From Publishers Weekly
A Peruvian journalist and research fellow at Oakland, Calif.'s Independent Institute, Vargas Llosa proposes that the shortcomings of Latin America's recent experiments with neoliberalism-which have left the elite and poor further apart than ever-reflect a deep-rooted and unshakeable pattern of state intervention in the economy, privilege and laws that have plagued these countries since their early colonial period. Despite the apparent push toward democracy and free markets, he argues, the most recent era of reform failed to address the root of the problem and ended up reinforcing governments' suppression of economic liberty and individual responsibility. Vargas Llosa offers the massive potential of the region's bustling informal economies as a sign of how far out of step the law is with economic and political realities. Not surprisingly, he calls for the abolition of unwieldy business regulations that keep ordinary, enterprising folks out of the legitimate marketplace. A short section of almost blithely outlined solutions disappoints, coming as it does after so much engaging and well-reasoned analysis, particularly since many of his proposals (tax code rewrites, school vouchers) have faced stiff resistance even in the developed country he so often holds up as a model for the region: the United States. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
An "enthralling history of permanent revolution," Alvaro Vargas Llosa writes in the stirring final sentence of this provocative book, will turn "the wheel of the individual to its rightful place." This is not Trotsky's permanent revolution, but it is the clarion call of a liberal -- a real liberal who thinks the state should interfere little with the economy or individuals' private lives. Vargas Llosa, who is the son of Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, writes little about the United States, but he surely believes that self-styled "liberals" in U.S. politics have a fatal attraction for the state. Lest neoconservatives cheer, Vargas Llosa also presents a searing indictment of the history of U.S. policy toward Latin America, including certain Bush administration policies.This feisty book, which will provoke and annoy people across the political spectrum, is a great read. The author takes on the big state everywhere. He criticizes autocrats from the ideological left and right. He castigates today's democratic presidents of Argentina and Brazil, both vastly popular, just as he dissects the mistakes of their autocratic and democratic predecessors. Vargas Llosa, a prominent Latin American political analyst who was born in Peru, is at his best as a critic of big, concentrated power, be it private or public.Latin America, he argues, suffered through the centuries from five "principles of oppression": corporatism, state mercantilism, privilege, wealth transfer and political law. Together, these foster state intervention in the economy and society, and concentrate power, status and wealth. He traces these themes from pre-Columbian civilizations through Spanish and Portuguese colonization to the present. He examines the continuity of persistent cultural traits and values from the Iberian and indigenous past, and of significant institutional choices that shaped long-winding paths. For example, he highlights repeated decisions that have weakened property rights, discouraging saving and investment. He embraces often contradictory perspectives to highlight the multiple reasons for the persistence of an oppressive past.The five key concepts change their characteristics as Vargas Llosa marches through the centuries, however, and fade as he approaches the present. Moreover, he sometimes undermines his own argument. He admits that Latin America's economic growth rates over time seem unrelated to the extent of pro- or anti-market policies. He also praises top-down statist projects, such as the Meiji restoration in 19th-century Japan, when "the Japanese government sought to 'import' Western modes and techniques, was able to finance the effort out of real resources, and made meaningful progress." True, but that enshrines the state as the engine of technical and economic change and generator of well-being -- the opposite of this book's message.Vargas Llosa also misses the opportunity to use Chile's past quarter-century to educate his reader -- and proves far too kind to the overrated economic performance of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's junta. "Chile had begun its free-market reforms in the 1970s," he writes, "so its 1980s slowdown, including the 1982 financial crisis, in the midst of military dictatorship was of a different nature and found citizens in a different situation, marked by economic change." In fact, in 1980 constant prices, Chile's per capita gross domestic product grew at an annual average of just 1.2 percent between 1981 and 1990 -- better than the dismal South American annual average (-0.9 percent) but not exactly at the level of an "East Asian tiger." In the 1982 financial crisis, Chile was South America's worst performer. Indeed, the Pinochet government actually seized the country's