My textbook Understanding Latin American Politics , which was originally published by Pearson, is now available in its full form as Open Acc...
I've been looking back at old posts, seeing how I viewed things a decade or more ago. I wrote a good amount about the xenophobic push to build a wall, how it was based on falsehoods, and how unlikely it was. I can see how it never occurred to me at all how that view (which is still minority) could hold power. Check out this post from almost exactly 11 years ago.
I am quoted in this BBC article by Daniel Pardo and he did a YouTube video as well. He compares AMLO and Jair Bolsonaro. I was hesitant about comparing too much, as there are also many differences, but the messianic tendencies are definitely there (interestingly, Boz was also just writing about hesitating about comparing Mexico and Brazil too much).
At present both get a lot of criticism about potentially damaging democracy because of personalist and authoritarian leanings, albeit in different ways. With AMLO it's more about centralizing power whereas with Bolsonaro that is also there but it's even more about finding scapegoats and limiting rights. Bolsonaro has a hate that AMLO lacks.
With both, we wait. Beyond Venezuela, perhaps the biggest stories of 2019 will be about what effect the two presidents have on democracy in their respective countries, both of which could really use a dose of democratic legitimacy.
The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV) said in its annual report that Venezuela still had the world’s highest murder rate, 81.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, but it noted that figure was down from 89 in 2017 and 92 the year before. Director Roberto Briceño attributed the drop in part to migration.
“The majority of the Venezuelans who emigrate are honest people who have been forced to look for work elsewhere, but many criminals are among them,” he told reporters, citing press reports on crimes in other South American countries.Their website does not seem to have the report up, so I don't know what evidence they present, but I feel skeptical. This is an argument I do not think I have ever heard. Gangs thrive in places like Venezuela, so why would they leave? Even if some did leave, we would expect other gangs to fill the vacuum.
The number of robberies of farmers and food distribution trucks increased in 2018, according to the report, a sign of growing desperation and hunger as inflation topped 1 million percent.Maybe attacking food distribution trucks requires less killing than other kinds of crimes.
In the spirit of reading updates of old classic characters (see my review of the latest Bond novel from a few days ago) I read Lawrence Osborne's Only To Sleep, a new Philip Marlowe novel. I like the idea of having old characters come back. Why not? The originals are there and wonderful, unsullied by it. I read Raymond Chandler in huge gulps in my early 20s.
Only To Sleep takes place mostly in Mexico, around resort towns in Baja but Marlowe does a lot of driving. Osborne was a reporter in Mexico in the early 1990s and captures the scenes beautifully. He clearly loves the place, and has an eye for detail. I also enjoyed the San Diego and environs references, including Julian, a small mountain town northeast of San Diego that deserves attention. I don't believe I've ever seen it mentioned in a novel.
It's a first rate story, good mystery with a pace. Marlowe is retired in Mexico and is hired to look into possible insurance fraud. An older man with a young wife died in Mexico with a sizeable life insurance policy. The company likes Marlowe because he is fluent in Spanish and old enough to be inconspicuous. The twists keep coming.
Unlike the Bond novels, it moves forward so it is 1988 and Marlowe is 72 and feeling it. I found it is discordant to hear Philip Marlowe refer to Guns N' Roses and Tina Turner. I found it discordant that Marlowe was quite physically weak and walked with a cane, even if it was one with a sharp Japanese knife inside it. In short, it was a good hard-boiled novel but completely disconnected with the Marlowe I knew. It's like a different person entirely.
On Monday, the Caricom group of 15 Caribbean nations including Guyana - many of which have historically received subsidized oil from Venezuela under Caracas’ Petrocaribe program - said it viewed the “interception” by Venezuela’s navy “with grave concern.”
“Such acts violate the sovereign rights of Guyana under international law,” the group said in a statement.The arrangement had already been sputtering because Venezuela could not provide the agreed upon amount of oil. Oil diplomacy works only as long as the cheap oil keeps flowing. Countries will act in their own best interest. This isn't about ideology. Economic self-interest wins out.
