To accelerate development in Latin America today we must exploit undervalued local markets, products and skills and establish a more productive 'trade on demand' and /or 'trade by necessity' with international communities that isn't holden to political jestures. Cultural and religious values are encouraged within the communities for stablization, par that with preparing for the future in which 'the individual' will override 'the company' in value .

What's my grade?

Invest in education, spread the wealth, reform the legal system and the courts.

And pray for the coming of the Messiah so these things become politically feasible.

Brad, as a service to curious readers who are not current econ students, can you link to or summarize Engerman and Sokolov's political-economy explanation of the phenomenon in question?

Is it in any way similar to my common-sense explanation? (that wiping out indigenous peoples (N.America) produces a population and resulting political system more in harmony with capitalism than what results on a continent where the colonial poweres merely dominated them (S.America))?

So, central/South America ended up with a lot greater % of the population (and electorate) whose 'cultural DNA' never "bought in" to the idea that they could become economic winners by playing within the rules of the system of the world?

Family atomization? In South America the natives had intact family structures. Lots of freeloading relatives to increase the tax rates for successful people to 100%. In North America the immigrants did not bring the cousins along. You worked harder, you made more money. Not to mention that the freeloading relatives wouldn't save up enough to get to the US in the first place.
Consider the Indians in India vs the Indians in Africa.

People, let's not ask our host, who does quite enough valuable work for this blog, for spoon-feeding. The basics of E&S's thesis is only a little googling away.

Which neither Dave nor Walter have done, although Dave is partly in the right time zone.

I took Jonathon's challenge, even though it wasn't directed at me.

Hmm, looks like extractive industries, and highly split economies are a big problem. So, nationalize any extractive industry, plow the money back into human capital -- education, health care, micro-loans focused on developing the internal economy.

Serious redistribution of wealth? I'm not sure this is necessary, but you have to do something to break the hold that the elite have over the economy. They do what's good for THEM, not what's good for the country as a whole.

Maybe you also need to split things up more, to create more homogeneous political units. Lots of problems there, too.

Simple: Aim for membership in the european union - Because this seems to be the most effective way to rapidly build a decent governance structure currently available; actually getting in would be a very nice bonus but is not strictly nessesary. Couple this with as much bog-standard social-democratic politics as you can afford.

Jay almost has it right, whereas the cultural explanations couldn't be more ludicrous. Argentina has a genetic/cultural, whatever nonsense was being reached for, history similar to the U.S. and still faces the typical latin american problems. The problem is the same there as everywhere, investment bankers. Risk no longer entails reward, and in latin america that's merely the beginning of the banker's corruption of commerce. The solution: allow workers organizations to freely associate. No more repression of Chavez and the Bolivarians.

Dave I suggest the people with a non-capitalist cultural "DNA" would tend to be the rulers not the ruled since the cultural experience of the Hispanic aristocracy is one of maintaining power by repression.

On the other hand Durriti is right that Chile & Argentina aren't particularly Indian & are perhaps as much 19thC Italian as traditional Hispanic. It is also a matter of record that parts of Latin America were very 1st world in the late Victorian era.

Solutions: Free trade in Nafta. A continentwide supreme court able to denounce corruption in governments (only denounce not send in marine "peacekeepers") & equally able to denounce US governments that use their power to run countries in the best interests of the United Fruit Company. Education.