Trade developments in Latin America

Reading this past week's The Miami Herald I found a couple of articles relevant to our discussion about the Inter-American system in Latin America. This week's Oppenheimer Report shows the great development and growth Chile has undergone due to its free-trade agreement with the United States. It also poses many questions regarding such treaties, for the response of the Latin American states varies greatly across the continent. Chile has undergone economic reforms that have aided in the success of this agreement, but a large percentage of other Latin American states simply don't work in the same manner. As a counter example to this success, Andres Oppenheimer talks about the issues of CAFTA and the hesitation surrounding that treaty. In his conclusion, Oppenheimer acknowledges the fact that the problem now is not so much about the establishment of treaties throughout the hemisphere and globally, but rather, it is an issue of being able to establish competitive nations in Latin America that can rise up to "threats", like the one posed by China. On this note, I also found this article, by Marifeli Perez-Stable, in which "China offers opportunities, poses threats". It describes the relations between China and Latin American nations and emphasizes the importance of raising the competitiveness of the the latter. I also found interesting the fact of the overwhelming differences between the approaches towards the Chinese markets from varying Latin American States, those between Mexico and Brazil, for example. It's particularly interesting to me that we can witness the course that the Latin American states are taking towards globalization and how diverse such path truly is.