ABSTRACT
The debt crisis has the potential to subvert more governments and do more damage in Latin America than Fidel Castro ever did. The sheer size of the debt is staggering. Brazil owes its foreign creditors $105 billion, Argentina owes $50 billion, Mexico $96 billion, and Venezuela $37 billion. In the time since the debt crisis emerged as a global problem of immense dimensions, a variety of smoke screens have been erected to disguise its true nature and to obscure its gravity. There is plenty of responsibility for the debt crisis to go around: the banks, the Latin American governments and state agencies, and the US government. The growing foreign debt in Latin America did not appear to be a problem in the 1970s, so long as the economies of the area were booming ahead. Exports were increasing, development was going forward, the world economy seemed sound, and, besides, there were always new loans to cover the old ones.