I read Julie Lythcott-Haims' Real American: A Memoir. I found her story about being biracial compelling and heartfelt, not to mention highly readable. Growing up she felt neither comfortably White nor Black, but experienced racism (both micro and larger) at the same time she enjoyed privilege because of her socio-economic status (her father, who was Black, was a successful doctor who traveled the world).
She tells her story in snippets, snapshots of her memories growing up and then more recently. It might sound disjointed but the style works well as she reveals how confused she was, how people reacted to her, and how her own thinking evolved. People's reactions would change just by how she did her hair: if she had it in braids from a Black salon, people shied away from her. She felt self-loathing for many years and only gradually embraced being Black, which in turn leads to discussion about anger, frustration, and Black Lives Matter.
She moved from corporate lawyer to high-level administrative positions at Stanford working with undergraduates, which suited her better because it involved making people feel welcomed and supported. (Here is her website).
For those of us who enjoy just about every category of privilege by sheer chance of birth, it is a reminder of what other people deal with that we don't, and the ways in which our own casual words can hurt deeply, things we need to be mindful of (she has many such examples, even from people she knows well).
For me, winter break is about relaxing with fun fiction. Last year I read Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders, which was great, and then I saw he had another mystery this year but also a James Bond novel, Forever and a Day. I had not read a Bond novel since my teens when I had a read most of them, along with pulp Nick Carter spy novels from a local used bookstore (where they were literally 35 cents). I couldn't resist.
Horowitz does an excellent job. Bond has feelings, is assertive but without the annoying misogyny apparent in the novels of the era, and as a prequel you learn some of his background (e.g. why shaken but not stirred?). The CIA plays a bit of a role and the effects of world wars are important to the narrative, but there is no Russian involvement, which disappointed me. I wanted to see some more of that Cold War intrigue. The story is about heroin trafficking in the south of France and Corsican gangsters, plus an empty cruise ship. There are plenty of "oh, really?" moments but no spy novel would be complete without them. It even has the outsized (literally, in girth) villain in Scipio that you usually get with Bond. .If you like Bond (without being some sort of purist, I suppose) and the genre, it's worth your time.
Under the plan, the Cuban baseball federation would release players to M.L.B. in return for a percentage of their contracts, an approach similar to the posting system used by Japanese and South Korean teams. The purpose of the agreement is to end the human trafficking of Cuban players to the United States and Canada.You should be able to see the problem. The Cuban government will start making a profit, paid directly from MLB.*
On Wednesday, a White House statement criticized baseball’s agreement with Cuba, saying the administration would continue to restrict Cuba’s ability to profit from American businesses.I can't find the statement itself (which does not seem to be on the White House statement page) but this was to be expected. MLB's stance will be that it was negotiating the deal at the time the administration changed rules regarding Cuba, and that Trump grandfathered those existing relationships. Trump will be pressed hard, very hard, by his hardline advisers, not to mention Marco Rubio, who does not like it.
One of the primary changes signaled by the presidential memorandum is its prohibition on any transactions with the Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA, or GAESA. Through this company, the military regime under Castro built an investment network that controls major aspects of the Cuban tourism industry, particularly hotels.
This clearly restricts Cuba tourism and may also complicate the proposal made by MLB to the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the spring of 2016. MLB proposed lifting the ban on signing of Cuban players and paying compensation to a newly-created organization devoted to Cuban youth baseball development instead of to the government-owned Cuban teams themselves.
The trouble is that GAESA has been described as “una especie de muñeca rusa” – a sort of Russian doll, each thing hiding something else inside that no one knows about. According to the Miami Herald, GAESA controls about 60 percent of the Cuban economy. With such an extended web of ownership involving GAESA in Cuba, it may be difficult to verify that GAESA holds no ownership interest in whatever entity MLB proposes to pay in exchange for Cuban ballplayers. Without such assurances, OFAC is highly unlikely to entertain MLB’s proposal.Update (12/29/18): yep, the administration intends to nix the deal.
The administration did not respond to specific questions about plans to scuttle the deal, but officials have been clear they feel the agreement would “institutionalize a system by which a Cuban body garnishes the wages of hard-working athletes who simply seek to live and compete in a free society.”
