Poverty and Inequality in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico after the 2008 Global Crisis

80 Pages·2014·1.646 MB·English

by  Lukasz Czarnecki, Erik Balleza, Mayra Sáenz

Koz´min´ski Studies in Management and Economics 2 2 Koz´min´ski Studies in Management and Economics 2
z
n
e
á
S

/

Lukasz Czarnecki / Erik Balleza / Mayra Sáenz a
z
e
l
l
Poverty and Inequality in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico a
B Lukasz Czarnecki / Erik Balleza / Mayra Sáenz

after the 2008 Global Crisis /
i
k
c
How deep is the impact of the 2008 global crisis on Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico? e Poverty and Inequality
n
Although having similar experience with the policies of the Washington Consensus, Ec- r
a
uador, Brazil and Mexico have established different concepts of social and economic de- z
velopment during the last decade. These differences could also be observed during and C
in Ecuador, Brazil
after the global crisis in 2008. In contrast to the social anti-neoliberal policy imple-
mented in Ecuador and the progressive social and economic policy in Brazil, Mexico has o
been carrying out the policy of continued neoliberalism. One of the conclusions drawn c
is that Mexico faces abysmal inequalities and persistence of poverty, which are not only xi and Mexico after the
e
explicated by historical roots, but also by strong applications of neoliberal policies. M

d 2008 Global Crisis
n
The Authors a
Lukasz Czarnecki is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Economic Research at the l
i
National Autonomous University of Mexico and holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social z
Science. He studied Law and International Relations at the Jagiellonian University of a
r
Krakow (Poland) and Management at the University of Orléans (France). B

Erik Balleza studied Political and Social Science at the National Autonomous University ,
r
of Mexico. o
d
Mayra Sáenz studied Economics at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in a
Quito (Ecuador) and works in the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). u
c
E

n
i

y
t
i
l
a
u
q
e
n
I

d
n
a

y
t
r
e
v
o
P
ISBN 978-3-631-64584-0 www.peterlang.com
Koz´min´ski Studies in Management and Economics 2 2 Koz´min´ski Studies in Management and Economics 2
z
n
e
á
S

/

Lukasz Czarnecki / Erik Balleza / Mayra Sáenz a
z
e
l
l
Poverty and Inequality in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico a
B Lukasz Czarnecki / Erik Balleza / Mayra Sáenz

after the 2008 Global Crisis /
i
k
c
How deep is the impact of the 2008 global crisis on Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico? e Poverty and Inequality
n
Although having similar experience with the policies of the Washington Consensus, Ec- r
a
uador, Brazil and Mexico have established different concepts of social and economic de- z
velopment during the last decade. These differences could also be observed during and C
in Ecuador, Brazil
after the global crisis in 2008. In contrast to the social anti-neoliberal policy imple-
mented in Ecuador and the progressive social and economic policy in Brazil, Mexico has o
been carrying out the policy of continued neoliberalism. One of the conclusions drawn c
is that Mexico faces abysmal inequalities and persistence of poverty, which are not only xi and Mexico after the
e
explicated by historical roots, but also by strong applications of neoliberal policies. M

d 2008 Global Crisis
n
The Authors a
Lukasz Czarnecki is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Economic Research at the l
i
National Autonomous University of Mexico and holds a Ph.D. in Political and Social z
Science. He studied Law and International Relations at the Jagiellonian University of a
r
Krakow (Poland) and Management at the University of Orléans (France). B

Erik Balleza studied Political and Social Science at the National Autonomous University ,
r
of Mexico. o
d
Mayra Sáenz studied Economics at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in a
Quito (Ecuador) and works in the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). u
c
E

n
i

y
t
i
l
a
u
q
e
n
I

d
n
a

y
t
r
e
v
o
P
www.peterlang.com
Poverty and Inequality in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico after the 2008 Global Crisis
Koźmiński Studies in Management and Economics

Edited by Andrzej K. Koźmiński and Dariusz Jemielniak

Volume 2
Lukasz Czarnecki/Erik Balleza/Mayra Sáenz

Poverty and Inequality in Ecuador,
Brazil and Mexico after
the 2008 Global Crisis
Bibliographic Information published by the
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication
in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic
data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Czarnecki, Lukasz, 1980-
Poverty and inequality in Ecuador, Brazil and Mexico after the 2008 global crisis
/ Lukasz Czarnecki, Erik Balleza, Mayra Sáenz.
pages cm. -- (Kozminski studies in management and economics ; 2)
ISBN 978-3-631-64584-0
1. Poverty--Ecuador. 2. Poverty--Brazil. 3. Poverty--Mexico. 4. Global Finan-
cial Crisis, 2008-2009. 5. Latin America--Economic conditions. 6. Latin America-
-Social conditions. I. Title.
HC130.P6C93 2014
339.4'6098--dc23
2014003315

ISSN 2196-131X
ISBN 978-3-631-64584-0 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-03788-3 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/ 978-3-653-03788-3
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2014
All rights reserved.
PL Academic Research is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.

Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York ·
Oxford · Warszawa · Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law,
without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing

in electronic retrieval systems.
This book is part of an editor´s series of PL Academic Research
and was peer reviewed prior to publication.
www.peterlang.com
Contents

Preface (José Luis Velasco) .................................................................................. 7(cid:2)
Part I
Lukasz Czarnecki
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 9(cid:2)
Part II
The social inequality and poverty after the 2008 crisis ...................................... 13(cid:2)
Mayra Sáenz
The case of Ecuador ............................................................................................ 13(cid:2)
Erik Balleza
The case of Brazil ............................................................................................... 33(cid:2)
Lukasz Czarnecki
The case of Mexico ............................................................................................. 49(cid:2)
Part III
Lukasz Czarnecki
Final conclusion .................................................................................................. 71(cid:2)
About the authors ................................................................................................ 75
Acknowledgment ................................................................................................ 77

(cid:2)

Preface

Latin America is known as the world’s most unequal region. And for most coun-
tries of the region, this reputation is well earned: inequality is one of their most
durable characteristics, a true structure in the sense that Fernand Braudel gives
to this term. Decades and centuries go by, governments come and go, revolu-
tions and military dictatorships succeed one another, economic booms and busts
produce alternating spells of hope and dismay—but the basic, unequal, architec-
ture of Latin American societies stubbornly remains, shaping the expectations,
actions and destinies of millions of people.
One massive manifestation of this inequality is poverty. Other regions of the
world may have worse levels of poverty, but in most of those cases this is due to
the fact that society in general is scarcely developed and absolute deprivation is
large. What is truly peculiar to Latin America is the combination of abundance
and scarcity, of prosperity and decadence. The political, cultural, even aesthet-
ical consequences of this fact are far-reaching and variegated.
But it is important not to reduce the issue to its economic manifestations, de-
fining it as a mere matter of income distribution. Precisely because this inclina-
tion is so strong, it is crucial to emphasize that Latin America’s inequality is a
social phenomenon in the broadest sense of the term—it is how wealth, power,
status, knowledge and other basic social goods are distributed to create an en-
during social structure. Thus, strictly speaking, extreme inequality is not a dis-
tortion or corruption of Latin American societies: it is the way these societies are
constituted.
Changes that took place in the last decades accentuated or mitigated this in-
equality. By liberating economic power from many political restrictions, the ne-
oliberal reforms of the 1980s-1990s certainly aggravated it. The progressive
governments of the early 2000s took pains to alleviate it, in some countries with
notable success. The reinsertion of the region into the world economy—with
many countries taking back their old roles as exporter of primary products—
certainly helped these political efforts by providing extra resources that could be
distributed without affecting the interests of the elites.
But if these recent changes altered the intensity of Latin America’s inequali-
ty, they did not transform its basic shape. The origins of this basic shape have to
be searched for in the distant past: in the Iberian conquest, in the original design
of colonial societies, in the way the newly independent nations inserted them-
selves into the global social system in the early nineteenth century.
But if inequality is a historical fact, it is also a living one—a continuous
struggle to maintain or transform the structure of society. Inequality is repro-
8 Preface

duced in the day-to-day working of institutions and the daily interactions of hu-
man beings. Thus, if one wants to understand it, it is not enough to point to its
historical roots. It is necessary to analyze why and how it is created and recreat-
ed every day, how the elites are able to overcome the continuous challenges to
their power and the frequent changes in the international environment.
Therein lies the main virtue of this book. The following chapters show how
the unequal structures of three Latin American countries interacted with the in-
ternational economic environment in a critical juncture whose effects are not
fully played out even five years after the initial outbreak. What the reader shall
find here is living history: the continuous present of the social tensions that
make Latin America the most unequal region of a very unequal world and the
equally continuous efforts to change this situation.
José Luis Velasco
Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

(cid:2)