> Where's the underlying data from?
CEPAL crunches the numbers after some adjusting aiming at make comparisons apples-to-apples. CEPAL relies on the income/spending household surveys conducted in most countries by official statistics agencies. In most (if not all) places (including Venezuela), these agencies enjoy a high degree of insulation from political pressure and are populated by very conventional, U.S.-trained economists and statisticians who try to follow the U.S. Census, BEA, BLS, Fed, etc. protocols. And I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. Apparently, Mexico's INEGI has experienced a sort of atypical reversal under pressure by the current government, if I'm to believe some recent horror stories. That is not surprising, given the conditions in Mexico, but that is atypical compared to the rest of Latin America.