Global Strategies: Tapping the Emerging Americas Market Available to Purchase

Latin America has emerged from the economic doldrums of the 1970s and 1980s to become a commercial power in its own right in the 1990s. The seeds for change were sewn with the 1980's movements toward democracy and free market economies. Then, in the 1990s, the region began to integrate economically. Mexico became a member of NAFTA; Mercosur, born in 1988, achieved full internal free trade among member‐states Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay by its 1994 deadline. Central America picked up the remains of its 1960s common market after the signing of a new free‐trade agreement in 1993, the union became the Central American Integration System (SICA). Similarly, the Andean Pact was revived, bringing together Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.