“Parties seeking to benefit from business opportunities in Cuba are on notice that the administration will continue to take actions to support human rights and restrict the Cuban regime’s ability to profit from U.S. business,” a senior administration official said.MLB claimed it had been talking to supportive officials in the White House and State Department. Are they clueless? The State Department doesn't matter and the only people that matter in the White House are the hard-liners, who are the line to the base. This is not a situation where Jared Kushner will step in and solve the problem. Read more...
Jonathan Blitzer at The New Yorker takes a look at the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy, whereby asylum seekers would have to stay in Mexico as they waited to hear about their asylum case, which could be years. In particular, he interviews Mexican officials and former U.S. officials, both of whom say it is unworkable.
First, migrants will enter the United States illegally anyway, particularly because staying in Mexico is not doable for economic and/or crime reasons. Central American migrants are targeted in Mexico.
Second, Trump might counter that a wall would prevent all those people from crossing illegally. That is a pipe dream but even if served as some level of deterrent it would result in instability in Mexican border cities, which would then disrupt the economies of their U.S. counterparts. "Remain in Mexico" really means "Remain in Border Cities." Many in Tijuana are already unhappy.
Third, U.S.-Mexican relations will become more strained unnecessarily. From the narrow perspective of U.S. interests, this has the potential for souring other areas, such as counternarcotics. This is even more problematic if AMLO starts to feel cornered.
There is nothing good about this policy.
Update: AMLO is going to help, at least temporarily. This is a risky move for him.
For years, the Cuban government has sent doctors abroad in order to generate revenue, sometimes in exchange for oil. Jair Bolsonaro ended the practice, saying the Cubans were slave labor. This is not inaccurate. But I had not appreciated the scope.
While Brazil said last month it had filled more than 90% of the vacancies, 2,439 out of 8,411 new recruits had failed to report to their work locations by a Tuesday deadline, a health ministry spokeswoman said. The positions will be opened up for new applications on 20 and 21 December, she said.8,000 doctors! This is awful both for humanitarian and public policy reasons. The humanitarian is that so many Cuban doctors were forced to leave their homes and live in an unfamiliar country (though there is an obvious humanitarian positive for the work they are doing, irrespective of their own situation).
An argument in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) about Venezuela would be well served to provide more fairness and accuracy. The main argument is that there are a lot trumped up (pun not originally intended but I'll just leave it) criticisms of Venezuelan economic policy that ignore the driving force of U.S. sanctions. Venezuelan economic history is, as you might imagine, not included.
But this is the paragraph that really made me cringe:
The contradictions and absurdity of the opposition’s discourse, including the moderate faction, beggar belief. One shudders to think what would become of such opposition figures in Paris or Washington, but you will be shielded from such considerations reading Western media—and from understanding why Maduro easily prevailed in the 2018 election, despite an economic depression.You cannot find any credible source to suggest the 2018 elections passed any basic tests of democratic electoral processes. He "easily prevailed" for authoritarian reasons. The author also does not believe Venezuela should be called a dictatorship, with this curious logic:
In fact, basic democratic freedoms in Venezuela remain at a level the US government would never tolerate were it faced with similar circumstances: a major economic crisis deliberately worsened by a foreign power that openly backs the most violent elements of the opposition.There is only counterfactual without actual facts and completely sidesteps what freedoms have been denied Venezuelans.
In Episode 61 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast, I talk with Jonathan Rosen,
A journalist at Bloomberg tries to make sense of the continued demand for a state presence even for conservative presidents in Latin America: voting right while leaning left. The premise, however, is wrong, and the reason lies with a comment by Guillermo Holzmann, a well-known Chilean political scientist.
“This government is not in power because of the Right or the Left—these are 20th century concepts—but because they appealed to the frustrations and the expectations of the small portion of voters that decide elections.”This is right on the money. I've written plenty of times about how we need to stay focused on the pragmatic nature of the Latin American voter. They aren't voting in the "right." They are voting in governments to deal with problems in new ways. That often includes state spending. This isn't the 1980s anymore, when governments ran amok with dismantling the state.
The International Labour Organization estimates that unemployment across Latin America fell from 8.1% to 7.8% from 2017 to 2018. Given the error involved in making these estimations, that does not really constitute a change at all. Further, regional rates are tough to draw conclusions from. They see some general trends, like high youth unemployment (19.6%) which is indeed a problem. But the real meat is the data on individual countries. The report has tons of that. Below is one of the better snapshots.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel reported on the sluggish economy in ways that you don't typically hear.