banks -- a policy impulse for which Liberty for Latin America rightly excoriates Mexico in 1982 and Peru in 1987 but not Chile in 1982. In fact, he could have easily demonstrated that Chilean economic growth rates took off only after the Pinochet regime ended. After 1990, political and economic liberty reinforced each other. The long-lasting Pinochet dictatorship suppressed political freedom and needlessly delayed Chile's economic boom.Vargas Llosa's key insight is to emphasize the centuries-long persistence of disproportionately concentrated economic, political and social power and the sustained inequality that has prevented the continent's progress. He is at his most articulate when he castigates the consequences of the European conquest and slavery, the systematic deprivation of political and property rights and the state's support of concentrated private power. He is also brilliant when, writing about the recent past, he deplores the privatization of state enterprises -- a principle he celebrates -- as having merely changed "from monopoly to monopoly," that is, from public to private monopolies.In the end, Vargas Llosa concentrates on choices, but he sometimes thinks too big. Latin America long performed poorly because the means for concentrating public and private power in the hands of just a few oligarchs have never been dismantled. The prosaic explanation for specific periods of economic growth or contraction is good or bad macroeconomic policy choices, a point that Vargas Llosa chooses not to emphasize. That, and not the grander subject of Latin America's legacies of oppression, explains why economies grew (good policies) or stagnated for long periods (bad policies). What good or bad macroeconomic policies never successfully addressed was inequality. Latin America remains the Olympic champion of worldwide inequality.What, then, of the role of the United States? A chapter entitled "Friendly Fire from the United States" argues that "at no point in the last two centuries has the United States promoted the kinds of policies that could have helped Latin American nations develop into healthy trading partners, solid political interlocutors, and trustworthy neighbors." In particular, he criticizes the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement for excluding the free movement of peoples in North America. He also chastises the Bush administration's performance in the 2003 talks on a Central American free trade agreement, arguing that it showed a "United States [that] has chosen to help reinforce rather than undermine protectionist privilege" -- requiring Central American "compliance with a battery of U.S. regulations" and employing its overwhelming power to exclude "certain items from the accord." His story of U.S.-Latin American relations helps explain the persistent lack of freedom in Latin America.Vargas Llosa's book is superb at diagnosing Latin America's ills but less persuasive at explaining them. The book's last chapter, calling for "Liberty for Latin America," provides a powerful set of motivations for change, even if the prescriptions offered here require closer attention. Only wise policy choices will make Latin America's peoples successful as well as free. Reviewed by Jorge I. Dominguez Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
What stands in the way of Latin American prosperity? According to Peruvian-born journalist and political commentator Vargas Llosa, the answer is 500 years of oppression and stagnancy, most recently defined by the "oligarchic legacy of statism." The solution? Skirt the political economists' chicken-and-egg problem by reforming both economic institutions and their underlying culture, and remove the inertial legacy of state power perpetuated by what the author calls the "five principles of oppression": corporatism, state mercantilism, privileged elitism, rigid and unjust mechanisms of wealth transfer, and the political denigration of legal authority. Vargas Llosa's is essentially a free-market, libertarian argument pursuing independence through individualism, which would dovetail comfortably with much of the last decade's rhetoric of economic neoliberalism were it not so boldly, and justifiably, critical of botched recent attempts at privatization in Latin America that actually reinforced the privileged status quo. Such willingness to criticize the regional failures of the Right, the Left, and the U.S. is refreshing, as is the author's clear concern for the poor. A work of unabashed capitalism unashamed to speak truth to capitalists, this is an important work of political economy. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Liberty for Latin America is an analysis of how differing cultures and institutions enable or impede the emergence and flourishing of free, representative governments and broadly productive economies. It is an analysis of the causes and consequences of liberty and oppression in the history of mankind, focusing on and thus constituting the most profound, enlightening study available of Latin American history." --William Ratliff, research fellow and curator of the Americas Collection at the Hoover Institution

