Land grabbing in Latin America: another natural resource curse?

Agostina Costantino

Abstract In recent years there has widespread in Latin America a phenomenon that, at first, had emerged in African countries. Faced with the explanations of multilateral agencies regarding that these investments are directed towards resource-rich countries, in this paper we argue that this explanation seems insufficient. Our hypothesis is that the rich endowment of natural resources in our region cannot explain why is rising the transfer of land to foreign investors, as a natural curse, by contrast the deepening of development models based almost exclusively on the exploitation of these resources seems to be the key, so that the role of states in this process would be essential. In fact, the emergence of many governments self-called progressive or leftish in the region has not reversed the structural dependency of the natural resources extractive development model, but in fact it has deepened it.

Key words Land grabbing; Latin America; accumulation pattern; natural resources; new extractivism

1) Introduction After the 2008 global crisis (which emerged in the financial sector but had structural causes, with clear effects on the food and energy sectors), growing concern arised about a phenomenon that had first manifested itself in many African countries: the "land grabbing". This phenomenon refers to the acquisition (purchase or lease) of large extensions of land by foreign investors (government or private). In Latin America the concern about it begins around 2010 with a regional report prepared by FAO. The process of land grabbing in Latin America has some features that differentiate it from most studied processes in other places, including African countries (S. Borras, Kay, & Gomez, 2012). Among them, a remarkable one is that flex crop production (crops that have multiple and flexible uses, like fuel and human or animal food) demanded by the world market causes land grab in African countries since the 2008 crisis, while in Latin America

began to be mass produced since the late nineties. The emergence of many self-called progressive or leftish governments in the region has not reversed the structural dependency of the natural resources extractive development model, but in fact it has deepened it. Although theyve introduced some variations (as the greater role of the state, for instance), these governments are leading to processes classified as "new extractivism" (Gudynas, 2009), "the commodities consensus" (Svampa, 2013), "postneoliberalism" (Sammartino, 2010), "rentier populism" (Arenas, 2010), etc. What these authors are pointing out is that this primary export-led development model is the funding basis for many of the social policies implemented in these countries, so far that, instead of questioning Latin American countries external integration as commoditys providers, South America's progressive governments have deepened these relationships with the justification that the extractivism is a necessary condition for development and for poverty reduction. Some authors, in a pretty simplistic way, classify countries between "landgrabbers countries, poor in natural resources" and "landgrabbed countries, rich in natural resources" (Deininger & Byerlee, 2011), stating that foreign land investment would only be guided to countries that are rich in natural resources (fertile land, water, etc..). What we discuss in this paper is whether this explanation is enough to understand why has land grabbing increasingly widespread in Latin America -what we shall call here the "direction" of land grabbing. Our hypothesis is that the rich endowment of natural resources in our region cannot explain why the transfer of land to foreign investors is rising, as it poses the problem as a natural curse, to which policy should only stare aside. On the contrary, the deepening of development models based almost exclusively on the exploitation of these resources seems to be the key to understand this process, so that the role played by the states is an essential one. This paper is structured as it follows: we present the main causes of the rise of land grabbing worldwide in section 2, while in the next section we present the main debates about the causes of the "direction" of land grabbing. In section 4, we make an exploratory exercise, trying to assess the relevance of the explanatory variables in the works discussed in the previous section. Finally, the essay finishes with some final comments and a whole consideration.

2) Land grabbing: drivers

Scholars usually group the explanatory drivers of land grabbing in two groups: the economic ones and those related to public policy. Among the first, it is often remarked the rise in food and raw material prices experienced since the late nineties, which makes investment in agriculture increasingly profitable. According to Cotula (2012), these investments include the entire agricultural value chain, from the direct control of the land to the provision of services or the production of fertilizers. Another explaining driver of the land grabbing that could be considered primarily economic is the phenomenon of financialization of agriculture, understood as the major attraction that started having land as an investment option not only for agribusiness companies but by financial operators interested in rising returns and reducing risks (Cotula, 2012; HLPE, 2011). The reasons for this financialization are, on the one hand, related to the increase in land value due to the increase in food prices mentioned above and, on the other hand, to the search for portfolios risk reduction after the 2008 crisis. The land is seen, in this sense, as a safe asset with higher expected returns.1 The GRAIN organization has released a list of land investments in pension funds from public and private high-income countries such as the United States, Denmark, New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany and the UK, showing the enormous dynamism of this activity (GRAIN, 2012). Among the second kind of drivers, related to the public policy factors, it is often to find mentioned the action of some governments, such as China and Saudi Arabia, in response to the problem of food security arising from the volatility in food prices. In this regard, the governments of some countries support land investments abroad (either directly from public finance or through private investments) to ensure the supply of soybean, palm, rice, wheat and sugar, among others (SM Borras, Hall, Scoones, White, & Wolford, 2011; Cotula, 2012; HLPE, 2011). In addition to food security, public policies to support investment in overseas land may also be motivated by considerations about business opportunities (such as "Going Global" strategy which has China since 1999 to create business opportunities outside the country) or geopolitics (for instance, chinese investment in Southeast Asia or Libyan investments in Sub-Saharan Africa) (Cotula, 2012). A final political strategy that has a great influence on the global land grab is the mandatory requirement set by the European Union to

