Miguel Centeno and Andrés Lajous have an excellent article over at The American Interest. They perceptively diagnose the pathologies and promise of Latin America. They correctly address the diversity of Latin America.

Latin America has lagged global growth rates, even during supposed boom times early in the 21st century before the Great Recession.

Latin America has been too dependent on the export of raw materials. The dependence on China as a consumer of raw materials and, in the case of Venezuela, oil exports, means the region does not have an engine for growth if China slows and oil prices fall.

Latin America has made progress in democratizing. Coups d’état have become a rarity. Parties out of power have respected the outcome of elections and there have been peaceful transfers of power from one to another. Although there has been a trend towards Presidents for Life in Venezuela and El Salvador.

Latin America still suffers from tremendous inequality. The economies are still two-speed with urban, trade-related regions with high income and significant rural poverty. Lack of secure property rights contributes to the poverty. (Unmentioned by the authors are the cultural factors that contribute to this pattern.)

Mexico is no longer a source of illegal immigration to the United States (although they fail to note that remittances are still a large source of income for Mexico).

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are all struggling with lawlessness and violence driven by the illegal drug trade (also a source of violence in Mexico). This has led to a militarization of law enforcement by those states to reclaim territorial sovereignty (a monopoly on the legitimate use on violence). This drives migrant flows to the United States via Mexico.

Where the authors fail is to advocate the usual liberal internationalist/neoconservative nostrums:

• Maintaining trade agreements with the region that result in both jobs in the U.S. and economic benefits throughout the region.
• Recognizing that immigration is not necessarily a burden on the United States but is often a dynamic source of growth.
• Realistically reappraising the “war on drugs” to take into account what prohibition has cost the region in human, political, and economic terms, and the alternative presented by the legalization of marijuana in several U.S. states.

An alternative that does not assume the United States would continue to be the safety value for people fleeing violence and acquiescence to unequal trade relationships is to:

• Reform immigration policy like other “normal” countries. Mass unskilled immigration is not a net positive in the short run, contrary to the authors’ contention. Larger amounts of legal immigration for desired skills should be combined with aggressive enforcement of illegal immigration with provision for refugees from Latin America is the most sustainable.
• Greater levels of the right kind of security assistance is needed in Latin America. That needs to be combined with judicial reform and development assistance to permit the state to exercise sovereignty.
• The most difficult challenge that the US has little affect except through using trade agreements as the carrot is a transition to Anglo-American legal norms. As the authors correctly note, private property protections are weak. Furthermore, neopatrimonialism is still a prominent feature of the political economy of Latin America. Until government approaches a Weberian rational-legal source of authority, Latin America will continue to lag the world in economic development.

The US needs to avoid stoking anti-Americanism in Latin America. The US needs to avoid creating a continent worth of failed states Central and South America, so a radical restriction on trade would be disastrous, but the status quo is also not working, nor is decriminalization of drugs a solution to the problem of violence. George Washington made a policy prescription in his Farewell Address:

Observe good faith and justice [toward] all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all….In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachments for other should be excluded.

This may have been appropriate before the United States became a continental power, but the Monroe Doctrine applies now. The principal goal for US foreign policy regarding Latin America is to foster stability and prevent rival powers from using Latin American nations as a base to threaten the United States. In the modern context, this means constructive engagement, but not necessarily pursuing cosmopolitan policy prescriptions.