Commenting on deficiencies noted in execution of the 2018 Plan, he acknowledged that many are due to the complex economic situation we face, which is related to problems accumulated on the structural order, of operations, as well as those of our own making that we must resolve. Nor can the impact of the blockade be underestimated, he said, which has worsened under the Trump administration, especially financial persecution internationally.The embargo is secondary, which I don't believe I've ever heard before. Here is Raúl Castro in a 2015 speech at the UN.
However, the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba persists bringing damages and hardships on the Cuban people, and standing as the main obstacle to our country’s economic development, while affecting other nations due to its extraterritorial scope, and hurting the interests of American citizens and companies.That is a long-standing line.
The 2019 Plan, he said, is realistic, "but it's the least we can do. And if we implement it well, we have the potential to do more. But if there are bureaucrats, if there are people who delay making decisions, to export, to collect; if there are people who do not have the sensibility that the circumstances demand, then the plan is paralyzed.”This is interesting because Díaz-Canel himself was, well, a bureaucrat. His career is serving on Communist Party committees. It also echoes what Fidel Castro himself believed. This is from 1965:
"Bureaucracy is a vice which threatens socialist revolutions as well as it threatens capitalists. But the socialist revolutions must know how to take measures to prevent this evil from becoming enthroned and causing all the damage it is capable of."The embargo obviously hurts the Cuban economy badly. There can be no argument there. But this is a big step away from leaning on the embargo as a crutch to avoid self-reflection, which Raúl was doing to a degree with all his efforts at economic reform.
Joe Biden has an op-ed in Americas Quarterly about the erosion of U.S. leadership in Latin America. I can quibble with his argument (e.g. excessive focus on the "geopolitical rivals" thing and how virtuous we are is not the best way to think about China and Russia) but there are a lot of good points. Terrible immigration policy is a problem. Antagonizing allies makes no sense. Undermining CICIG is a major policy failure. I also agree with this assessment about Venezuela:
Yet, even sensible efforts by this administration to exert pressure on Maduro and Ortega have been undermined by politicization, faulty execution and clunky sloganeering. Stronger diplomatic efforts and intensified sanctions on Venezuela have been clouded by saber-rattling and misguided efforts to engage with coup plotters. Similar responses to the civil unrest and state repression earlier this year in Nicaragua produced little in the way of results as that country settles into an intolerable “new normal.” This administration has demonstrated its willingness to capitalize politically on crises, but actions like its continued deportation of Venezuelans and the attempted revocation of “temporary protected status” for Nicaraguans demonstrate little concern for the Venezuelan or Nicaraguan people.The Trump administration has been committing lots of own goals that were all preventable. Regional "leadership" is a vague term but at a minimum it should mean genuine desire to make people's lives better. The U.S. has not always been good at this, or at least its vision has been twisted. But with the Trump administration it seems absent.
Last week the State Department hosted a ministerial on counterterrorism in the Western Hemisphere. Thirteen countries attended, though two (Brazil and Mexico) were just observers. It was all about Middle Eastern terrorists, the subject that the U.S. government periodically tries to get Latin America interested in. I won't belabor how tired that subject is--something else caught my attention.
The U.S. government's verbiage is that Latin America "joined" and "committed." In other words, they played active roles. Voice of America obediently and vaguely reported "with some analysts suggesting member countries are stepping up efforts" while interviewing one analyst who does not study Latin America and one analyst who writes alarmist stuff on Iran.
In the Latin America press, the verb used over and over to describe the same event was "pedir," which means "to ask" or "to request." Pidió colaboración (Peru) or pide ayuda (Paraguay). There's even a "solicit" (solicitó cooperación from Argentina).
The difference is subtle but noteworthy. South American governments in particular are paying attention, especially to money laundering. But unlike the Trump administration (and the Bush administration before it) they are not putting Middle Eastern terrorism front and center. I could see Jair Bolsonaro doing so just to curry favor but in general there is wide skepticism about U.S. priorities.