Although the land has always been regarded as a safe asset within countries, the novelty is that now it has a global valorization.

replace 5% of the fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels by 2020 (BBC, 2012; Swinnen, Vranken, & Stanley, 2006). These are the main explanatory factors found in literature to explain why the problem of land grabbing arose. Strikingly, they all refer to the incentives of land grabbers (governments and companies) to make these investments at global level, but cannot distinguish why investors target into particular countries to acquire land, and not others (and why governments or individuals in recipient countries also adopt the counterpart strategy). The factors above listed refer to the underlying causes of land grabbing phenomenon itself, but do not explain why such land is grabbed in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Argentina and not in Canada, USA and South Africa. Despite the importance of this question, there is very little research about.

3) The reasons for the land grabbing "direction" As noted, the purpose of this work is not to investigate the causes that explain why did the phenomenon of land grabbing arose (which is already very well explained in the literature) or its impact on recipient countries, but the reasons that explain why investors choose certain countries (and not others) to acquire land. That is, we will try to explain the land grabbing "direction", where investments are directed to.

3.1) Natural resources: the sole explanatory factor? According to Deininger and Byerlee (2011), in their paper for the World Bank, countries that attract the interest of investors are those where there is abundant land. They say land grabbing is oriented to countries with adequate available land (as in many Latin American countries), prescribing that if in these cases property rights are secure, markets function well, and areas of high social or environmental value are effectively protected (possibly using market mechanisms such as payments for environmental services), the role of the public sector will be primarily regulatory. The use of "natural resource endowment" as the sole explanatory variable of some economic and political phenomena comes from a classic discussion on if these resources are a "curse" or a "blessing" for the country that owns them. The positions regarding the role of natural resources are diverse; we summarize those we consider to be most important.

First of all, the neoclassical theory of trade (the "Heckscher-Ohlin model") states that countries have comparative advantages in those goods that are intensive in the countrys relatively more abundant factors (Wash, 1977). Therefore, it will be efficient and beneficial to specialize in the production of these goods. With this same position, one can find some ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) studies which insist on the potential of the natural resource-based networks as platforms for development (Marin, German Navas, & Perez, 2009, Perez, 2010). These are the underlying theories on the explanations that pose land grabbing as positive for the country's development, explaining by the sole abundance of suitable land for the production of goods in which the country has comparative advantages (in this case, agricultural goods) (De Schutter, 2009; Deininger & Byerlee, 2011; Swinnen et al., 2006; Yew, 2003). Second, there is a huge literature production holding that the country possession of abundant natural resources is necessarily a curse to its growth (Gylfason, 2004; Sachs & Warner, 2001). They say that these countries tend to grow at lower rates than resource-poor countries, as the "natural capital" expels foreign capital, social capital, human capital, physical capital and financial capital. Even more, they encourage corruption and diminish political freedoms. This is the "neoclassical" version of the problem known as "Dutch disease", through which if a country experiences a price boom of some of its abundant resources, appreciation in the exchange rate caused by capital inflows will decrease the returns of other tradable sectors, whose production will no longer be viable. These theories are the underlying explanations of land grabbing as a negative feature for a countrys development, and they also explain this grabbing as a direct result of natural resource abundance (Sauer & Pereira Leite, 2011). Finally, the structural approach denies the previous two: natural resources, in themselves, are not a curse or a blessing for the country that has them (ECLAC, 2012, Palma, 2005; Puyana & Thorp, 1998; Sinnott & Nash, 2010), as it is shown by the examples of developed economies rich in natural resources such as Australia, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, etc. This means that natural resources do not necessarily represent a curse but can serve as a basis for structural change. This is, in fact, a matter of economic policy. But to change the production structure it is also required to challenge the regions inclusion in the

