Colombia in the OECD

Colombia joined the OECD, which was news I hadn't even noticed. Sara Danish and Norberto Martinez write about it at Global Americans.

Membership carries real weight and gaining entry requires more than currying favor with a few key “sponsors.” Beginning in 2013, Colombia underwent technical reviews by 23 OECD committees spanning topics from trade to environment to public governance and justice, a process that prompted various reform measures, including the 2014 Transparency and Access to Information Law and 2011 Anti-Corruption statutes to prevent, investigate, and punish corruption. 

I won't argue with the notion that it's positive, but I do wonder how much. Perhaps it is possible (though not measurable) to say a country would be worse off without it, but Mexico became a member in 1994 and the rule of law has suffered terribly since then (the 2019 OECD report on Mexico discussed failure a lot). Chile joined in 2010, and the past decade has seen protests, corruption charges, and other problems. Having a big USAID presence doesn't necessarily make anything better, either.

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Chile and the U.S. Deal With Covid-19 Similarly

Bloomberg takes a really interesting look at Covid-19 in Chile, which has been hit hard. The bottom line is that the "stay at home" message is an inherently privileged one. 

What went wrong in Chile goes to the heart of the debate over lockdowns, which health experts now acknowledge work well for the haves but not for the have-nots. In the end, Chile’s virus fight seems to have fallen victim to the same factors that sparked crises in other emerging markets -- poverty, overcrowding and a massive off-the-books workforce. Staying home for long periods, the world has learned rather painfully, isn’t a real option for many.

I see so many parallels to the United States, where Latinos are disproportionately affected by Covid-19.  The affluent can stay home and still get paid, but that is a privilege that relatively few enjoy. Virtue-signalling messages and hashtags about staying home mask the true magnitude of the problem. 

Nonetheless, the common U.S. response of simply reopening doesn't address the problem either. People feel they can't stay home even if they're sick; too few people have access to affordable healthcare; people who go to work while schools are online have no childcare. The list goes on.

The Charlotte Spanish-language newspaper La Noticia recently ran a story about how Latinos are the hardest hit, yet the state has no strategy at all. Same problem in Chile:

“If the government is going to make decisions about a world it doesn’t know, then it should include people from that world in the decision-making process,” said Diego Pardow, executive president of the Espacio Público think tank. “The problem with this government is that it just surrounds itself with its own people.”

Governors in the U.S. get a lot of attention, but it's been on "re"opening and not on helping those who were always open. Those of us who work from our laptops tend to think the supermarkets should have all the same products as usual. But people are still picking, packing, shipping, etc. We hear news stories about, say, a meatpacking plant closing, and maybe we're pleased. We don't think about what the laid off workers--both sick and well--do afterward.

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Chile's Continuing Protests

Pablo Rubio has a brief post at AULA Blog on why the Chilean protests are continuing. I also talked with Pablo about the protests on my podcast in December. Anyway, I found this part especially interesting:

A prestigious Chilean polling firm, Cadem, reported two weeks ago that 63 percent of the Chilean population approved of the protests and – importantly – 80 percent believe that Chile will be a better country after this critical situation. In any case, the plebiscite in April will take a place in an unstable context, with an uncertain outcome. For the Piñera administration, the challenges seem unlikely to abate, and pressures may surge when the school holidays end in March.

So there is some optimism! In an era where presidents and the public alike are looking to the military at uncomfortable rates, it is nice to see some confidence in institutions to resolve problems even at a time when confidence in the government is low.

On the other hand, this sets a high bar. People are counting on the plebiscite and eventual new constitution to correct problems they've identified. What happens if many people feel they are not corrected even after all that?

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Lessons For the Democratic Party From Latin America

Five years ago, I wrote an op-ed for Global Americans about the lessons Chile could offer the Venezuelan opposition for winning elections. Rereading it, I am struck by how it applies to the Democratic Party in the United States this year. Here were the takeaways:

1. Agree on a coalition leader.
2. Explain why the coalition excludes extremism.
3. Avoid personal attacks.

In the U.S., #1 refers to backing whoever becomes candidate, even if that person does not align perfectly with your policy preferences. This bedeviled the Venezuelan opposition back when winning elections was actually a possibility.

Now, #2 does not pertain quite so much to the U.S. because even Bernie Sanders' ideas are not radical compared to socialists in plenty of other countries. The Chileans excluded the Communists, and that just isn't relevant here. It might actually be more about explaining how your policies aren't actually as extreme as portrayed.

