LEADING Mexican political analyst, Dr Jorge Castaneda, delivered a pessimistic message to his Irish audience in Trinity College, Dublin, last week.
In a broad sweeping lecture about the economic and political realities of Latin America today, Dr Castaneda recounted the failure of free market economics, from Los Angeles to Patagonia, citing sharp increases in poverty and crime and a dramatic shift away from rural productive labour, leaving millions of unemployed city dwellers competing for low wage employment.
Dr Castaneda, a historian and economist, challenged the prevailing neo liberal wisdom, which, he said, promised prosperity, economic growth and employment once the government sold off inefficient state run industries and left the market to its own devices.
Taking Chile as an example, he pointed out that despite 17 years of authoritarian rule under Gen Pinochet, during which economists enjoyed ideal neo liberal "laboratory" conditions (revised labour code, no strikes, no delays in passing laws through parliament), the "economic miracle" did not materialise.
"The macro statistics look good," said Dr Castaneda, "but there are more poor and more unemployed."
Among the deluge of statistics highlighting the region's increased impoverishment stood one sobering fact. In Latin America just one in three people are engaged in productive labour, as the majority struggle to enter the informal sectors.
Since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), in 1994, the Mexican government cut off credits for small farmers and rewarded producers who turned to export crops, with disastrous consequences. In 1995 the Mexican government was forced to rent one million hectares of Texan land to insure that the nation's annual bean requirements were met.
Bean farmers in other Mexican states had opted to leave 600,000 hectares idle rather than face bankruptcy, while a drought, in Chihuaha severely reduced existing reserves.
In his recent books and newspaper columns, Dr Castaneda has begun to piece together the framework of a new "social pact" for the region, which would combine elements of the Asian Tiger economies with a real social welfare net, allowing a shock free economic process, with state intervention in strategic aspects of the economy.
"No one can provide jobs for the one million Mexicans who join the job market each year," he concluded, debunking the myth that a "better government" would automatically turn around Mexico's economy.
HE described the effects of Mexico's neo liberal model on the US, with a huge rise in immigration and drug trafficking. "Now that's the best business to get involved with," he said, with a wry smile.
In response to a question on the thorny issue of US Mexican relations during the US presidential election campaign, he was confident that the US government would not abandon, its neighbour, as the two economies are now inextricably linked.
He pointed to the Clinton administration's speedy $20 billion (£13 billion) rescue package organised after the Mexican peso lost 60 per cent of its value in Decemner 1994.
Dr Castaneda has published half a dozen books on US Mexican relations and the left in Latin America. A regular on the US lecture circuit, he received his BA degree from Princeton University and his PhD from the University of Paris. A senior associate at the Carnegie Institute of International Peace in Washington DC, Dr Castaneda writes a regular column for Newsweek International and other publications.
After the Zapatista indigenous uprising in January 1994, and subsequent political upheaval, Dr Castaneda established the San Angel Group, a diverse group of intellectuals with no direct ties to political parties.
A close friend of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the assassinated presidential candidate of the regime, Dr Castaneda was due to be in line for a cabinet post, a natural move in Mexico where intellectuals are by turn coerced and coopted by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Lacking a clear platform or political support base, the San Angel Group fizzled out but Dr Castaneda remains in search of political allies.
With an armed revolutionary movement in the south east and growing social chaos in the capital city, his voice and pen will be in demand for some time to come.