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 Brazil might do a little better, but growth in Latin America will plunge strongly this year to 0.3%, forecasted Pamela Cox, World Bank vice-president for Latin America and the Caribbean. Last September the WB forecast was 2.7%, in January it was down to 1% and now 0.3%.
Addressing the Ibero-American forum in Madrid, Ms Cox anticipated that impacts will not be the same in the different countries of the region with those closely linked to the US economy and exports "suffering the most," in spite of the very good macroeconomic showing in 2008.
Ms Cox named Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean among the first group and Ecuador and Venezuela in the second.
However countries such as Chile and Brazil will be able to better weather the global slowdown, "the worst suffered by the world in over eight decades." She recalled that the WB forecast for global growth was 1% with leading countries such as the US and the EU recording negative percentages.
Regarding recovery Ms Cox was more cautious and said it was "difficult" to anticipate, but mentioned "two to three years" much of which will depend on the different plans and keeping the tendency to protectionism "distant."
"Protectionist policies will not be good for Latin American recovery from the crisis" said Ms Cox, recalling the debate over the "Buy American" phrase in the US stimulus plan which was finally watered down to some extent in the US Senate.
The WB official also mentioned the impact in several Latin American countries of the fall in remittances from the US and Spain, as well as the credit crunch which will have an impact on investment. In this case she mentioned the WB was working with Mexico and Central America to have remittances delivered through the normal financial system so they could be computed both for consumption and investment.
Finally she spoke about the humanitarian impact on the vulnerable population underlining that the multilateral organization has estimated than another 53 million people will fall into that category, after several years of reducing those numbers.
"For this, developed countries much help by allocating 0.7% of their stimulus plans to the "Vulnerability Fund" established by the World Bank," she said.
Mercopress
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
Every Brazilian says Brazil is the country of the future.. even my ex brazilian boyfriend used to say the same to me.. HAHAHA Junkies, dream on !
Your Republic Banana will always be the country of the future, a future that will never be present !
GOATS WILL ALWAYS BE GOATS !