 2018, the government announced another crypto currency “ Petro Gold”. But the government kept changing the regulations many times causing loss of credibility in the world’s crypto community. It is not known how many Petro tokens have been issued or bought.
 
The genesis of the currency and economic crisis goes back to the coup against President Chavez in 2002. The Venezuelan oligarchs and businessmen were the main coup conspirators. Pedro Carmona, the president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce became the interim president after the overthrow of Chavez. However, the coupsters mismanaged the coup and Chavez came back to power in just 48 hours. Chavez then unleashed a ferocious campaign of revenge against the business community by introducing foreign exchange and import controls, nationalization of industries and other punitive measures. He did not care about the economy or industry. His only aim was to teach an unforgettable lesson to the businessmen. He changed his agenda from “ pro-poor” to “ anti-rich” and took total control of the economy. No one in his cabinet or party dared to oppose Chavez, who became the absolute authoritarian. The Chavista economic advisers and administrators who were neither qualified nor experienced, resorted to ad hoc policies to suit the whims of Chavez. He gave positions and powers to thousands of Chavistas and military officials and let them become corrupt and his accomplices. Maduro who succeeded Chavez has simply inherited the system and he is not powerful or charismatic enough to control others. So the country is bleeding with multiple political, economic and social wounds. 

Trump tried regime change with overt bullying and covert operations but failed. He took the illegal and unilateral US sanctions to an absurd extreme by announcing a 15 million dollar bounty for the arrest of President Maduro on drug trafficking charges. This is besides the 30 million dollar bounty on the heads of some ministers, generals and judges. 

The US engineered the formation of Lima Group with some Latin American countries to recognize Guaido as President and deal with the Venezuelan crisis.This was supported even by European Union. But now the Lima Group has become an anticlimax after the new leftist government of Peru has exited from the group and recognized the Maduro government. Earlier the leftist governments of Argentina and Bolivia also left the group, which was recognized by their rightist predecessors.

The opposition lead by Juan Guaido has done worse by seeking external intervention from US. His attempts and promises to bring down the Maduro regime have failed miserably. He has lost credibility. 

Now the Opposition has realized rightly that the only way for resolution of the crisis is to take part in the elections and fight the Maduro regime democratically and constitutionally. 
Credit should be given to Mexico which is facilitating the negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. 

Shining Path’s Dark Chapter in Peruvian and Latin American history

 
Abimael Guzman, the founder and leader of the Peruvian armed revolutionary group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) which waged a violent protracted war against the state in the eighties, died in prison on 11 September at the age of 86. 

The Shining Path and Guzman had gone farther than any other groups or leaders in Latin America in taking the Leftist ideology to the extreme. Shining Path followers declared Guzman as the "Fourth Sword of Communism" (after Marx, Lenin and Mao). Their insurgency was the deadliest chapter in the history of Peru and of Latin America. 
 
In 1980, while Peru celebrated the return of democracy by voting in the country’s first elections after seventeen years of military dictatorship, Shining Path militants burned ballot boxes in Chuschi, a small town in the department of Ayacucho. On the day after Christmas of that same year, Shining Path members marked Mao’s birthday by killing street dogs in Lima and hanging them from street lamps in the colonial center. 
 
The Shining Path movement which was initially confined to academic circles in the universities, started with championing of the cause of dispossessed campesinos and indigenous people, and won the support of many across rural Peru. In the late 1970s, the movement developed into a guerilla group and pursued a campaign to demoralize and undermine the government of Peru in order to create a situation conducive to a violent coup which would put its leaders in power. In the early eighties, it focused on the countryside, but by the middle of the decade it had shifted its campaign to Lima, the center of the country’s political and economic power, with car bombs, kidnappings, and attacks on police and military installations. It took to indiscriminate violence against the state and caused death and destruction. According to the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up in 2001 to investigate the roots and consequences of the conflict, about seventy thousand Peruvians were killed or disappeared between 1980 and 2000, with nearly half of those deaths directly attributable to Shining Path, and almost a third to the Peruvian military and police.

