An Inside View of Latin American Microfinance

Microfinance is a capitalist paradox. In a region of great inequality and economic instability, it has been able to create viable services for those at the base of the economic and social pyramid, survive and grow in adverse economic conditions, and become a profitable and rapidly growing part of the regulated financial sector. This book offers an inside view of Latin American microfinance, as seen by those who have worked over the decades to make it grow. The lessons are relevant not only for the global microfinance community, but for the field of development writ large.

What promise did Sequoia Capital recognize in SKS microfinance (India) that it had also seen in Apple, Oracle, and Google? Why would Vodafone help distribute money via cell phones for millions of Kenyans? How did a Mexican retailer create a financial-services empire, Banco Azteca, that would serve eight million borrowers in five years?

A Treasury of Recipes from the South American Countries, Mexico and the Caribbean (Round the world cooking library)

Since its emergence in the 1970s, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to address poverty and under-development in developing and transition countries. It is beloved of rock stars, royalty, movie stars, high-profile politicians and "trouble-shooting" economists. Its most famous pioneer, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
In this provocative and controversial analysis, Milford Bateman reveals that microfinance doesn't actually work. That, in fact, the case for it has largely been built on a desire to advance a particular free market ideology, on hype and egregious half-truths, and -- latterly -- on the Wall Street-style greed, deception and individual self-interest of those promoting and working in microfinance. Using a multitude of case studies from across the globe -- from India to Cambodia, Bolivia to Uganda, Serbia to Mexico amongst many others -- he exposes why many of its most fundamental building blocks are largely myths. In doing so, he demonstrates that microfinance actually constitutes a major barrier to sustainable economic and social development, and thus also to sustainable poverty reduction.
As developing and transition countries attempt to repair the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis, Bateman argues forcefully that the role of microfinance in development policy needs to be urgently and fundamentally reconsidered.

England's John Zaradin is a gifted performer both in jazz and in the field of classic guitar. He is especially knowledgeable in the wide and diverse world of Latin American guitar solo and rhythm styles. This book contains six solos based on the Rumba Rhythm (Mosaico de Rumbas) and six solos in the Bossa-Samba mode (Ambientes Brasileiras). Each solo is scored in both notation and tablature and reflects the vitality, rhythm, and improvisatory nature of this idiom.

This important and welcome volume is the first English-language anthology of writings on Latin American modern art of the twentieth century. The book includes some fifty seminal essays and documents-including statements, interviews, and manifestoes by artists-that encompass the broad diversity of this emerging field. Many of these materials are difficult to access and some are translated here for the first time. Together the selections explore the breadth and depth of Latin American modern art as well as its distinctive evolution apart from American and European art history. Included in this collection are fascinating ideas and insights on the impact of the avant-garde in the 1920s, the Mexican mural movement, Surrealism and other fantasy-based styles, modern architecture, geometric and optical art, concrete and neo-concrete art, and political conceptualism. For students and scholars of Latin American art, the volume offers an invaluable collection of primary and secondary sources. ...