world. This would modify both the orientation of financial flows to the region, as the fate and direction of international trade (Boron, 2008; dos Santos, 1998). The latter position on the role of natural resources for the countrys development will be the basis for the hypothesis of this work: the land grabbing "curse" (or "blessing") is not a necessary consequence of being a land (natural resources) rich country; the role of the state and the power of economic forces (landlords, financial groups, etc.) in these countries is essential to understand this phenomenon. Indeed, it is necessary to consider the nature of the political economy or "the way in which rational actors motivated by self-interest, combine forces and use the existing formal and informal institutions, to influence and affect in their favor, the social outcomes"(Frieden, 1991, p. 15,16). The interactions between the orientation of the economy and the exercise of political power within the states are what give the green light to land grabbing. So, what other factors, besides the abundance of natural resources, could explain land grabbing in Latin America?

3.2) Other factors that could explain the land grabbing "direction" Although they are not so many, there are some studies that focus on why investors are directed to certain countries to acquire land. Lavers (2012) explains land grabbing in Ethiopia as a result of the specific role played by the government to achieve political and economic objectives. Visser and Spoor (2011) found that the factors that explain land investment in post-Soviet Eurasia countries (Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan) are low prices of land (10 to 15 times lower than in Argentina and Brazil), the existence of infrastructure and that northern lands climate conditions are expected to be agriculturally viable as a result of climate change. Similarly, Hall (2012) notes that many South African producers are buying up land in other African countries financed by foreign funds, and yet they do not go to any country. They go where there is cheap land, water, labor and favorable tax conditions, in order to export to markets that seem more lucrative (limited by the constraints of the funders). In this regard, many of these studies point out the importance of both domestic producers and the receptors states in the process of land grabbing. Cotula (2012) notes that the role of domestic producers, as land grabbers as well as intermediaries and strategic

partners for the international capital, is the continuation of a longer-term process in which national elites have played the role of land "concentrators". Regarding the role of state, Oxfam (2013) poses that land investors seem to choose countries with "poor governance" (understood as poor state capacity to govern and decide policies) in order to maximize profits and minimize paperwork and formalities. The study measures governance through four indicators: voice and accountability, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. The result was that 78% of the countries in which there were land deals between 2000 and 2011 showed scores below average in these four key indicators. In fact, in many cases, the amount of available land for investment did not appear to be a significant factor in investment decisions. According to the article, weak governance allows land grabbing because it helps investors to set aside rules and regulations that are costly and time-consuming. Criticizing such studies that claim political instability and corruption as the explaining factors of land grabbing, Borras et al. (2012) point out that studies about African countries have treated states as "victims" of the grabbing process conducted by powerful governments and foreign firms. Instead, the authors argue that states perform a contradictory task, driving capital accumulation while, at the same time, trying to maintain a minimum level of political legitimacy (for example, in the case of Argentina, this attempt to maintain legitimacy was through the enactment of the Land Act). This contradictory role allows to understand some reformist concessions when they occur. In any case, we believe that states weakness or corruption are not the causes that explain the direction of land grabbing, but are manifestations of a phenomenon that is earlier in logical terms. This is what Gell (1973) names as "antecedent variable", which refers to the existence of previous factors to both, dependent and independent variables; in this case the relation between the two first variables takes place only thanks to the priority of a third one. The next section presents the results of an exploratory exercise that will help us to outline an explanatory hypothesis of our problem.

