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SCHILLER INSTITUTE
Releases New Spanish Language
Economics Book

Articulos en espanol

LaRouche's Economics

"The ABCs of Nation Building"
Released at Domincan Republic Seminar
August 9, 2001

Dominican Republic Is Listening to LaRouche

On Aug. 9, the Schiller Institute released a new book, in Spanish, whose translated title is, The ABCs of Nation Building. The event took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, under the glare of television cameras, and in the presence of newspaper reporters and scores of people, including many well-known Dominican personalities. That The ABCs of Nation Building has attracted so much interest, is because people are increasingly aware that the International Monetary Fund-imposed ``free trade'' globalization system has failed and the financial crash is on, and the question now is, what's next?

As in much of Ibero-America and in many other places in the world, including the United States, the policy of selling off everything in sight in the Dominican Republic, in the name of privatization, has meant astronomically high utility bills and daily blackouts that sometimes last for 20, 22, or even 24 hours. The country largely depends for its survival on remittances from immigrants in the United States, and on exporting cheap goods, chiefly clothing, to the United States, a market that is fast disappearing with the economic downturn in the giant to the north.

LaRouche and Hamilton

The alternative is offered by The ABCs of Nation Building, which contains Lyndon LaRouche's ground-breaking essay, ``The Economics IQ Test'' from May 14, 1999, and the famous "Report on the Subject of Manufactures", by Alexander Hamilton, LaRouche's predecessor as the leading exponent of American System economics.

Written in 1791, Hamilton's report helped transform the fledgling U.S. republic into an economic powerhouse, and is one of the seminal documents of the American System of economics, whose principles have guided every economic recovery in the United States, and transformed Germany, Japan, and other nations into industrial powers.

But, as far as we know, it was not until 1988, that it first appeared in Spanish, in a translation published by the LaRouche movement. (A Portuguese translation of the report, the first in that language and published by the LaRouche movement in 1995, has now become a touchstone for politicians, businessmen, labor leaders, and other nationalists opposing globalization in Brazil.)

In the prologue, journalist Jorge Melendez, the Schiller Institute's representative in the DominicanRepublic, notes that Hamilton is in certain ways connected to the Dominican Republic. First, Hamilton hails from the neighboring Antilles island of Nevis. And, more important, he helped draft Haiti's first Constitution for Toussaint L'Ouverture, at a time when what is now the Dominican Republic was part of Haiti, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola.

At the Aug. 9, 2001 release in Santo Domingo, one of the speakers, attorney Marino Elsevyf, praised LaRouche, who has become a household name in the Dominican Republic. Elsevyf said that he had known LaRouche for years, and that he had always been right in his forecasts.

Political leader Ramon Emilio Concepcion, famous for bringing suit against the government's privatization policy as anti-Constitutional, said that meeting Mr. Melendez and, through him, LaRouche, ``changed my life.'' Father Lautico Garcia, S.J., who gave the invocation at the event, and who is a regular columnist for the daily El Nacional, also had laudatory words for the Schiller Institute and for LaRouche.

Several people came up to Melendez during the reception, sponsored by the Brugal Rum company, which provided the refreshments, and identified themselves as regular readers of his column in the daily El Siglo. One of them said: ``Everything you write that says `LaRouche,' I read right away.''

Extensive Media Coverage

The release of The ABCs of Nation Building was reported by television, radio, and nearly all the major daily newspapers in the Dominican Republic, including El Siglo, Listin Diario, Hoy, and El Nacional. The daily El Caribe published an article on Aug. 7, which said that the book is ``necessary reading for government leaders, economists, politicians, businessmen, and trade unionists.'' El Caribe reported that the book ``contains two reports, one written in 1791 by Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. first Secretary of the Treasury, titled Report on the Subject of Manufactures, the first time this report has appeared in book form in Spanish.

The second report, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, `The Economics IQ Test,' is a thorough assessment of the speculative process that is driving economic globalization.'' The ABCs of Nation Building, said El Caribe, ``offers a true programmatic alternative to the disaster of globalization, based on the example of the American System, and the principles of physical economy of LaRouche.''

In addition to the coverage in the print media, Schiller Institute representative Melendez has appeared on several television programs to talk about the book, which he edited.

schiller@schillerinstitute.org



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