Читать книгу The New Latin America - Manuel Castells - Страница 17

China’s rise to a prominent position in the new world economy created an enormous market for the kinds of exports that still characterize most Latin American economies: agricultural products, raw materials, and energy. The more China imports from and invests in Latin America and the rest of the Global South, the more it spurs economic growth in the Global South, which becomes an expanding market in its own right. Latin America took advantage of the boom in commodity prices linked to the explosion of demand from China, India, and other large markets; it modernized its primary sector, using new technologies of information and genetically modified agriculture as well as new business strategies. A new model arose, one that we have called informational extractivism. Although information technologies did not completely transform the productive system, they did transform the production of soy, the production of meat, the creation of energy and gas, and the mining of precious metals (like lithium in Chile, Argentina, and most recently Bolivia), raising both quality and productivity in a virtuous circle of economic growth. Nevertheless, the success of neo-developmentalism followed from two premises that were soon shown to be fragile: first, that global demand for commodities would continue to increase; and, second, that the prices of these commodities would remain high. Reclaiming its redistributive role through new policies, the state could avoid opposition thanks to the fact that society remained active, was increasingly informed, and significantly increased its participation in consumption.