4) Differences between land grabbed and land grabbers countries: an exploratory exercise

As we have mentioned in the introduction to the problem, land grabbing is a not very longstanding social phenomenon in the countries;2 therefore, most investigations are exploratory and referred mainly to case studies (as discussed in previous section). One problem with these approaches is that explanations of a phenomenon for a particular case may not be generalized for all other cases. That is why we decided to conduct an exploratory test assessing whether the variables mentioned by studies in paragraph 3 make a difference between land grabbed and land grabbing countries. If this were so, these variables could give us a first approximation to the hypotheses regarding the factors that explain the direction of land grabbing to Latin America. The explanatory dimensions used in many of these studies relate to: (i) the existence of natural resources in land grabbed countries (Deininger & Byerlee, 2011; Deininger, 1999; Hall, 2012), (ii) the existence of infrastructure in these countries (Visser & Spoor, 2011) and (iii) weak institutional and governance conditions (Oxfam, 2013). We add a fourth dimension refers to the countries pattern of growth (GDP, external integration, sectorial distribution, etc.), reflecting our hypothesis about the deepening of a development model based on the natural resources exploitation.3 The variables selected for each dimension shown in Table 1.4

The most similar antecedent, historically and geographically limited, would be the XVIII-XIX century enclave economies, where foreign powers controlled the entire capital and resources involved in operations in outlying regions (Cardoso & Faletto, 1986). However, this is a description of the context of colonial or newly independent economies: it would be an anachronism to compare without some cares. 3 Although the semantic differences involved, for the purposes of the present discussion, we will use interchangeably pattern of growth, development model and accumulation pattern. We offer a synthetic definition later. 4 We understand that variables included in the "governance" dimension have many problems since: (i) they are subjective variables relating to the perception of people towards corruption, transparency, etc. in country; and (ii) we consider political variables involved in land grabbing are directly linked to economic issues and therefore cannot be studied separately (well return to this in the formulation of the hypothesis). Moreover, the absence of such data for a large number of countries difficults the attempt to generalize differences.

Table 1. Dimensions and variables in land grabbing by state of art

Dimensions NATURAL RESOURSES

Variables Agricultural area (has.) Agricultural area per cpita Freshwater resources renewable internal (billion cubic meters) GDP (2000 US$ constant prices) GDP per cpita (2000 US$ constant prices) Manufacturing, value added (% GDP) Manufactured goods exports (% of merchandise exports) Net capital account (BoP, current U.S. $) Cost to export (U.S. $ per container)

ECONOMY

Quality of port infrastructure (1 = very poor to 7 = good development INFRAESTRUCTURE and efficient by international standards) Index ocean freight connectivity (maximum value in 2004 = 100) Rating of property rights and government (1 = low to 6 = high) Rating quality of public administration (1 = low to 6 = high) GOVERNABILITY Rating of policies and institutions for environmental sustainability (1 = low to 6 = high) Rating of transparency, accountability and corruption in the public sector (1 = low to 6 = high) Taking advantage of the online database on land grabbing "Land matrix", we built our own base including the variables mentioned in Table 1.5 In order to analyze the database, we have clustered countries into three groups: only land grabbed countries (refers to countries that are grabbed but not hoard land in other countries); only land grabbers countries (refers to countries that are hoarders but not grabbed by other countries) and countries we call "mixed" (refers to countries that, besides of being grabbed, are grabbing in other countries). The list of countries within the three groups is in Table 2, where we also include whether mixed countries are net grabbed or net grabbers (as if the difference between the land

"Land Matrix" is a database constructed by several organizations (such as International Land Coalition, Centre de Coopration Internationale pour le Dveloppement Recherche Agronomique and Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Internationale Zusammenarbeit, etc.) that includes information on land acquisitions for agricultural production, timber extraction, carbon trading, mineral extraction, conservation and tourism. Records are derived from a variety of sources, including information provided by the Land Matrix website, press releases, reports from international organizations and local NGOs and research projects in the field, web sites company and government records.

captured by other countries and the land captured by them in other countries is whether positive or negative, respectively).
Table 2. List of countries and their classification according to their status of grabbing Only grabbed countries Angola Benin Bolivia Cambodia Cameroon Chile Congo Costa Rica Democratic Republic of the Congo Ecuador Ethiopia Ghana Guatemala Lao People's Democratic Republic Liberia Madagascar Malawi Mexico Mozambique Pakistan Papua New Guinea Peru Philippines Rwanda Senegal Sierra Leone Solomon Islands Only grabber countries Austria Belgium Brunei Darussalam Cote d'Ivoire Canada Cyprus Denmark Djibouti Egypt Finland France Germany Iran (Islamic Republic of) Israel Italy Japan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Luxembourg Maldives Mauritius Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Qatar Mixed countries/net outcome Net Argentina grabbed Net Australia grabber Net Brazil grabbed Net Burkina Faso grabber Net China grabber Net Colombia grabbed Net India grabber Net Indonesia grabbed Net Kenya grabbed Net Malaysia grabber Net Nigeria grabbed Russian Net Federation grabbed Net South Africa grabber Net Turkey grabbed Net Uganda grabbed Net Viet Nam grabber

