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# Posted 6:03 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

ALL FISKED OUT: Nicholas Krisof's column in today's Times contains almost as many misguided and disturbing statements as yesterday's profile of Chesa Boudin. Lucky for Nick, I'm all fisked out. But here are responses to a a few of the most serious factual and interpretive errors:

The title of Kristof's column is "The Next Africa?" While columnist have the right to be provocative, nowhere in the column does Kristof acknowledge that there is not a single military government in all of Central America. Poverty there is. But the people's commitment to democracy has saved them from the brutal fate of the Congo or Sierra Leone or even the lesser brutality of Zimbabwe.

"South America and Central America now risk becoming another Africa, in the sense of institutionalized Western neglect and indigenous despair, of tumbling living standards, of coups and civil war and failed states. If we allow this to happen, we Yanquis will pay the price — in terms of economics, drugs and immigration — for years to come."

Institutionalized neglect? Has Kristof heard of the OAS or the Interamerican Development Bank? And what about regional programs funded by the IMF and World Bank? And, of course, the National Endowment for Democracy. While there are ample grounds for criticizing these institutions' work, neglect is not one of their vices. In fact, the instiution that most neglects Latin America is Mr. Kristof's own: the media. Headlines are reserved for conflict and violence. Even before September 11th shifted the media's focus to the Middle East, Latin America did not get much coverage. Let's see how often Mr. Kristof writes about Latin America after returning from his current foray south of the border.

As for "coups and civil war and failed states", this is an irresponsible generalization based on the current situation in Colombia, Venezuela and (to a lesser degree) Ecuador. Still, there have been no successful coups in Central or South America for more than twenty years now. Apart from Colombia's civil war, the entire region is at peace. Again apart from Colombia, nothing in Latin America resembles a failed state. And even in Colombia, there have been free elections since the late 1950s. This is not failure in the African sense of the word.

"Almost everywhere, the 'Washington Consensus' free-market policies of the 1990's are regarded as failed and discredited, partly because we did not fight corruption as aggressively as we should have, and in countries as diverse as Brazil, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador, recent elections have gone to leftists or populists who tend to make Americans deeply nervous."

For more than two years now, Times correspondents and columnists have talked about the discrediting of the Washington Consensus. Apart from the fact that their accounts of the consensus are wildly inaccurate, they always seem to ignore the fact that no Latin American nations has initiated a return to the statist, closed market policies of the 1990s. Next, when Kristof says that "we did not fight corruption", who is we? While America should provide advice and funding to help fight corruption, the failure of Latin America's governments to fight corruption is their own. It is a matter of lacking political, not outside help. Finally, Kristof seems to buy into the myth of Latin America's populist backlash. But Brazil's "populist" president cuts deals with the IMF and talks about balancing the budget. Venezuela's populist president is on the brink of impeachment because of his policies' failure. Peru has a president with a degree in economics from Stanford, so Kristof is way off base there. Ecuador? Well, one out of four ain't bad.

Nick, go back to writing about China.

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