Latin America

Lucía Galván Olvera A01375600Vania Wilde Jiménez A01374582Abraham Moran M. A01375312Luis Daniel Rivera A01374997

Karyme Novoa Barbosa A01375923 Luna A. Ortiz Magaña A01376089

¿What is Latin America?

According to the Oxford Dictionary:

“The parts of the American continent where Spanish or Portuguese is the main national language (i.e. Mexico and, in effect, the whole of Central and South America including many of the Caribbean islands).”

Is an ethno- geographical concept used to identify an area of the Americas, defined as the set of countries or areas where the Romance languages Spanish , Portuguese and French are commonly spoken or is the official language and were people has Hispanic descent and culture.

Countries that are part of Latin America

Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El salvador, Falkland Islands, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Just to know

Total population in Latin America and Caribbean was last measured at 588,019,503 people in 2013 (Trading Economics)

Importance of Latin America in the IR system.

Latin America has 3 main points, talking about his IR with the world.

1) It’s trading: Because of the great biodiversity that many of the Latin America`s states has, they are principal producers in many products that are produced just in that region.

2) Drugs production and exportation: In many of the nations that are part of Latin America ,such as Mexico or Colombia, are drugs producers, and they export them to other countries like USA.

3) It’s relations with U.S.: “The region is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States and a strong partner in the development of alternative fuels”.(Charlene Barshefsky. (2010). U.S-Latin America Relations . 2015, de Council Foreign Relations . Also Latin America is the principal source of U.S. immigrants.

Balance of power

According to the GDP (Gross Domestic Products) these are the most powerful countries in Latin America:

- Brazil: 2.246 Trillions of Dollars

- Mexico: 2,143,499 Millions of Dollars

- Argentina: 827,382 Millions of Dollars

These countries are ones of the most important countries not just because of their economy, but because the relations that they have with other countries around the world.

Principal Issues in latin america

. Drug trafficking

. A low economic development

. Human Trafficking

. Pollution

. Violence

. Migration

. Poverty

. Unemployment

Poverty and Inequality-Are the biggest challenges of the population. In 2012 CEPAL made an alarming announcement, that Latin America was one of the inequity and poorer regions, in first place Honduras (67.4%), continuing with Nicaragua(58.3%), in third place Guatemala(54.8%), and Mexico in the eighth position with (36.6%).

-The situation we have in 2002 was more people in poverty with 225 million of habitants, and the poverty in 2013 was of 124 million of habitants, we can see the rates of population decreased.

-In Mexico, we have problems of poverty because we don’t have social reforms that support the most vulnerable sectors of the population, and obviously the rates increase year by year.

Inflation

-We can define the inflation by the increase of the price in products of a country. The inflation can be

measured with the GDP, according with the World Bank, the largest deflator was in 2008 with a 7.9 and the lowest in 2009 with a 2.3.

-In 2012 the inflation that the countries in Latin America had: Venezuela got a 14.1, Nicaragua 8.8, Uruguay 8.8, and Mexico 3.6.

-Also in Latin America the inflation represents a big challenge, principally in emerging and developing

economies. The banks need to be independents in their totality in order to reduce the risks of inflation.

Unemployment

-In 2013, the World Bank said that had 200 million of people in the world was unemployed.

-This rates demonstrate that the youngest people are more vulnerable to be unemployed than the adults. CEPAL said that in 2012 decrease the rates 0.10%. But it was not generated by the generation of employment, it was by the slowdown in the labor supply.

-The four countries in Latin America with more unemployment: Colombia (10.6%), Costa Rica (8.3%), Venezuela (7.8%) y Argentina (7%).

-Day by day more people joined to the unemployment. And this is because of the economic slowdown and the internal problems of each state.

Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is a growing problem in Latin America. The people do different jobs when they're on sell, this include commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, labor trafficking within national borders and among countries in the region, and the trafficking of illegal immigrants in Mexico and Central America.

Migration

- This problem starts because the people search a progress and a better quality of life that their country can’t give them.

- The migrants are in danger because as they face many violent situations while trying to reach their destination.

- When the migrants get to their destination searching for a good life, they mostly suffer from racism and they are usually exploited at work.

Violence in Latin America

Latin America has not suffered major military conflicts during the 20th century, at least not on the scale of the ones that occurred in other continents, but our crime rates are among the highest in the world.

Our continent faces serious problems of crime organizations and we can´t live in peace as a region with those problems.

It is true that political violence has declined, many years ago no, it whipped our population; we have much less political violence that in other regions of the world, within the States and between the States.

DRUG TRAFFICKING AND ORGANIZED CRIME

- The producing areas are very insecure because of the war with the drugs trafficking.

- It's a hard situation to fight because no funds to combat this situation.

- It's so difficult this problem because not only need to finish the cartels or narco leader, also need to remove the centers where these substances are produced also their ensuring export.

- An important consequence is that drug trafficking is living expansionism thus giving an important opening to create new substances such as synthetic drugs.

- The orgnizated crimes stop the democracy.

- This search a peace between the states and the mafia by treatments

-This situation brings a lot of social problems like prostitution because the missing economics resources a lot of people choose to sell their body for get money to solved their needs.

- Because of the extreme poverty that are living some regions, the children exploitation where are unscrupulous people to choose giving work to make activities that are clandestinely, paying them less than the amount made work.

- Also there are a lot of social problems by the inequality.

Poverty

References

Operation World. (2015). Operation World. Retrieved from http://www.operationworld.org/latin-american-countriesOxford University press. (2015). Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved from

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/Latin-AmericaThe World Bank. (2015). The world Bank. Retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-and-lending-

groups#High_income Charlene Barshefsky. (2010). U.S-Latin America Relations . 2015, de Council Foreign Relations Sitio web:

http://www.cfr.org/mexico/us-latin-america-relations/p16279. (2001). America latina exportaciones de productos basicos durante los noventa . 2015, de comicion economica para America

latina y el Caribe Sitio web: http://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/4352-america-latina-las-exportaciones-de-productos-basicos-durante-los-anos-noventa

Mary Murray. (2014). Organized Crime, Gangs Make Latin America Most Violent Region. 13/09/15, de NBC News Sitio web: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/organized-crime-gangs-make-latin-america-most-violent-region-n83026

Desconocido. (2011). Narcotráfico. 11 de septiembre del 2015, de Igadi.org Sitio web:http://www.igadi.org/web/analiseopinion/latinoamerica-entre-el-narcotrafico-y-la-dominacion

Desconocido . (Desconocido ). Pobreza . 11 de septiembre del 2015, de Pobreza mundial.com Sitio web: http://www.pobrezamundial.com/latinoamerica

Fernando Iglesias. (2014). Crimes. 11 de septiembre del 2015, de Blogspot Sitio web:http://fernandoiglesias.blogspot.com/2014/09/corte-penal-latinoamericana-contra-el.html

Desconocido. (2015). America. 11 de septiembre del 2015, de MPI (Migration policy Institute) Sitio web: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/regions/south-america

Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México . (2015). Latin America conflicts . September 11 , 2015 , de ITAM Sitio web: http://revistafal.com/7

Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) (P.L. 106-386). The United Nations Convention Against Organized Crime and Its Protocols, available at

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CTOC/index.htmlAnonimo. (1013). Drug Trafficking in Latin America. 2015, de . Sitio web: www.drugpolicy.org/drug-trafficking-latin-america