Somalia Sudan Suriname Swaziland Ukraine Zambia Zimbabwe

Republic of Korea Saudi Arabia Singapore Spain Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Thailand United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United States of America

To analyze which is the difference between different groups of countries we perform several hypothesis tests of mean differences for each of the selected variables (Table 1) comparing in pairs between the 3 groups. The result, as shown in Table 3, is that the only variable that shows a statistically meaningful difference between the 3 groups of countries is GDP per capita. That is, at least in general terms, the abundance of natural resources does not appear to be a significant difference between grabbed and grabbers countries, so as it happens with infrastructure or institutional issues. Therefore, these variables suggested by the World Bank and other case studies (Section 3) do not appear adequate to explain the direction of land grabbing. As we can see here, the relative wealth of the countries would be the exception.
Table 3. Significant variables in testing mean differences among the three groups of countries Mixed countries Mixed countries Only grabbed countries Only grabbed countries There is no differences Only grabber countries GDP per capita* GDP per cpita*

Notes: (*) The variable is significant at 10%. Source: Author's calculations based on World Bank (2013) and Land Portal (2012).

Further analysis of this variable is needed. The cross table below shows the land grabbing classification of countries and the classification of countries according to income level (World Bank), that is "low-income" countries (less than U$S 975 per capita); "lower

middle income" countries (between U$S 976 and U$S 3,855 per capita); "upper middle income" countries (between U$S 3,856 and U$S 11,905 per capita) and "high income" countries (more than U$S 11,906 per capita).
Table 4. Cross table between land grabbing classification and income level of the countries Lower Low-income middle income Only grabbed Only grabber Mixed 65,6 0,0 40,0 25,0 6,3 26,7 Upper middle income 9,4 15,6 26,7 High income 0,0 78,1 6,7 Total (%) 100 100 100

Source: Author's calculations based on World Bank (2013) and Land Portal (2012).

As it can be seen in the table, the difference between groups of countries according to income level is in fact significant: from the total of countries that are only grabbed, 90.5% are low-income and lower middle income countries; on the contrary, 93.7 % of the only grabbers countries are upper-middle and high income countries. Meanwhile, mixed countries are a bit dispersed according to income level, but still 66.7% of them are low-income and lower middle income countries. This coincides with the finding shown in Table 3 for which there is no significant differences between countries that are only grabbed and mixed (not just on GDP but also from any other variable). Finally, as we noted too much dispersion within the groups in regard to the agricultural area (the standard deviation of this variable within each group was much larger than the average), we decided to perform a new test but this time stratifying the groups of countries according to this variable into 4 groups: countries with very low agricultural area (less than 1 million hectares), countries with low agricultural area (between 1 million and 10 million hectares); countries with middle agricultural area (between 10 million and 100 million hectares), countries with high agricultural land (100 million hectares). The first important result obtained from this stratification is shown in Table 5. In the comparisons made in the first two layers (very low and low agricultural area) shows that there are more significant variables, besides GDP per capita, that account for the differences between countries: variables related to countries natural resource endowments (agricultural land and water), economic structure (manufactured exports) and the countries infrastructure (connectivity index or sea port infrastructure quality). This means that the World Bank's

claim that land grabbing occurs in those countries with abundant natural resources seems to be right only for these strata. But lets have a look at what happened in the comparison of the countries belonging to the higher strata of agricultural area.
Table 5. Significant variables in comparison to the strata of countries with very low (less than 1 million has.) and low agricultural area (between 1 and 10 million ha.) Mixed Only grabbed Agricultural area (has.)** GDP per cpita*** Index ocean freight connectivity *** Superficie agrcola (has.)** Only grabbed PIB per cpita*** ndice de conectividad de carga martima*** Only grabber Agricultural area (has.)*** Freshwater resources*** GDP per cpita** GDP per cpita*** Manufactured goods exports*

Mixed

Quality of port infrastructure **

Notes: (*) Variable significant at 10%, (**) Variable significant at 5%, (***) significant at 1% Variable Source: Author's calculations based on World Bank Land Matrix.

