ENDOGENOUS DEVELOPMENT AND A SOUTH AMERICAN FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE

Résumé :

South America has experienced a number of integration processes and their outcome is ambiguous: they present gains and losses. I wrote this paper with no scientific pretension. It is rather an exploration of scenarios, a trip to possible futures. It summarizes what seem to be some of the most relevant lessons to learn from some practices of regional integration in Latin America and Europe. It takes into account the current financial earthquake that is shaking the US financial system, flashing seismic waves throughout the economy of world capital. The paper summarizes some of the main arguments related to the creation of a new financial architecture for the region. It shows that such a task cannot be fulfilled outside the context of a critique of the exogenous, technocratic development paradigm that dominates the region and most of the world. It asserts that a financial architecture always serves a certain development pattern and policy, therefore is not politically ‘neutral’. The main part of the paper is dedicated to outline the vision of an authentically democratic framework for cooperative integration of South America: an endogenous, democratic and sustainable development; and to raise questions related to the current debate about the construction of a South American financial architecture.