Latin America has three fantastic opportunities to excel — and it’s blowing all of them | Opinion

During an interview with former Inter-American Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno last week, he said something that left me thinking: “Latin America has long been the world champion of missed opportunities.”

It’s a variation of similar statements I’ve heard over the years — for instance: “Latin America is the continent of the future, and will always be” — but it could hardly be more timely nowadays.

I called Moreno, a former Colombian diplomat who headed the Washington-based regional financial institution from 2005 until 2020, to get insight into a book about Latin America’s future that he will be releasing next month.

Ironically, despite his statement’s pessimism, he is quite optimistic about the region. But he’s also a realist, and now that he’s no longer a diplomat bound to be politically correct, he can be more candid than during his tenure at the IADB.

In his forthcoming book, “¡Vamos!” — “Let’s Go!” — Moreno says that the current world situation offers Latin America a golden opportunity to grow. He’s is right on the mark, for several reasons.

First, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a world shortage of food and to higher world prices of commodities that are South America’s biggest export items.

In addition, the U.S. and European shift toward electric cars is creating a soaring demand for lithium, a key component of electric car batteries. Almost 60% of the world’s lithium deposits are concentrated in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.

President Biden signed an executive order last year to make 50% of all new vehicles electric by 2030; the 27-nation European Union approved a similar rule to ban gasoline-fueled cars by 2030.

Second, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chains from China to the United States, driving growing numbers of U.S. multinationals to set up factories in other parts of the world.

Mexico could be the world’s biggest beneficiary of this trend, because of its economic integration and proximity to the United States. Factories moving from China to Mexico could save a fortune in transportation costs and get their goods to the U.S. market much faster.

Third, as services replace many manufactured goods as the most profitable exports in the world economy, Latin America has a huge pool of young people who can take over a share of India’s call centers and other export service industries. The percentage of Latin American youths enrolled in universities has more than doubled since 1990.

“This amounts to an incredible advance, with a transformation potential that is bigger than in any other part of the world,” Moreno says. “And, in a hopeful sign for societies that are still stained by machismo, the number of women enrolled in Latin American universities exceeds that of males.”

But, as Moreno admits, the key question is whether Latin American countries will take advantage of these opportunities.

Right now, I think they are blowing it.

As we saw in the recent Summit of the Americas hosted by Biden in Los Angeles, the populist governments of Mexico, Argentina and other countries in the region squandered their best chance in years to propose new economic initiatives that could bolster their exports to the U.S. market.

Instead, they spent their time at the meeting on petty issues, complaining that the dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua hadn’t been invited to the summit.

And, in an ominous sign, the region’s populist-ruled countries are lowering academic standards and backsliding in education. Worse, a new World Bank study released on June 24 reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic caused Latin American students to lose half a school year, more than in most other parts of the world. As a result, 80% of Latin America’s sixth graders may not be able to understand and interpret a basic text, the report says.

And yet, if you listen to most Latin American leaders, neither the region’s huge opportunities nor its major challenges are part of their agenda. Until that changes, we may have to combine the previous half-joking statements about the region and say, “Latin America has long been the world champion of missed opportunities, and will always be.”

Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 7 pm E.T. on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera

This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 5:29 PM.