Finally, #3 gets to the fact that criticizing the incumbent better not get in the way of presenting a coherent and positive vision. The Chilean case sounds familiar:

The campaign to unseat Pinochet focused on the promise of a more positive future and incorporated criticism of human rights abuses into that theme. The tone of the campaign was mature, measured and optimistic. That stood in contrast to the dictatorship’s insistence that a “No” vote was the same as voting for communism.

Michelle Obama famously said the party should "go high." The idea is to stick to your message, not theirs, and that message needs to be inclusive.

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Chileans Are Not Happy and the Polls Show It

A new poll is out from Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) in Chile. Chileans are not positive about the economy, but not entirely negative either. They used to trust the military and the police, but no more. Now they don't trust much of anything (the media gets the highest, but not terribly high). 72% have no stated political identification, the highest ever. A majority supported the October 2019 protests, but not an overwhelming majority (55%). And no, they don't think the protests were foreign-inspired. 67% support writing a new constitution. Sebastián Piñera has a 6% approval rate and an 82% disapproval, which might be the worst I have ever seen in Latin America.

What you see in the numbers is that Chileans see their country in a rut, not stagnant but not improving. They see the new constitution as a way to improve things a bit at least.

The good news is that the belief in democracy over authoritarianism is the highest it's ever been.

Especially these days, this is something we should celebrate and not take for granted.

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Podcast Episode 69: Understanding the Chilean Crisis

In Episode 69 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast I talk with Pablo Rubio, a historian who is currently Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University/Investigador de la Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile. He researches the political transition in Chile and U.S.-Chilean relations. We discussed the long-term impact of the transition, the possibilities of constitutional reform, police violence, and even the right's belief that Venezuela is behind the protests.

You can find this podcast at iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts can be found. If there is anyplace I've missed, please contact me. Subscribe and rate, even if just to tell me I am a crazed leftist professor.

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Chile's Economic Legacy

I recommend Paul Posner's take on the Chilean economy and how it left many Chileans behind. I do think, though, that we need to be careful about referring quite so much to Augusto Pinochet.

Chile’s current constitution, which dates back to 1980, was written under Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the dictator who ruled the country from 1973 to 1990. Pinochet is reviled for overseeing several thousand extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances. He was arrested in 1998 on charges of crimes against humanity but died before being tried. 

But he also implemented the free-market reforms that are often credited for Chile’s celebrated economic dynamism. After growing at an average of 4.7% a year, Chile’s economy today is nine times larger than it was in 1990.

All of this is 100% accurate. But 1990 is a generation ago. Since then, Chile had a load of center or center-left presidents. We should not leapfrog them as we lay blame for Chile's political and economic systems.

In other words, this isn't just Pinochet's legacy. It is the Concertación's legacy, even the Socialist Party's legacy. They had years and years to make a dent, and they failed. I wrote all the time about how Bachelet got lumped together with the "pink tide" even though she presided over and did not much change the most capitalist system in the hemisphere.

Yes, Pinochet created the constitution and the economy, but the center-left accepted them and worked within them. As my friend and colleague Silvia Borzutzky wrote in the book we co-edited in 2010:

The end of the Pinochet regime failed to produce dramatic transformations in Chile's political economy. The Concertación governments enhanced the market approach while introducing modifications in the social policy area (p. 88).

Further:

Although all Concertación administrations have increased spending in the social policy area, the market model that inspired those policies was not modified (pp. 89-90).

So I agree with everything Paul writes in his article, but this isn't just about Pinochet. It's about the presidents and parties who did very little to alter what he created.

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Sorting Out the Chilean Protests

The social and political explosion in Chile seems on the one hand to be so simple. Academics and activists have been arguing for a long time that the economic model generates inequality, and the political parties have been in disfavor for quite a while.

Lucas Perelló notes that Chile is unequal, economic elites are grabbing whatever they can, and the political establishment doesn't care. Patricio Navia points to "high dependence on copper, high levels of inequality and an increasingly unresponsive and corrupt political system." Pamela Constable, who has reported on Chile for many years and co-authored a very good book on it, calls it "a democracy that has restored political freedom but failed to meet rising expectations of economic fairness." Irina Domurath and Stefano Palestini Céspedes make a similar argument: "While the immediate trigger of the protests was an increase in subway prices, underlying the unrest is a deep social discontent over the results of decades of neoliberal policies."

