I loved going down there. Loved the people, the food, the culture.
They have such a wealth of natural resources and a relatively low population, but they just can't ever seem to get it together. Under Menim, they apeeared to be tentatively headed in the right direction, but then it all fell apart when the peso crashed.
I know what you mean my friend... I was there for two months in the July and August of 2003, and the people there are so misguided. Along with the poverty that accompanied the peso's crash, came the socialists, the communists, the isolationists, and every other backward political group. To see that they are aligning themselves now with Castro and Chavez doesn't speak well to their future, nor does it point towards a vacation spot hospitable towards Americans. I guess I will have to try Montevideo, though Uruguay doesnt look to be much better these days. Cheers!
Actually, IMHO their problems started during Mr. Menem's 1992 re-election campaign, when he engaged in a drunken orgy of government spending to buy votes, undoing four years of tight fiscal discipline. That would've been forgivable if he had resumed discipline after re-election, but government spending never went back down. After several years investors decided (not without reason) that Argentina was reverting to form, and began to exit. You could see the writing on the wall by the late 1990s.
With the exception of Chile and maybe a handful of other countries, S. America is going Chavez. They'll regret it in ten years, but they feel right now like globalization burned them. I wonder what the chances are of the lefty Mexican part (PRD? I can't remember) winning their next election, and bringing Chavezonomics right to the Rio Grande.