Research Paper

  
The History of Latin America's Political Economy
 Rob McGregor
Where Spanish restrictions on trade had inhibited the growth of a diverse export sector, the opening of trade following independence allowed capital and labor to gravitate to the most productive economic areas, and those areas were in basic commodity production and export. For Latinos, the export of basic commodities was both a source of wealth and a source of foreign exchange with which to pay debts and to purchase imports. Emerging Latin states, hungry for revenue, saw exports as an obvious opportunity for economic growth and tariff revenue. Commodity exports are still the principal revenue-earners more than a century after Latin America became independent.    [view full item]
  
Reform Movements of the Nineteenth Century
 Rob McGregor
The liberal programs of mid-century reformers had the ironic consequence of opening the Indian village lands to appropriation or purchase by large landowners, who aggregated land and power in the countryside at the expense of both the Indian and the small would-be entrepreneur or farmer. It also provoked resistance from the Catholic clergy and the conservative right, including royalist army officers. This highlights the fact that reform created losers as well as winners, and that westernization was not universally welcomed.   [view full item]
  
The Irresponsibility Index
 Rob McGregor
The reason Congress hasn’t fixed the Social Security crisis is politics. The most likely solutions -- raising taxes, cutting benefits, establishing private accounts or some combination of the three. These solutions face opposition from one of the strongest, most politically-connected lobbies in existence: AARP. The 20-something workers who likely will pay the cost for Congressional inaction don’t have nearly the same clout. If you are in college today, you had better get informed and start voting. The Baby Boomers are going to stick you with a bill you cannot afford to pay! That's not my opinion; it's arithmetic.   [view full item]
  
Mexico in Transition: Forging a New Political Model
 Rob McGregor
The plantation or hacienda economy had a complimentary tradition of authority and patronage between wealthy landowners and their laborers. The links of authority and patronage would carry over into twentieth century politics as bureaucrats and business elites emerged to occupy the privileged place of the hacendado. The colonial dependency relationships did not pass away with the colonial regime, but were re-instituted between the revolutionary government and the official sectors of society.   [view full item]
  
Mexico in Transition - The Stolen Election of 1988
 Rob McGregor
Free democratic elections were among the rights the new Constitution granted to Mexican citizens, but as with the Constitution’s list of economic rights, what was guaranteed in theory was denied in practice. In practice elections were engineered in advance by the ruling Party so as to guarantee a sufficient number of PRI votes in a sufficient number of precincts to keep PRI candidates in office.   [view full item]
  
Cortés on Trial: Questions Regarding the Conquest
 Rob McGregor
I wrote this research essay in response to a request from a high school student for information on Hernando Cortés and the conquest of Mexico. It seems that her class was going to have a mock trial, and she was on the defense team for Cortés. How could a defense attorney justify the actions of the Spaniards during the conquest?   [view full item]
  
Fair Trade vs, Free Trade
 Rob McGregor
By rejecting some of the spurious arguments about globalization we can avoid wandering off into unfounded assertions about the causes of inequality and underdevelopment. My purpose is to dissociate the arguments that have real merit from the emotional and rhetorical arguments about "free trade" vs. "fair trade." I want to offer an explanation for why I feel some arguments regarding globalization deserve to be heard and discussed, and why others should simply be rejected as irrelevant or misguided.   [view full item]
  
Original Sources Re: The Conquest
 Rob McGregor
The following is a partial summary of the contents of three original sources: The Florentine Codex - Book 1; Cortéz: the Life of the Conqueror by his Secretary; and Five Letters to the Emperor, by Cortéz himself. I'm interested in what these narratives reveal about Aztec and Spanish perceptions of the world, and how those perceptions affected the outcome of the conquest.   [view full item]
  
Poverty in Latin America - Who's Fault Is It?
 Rob McGregor
With the current debate in the public forum (and in the streets) over free trade policy, and the rhetoric generated about whether free trade violates "human rights," or works to the benefit of multinationals, I thought it would be instructive to get to the issue that underlies these arguments.   [view full item]
  
Ghost in the Machine
 Grahame Russell
Every year, close to 20,000,000 people die of malnutrition and starvation and over 1.2 billion more survive underfed and malnourished. Meanwhile close to 500,000 US citizens spend $10 billion on liposuction procedures. So it goes.   [view full item]
  
How Much More Do We Need To Spend To Achieve An Illiterate Society?
 Dwight Williams
Education spending has been increasingly controlled for the entire nation by bureaucrats in distant Washington, and has seen one failed fad after another, including new math, multiculturalism, outcome based education, sex education, drug education, self-esteem programs, global studies, "bilingual" segregation programs, "mainstreaming" children with serious behavioral disorders, America 2000, Goals 2000, School to Work, and many others, all backed by the NEA. These failures have devoured trillions of dollars. The experts who have engineered thirty years of declining achievement are the worst source of possible solutions to our country’s educational malaise.   [view full item]
  
Juvenile Immigrants and the INS
 Peter Lippman
Markus had a watertight case for political asylum, but the INS authorities did not advise him of this. Nor did they tell him that, as a juvenile, he may be eligible for “Special Immigrant Juvenile Status” (SIJS) which can be available to abused or neglected immigrant children. Instead, they locked him up in Martin Hall, a juvenile detention center near Spokane in Eastern Washington, and waited until he turned eighteen, when he “aged out” -- could no longer apply for SIJS.   [view full item]
  
Collusion and Control: Press and the State in Latin America
 Julian Quibell
The relationship between the press and the state has often been one of mutual fear. That fear is reflected in the long track record of efforts by political elites to control the press. Historically the state has sought to limit the freedom of expression and its corollary freedom of the press as an extension of its attempt to retain hegemonic control of the public realm. Press suppression has been understood as a means by which the state attempts to retain power and shape popular political attitudes and opinions.   [view full item]
  
Frederick Bastiat on Government
 Gary Galles
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to express such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself. A medium is thought of; Government is applied to, and every class in its turn comes and says, "You, who can take justifiably and honestly, take from the public, and we will partake."   [view full item]
  
Democratizing the World Trade Organization
 Fiona McGillivray
This essay is about which countries determine the course of policy proposals in the WTO and to what extent the winners or losers from free trade are championed by national trade negotiators. The key question is, which U.S. special interests get represented at closed WTO negotiations: Is it multinational corporations or the NGOs? (Ed: This is a "must read" for anyone interested in the debate over trade with developing countries.)   [view full item]