Is that what is wrong with Latin America?
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121962333297467725.html
In today’s Wall Street Journal, one of the op-ed pieces opines that the principal reason why Latin America suffers from poverty is a general anti-business environment. I respectfully disagree. The principal reason for Latin American poverty is relationship. In my experience in Latin America, there are two problems with their relationships. First, people do not consider themselves to be equal to one another. This occurs on a macro-governmental level. Presidents and congressmen consider themselves to be of superior essence than the people over whom they rule. But it happens just as viciously (if not more so) in the micro setting: rich over poor; employers over employees; husbands over wives. One of the more gripping stories I heard about Latin American inequality I heard from a woman from El Salvador. She related how could not convince anyone to give her a job because she was poor. To our thinking, that is crazy. If any one of those people ever gave her a job, she would no longer be poor. But to them in that setting, it made perfect sense. A person of higher social standing (and thereby higher perceived self worth) rejected the idea of a woman escaping her destitute social standing (and thereby virtually no socially accepted worth).
The second problem is that those who hold power do so for the purpose of their own best interests and not the best interests over whom they exercise that power. Now, this is really just an extension of the first problem. We see this most obviously in the governmental context. Politicians do not hold the power for the benefit of the people but rather for themselves. From their perspective, these things only make sense. If they are worth more than the masses, then they are entitled to use that power for whatever they want. These are the sources of corruption and oppression. Consequently, they rob the public of their money and they rob people of their dignity. But in my experience, the far more brutal expression of this twisted value is played out on the micro level: rich brothers flaunting their wealth to their poor brothers; employers forcing poor women into sexually illicit relationships; and husbands lording every sense of power over their wives, including adultery and sexual and physical abuse.
Many people do not appreciate that the American vigilance against corruption and oppression really derives out of a firm belief in the shared equality of humanity. This belief, in turn, can only be traced back to a fundamental Judeo-Christian ethic of how it is that humanity came to exist in the first instance (i.e, God made man a special creation in His image). Our society does not suffer from these ills as much because it holds to this belief; however, reverse that belief here, and you will get the opposite result in society. Establish that belief in Latin America and you will see a different Latin American experience. But the one thing that does not change anything is if the United States just dumps more money in Latin America.