Universidad Popular (UNIPOP)

The haunting specter of persistent poverty across Latin America and the Caribbean has been a matter of profound concern to economists, sociologists, development planners, social and political activists and human rights advocates throughout the region. 

Successive top-down development strategies and programs promoted by international agencies have failed to produce the highly touted results they had anticipated.  International development aid programs to the region by rich countries of the North and stringent structural adjustment  demands on governments by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have left many countries reeling in abysmal debt crises, unemployment, crippling devaluations, economic stagnation and concomitant social problems.

Dr William Easterly, former World Bank Research Economist, observes, in his 2006 bestseller, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, (Penguin) that international aid strategies tacitly assume that Western donors know what is best for everyone, but lack mechanisms for accountability without which broken economic systems won’t be strengthened.  He further argues that true victories against poverty are most often achieved through indigenous, “homegrown”, ground-level planning.

·         The Caribbean, Latin America and North  America contain discriminated groups that

      collectively constitute an invisible majority and corresponding market that must be  

      recognized.

• Groups in the invisible majority can be organized and connected in business partnerships to create products and services for trade among themselves and with others.
• These groups can find among themselves the resources and skills to create new wealth and use the new wealth to provide jobs and new businesses thereby   eradicating poverty.

•         A population of 20 million persons of Indigenous Descent and other ethnic minorities in the U.S. and Canada

Members of the invisible majority of discriminated groups of the Western Hemisphere commit themselves to determining their own destinies through community based action plans that utilize partnerships of the intellectual, financial and community based resources inside and outside of the discriminated communities to create new wealth and competition.

The New Paradigm for the Eradication of Poverty calls for community participation in all existing and emerging mega developments in the US, the Caribbean and Latin America, by the Diaspora of peoples of African and Indigenous descent throughout the continent.

The New Paradigm process offers a sound agenda for sustainable development through:

• Increased participation     Increased employment       Increased trade       Increased wealth
• Increased access to technical assistance, feasibility studies and business plans

      for select, community-based economic initiatives.

The proponents accept the position of the Inter American Development Bank (IADB) ^[3]that “there is an Invisible Majority in Latin America and the Caribbean” of Peoples of African Descent, Indigenous Peoples and other ethnic minorities that lack broad- based growth. The proponents also agree with the IADB conclusion that “Even if the period of uninterrupted growth from 1960 to 1980 were included there would still be no improvement in poverty or inequality despite a 95 percent real growth in per capita gross domestic product over the past 45 years. This lack of broad- based growth manifests itself in social and economic exclusions. Typically, exclusion refers to minority groups that are marginalized because of race, ethnicity or gender.”

The current lack of improvement in the economic status of the target populations is the result of the historic, and current, paradigm of economic, social and political relationships. . The target populations are not stakeholders, and are excluded because they are as good as invisible to the dominant group.

According to the IADB, “It is one of the profound lessons of economic history that democracy and free markets together provide the best foundation for both economic prosperity and a vibrant civil society. These systems reinforce each other when markets provide opportunity for the vast majority of citizens to participate effectively in economic life as both producers and consumers. When markets empower the majority economically, societies can flourish and compete successfully in the global market place”.^[4]

For decades international organizations have channeled millions of aid dollars to those in control of the societies of Latin America in an unsuccessful attempt to eradicate poverty. Those efforts have failed to achieve their objectives  because  those in control of existing means of production behaves as if :

• The target populations are insignificant and not worthy stakeholders.
• The target populations are not qualified to take advantage of opportunities, or are from unacceptable racial or ethnic groups.
• The target populations are not entitled to share in the fruits of current economic activity because they are not investors nor are they the beneficiaries of  assets acquired  as a result of  colonial conquest.

There is no evidence that the obstacles to inclusion of the target groups will be removed as a result of goodwill on the part of those currently in control of existing means of production.

