Juanson World

The Washington Post has an interesting article on the DC area delegation that is currently in El Salvador. One of the purposes of the trip is to encourage investment from Salvadorans in the US back into El Salvador. The rationale behind this is to generate some productivity from all of the money pouring into the country ($2.5 billion last year) in the form of remittances. Instead of simply sending money to consume, the logic goes, capital can be used as a long term investment. Sounds great, right? Well, the article features a range of viewpoints on this idea:

"They want us to buy land and hotels on the beach," said Faustino Merino Jr., a Salvadoran immigrant who lives in Lorton, Va. "They want us to open better restaurants with the same food that we have here. Then they think that the tourists will come. But what does it serve us to open when they don't provide the security that we need?"

When Merino left El Salvador 24 years ago, a civil war was raging. During the 1980s, he could not safely travel back to El Salvador, and he says the government made no attempt to stay connected to its emigrants in the chaos. When the conflict ended in 1992, Merino and his family had established roots in Northern Virginia. Now he is an owner or investor in five Central American restaurants there.

Merino said he has been invited to several meetings with the Salvadoran consulate. Last year, a representative of El Salvador's economic ministry met with him and others to promote investment opportunities.

"Now they see that we can invest," Merino said. "They see that we are big people now, and we put the money in [the United States]. Now they are jealous. They see we are strong here. They want us to put our money [in El Salvador]. They have to make sure it is secure."

I find it unfortunate that immigrants that have succeeded in the US are reluctant to return to their native countries and contribute to development. In many ways, this particular stance from Salvadorans that left the counry in the 80s that is cautious to invest reminds me of a less rabid version of the anti-Castro South Floridians that left Cuba 45 years ago.

When I was in San Salvador in June, every Salvadoran I spoke to told me that they had family in the States. I sat next to a man in his 30s on a bus coming back from a lake outside the city, who started up a conversation in nearly flawless English. He had grown up in the marginal area surrounding the lake, but had been in the Bay Area for almost 10 years now. He started out as a janitor and now worked for the San Francisco city government in urban planning. He owned a home in Oakland and his children were doing well in school. He was back visiting his mother, and told me that he had been sending remittances the entire time.

This example illustrates one of the challenges facing Latin America as a whole: brain drain. It is the most ambitious and driven that end up in the North. Whether it is Colombians starting businesses in Costa Rica who left for security reasons or Bolivians heading to Spain who cannot survive on local wages, Latin America cannot progress without those abroad making an investment in their country's futures. A great example of a solution to this is an NGO in Argentina called HelpArgentina. The premise behind the organization is to mobilize Argentines abroad by channelling contributions to local organizations. The founder of the organization, Lloyd Nimetz, studied in Argentina following the economic crisis in late 2001, and witnessed the fleeing of Argentines to greener pastures. Last year HelpArgentina channelled over $200,000 to various local organizations and is growing by leaps and bounds.

It is disheartening when a candidate like Tuto Quiroga in Bolivia gets slammed by the left for being "white IBM executive from Texas" when he is forgoing the lucrative US private sector to try to make a contribution to Bolivia. Furthermore, it does not bode well for democracy when leaders like Lula and Chavez, sweeping to victory on populist campaigns aimed at the poor, find themselves unable to fulfill their promises as they sell out their base through corruption and other shenanigans. It is an Sisyphean battle that the United States cannot afford to continue ignoring.