Latinobarómetro, 2011 report

There is a Latin America hidden behind the stereotypical image of the twentieth century, we have transformed.
While the weakness of politics and distrust overwhelm the region's agenda, progress continues silently unattended. A new region emerges that pushes to go faster than the countries, to redistribute the fruits of growth, which strongly demands in the year 2011 because the slowdown affects them. This Latin America punishes more harshly.
Eight out of ten Latin Americans are connected to the world through cell phones, and four out of ten today have a level of education more than the one in which they were born. It is the emerging middle class that defends itself.

This is the introductory text to the 2011 Report published by the Latinobarometer Corporation, with a 112 pages of statistics taken from 20,204 face-to-face interviews in 18 countries between the 15 of July and the 16 of August, with representative samples of the 100 %, of the national population of each country of 1,000 and 1,200 cases, with a margin of error of around 3% per country.
Much of the report is nothing new, but comparative value is interesting, where we can see how our country is in relation to the context. 

Interestingly, the high contradiction in connectivity, a wave that has been absorbed by the entire continent, but contrasts with the slow progress towards respect for copyright. As long as the use of technology is not leveled in the use of hardware and respect for licenses, much of what we do in Latin America will be unsustainable; not only at the government level but also in the incentive for private companies. It is also an important opportunity for Open Source Software.

For the first time this study measures piracy explicitly and it is found that this is greater than the willingness to buy something stolen. That is, the pirate is not necessarily seen
as stolen. The following chart does not reflect the volume of piracy by country, but rather its acceptance as a justifiable act.

I recommend that they keep it for their leisure time, I leave the index of topics researched and final conclusions that are not representative of each country but that serve to compare contextually:

• DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA
• THE TRUST
• CIVIC CULTURE
• DISCRIMINATION AND BREED
• THAT GUARANTEES DEMOCRACY
• SOCIAL FRAUD
• THE AGENDA OF LATIN AMERICA
• POLITICS
• THE EXPECTATIONS
• LABOR SAFETY INDEX
• CONSUMER CONFIDENCE INDEX
• ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE MARKET
• ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE STATE
• SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACY
• INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
• EVALUATION OF LEADERS
• EVALUATION OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

There is a Latin America hidden behind the stereotyped image born of a desolate twentieth century, we have transformed, but the world is still not convinced.
Democracy has slowly been consolidated in its core values ​​as it is the fulfillment with the law. Governments are the institutions that have been more trustworthy in recent years, although in 2011 there is a setback. The parliament manages to move slowly in its legitimacy. A substantive part of the region says that it expects the same from the future, that is, it expects stability. Economic stability is something new and fascinating for Latin America. Employment stability has more than doubled in the last decade and peaks at 2011. Never before there were so few people with great economic difficulties (10%). Four out of ten Latin Americans today have one step more education than the home in which they were born. Eight out of ten Latin Americans are connected to the world through cell phones. The region has moved away from the US, that country is the model country mainly for Central America, while South America looks increasingly towards other parts of the world, especially Europe. Above all we have increased our life satisfaction, independent of the ups and downs. Nothing changes our growing happiness. The region has incorporated consumption to 150 millions of inhabitants in the last decade.

At the same time the backpack of the earrings is huge. It begins with the economic problems that afflict a very significant part of the population with low salaries, precarious housing, restricted access to health, poor education, although unemployment is at one of its lowest points. Inequality remains the greatest threat, discrimination as its most immediate cultural consequence. Tolerance and trust are low, we do not trust political parties, nor do we trust our neighbors. Democracy has not been able to change those central coordinates of our civic culture. In the year 2011, we mainly punished the 111 governments, especially those who had done their homework well last year. The change of ruler is one of the reasons for demanding more, but there is also a state of discomfort because the increase of wealth does not bring with it the expected distribution. Governments fail to increase the perception that is governed for the majority. There is a sense of abuse and undue privilege.

Latin America showed between 2007 and 2009 that it was able to flatten the impact of the crisis with counter-cyclical economic policies, that did not happen in the 2011, and in the face of a deceleration of the
growth governments did not take measures to mitigate this impact on the most vulnerable. The positive impact on democracy between 2007 and 2009 were historic, governments managed to disengage the economy from the evaluation of democracy, producing an increase in the right direction despite the crisis. In 2011 that impact disappears. We still have to learn that the ups and downs of the economy affect the different sectors within a society in a very different way. On the one hand, the increase in growth does not produce a distribution, and on the other, the decrease in growth impacts the most vulnerable. So those who have less do not benefit from growth and are punished by the slowdown.

Hidden Latin America, the one that has emerged from 30 years of social policies and reforms, is another Latin America, it is no longer the land of "come back tomorrow," nor the stereotypical image of Hollywood movies. This is a foot region with high levels of demands that is advancing by leaps and bounds towards more open and democratic societies by the unconventional way with high degrees of lag.

Here you can download it, as well as previous versions since 1995.