The current state of affairs and challenges facing the region in the next five years.

• Author: San Juan, Ana Maria
• Position: Latin America

AS A CRISIS WITH A foreign epicenter and uncertain consequences continues to unfold, Latin America is starting to sink deeper into what looks like the collapse of the global financial and economic system, and it is using instruments that were made for navigating in other seas and other storms. The crisis continues its course, forcing changes in the conventional coordinates of international order and producing a barrage of negative externalities that everyone now agrees will have repercussions on the political order and stability of the region. Without succumbing to the "pessimism of intellect or the optimism of will," it behooves us to assess the region's achievements and vulnerabilities over the last decade, so that we can decide on the types of structural reforms (political, economic, and social) we will need to navigate successfully in a post-crisis future. We must get past our initial attitude of complacency about the origins of the crisis and who is responsible for it, in order to find institutional channels for the social transformations we need in these complex times--transformations that involve strengthening the hand of new social and political actors and maintaining the central objective of deepening democracy. In recent years, the region has strengthened democracy and made significant strides in the areas of political pluralism, institutional stability, economic growth, and poverty reduction.

These assets may quickly come under question, however. Generally speaking, it is worth remembering that this tri-fold crisis (financial, energy, and food) has revealed a deeper crisis that touches the very foundations of capitalism. The economic system we have had for the last fifty years needs to be reformed, and there is talk about profoundly changing the way in which the production of goods and services is organized. The grave ecological situation of our planet is important as the backdrop to this worldwide crisis, and in many ways new technologies in computer science, biotechnology, and nanotechnology will determine the nature of the transformations that will take place. A whole series of reforms are coming that will, of course, have a lot to do with the social, economic, and political fate of Latin American countries. In the short term, the world crisis will have significant effects on Latin American economies, which are generally very vulnerable from the point of view of their productive structure. Separate from their...