Table 6 shows the significant variables in the comparison between groups of countries for major agricultural area strata (high and very high). Notice that in this case the results coincide with the first comparison made (the entire unstratified database): the only variable that makes a significant difference between countries is GDP per capita, and in this case also the total GDP.
Table 6. Significant variables in comparison to the countries within middle (between 10 and 100 million ha.) and high (more than 100 million ha.) agricultural area strata Notes: (*) Variable significant at 10%, (**) Variable significant at 5%, (***) significant at 1% Variable Source: Author's calculations based on World Bank Land Matrix.

Summarizing, when comparing countries with lower agricultural area we found that there are many differences between countries, not only in terms of GDP per capita, but also in terms of natural resource endowment and infrastructure. Now, with increasing agricultural area these differences are blurred, with GDP per capita as the only difference between grabbed and grabbers countries. In short, it seems that the explanations provided by the

World Bank as generals are only valid for the case of countries with less agricultural area; in other countries the existence of agricultural land seems insufficient to explain the land grabbing. In fact, most of the case studies are African countries that have, on average, a lower agricultural land than Latin American countries. That is, the explanation offered by the World Bank seems to have had a serious error of sampling bias. The finding of the income level as the fundamental difference between grabbed and grabbers countries can give us some light in explaining the direction of land grabbing to Latin America. While as an explanatory variable is still very general, it may be pointing the way to give the explanation: both the amount and the form (structure) of the GDP of the countries are part of the development model or pattern of accumulation conducted by these. A pattern of accumulation refers to a specific operating mode of capitalist accumulation acquired over a period of time and specific place (Osorio, 2008; Valenzuela Feijoo, 1990). This is the "footprint" that capital leaves while it searches its own accumulation: in what sectors it gets done, how intense, how to distribute its results, how it fits into the global trade and finance, etc. Changes the accumulation's pattern may be correlated to changes in the social structure and the economic, political and ideological relationships between different social subjects. "In this regard, the policy variable identification is critical to properly understand the dynamics of a given pattern of accumulation." (Valenzuela Feijoo, 1990, p. 64). In this sense, the pattern of accumulation is the visible result of the interaction between the intentions of the capitalists and the constraints imposed by their own competence and their dispute with the popular sectors (Briones, 1988). In this sense, according to some scholars (Gudynas, 2009; Osorio, 2004; Svampa, 2013), the XXI century marked the deepening of a pattern of accumulation started decades ago in Latin America, adopting new features, such as the economies reprimarization and the heavy weight of activities that generate little value in the economic structures, and a greater role of the state in extractive activities surpluses uptake (a condition of possibility for the coexistence of this pattern of accumulation with progressive governments). ECLAC talks about a perverse path dependence, where the increase in international prices tied to a primarized production structure, exacerbating the latter to encourage investment in the same sectors (ECLAC, 2012). Even more, it keeps other typical features of the previous stage, such as permissive legislation, the "legal certainty" regarding the management and ownership of

natural resources, and the acceptance of the diverse governments (progressive and nonprogressive) of our role in the world as suppliers of raw materials, dependent on what the core countries dictate.6

5) Concluding Remarks The primary objective of this paper was to question the "curse" that Latin American countries are destined to have, because of its relatively abundant natural resource endowment. In particular, we decided to focus on the issue of land grabbing by foreigners that began to be a problem since the mid-2000s in our region, but was already widespread in Africa. Is it true the multilateral agencies claim about that we must resign ourselves to being suppliers of raw materials for industrial countries? In this sense, should we inevitably expect that investors of these countries take ownership of our natural resources just because of the promise of development and an accumulation momentum? As we saw, the association "relative abundance of natural resources land grabbed country" does not seem to have empirical support. The land grabbing would not be heading to resource-rich countries, but to countries where governments encourage an extractivist development model that requires large foreign capital to sustain accumulation. It would be rather an uncritically reaffirmation by the governments of our role in the world, a return to late nineteenth century export model, this time with a discursive turn (and only in some areas, material) to the left of the political spectrum.

Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1986). Dependencia y desarrollo en Amrica Latina (20th ed., p. 213). Mxico: Siglo XXI.

This generic accumulation pattern for Latin America supports inside variations: in very general terms, countries in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico seem to have specialized in manufactured exports based on the use of cheap labor (skilled or not), while South American countries seem to emphasize the export of raw materials based on the exploitation of natural resources (Katz, 2000). Of course, we insist, it is a general approach to the problem.