MUST READ-Georgetown’s Latin American Board Training the new face of the right http://www.counterpointmagazine.org/2011/03/25/jose-maria-aznars-latin-american-board/

There are three natural states in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a promotional video made in 2007 for Georgetown’s Global Competitiveness Leadership Program.The video explains that in this state there is “chaos” and “the ideologization of the region.” An image shows indigenous activists carrying a banner asking for “land and liberty.” The people are impoverished; there is unemployment, illiteracy, and infant mortality. Democracies are unstable. Citizens lack faith in the political system. Yet, there is still hope that the people will “wake up.” It’s only a matter of unleashing their ambition.

That’s where Georgetown comes in. With White-Gravenor Hall in the background, former Spanish President José María Aznar appears on screen to tell us there are new leaders who can solve these monumental problems—and the Latin American Board’s Global Competitiveness Leadership Program is here to train them.The video’s abridged narrative of Latin American history appears to reduce the region’s immense structural problems to a singular failure to embrace the free market. It is a vision for development and governance that has the institutional support of Georgetown University’s Latin American Board, an organization founded in 2006 and chaired by Aznar.