Pascual Gerstenfeld

RED ALERT FOR LATIN AMERICA's DEVELOPMENT AND FOR THE AMERICAS AS A WORLD PLAYER - Extended Edition Pascual Gerstenfeld

Latin America and the Americas are on red alert facing this profound and accelerated change of time, which, like any tipping point, also offers a narrow space and little time to start once and for all the path of progress, in this growing world of economic-commercial blocs, which in turn lead to strong political and cultural implications. More than ever, in this context, results essential to aware and contribute to the profound change of vision and behavior that the Latin American region and the Americas' neighborhood need, providing new, deeper, and useful insights to overcome their erroneous socio-economic and political trajectory, and to pull-up the reciprocal prejudges and damages between them and particularly with the USA. Development is crucial and the neighborhood matters a lot! Because in the geopolitical sphere for the countries, analogous to what happens in the community sphere for the people, the well-being of each one, in the medium and long term, is inextricably linked to the well-being of the neighbors. So, the Americas must integrate and pursuit to "match up", if not unfortunately the alternative will be around the corner, and later or sooner, they will "equalize down". That is why the book examines and measures the roots of the main structural challenges for development, in areas such as the creation of human capabilities, the production and distribution of well-being, the generation of knowledge and opportunities, and the construction of democratic coexistence and social integration. For fulfilling these objectives, this multidimensional and comprehensive journey incorporates a new specially designed and constructed state-of-the-art development measure, the Global Prospective Development Measure - GPDM. At the same time the critical analysis is oriented to overthrown complacency and extreme ideological temptations of any sign, to promote the inescapable structural transformations needed, both in the socioeconomic and political dynamics, quantifying and illustrating in which changes should be primarily focused on in these times of inflection. Both complacency and extreme ideological temptations, during the historical trajectory, have predominantly emphasized that the problems and limitations of Latin-America's development, mainly originate "from outside", due to conditioning factors of the "developed center" in the international division of roles and their differential benefits. Contrary, this work is aimed at demonstrating with empirical evidence, that the main limitations are within the region itself, in its idiosyncrasy and the functioning of its society and elites, who excuse themselves with the easy way of the external guilt, instead of self-examine their own deficiencies and resistance to the necessary and indispensable change, which undoubtedly entails effort, persistence and probity. As the Irish writer Bernard Shaw said, "progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."This is the leitmotif of the book, to contribute to generate critical awareness for mind changing, to overcome the mediocrity of the custodians of the past, and to begin to build a future of development, with growing well-being, more shared, integrated, and sustainable, in freedom and democratic coexistence.