The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2005

ers because it shows how international cooperation can make a real differ- ence. As noted in the State Depart- ment’s 2004 Country Reports on Terrorism, continuing terrorist threats “require a growing level of interna- tional cooperation between the United States and its many partner nations around the world to interdict terrorists, disrupt their planning, res- trict their travel, reduce the flow of financial and material support to ter- rorist groups, and enable partner gov- ernments to assert control over weak- ly governed territory where terrorists find sanctuary.” Successful AML efforts are a key element of that coop- eration. Todd Kushner, an FSO since 1985, is the director of the Designations Unit in the State Department’s Office of the Counterterrorism Coordinator. He is also a member of the AFSA Govern- ing Board. The Heavy Hand of the Past Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression (Independent Studies in Political Economy) Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005, $25, hardcover, 288 pages. R EVIEWED BY A LEXIS L UDWIG Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s new book, Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression — originally published as Rumbo a la Libertad — reviews the unfulfilled promises of Latin America’s recent age of privatization. As he notes, during the 1990s, many governments across the continent took to heart the idea that private enter- prise, foreign investment and open markets would pave the way out of the prolonged stagnation of the 1980s — the region’s “lost decade.” The catch- words then were “stabilization, liberal- ization, privatization … and the horn of plenty seemed to be around the corner.” But despite its initial success in countries like Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, by the turn of the new century the fragile edifice was tumbling down. Even in the author’s own Peru, where the economy registered solid, if unspectacular, growth thanks to the new medicine, the underlying indices of social inequality and poverty remained unchanged, with well- known consequences for political sta- bility. Thus, the very idea of democra- tic government, not to mention mar- ket economics (aka “liberalism”), began to be called into question throughout Latin America. To explain this debacle, Vargas Llosa identifies “five principles of oppression” that he argues have per- sisted from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present day, and underlie the failures of many succes- sive attempts at reform: corporatism, state mercantilism, privilege, transfer of wealth and political law. He sum- marizes the operation of these princi- ples in the functioning of a “state through which a group of men have exploited others to satisfy their own needs.” The fifth of these principles, politi- cal law, is at the center of his analysis. Political law functions not to promote justice for one and all, as the “rule of law” theoretically does, but rather to protect the privileges of the chosen few. An anecdote taken from a news report in Bolivia, where I am current- ly serving, illustrates this principle with an almost comical clarity. The son of a former dean of one of the country’s more prestigious law schools was arrested for criminal disorderly conduct. Armed with his authoritative knowledge of political law, what did the father do? Posing as the current dean, he confronted the police and warned them to release his son or face the wrath of his friends in high places, including the minister of government (who heads the national police). Naturally, he got his way. (One won- ders whether this “legal” strategy formed the basis of a special course that the former dean taught to partic- ularly gifted students.) As one of the co-authors of the cel- ebrated Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot (1996), Vargas Llosa already dismissed dependency theory — the argument that “it’s their fault we are poor” — as an explanation for the region’s continuing predicament. While he does blame Washington’s historical political and military inter- ventions, as well as its trade and aid policies, for reinforcing the status quo, he mainly focuses on Latin America’s own flawed institutions and warped values. Liberty for Latin America offers a useful lens through which to under- stand the fundamental social, politi- cal and economic challenges still fac- ing the vast region south of our bor- der. It also offers some hope. Dismantling the current set of disin- centives to development, and con- structing in their place a system that protects the freedom of the individ- ual (regardless of status or group association), will enable genuine democracy to emerge and flourish throughout Latin America. That, in turn, will release the region’s pent-up economic potential.  Alexis Ludwig, an FSO since 1994, is currently deputy economic-political section chief and labor officer in La Paz. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 81 B O O K S u