While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries - seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Brazil has a lot of issues that are similar to a lot of countries in Latin America, but the dominant issue Brazil is dealing with is poverty and political corruption.
Brazil is a country that has rich people, as you have in New York City, as you have in Berlin or in London. But we also have poor people like in Bangladesh or in African suburbs.
I have written about Chile extensively, and therefore I have read many books on the subject, mostly for research.
The poorest country in South America, Bolivia, had been devastated by neoliberal economic policies.
Only two countries in this hemisphere are not democratic, but many countries in both Central and South America, and in the Caribbean, are really fragile democracies.
What most surprises me about Brazil is the extent of the difficulties that we create for ourselves. We create a lot of legislation to control the Brazilian state itself, that this ends up meaning that things don't go with the speed any head of government would like.
Brazil is where I belong, the place that feels like home. They love their family, their country and God, and are not afraid to let anybody know it.
Also, there are now new laws in Brazil which create incentives for Argentine and Latin American films to be premiered and distributed in Brazil and vice versa.
The peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have common interest and are in the position to support each other in their anti-imperialist and anti-U.S. struggle. As long as Africa and Latin America are not free.
Any North American state is more important than Uruguay, in dimensions, in its economic force.