by BEN NORTON
Ecuadorian economist and former presidential candidate Andrés Arauz explains Latin America’s attempt to create a new currency and regional financial architecture, to challenge the “hegemonic, neo-colonial” US dollar-dominated system.
Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton spoke with Ecuadorian economist Andrés Arauz, a former presidential candidate who came close to winning the 2021 elections.
Arauz discussed Latin America’s attempt to create a new currency and regional financial architecture, to challenge what he described as the “hegemonic, neo-colonial” US dollar-dominated system.
“We need the type of bank that can really serve the Global South”, he urged, calling for a “clearing and settlement bank that can allow for these transactions to take place, and that is not afraid of sanctions from the United States”.
“We’ve seen tectonic shifts in the functioning of the international monetary system”, Arauz said, agreeing that the world is now seeing a new kind of Bretton Woods III emerge.
“There are many different initiatives, but this has to find a reasonable path forward, which goes along with regional integration mechanisms. So you have a sort of Eurasian hub, a pan-African hub, a Latin American hub, and then you have connections among those regions”.
“The society of the 21st century has to be a society of blocs, of large geopolitical blocs that can effectively allow for a sort of planetary governance, in more balanced terms, but also have common positions, but then within those blocs you can have quite a bit of diversity. So I think that’s how it will end up working also in the monetary sphere”.
“This is a historic moment for humanity”, he argued. “We have to show that there is an alternative, and we are in the conditions to prove that”.
But Arauz warned that Latin American unity must come quickly: “We cannot be facing this geopolitical moment, basically a world war, as 33 independent, small republics; this has to be faced as a Latin American bloc. And the political conditions are there. I just hope that we can get the structures, the instruments, in place for the regional bloc to actually assert itself”.
Geopolitical Economy for more