Guzman was a student of philosophy and law in university. He wrote a thesis on “The Kantian Theory of Space and The Bourgeois Democratic State”. He was influenced by the book "Seven Essays on the Interpretation of the Peruvian Reality" by the famous Marxist intellectual of Peru Jose Carlos Mariategui. Guzman was recruited as a professor of philosophy by the rector of San Cristobal University in Ayacucho.  The rector was Dr Efrain Morote Best, an anthropologist who is said to be the true intellectual leader of the Shining Path. Encouraged by Morote, Guzmán studied Quechua, the language spoken by Peru's indigenous population. With this, heattracted  lot of students from Indigenous communities. In the 1960s, the Peruvian Communist Party had splintered over ideological and personal disputes. Guzman, who had taken a pro-Chinese rather than pro- Soviet line, emerged as the leader of the faction which became the Communist Party of Peru- Shining Path (PCP-SL) in 1969. Guzman adopted the nom de guerre Presidente or Comrade Gonzalo and began advocating a peasant-led revolution on the Maoist model. Guzman was critical of not only the US imperialism, but also Soviet imperialism, which he called as "social-imperialism". Later, he came to scorn Castro and even moderate factions in China. He visited China several times. Both of Peru’s main Communist parties expelled him. Calling himself as President Gonzalo and Comrade Gonzalo, he preached “Gonzalo Thought,” which he claimed would bring the world to a “higher stage of Marxism.”

The Shining Path guerillas attacked police stations, military camps, government offices and infrastructure such as power transmission lines. Later they escalated the war by attacking 
banks, hotels, schools, restaurants and shops. They murdered peasants, trade union leaders and others who refused to cooperate. The guerillas controlled large parts of the country which became unsafe for travel. The indiscriminate violence turned public opinion against the movement. It was at the height of this insurgency that Alberto Fujimori became president with a campaign promise to eradicate terrorism and capture Guzman who had gone underground in the mid-1970s and remained since then as a mysterious figure hiding in secret locations and later in safe houses in Lima.  Fujimori created a special counter-terrorism directorate with unlimited powers to put an end to the terrorism. Predictably, the security forces committed excesses killing innocent people besides the guerillas and their sympathizers. The security forces captured Guzman from a safe house in September 1992 and found details of the guerillas, arms and other details from his computer. Guzman was sentenced to life imprisonment and many guerillas were killed or captured. 
 

In 1993, Guzman publicly admitted defeat, advised his followers to lay down arms and called for peace. This lead to the collapse of Shining Path within a matter of months. He spent the next twenty-eight years in prison, until his death. 
 
Guzman’s first wife, Augusta La Torre, second-in-command of Shining Path, died mysteriously, in 1988. At the age of 75 years Guzman married Elena Iparraguire, who had taken La Torre’s place, both as Guzman’s partner and within the leadership hierarchy of Shining Path. Like Guzman, she had also been sentenced to life in prison for terrorism.
 
Even after his death, Guzman’s body is challenging the government. Normally the bodies of prisoners are handed over to the families. But the Peruvian government fears that his burial site might become a rallying place for radical insurgents. So the Peruvian Congress has quickly passed a law to allow the state to cremate the bodies of terrorists and those convicted of treason who die in prison.  
 
While most Peruvians are relieved that the darkest chapter of the country is over with Guzman’s death, there are still some leftists who have residual sympathies for the Shining Path. This includes the current President Pedro Castillo and his Peru Libre party. Many in Castillo’s cabinet opposed the proposal for cremation and members of Peru Libre party voted against the cremation bill. But in deference to the feelings of the majority of Peruvians, President Castillo signed the bill. Still there are a few smaller armed groups, associated with Shining Path who are operating in the country. But they do not pose any credible threat to the state and democracy of Peru.
 
In this context, one is reminded of a similar problem caused by the body of Evita Peron in Argentina following her death in 1952 to the right-wing military dictatorship. Fearing that her body and burial ceremony would rally the Peronists, the authorities hid the body in secret places and finally sent it in a coffin to be buried secretly in a cemetery in Milan. They made identical coffins and sent them to other European cities to confuse anyone trying to trace it. In 1974, the Montonero guerrilla group kidnapped from the cemetery the body of General Aramburu who lead the coup against Peron and became President in 1955-58. He was earlier abducted and killed by the Montoneros in retaliation for his execution of Peronists. The group demanded the return of Evita’s body in exchange for that of Aramburu. Finally Evita’s body was found and brought back to Argentina in 1974 after the return of Peron to power. Once Evita's body arrived in Argentina, the Montoneros gave up Aramburu's corpse and abandoned it in a street in Buenos Aires.

