{"content":[{"text":"financing options for governments until the other major change occurred: the sudden emergence \n of China and Venezuela as influential actors on the world stage. The former’s thirst for natural \n resources has been matched by the desire of governments across the South to escape the IMF’s \n crippling grip. As China provides markets and loans without economic or political conditions, \n opportunities for, and dependencies on, the United States and its corporations have \n decreased. Cries from the U.S. about China’s perpetuation of undemocratic regimes in, for \n example, Africa ring hollow when the U.S. imposed on the continent one economic plan after \n another that has denied Africans the opportunity to pursue their own development.","bbox":{"left":0.117686,"top":0.088616,"width":0.759733,"height":0.142182}},{"text":"But the most remarkable turnaround has taken place here in South America, where, on top of the \n political impact of organized movements and the considerable influence of China (which now \n purchases, for example, about eight percent of Argentina’s output), oil-rich Venezuela has \n played a transformative role. Thanks to Venezuela’s purchase of its bonds, Argentina has been \n able to eliminate its obligations to, and dependence on, the IMF, and the Chavez government has \n moved to similarly assist other countries in the region and to create a permanent financing \n alternative in the form of a Bank of the South. In so doing, and by financing key national \n projects and companies, it is enabling countries to forge their own development paths, all of \n which, like Venezuela’s, are grounded in a market economy. They differ in the extent to which \n key sectors are being brought back under state control, in the degree to which other sectors are \n being again regulated, and in the nature of the new rules that ensure that the state shares fairly in \n the profits of foreign investors. What virtually all the countries of the region share, indeed what \n defines the region today, is a rejection of the so-called “Washington Consensus” under whose \n cloak of free-market ideology the people of Latin America lost control of a major part of their \n nations’ assets, or patrimony, to foreign special interests.","bbox":{"left":0.117686,"top":0.245737,"width":0.759961,"height":0.26406300000000005}},{"text":"The ascendancy of the Mercosur","bbox":{"left":0.117686,"top":0.525179,"width":0.272059,"height":0.02098500000000003}},{"text":"It is upon that common base that Venezuela is helping to expand and strengthen the Mercosur, to \n instill in it a greater emphasis on social equity, and to enable it to assert its independence \n effectively vis-à-vis the United States and in its relations with the rest of the world. Having \n recently joined Brazil and Argentina as the Mercosur’s most powerful members, Venezuela has \n committed to financing mega-energy and other infrastructure projects to help integrate the \n continent. For these efforts to be successful, however, the big three must find a way to \n accommodate the concerns of the smaller members, Uruguay and Paraguay, as well as those of \n Bolivia, likely the first of the handful of Andean associate members to join, perhaps by the end \n of this year. These concerns relate to the disadvantages experienced by smaller economies \n playing by the same rules as their larger partners.","bbox":{"left":0.117686,"top":0.559891,"width":0.760588,"height":0.177068}},{"text":"In the case of Uruguay, disagreements within the Mercosur have been exacerbated by divisions \n within the Uruguayan government and by bilateral conflicts between Uruguay and \n Argentina. The latter disputes include Argentine opposition, for environmental reasons, to a \n major, prospective Finnish paper-mill investment on the river that divides the two countries (a \n dispute that Spain will try to mediate later this month) and Argentine charges that Uruguay, a \n growing financial center, is not cooperating fully in the fight against money laundering and the \n financing of terrorism. Though led in part by former revolutionary leaders, Uruguay’s governing","bbox":{"left":0.117686,"top":0.751748,"width":0.7628860000000001,"height":0.12478200000000006}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}