It is our duty to take our rightful place at the helm and facilitate that all passengers can travel in conditions of solidarity, equity and justice. Hostile economic order For two decades, the Third World has been repeatedly listening to only one simplistic discourse while one single policy has prevailed. Along this line the developed countries, particularly the United States of America, the big transnationals benefiting from such policies and the International Monetary Fund have designed in the last two decades the world economic order most hostile to our countries' progress and the least sustainable in terms of the preservation of society and the environment. Two decades of so-called neoliberal structural adjustment have left behind economic failure and social disaster. It is the duty of responsible politicians to face up to this predicament by taking the indispensable decisions conducive to the Third World rescue from a blind alley.
Economic failure is evident.
Under the neoliberal policies, the world economy experienced a global growth between 1975 and 1998 which hardly amounted to half of that attained between 1945 and 1975 with Keynesian policies and the states' active participation in the economy. In Latin America, where neoliberalism has been applied with absolute attachment to doctrine, economic growth in the neoliberal stage has not been higher than that attained under the previous state development policies. This is the highest per capita debt in the world. Also the income difference between the rich and the poor in the region is the greatest worldwide. There are more poor, unemployed and hungry people in Latin America now than at any other hard time in its history.