Education and Scholarship

Grupo Vidanta Foundation (Spanish: Fundación Grupo Vidanta) was founded by Daniel Chavez Moran and is now operated by its president, Roberto Russell. The foundations purpose is to engage educators, economists and political leaders from the international community in dialogue to promote policy-making that encourages socioeconomic growth and promote social equality in Latin America.

The Foundation hosts international seminar and conferences; honors outstanding projects in Latin America and the Caribbean which aim to reduce poverty, discrimination and intolerance; and distributes academic works on public policies that sustain economic expansion and increasing equality through democracy.

Recent works include:

• Argentina 1910-2010: Evaluation of the Century
• Argentina 2010: Between Frustration and Hope
• Chile: One Hundred Years of Light and Shadow (2 volumes)
• Colombia 1910-2010
• Mexico 1910-2010: The Trial of the Century
• Mexico 2010: Mortgaging the Future

These scholarly writings are discussed at international conferences and seminars hosted by the Grupo Vidanta Foundation in conjunction with foremost economists, distinguished political leaders, and institutions of higher education. The goal is to promote an open discussion about the upcoming key obstacles for Latin America.

Excerpt from one of these academic works:

“Prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1492, many parts of Latin America were richer than North America. Colonization, it is widely agreed, had a devastating impact on the welfare of the indigenous pre-Columbian populations in Mexico and the Andean region, as the Spanish set up an empire to extract gold, silver, and other commodities, much in the same way that the British and French colonization devastated the smaller number of indigenous peoples in North America. But initial conditions were not all that different in the two halves of the New World, in terms of either per capita income or economic structure. Both regions were predominantly agricultural economies and commodity exporters to the more-developed parts of the world. This situation persisted more or less through the end of the eighteenth century and the emergence of an independent United States of America.”

Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between the United States and Latin America.