Latin America Is Lagging. Someone Tell Its Leaders.

As a longtime commentator on Latin America, I'm used to getting yelled at, but when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez recently labeled me an enemy of the revolution on national TV, it was more than my usual dose of venom. I never imagined that Chavez would mention my name six times in an angry speech, accusing me and other "big intellectuals" of undermining his leftist programs.

Nor did I imagine that I would be demonized by many seemingly calmer, less radical Latin American officials and their friends in the business world. But the publication of the Spanish-language edition of my new book about Latin America's malaise, "Saving the Americas," had turned me into a punching bag for people across the political spectrum.

My sin was becoming a party pooper -- arguing that Latin America is falling behind at a time when the commodity-rich region is going through its biggest boom in decades. Granted, I got far nicer reactions from Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, a Nobel laureate, and former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, but their praise was drowned out by those denouncing me as a spoiler.

So what caused the stir, which helped sell more than 200,000 copies of the book's Spanish edition? Basically, it was my observation that the region is suffering from peripheral blindness: It fails to see that it is falling behind the rest of the developing world.

To be sure, Latin American governments and international financial institutions have good grounds to celebrate these days. The region's economy has been putting in its best performance in 40 years, according to the United Nations. Some countries, such as Venezuela and Argentina, have been growing at rates around a whopping 9 percent. A record $65 billion per year has been flooding back home in family remittances from Latin American migrants in the United States and Europe, offering a new source of income to millions of the region's poor. And soaring world prices of oil, soybeans, copper and other commodities -- alongside China's emergence as a major buyer of the region's goods -- have resulted in a regional export bonanza.

Not surprisingly, Latin American leaders have been jubilant. Venezuela's Chávez crowed that his oil-rich country was growing not only economically but "socially, morally, even spiritually." Former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner assured his country that the whole world was marveling at Argentina's impressive economic recovery. Mexico's then-president, Vicente Fox, asserted that Mexico was growing "like a locomotive that after taking off, starts picking up speed."

The only trouble is that Latin America is growing economically almost exclusively because of external factors, especially a growing world economy and high commodity prices, rather than because it has its own house in order. And those outside boosts won't last forever.

What was my heresy? As Latin American leaders were strutting, I argued that their claims that the region was entering a new era of prosperity were fairy tales. (My book's Spanish title was "Cuentos Chinos," and in Portuguese, it was "Contos do Vigario," both of which translate roughly as "Tall Tales.")

And so they are. Latin America's economy has grown at a 5 percent rate for the past five years, but China's has been growing at 10 percent ratefor nearly three decades, India's at about 8 percent rates for a decade, and Eastern European economies have been expanding at near 6 percent annual rates. Even Africa has recently grown at 6 percent rates. In fact, measured against other parts of the developing world, Latin America's economy is growing at the slowest rate.

If you consider poverty reduction, the contrast is even starker. While Asia cut poverty from 50 percent of its population in 1970 to 19 percent nowadays, Latin America barely reduced poverty from 43 percent of its population to 36 percent over the same period, U.N. figures show.

So what, I asked, are Asians doing that Latin Americans aren't? For one, I argued, many Asian countries are guided by pragmatism and obsessed with the future, while many Latin American countries are guided by ideology and obsessed with the past.

Shortly after landing in Beijing, for instance, I learned that top government officials had recently welcomed the entire board of directors of McDonald's. A few weeks earlier, while traveling in South America, I had learned that the Chávez government had proudly announced a three-day suspension of all McDonald's restaurants in Venezuela to teach multinationals a lesson. Ironically, while communist-ruled China is going out of its way to woo foreign investors, several nominally capitalist Latin American countries seem to be trying to keep investors away.