"There is much to admire in Alvaro Vargas Llosa's Liberty for Latin America, not least of which its sweep, ranging across centuries of economic history from Mexico to the Southern Cone. He is especially incisive on the free market reforms that became the rage during the '80s and '90s, with Washington's encouragement, but that have left intact the stagnation and crony capitalism they aimed to end. This is an intriguing manifesto, passionately argued." --Samuel Dillon, co-author of Opening Mexico

"You may not agree with everything Alvaro Vargas Llosa says in his Liberty for Latin America, but you should take very seriously his central argument: that lack of political and economic freedom is at the root of our region's underdevelopment. With this volume, Alvaro makes an important contribution to the present debate on the causes of Latin America's poor economic and social performance." --Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico; Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University

"Liberty for Latin America presents Alvaro Vargas Llosa's thoughtful analysis of what has impeded Latin America's progress and what needs to be done.  It is well worth reading." --Lawrence Harrison, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, author of The Pan-American Dream

"Liberty for Latin America is a gripping story of five hundred years of Latin American oppression. But it's not just another re-cycle of that well-worn story.  Far from it. Vargas Llosa marshals an impressive array of evidence to successfully make his incisive case: no rule of law, no liberty, no progress. This book is essential reading" --Steve H. Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics, Johns Hopkins University

"Why does 'everything' in Latin America usually fail? Vargas Llosa has a daring, but coherent, explanation: Neither the cultural features of Latin America nor its prevailing institutions lead to stability and a growing prosperity." --Carlos Alberto Montaner, The Miami Herald



Book Description
Latin America's Foremost Political Journalist Makes a Brilliant and Passionate Argument for Real Reform In the Economically Crippled Continent

In Liberty for Latin America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa offers an incisive diagnosis of Latin America's woes--and a prescription for finally getting the region on the road to both genuine prosperity and the protection of human rights.
When the economy in Argentina--at one time a model of free-market reform--collapsed in 2002, experts of all persuasions asked: What went wrong? Vargas Llosa shows that what went wrong in Argentina has in fact gone wrong all over the continent for over five hundred years. He explains how the republics of the nineteenth century and the revolutions of the twentieth-populist uprisings, Marxist coops, state takeovers, and First World-sponsored privatization-have all run up against the oligarchic legacy of statism. Illiberal elites backed by the United States and Europe have perpetuated what he calls the "five principles of oppression" in order to maintain their hold on power. The region has become "a laboratory for political and economic suicide," while comparable countries in Asia and Eastern Europe have prospered.
The only way to change things in Latin America, Vargas Llosa argues, is to remove the five principles of oppression, genuinely reforming institutions and the underlying culture for the benefit of the disempowered public. In Liberty for Latin America, he explains how, offering hope as well as insight for all those who care for the future of this troubled region.



About the Author
A native of Peru, ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA was trained at the London School of Economics and has worked as a journalist in Latin America, Europe, and the United States for fifteen years. He is a fellow of the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Liberty for Latin America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa offers an incisive diagnosis of Latin America's woes - and a prescription for finally getting the region on the road to genuine prosperity and the protection of human rights.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jorge I. Domínguez - The Washington Post

Vargas Llosa's book is superb at diagnosing Latin America's ills but less persuasive at explaining them. The book's last chapter, calling for Liberty for Latin America, provides a powerful set of motivations for change, even if the prescriptions offered here require closer attention. Only wise policy choices will make Latin America's peoples successful as well as free.

Library Journal

Permanent revolution, argues Vargas Llosa (Rumbo a la Libertad), is Latin America's only solution to 500 years of oppression. By defining oppression in terms of five principles-corporatism, state mercantilism, privilege, wealth transfer, and political law-Vargas Llosa's heavy treatise serves to indict the continent's economic and political institutions, as well as obvious targets like European and American colonizers. Quick to point out the gradual decline in U.S. investments in Latin America during the 20th century, Vargas Llosa correctly identifies the chaotic image and political instability of Latin America as background for U.S. foreign policy. Yet this son of noted Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa offers a clear path to reform, identifying four priorities: reform the political system, wipe out poverty, rid the justice system of corruption, and provide wider access to healthcare and education.Vargas Llosa's analysis is both passionate and thoughtful, but he does not offer the realistic solutions needed for lasting reform. Often difficult to read, this book is recommended for larger academic collections.-Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., AL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews