6.

Economic Issues

An economic issue plaguing most of Latin America is market reform. The cause of why the issue
is so dramatic is because during the 1980s debt crisis in Latin America, governments wanted to
decrease foreign dependency and make themselves more self sufficient. The change in the
economy created more of a need for labor and decreased the formality of the economy mainly in
the 1990s but market reform effects are still relevant to this day. This directly increased the gap
in economic classes and eliminated the middle class. The shift in classes increased poverty
rates. The government has taken action since, an example being conditional cash transfer
programs in which poor families are compensated if they provide their children an opportunity to
go to school among other ways to ensure the state of Latin America increases in the future.

Poverty hotspot in a favela in Brazil. Most Latin American countries are

growing
aside from very poor countries like
Venezuela.

Another issue in Latin America is their high homicide and violent crime rate. According
to political violence ataglance.org, a Latin American is murdered every 15 minutes. When the
United Nations conducted a study about global homicide they said areas with high amounts of
homicide are caused by a mix of economic inequality, low gun control, and high amounts of
gang violence, all of which are major issues in Latin America. Contrary to popular belief the
influence of drug cartel, while an issue is not as prominent of a factor. The effect of this high
crime rate is most obviously, the security threat to Latin American citizens in lower income
areas. A major effect is also how having such a high crime rate creates issues in association with
other countries. ( The US President Donald Trump is acclaimed with saying that he wants to
build a larger barrier between Mexican-American Border because he wants to keep out rapists
and drug dealers).
Latin American Countries are at risk for very high crime and murder rates.
(Red then orange areas are the highest at risk.)