Latin America and the Caribbean face a unique set of economic, political, and social challenges. Chronic economic stagnation, caused by a stubborn lack of productivity growth, has left citizens in the region dissatisfied with the status quo. In the past few years, voters have turned out in high numbers to punish incumbent political leaders by shifting their support to non-traditional candidates, some with problematic rhetoric that gives concern to international onlookers regarding the strength and resilience of democratic institutions throughout Latin America. In this context, the Georgetown Americas Institute (GAI) is pleased to host author and journalist Michael Reid, visiting professor at the London School of Economics, for a discussion on the complex challenges and the paths to economic stability and democracy resilience in the region. The conversation will be moderated by GAI Founding Director Alejandro Werner.
Featuring
Michael Reid is an author, journalist, and speaker, specializing in Latin American, Iberian, and international affairs. In 2023 he was appointed as a visiting professor in practice at the School of Public Policy in the London School of Economics. From 1994 until 2023 he was a staff journalist for the Economist. From 2014 to 2022 he wrote the Economist’s “Bello” column on Latin America and was a senior editor and Spain correspondent; prior to that he was the magazine’s Americas editor, its correspondent in Brazil, consumer industries correspondent, and correspondent in Mexico and Central America. He spent most of the 1980s based in Lima covering the Andean region for the Guardian and the BBC. He recently published the book Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country (Yale University Press, 2023). His previous books include Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America (second edition, 2017) and Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power (2014), both published by Yale University Press.
Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).