The death of Guzman is the end of a dark chapter not only in the history of Peru but also in the history of Latin America. In the second half of the twentieth century, the region had a large number of armed leftist groups which sought to overthrow governments to bring about Utopia. Hundreds of thousands of students, professors, intellectuals, artists, peasants, indigenous people and even catholic clergy joined the armed revolutionary groups. They were inspired by the success of the Cuban and Sandinista revolutions which overthrew rightist dictatorships and embarked on socialist path. The Colombian leftist group FARC had controlled almost half of the country’s territory at one time and was a grave threat to the Colombian state. These gave an excuse for US intervention in the region in the name of the “War on Communism” and their support to brutal rightwing military dictatorships. Thousands of leftist activists were killed, jailed, tortured and exiled. However, the Left reemerged in the late ninties and came to power in many countries of the region. Some of the former guerilla leaders contested in the elections and became presidents such as President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, President Dilma Rouseff of Brazil and President Sanchez Ceren of El Salvador.  With so many leftist governments in the region, the first decade of the twenty first century was called as the period of Pink Tide. Brazilian President Lula and Venezuelan president Chavez were in the vanguard of the New Left. But the excesses and corruption scandals of some of the Leftist governments caused a right turn in Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador. The left-baiters called it as the end of the Pink Tide and reemergence of the Right. But this was disproved by the return of Left to power in countries such as Argentina and Peru. The far-right Bolsonaro is expected to lose in the next elections in Brazil in 2022 to the leftist Lula, who is leading in the polls. Meanwhile Mexico elected the leftist Lopez Obrador as President in December 2018. He hosted a summit meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC) on Saturday 18 September. He had invited the Presidents of Cuba and Venezuela to the summit in defiance of the US policies of sanctions and isolation. 

The Latin Americans are getting used to their journey with Left and Right turns. But hopefully they will not be lead into darkness again by any more Shining Paths.

Argentine writer Cesar Aira’s novel “The Divorce”

This is the first time I tried the work of Cesar Aira, the Argentine author. I enjoyed his way of provoking and stimulating the reader with surprise twisting of sub plots, cerebral analysis and delightful descriptions. He takes the readers for leisurely stroll in the streets of Buenos Aires stopping at cafes, bars and restaurants and letting us listen to the unending Argentine conversations, complaints and debates. 
 
Aira opens the story with the sentence,”When I left Providence (Rhode Island) in early December, the first fall of snow already lay buried beneath the second, and the second fall beneath the third”. That’s what one finds inside the novel; layer of one story buried under another.

 
Here is a sample of the way Aira describes an incident :
 
“El Gallego, the owner of the restaurant inserted the crank handle and started turning it, and the first fold of the awning opened out, a mass of water fell onto the pavement. It had rained overnight and the water had pooled in the canvas. Luckily it came down well away from the line of tables, and didn’t even splash us. Perhaps it wouldn’t have splashed us even if we had been closer, because it was as if every last drop had been absorbed by the victim: a young man with a bicycle. He wasn’t riding his bicycle but wheeling it; he had probably just got off and stepped up onto the pavement. The water doused him as if it had been expertly aimed. And it was no small amount. No shower of separate drops. It was a solid bucketful, gallons of it plunging with the force of gravity, right down onto him. He stood there transfixed by surprise, fright and wetness. Especially wetness, which overpowered all the rest. He was drenched, down to the last thread of his clothes, the last strand of his hair and the last cell of his skin. He seemed to go on getting wetter, in a process that transcended the temporality of the accident. The water ran over his face and down his arms (eddying around his watch); smooth waves of it passed under his T-shirt, swelling and rippling the fabric; it flowed down inside his Bermuda shorts, formed little translucent curtains like glass tubes around his calves, and bubbled coldly all over his sandalled feet. We stared in fascination, frozen like him. He was right there in front of our table. A moment passed, the briefest of moments, perhaps. Time is especially hard to measure in such circumstances. Perhaps no time passed at all, or only the infinitesimal fraction of a second required for the eye of the totally soaked young man to communicate with his brain. He didn’t have to look around because chance, as I said, had put him right there in front of our table; the same chance that had placed him beneath that cascade at just the right moment. He opened his mouth, parting the veils of water that were still flowing over his lips, and cried: ‘Leticia!’. The young video artist who was sitting with me, and had seen it all happen, suddenly found herself having to make a psychological readjustment. I know, because I was looking at her and could see the mental process reflected in her face. The protagonist of this episode had been a stranger, like every victim of a mishap witnessed in the street. It’s never Juan or Pedro but the guy who tripped or was mugged or got run over. But now, with the help of memory, she had to reassign the stranger to the category of people whose names she knew. This too was a very rapid operation. It happened in a flash, before all the water had fallen from the awning, or so it seemed: ‘Enrique!’ She leapt up, went straight over and hugged him, oblivious to getting wet”.
 
