Archived Articles

Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

Global Real Estate Project
News Index

Directories
  Int'l Realty
  US Realty

• Latin America 2003
  
• Latin America 2003, 2
  
• Latin America 2003, 3
  
• Latin America 2005
  
• Latin America 2007
  

So let's look at the political picture of Latin America, using some of most unbiased and objective resources known to exist, which can help us post the different countries in the order of their achievements, beginning with the champions of human, social and political rights and ending with the F-marks. We'll use two worldwide known indexes. One of them is the Freedom House Annual assessment of state of freedom, putting every country in 3 groups - Free, Partly Free and Not Free. The index has been regularly published since 1972. The most recent data available is from 2000. The second quantitative index is Transparency International annual assessment of the level of corruption in different countries. Each country according to this organization has been attributed a point from 0 to 10, with the highest mark reflecting the best achievements. The recent data is from 2003. So where are our Latin America countries according to these two indexes? For reference we may use United States and Canada, countries that are declared "Free" by Freedom House and with higher level of transparency (7.5 and 8.4 for each of them).

Most countries in the region are declared to be "Free" or "Partly Free" by Freedom House. In the first group are put countries like Argentina, Panama and Costa Rica, in the second are Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, etc. Only one country is put into the group of "Not Free" and that's Cuba. Haiti is on the brink and with a little help may be a companion to Fidel Castro. Of all countries and dependent territories south of Rio Grande 21 are declared to be "Free", 11 are "Partly Free" and as we mentioned so far only Cuba has F-mark.

The situation looks much more interesting if we put on the balance the issue of transparency. Only two countries - Chili and Uruguay, are declared sufficiently "clean" from corruption (7.4 points for Chili, just behind the United States, and 5.5 for Uruguay). There are no other countries scoring more than 5.0. 11 countries score between 3.0 and 5.0 and 7 countries are put in the black list, because they score less than 3.0. Surprisingly enough, Cuba scores pretty well on this index - 4.6. I doubt how they were able to score the corruption in a country where there isn't free press to report cases of corruption? But suppose they are right and that indeed Castro has exceeded almost all Latin America countries in the fight against corruption.

So, if we have these two indexes, where is best for us to move?

Chili and Uruguay offer the best opportunities if we're freedom lovers. They are "free" and "clean" so any American or Canadian will feel there like home. If we love the freedom as from time to time free and fair elections but don't mind to see local and other officials regularly taking bribes, then you have large option between the following countries: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago. For the people with more adventurous mood, we can offer somehow less "free" countries with no lesser level of corruption such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. At the end of this list comes Haiti, which as we noted, is near the point of no return. Cuba is by all means a special case, but sooner or later it will have to join one of the three above-mentioned groups. We can only hope this will be the first one.

Latin America:
Latin America - Economic picture
Latin/Central America: Immigration Picture

--------------------

See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of South America and Central America.