By Juan Forero for WashingtonPost.comIN USHUAIA, ARGENTINA Here at the end of the Earth, just 600 miles from Antarctica, tourists hike over glaciers and flock to rocky beaches to photograph penguins and 700-pound sea lions.
Tierra del Fuego, or Land of Fire, on the southernmost tip of South America, is as breathtaking and forlorn as its name suggests. This island is also a little-known motor of manufacturing that churns out cellphones and LCD televisions for a seemingly insatiable consumer market - symbol of the stability that has taken hold in a country once accustomed to defaults and hyperinflation.
But the boom in demand and production, and their byproducts - jobs and investments - are evident far from this distant outpost.
From Paraguay to Chile and Brazil to Peru, a growing middle class armed with cheap credit and new confidence in the future is contributing to the most vigorous economic expansion in decades. The growth in South America is still largely driven by Asia-bound exports of copper, iron ore, tin, meat and soybeans.
But economists now talk of a new dynamic that reflects the stronger foundation of more-mature economies: increasingly affluent consumer societies.
The irony, as laid out in a recent report by the International Monetary Fund, is that history's traditional No. 1 consumer..Read full article