Contrary to the claims that the target population is not qualified,

• That there is a reservoir of persons within every community capable of becoming entrepreneurs, individually or collectively. under the right circumstances.
• That community people can be encouraged to develop sustainable economic and environmentally friendly master plans for themselves that can be profitable for all of the  plan participants .
• That, for this to happen, people need only to grasp the idea of the possibility of access to capital, credit, capacity building, technology exchange, and have information about international events that will affect the welfare of their community.
• That with joint venture participation in selected projects in the master plans developed, the communities can facilitate, own, operate, and support the products of the collective planning efforts and so ensure improvement in their quality of life and environment That once processes for community participation in sustainable economic development are firmly established, communities  will have the economic power to contribute to   fair two-way trade  (north South and south- south).

Unwilling to submit to the inevitable outcomes of the impact of the historic paradigm, members of the disadvantaged groups in Latin America have decided  that their only option is to demand a new paradigm that:

• rejects the contrived invisibility of the Majority consisting of  the disadvantaged groups of  the Americas;
• Identifies and utilizes  the assets, capabilities and resources of the majority, and documents political, economic and social worth;
• identifies, connects, and includes the diasporas of the target groups that form part of the Majority;
• constructs a model for development that draws on cultural strengths, geographic linkages, skills, and market potential to create production, trade, and new wealth  
  

The Paradigm:

·         stresses self- determination, organization, and collaboration within and between target groups, 

·         acknowledges that the target groups comprise collectively a significant majority and have great potential for creating  new wealth,

·         establishes strategies for community development, capacity building, partnership human resource investment, cash investment, and leveraged consumption by the invisible majority in Latin America and the Caribbean,

·         Builds on these strategies  to generate production of goods and services and inclusion in Fair Trade, 

·         applies the notion that as the target groups develop their own means and systems for creation of new wealth they will hire many of their own people, thus contributing to the eradication of poverty,

·         works to create  new institutions  and strengthen old ones  so as  to provide  the access to technology, capacity building, capital , and credit  that is currently denied the target population,

·         provides through these initiatives effective ways of making the target population visible.

·         strives to change  the behavior of those who currently benefit from deposits and remittance transactions by the majority and their Diaspora, but deny them access to capital and other financial services,

The New Paradigm process has already been applied from the bottom up in a pilot program  in the Republic of Panama. The program involves marginalized communities in master planning for sustainable development. This initiative has produced a registry of economically feasible projects in which community individuals and groups will be involved. This will become the Multi Regional Registry of Feasible Investment Opportunities, and will eventually be developed into the Central America and Dominican Republic Community Participation Capacity Building Set Aside Initiative (CIDES) (See Abstract 2).

Under the CIDES Initiative, community master planning processes will be promoted and developed in the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic. A consortium of universities will provide services for capacity building, technology exchange, incubator research, distance learning, and feasibility studies.

The proponents are aware of the importance of access to capital and credit, and to address this issue have created a task force known as   “The Southern Caucus Access to Capital and Credit Task Force for Business Development and Fair Trade.”  The task force includes financing facilities, socially responsible financial institutions, southern Diaspora investment groups, and private sector corporations.  

The aim is to generate $100 million dollars of access to capital and credit for development and market structures, remittance facilities and investment funds for joint venture partnerships with community- based investors, many of whom will come from the Multi Regional Registry of Feasible Investment Opportunities.

 Southern Diaspora of People of African Descent,   

All people in the world who acknowledge that part of their ancestry traces back to Africa

Afro-Latinos,  Afro-Americans, North American Indigenous Peoples, Afro-Caribbean peoples, and other ethnic minorities in the United States who have  strong ties to each other and to peoples of African descent, indigenous peoples,  and ethnic minorities in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Ethnic minorities  

Indigenous Peoples  

People who trace their ancestry to Indigenous peoples of Central and South America and the Caribbean.

(Any other terms not understood by the editor shall be listed here for introduction and definition.)