LATIN AMERICA CORNER
MUTUAL VALUE ADDITION
IN INDO-LATIN AMERICAN
ECONOMIC RELATIONS
BY R. VISWANATHAN*
T
he economic relations of India with Latin America
have evolved in three stages, as in many Bollywood
fi lm stories: started with mutual ignorance, ran into
occasional fl irtation and climaxed in romance.
In the fi fties, sixties and seventies, it was a period of
mutual ignorance and indiff erence. India was grappling with
its own survival as an independent country in the process of
consolidating itself as a democracy with diverse languages,
religions, ethnic groups and cultures. On the other side, Latin
America was mired in military dictatorships and economic
instability. The two sides did not feel the need to reach out
to each other.
The second stage of occasional fl irtation was in the eighties
and nineties when the two sides probed each other tentatively.
In the eighties, the Latin American region was coming out
of dictatorships and transitioning to democracies. But the
young democracies were forced into Washington Consensus
which lead to “the Lost Decade” when neoliberalistic policies
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 7 • Issue 4 • April-May 2019, Noida • 53