With such delightful descriptions, the book is entertaining and intriguing. But when I settled down to enjoy the scenic journey, the story stopped and ended abruptly with this: 
 
“Oblivious to the accident that he had caused, El Gallego kept turning the crank handle. Enrique, like an actor left in the middle of the stage when the play has finished, stood there dripping, motionless, stunned by the surprise. And with one hand, he went on holding the delicate machine at his side: that ‘little steel fairy’, the bicycle, from whose spinning stories are born”.
 
I felt like Enrique who ends up like “an actor left in the middle of the stage when the play has finished, stood there dripping, motionless, stunned by the surprise” and wonders “how could there have been an ending if the beginning was still going on?”
 
I am hooked to the way Aira spins stories on the pavements of cafes and bars of my beloved Buenos Aires, the Borgesian city. I am going to read his other books.

Roberto Bolano, the famous Chilean writer said, "If there is one contemporary writer who defies classification, it is César Aira, who has written one of the five best stories I can remember".

 

Impressive increase in India's pharmaceutical exports to Latin America

India’s pharmaceutical exports to Latin America increased by 15% to 1108 million dollars in 2020-21 (April-March) from 962 m in 2019-20 (according to the latest data published by India’s Ministry of Commerce). This is against the backdrop of a decline of 3% in India’s total exports to the region.
 
Exports to Peru increased by a remarkable 86% to 128 m from 69 million in the year before.
 
Exports to Mexico jumped by 80% to 114 m from 64 m
 
Exports to Chile went up by 32% to 123 m from 93 m
 
Exports to Venezuela increased by 39% to 52 m from 39 m 
 
Exports to Dominican Republic were up by 37% to 54 m from 39 m
 
There were modest increases in exports to Brazil (317 m from 298 m), Colombia (68 m from 65 m) and Guatemala ( 48 m from 44 m).
 
In the last five years, the exports to Latin America have doubled from 651 m in 2016-17.
 
Pharmaceuticals are now the third largest export to the region after vehicles and chemicals.
 
Exports to USA
 
India’s pharma exports to USA went up by 13% to 7.2 billion dollars in 2020-21 from 6.3 bn in 2019-20. USA continues to be the # 1 market for India’s pharma exports which have gone up by four times in the last decade from 1.8 bn in 2010-11.

 
Global Exports
 
India’s global exports of pharma showed an even more impressive increase of 19% to 19.4 billion dollars in 2020-21 from 16.3 bn in 2019-20.
 
Pharmaceutical exports have been on a steady trajectory of increase in the last two decades moving up from just 945 million dollars in 2000-01 and 6.6 billion dollars in 2010-11.
 
Pharmaceutical exports were #3 in the ranking of India’s global exports after diesel (26.8 bn) and diamonds (26.1 bn), up from the 8^th position in 2010-11 and 14^th position in 2000-01.

But both diesel and diamond exports involve large imports of raw materials namely crude and raw diamonds which account for over 80% of the export value. In the case of Pharma, imports of raw materials are about 32 % of total requirements while the rest is produced in India itself. So the absolute value derived from Pharma exports is much more than from the exports of diesel and diamonds. 
 
It is time for the government of India to recognize this growing importance of pharma exports and formulate long term strategies for further growth. 

Pharma is one of the few export items in which India is ahead of China with competitive strength and solid reputation. China's exports in 2020 were 13 billion dollars. China ranked 13th, behind India's 11th position in global Pharma exports. However, China is the world's largest supplier of Pharma raw materials.

India has been recognized as a  “Pharmacy of the Global South”, with its pharmaceutical industry ranking third largest in the world in terms of medicines produced by volume. India accounts for 20% of global generic medicine exports by volume and supplies over 50% of global demand for vaccines.