On July 15, 2024, a man of extraordinary intelligence and uncommon generosity passed away: the sociologist and economist José Antonio Ibáñez Aguirre. An expert in poverty, globalization, human rights and systems theory, he also delved into the complex issue of the external debt of the poorest countries in the world, coordinating a collection of important multidisciplinary works on this subject, around the Jubilee of the year 2000.
In those books, Loretta Ortiz, Enrique Cárdenas, Jaime Estay, José Luis Calva, Alejandro Nadal, José Antonio Farías, Raymundo Martínez, Firdaus Jhabvala, Julio Boltvinik, and the one writing here, sought to highlight both the economic, legal and ethical aspects of the debt that suffocates many developing nations.
José Antonio stated: “Our main proposal to definitively solve the problem of the external debt is to change the economic model in terms of its way of linking with the outside world (…) Increasing the generation of our foreign currency (…) will ultimately contribute to generating the surplus resources necessary to pay and gradually reduce the amount of the external debt.”
He continued: “This change must be made through an active economic policy that does not renounce growth as an aspiration and openness as a requirement to modernize and make the productive plant efficient. If we continue with the opening under the ideology of the market at all costs, it is very likely that new cycles of over-indebtedness and greater temporary needs for loans will wipe out the benefits obtained from possible renegotiations, refinancing, forgiveness, temporary moratoriums, etc.” (Mexico: from external debt to eternal debt, UIA, 1999).
Twenty-five years have passed and foreign debt, intertwined with ecological debt, continues to weigh down many countries in the global south. Pope Francis, in the framework of the Jubilee 2025, noted: “I never tire of repeating that foreign debt has become an instrument of control, through which some governments and private financial institutions of the richest countries have no qualms about indiscriminately exploiting the human and natural resources of the poorest countries, in order to satisfy the demands of their own markets. Added to this is the fact that various populations, more burdened by international debt, are also forced to bear the weight of the ecological debt of the most developed countries. (…) I invite the international community to undertake actions to remit foreign debt, recognizing the existence of an ecological debt between the north and the south of the world. It is a call for solidarity, but above all for justice” (1 January 2025).
I know well that José Antonio Ibáñez was able to foresee the scenario that Pope Francis is bravely facing today. What has to happen so that more substantive solutions can be implemented? Will it not be enough to look at the faces of the impoverished populations of countries like Haiti, Burkina Faso, or many places in Latin America, to recover the just reasons that allow a more comprehensive and humanistic reconsideration of a debt that in many cases is unpayable?
