Latin America is portrayed as a region that is struggling to grow. You might have learned about their struggles in the past about their negative growth and increased poverty throughout the region. This allowed International Monetary Fund (IMF) to impose very harsh rules on the region’s economy. What this allowed was for foreign agencies and governments, such as the United States and the European Union, to take control of the most successful businesses and reap their benefits. What this did was make the poverty levels sky rocket. When the economic crisis hit the United States and most of the world, Latin America was hardly affected. Latin America has been growing at a steady rate since 2003. They have managed to have booming exports, rising imports, and large scale poverty reduction while the rest of the world is some sort of recession. The largest thing that Latin America is trying to change is the number of people who are in poverty. Brazil has managed to reduce the number of poor people by 30 million. Venezuela and Argentina have increased their minimum wage, pensions, and increased welfare payments for the ones who need it the most. Since Latin America has been doing so well over the past years compared to the rest of the world people are starting to invest their businesses to the region. According to Alfredo Coutino “Latin American countries have learned from their past mistakes and have corrected the imbalance while bringing inflation under control.” They are not completely unaffected by the bad economies in Europe and the United States, but the new policies that they put in affect make outside impacts less affective.

One of the countries in Latin America that is growing is Colombia. After decades of being known as one of the worst countries to live in has become one of the hottest investment destinations in Latin America. There are so many foreign nationals coming to the country the country is requiring students to study Mandarin and English. It was reported that in the second quarter of 2011 the Colombian economy expanded by 5.2% y/y. Now that Colombia has become a safe place to live, households hare starting to spend their money they have saved for years. Private spending has gone up 80% just in the second quarter of 2011. This is also helping the country by being able to develop their larger cities. The construction in major cities in Colombia has expanded by 8.8% in the second quarter alone. A growing financial sector is also helping the private spending of families. There is some concern that the banking system is being affected by the indirect exposure to the shadow banking system. Another big reason why Colombia is not affect by the economy of other countries is because of their mining. Colombia has a lot of mineral deposits, from precious metals to oil fields. The reason these are being found and used now is because they are mostly located in remote regions of the jungle. During the civil war it wasn’t safe for anyone to go into these remote areas. Billions of dollars are being poured into Colombia for these resources.

For being in such poverty for the longest time, when the recession hit the rest of the world, it was time for Latin America to capitalize. It is about time that they use their own resources to help improve their own countries. For the longest time all their resources were being taken away from other foreign countries. They are now able to get out of the hands of other countries and the IMF. There are only good things that can come out of the wellbeing of Latin America.