I think the omnipresent external force has been much more important in determining outcomes than local culture (but of course these are complex systems which can’t cleanly be broken into parts – “culture”, “law”, “economy”, “government”, “power structure” are all linked together).

I do agree though that it’s necessary to have some combination of land reform, capital accumulation and investment (and perhaps local reinvestment of export profits?), education, industrial development, and strengthening of civic and political institutions to build a successful functioning society. These are hard problems for poor countries, and the last 60 years of academic political science have pretty convincingly failed to turn up any easy explanations or solutions. I wouldn’t hold my breath that building a foreign “special economic” enclave unaccountable to the rest of the country will ultimately save Honduran peasants. But that’s not the part of the article I’m offended by.

> I think the omnipresent external force has been much more important in determining outcomes than local culture

Maybe, but you seem to assume that the impact of an omnipresent external force is always negative.

The more I read about history, the more it begins to appear to me that today's economic boom in Asia is in no small part due to the British imperial system a century ago which first set things in motion.

I wonder if Romer's systems can be used to stave off the encroachment of the cartels and continued growth of MS-13 (and the speculated alliances between them). As healthy as it seems to unwind the western corporations binds on the country and come to terms with centuries of exploitation, it could be even more important to suggest that radical developments like this are necessary in a race against the expulsion of the cartels from Mexico (where are they going to go but south?) and thus, time.