Victor Sebestyen's Lenin: The Man, The Dictator, and the Master of Terror (2017) is a highly readable and entertaining biography of Vladimir Lenin. The subtitle is a bit sensationalist but is in fact accurate.
You get a sense of him as a person, especially his relationships with his mother, wife, and mistress. He did not really develop close relationships with men, but he was very tender with those women and they were dedicated to him. He was exiled for many years and spent much of that time in libraries, writing books and cranking out countless articles (later he would write decrees specifying exactly how libraries should be run). Some derided him as a mere journalist rather than a revolutionary. If there is one thing missing, it is how he managed to generate so much support since at times Sebestyen notes how small and weak a group the Bolsheviks were prior to the revolution and how far he was from the action. But that is perhaps part of the mystery--how did this otherwise unremarkable though highly intelligent man create something so huge and destructive?
Then the dictator and the master of terror, two roles that go together. Lenin had no regard for human life and believed killing was part of the process, even in large numbers. The regime commonly used the word "terror" to describe what they were doing--it was not hidden. He openly disliked peasants and favored policies of intimidation and murder. He had no interest in democracy, and launched the October Revolution before the awaited constituent assembly could meet. A lot of people saw him for who he was, and there were assassination attempts, including a very serious one where he was shot in the neck. He responded with an "orgy of revenge violence throughout the major cities and towns of Russia" (417). Lenin never actually committed violence himself but he ordered it constantly and forcefully.
One point that Sebestyen repeats is that Lenin survived for many years in exile and then got back into Russia because rich people supported him and his cause financially. It's amazing. One could argue that Lenin never would have gotten anywhere without the rich people he hated. Meanwhile, the Germans intentionally let him back into Russia to sow chaos, not knowing they were creating a monster.
For many years, the United States and then U.S. banks were deep in the loan business in Latin America. It's a great setup. You loan money to less developed countries and they often have a difficult time repaying on time. To ensure repayment, you loan them more money. As long as you keep friendly governments in power, you make a ton of money even if their economy falls apart.
It is unclear how much support Rumbo Libertad enjoys in Venezuela. Henrique Capriles, one of the key leaders of its mainstream opposition, recently dismissed it as part of “a small extremist sect” that was intent on replacing Venezuela’s red dictatorship with one of another hue. Such groups were noisy on social media but did little to help feed starving Venezuelans, Capriles complained.
But Navarro does appear to have the ear of Brazil’s next president and his influential son, Eduardo, a 34-year-old politician who is positioning himself as Brazil’s answer to Jared Kushner – and recently travelled to the US to meet with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Steve Bannon.A few thoughts. First, this is the worst possible solution. It will lead to deaths, suffering, and perhaps even some sort of new dictatorship. I shudder to think of what such a group would do if it actually held power. It would need to use a lot of force to overcome its illegitimacy.
“If they imagine that somehow the Brazilian armed forces under the direction of President Bolsonaro are going to change the government in Caracas, it reveals a complete lack of understanding of the military challenges that would present,” he said, pointing to the vast areas of jungle and savanna between Brazil’s northern border and Venezuela’s capital.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a press release today about the border wall.
The right in Latin America is diverse but one commonality is suspicion of migration. Sebastián Piñera joined Jair Bolsonaro in refusing to sign the United Nations pact on migration. From the Interior Ministry:
"Our position is clear," he said. "We have said that migration is not a human right. Countries have a right to determine the entry requirements for foreign citizens."This is disingenuous because the pact (full text here) explicitly stipulates that states have that right. And it is non-binding.
The Global Compact reaffirms the sovereign right of States to determine their national migration policy and their prerogative to govern migration within their jurisdiction, in conformity with international law. Within their sovereign jurisdiction, States may distinguish between regular and irregular migration status, including as they determine their legislative and policy measures for the implementation of the Global Compact, taking into account different national realities, policies, priorities and requirements for entry, residence and work, in accordance with international law;
“Immigration shouldn’t be treated as a global issue, but rather in accordance with the reality of each country.”Not a global issue? Where do you think the migrants are coming from, genius? And again, the pact explicitly allows each country to sort out its own reality while recognizing that by definition it is a global problem.
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