But none of this explains timing. Protesters call for a constituent assembly, but that's not new either. The 1980 constitution has long been a bone of contention given its authoritarian origin (Google Jaime Guzmán to get a feel for that). Student protests have been happening for years, but not like this. The subway fare increase was a few cents, but it was a straw that broke the camel's back. The difficult is understanding when the camel's had enough, so to speak. From a comparative perspective, this is a huge question.

Therefore we move to solutions. Interestingly, a new constitution won't resolve the economic issues, but it would address the military response. This isn't likely any attack on capitalism per se, but rather a demand for greater attention to working class problems, public transportation being one of many. At least Sebastiám Piñera appears to have changed course, though new elite faces in the cabinet don't necessarily mean real change. There are comparisons to 2013 Brazil, but we need to be careful about that because the political context is quite different: Chile has experienced electoral shifts from left to right and back again, whereas Dilma was president after years of PT rule. And the corruption aspect is less evident in Chile than it was in Brazil. But Piñera needs to put together a broad-based group that will start proposing economic solutions.

Convincing Chileans that you actually care about their problems is no small project. Hopefully this just doesn't devolve into arguments about "populism." Do that too much and you'll end up with more protests.

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Mixing Military and Police Functions in Chile

The Chilean army is at the northern border to fight drug trafficking. They will "track and identify criminals."

El Comando Conjunto Norte, dependiente del Estado Mayor Conjunto de Chile dirige la coordinación de las distintas capacidades de las Fuerzas Armadas con las fuerzas policiales. Los militares prestan el apoyo logístico y tecnológico para rastrear e identificar a los criminales, mientras los elementos de las fuerzas policiales son responsables de aprehenderlos.

Augusto Varas, who was at the forefront of publishing on Chilean civil-military relations in the 1980s, published an interesting article at the Fundación EQUITAS site on the military and internal order under Sebastián Piñera. This isn't just about drugs--it's about concern over what the military mission should be. In July he decreed the military would become part of the fight against drugs at the border, even in May he had said this wasn't a it was trained for.

Varas notes how expanding the military's mission beyond its profession has been a hallmark of Piñera's two terms, and goes hand-in-hand with a market orientation that sees the military budget as something to be used for whatever the government wants rather than strategically constructing the military's proper mission and leaving other pressing problems--climate change, fires, earthquakes, drugs, etc.--to other state agencies.

Further, and more troubling, it gives the military an internal orientation and the mission to keep internal order, which is consistently a source of violence.

Así, el Decreto 265 es una mala idea y debe ser abandonada. Con malos y peligrosos resultados en otros países, tiende a consolidar un espacio en el que se diluyen las fronteras entre lo militar y lo civil, lo nacional y lo extranjero, lo castrense y lo político, lo republicano y lo autocrático.

The same goes in the United States, where the military should not be involved in patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.

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Podcast Episode 66: Chilean Terrorism & the Ghosts of Sheridan Circle

In Episode 66 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast, I talk with Alan McPherson, Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. He has published a ton on U.S.-Latin American relations, especially as it relates to intervention. In particular, he has a brand new book Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet’s Terror State to Justice. That assassination took place September 21, 1976, almost exactly 43 years ago. I highly recommend the book, which reads like a thriller. Here is the review I wrote of it on this blog.

Go order a copy of the book at the University of North Carolina Press or at Amazon.

If you're going to be in DC on October 1, then go see him in person!

You can find this podcast at iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts can be found. If there is anyplace I've missed, please contact me. Subscribe and rate, even if just to tell me I am wrong about everything.

Update (9/20/19) Go check out his op-ed in The Washington Post.

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Alan McPherson's Ghosts of Sheridan Circle

I had the privilege of reading a draft of Alan McPherson's Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet's Terror State to Justice, which has now just come out. You should but it and read it.

It is the story of the Pinochet government's car bomb assassination of former Allende cabinet member Orlando Letelier and an American, Ronni Moffitt, in Washington DC. John Dinges and Saul Landau wrote a good book on it in 1980, but obviously a wealth of new declassified sources have emerged since then. McPherson dives deep into archives, conducts interviews (including with Letelier's widow Isabel), newspapers, and secondary sources.

The significance of the book is twofold. First, it provides an accessible yet extensively researched account of a particularly important moment in the Cold War, where a foreign country made a terrorist attack on US soil.

Second, the book shows how the Letelier-Moffitt case fits within the broader context of U.S.-Chilean relations, as it had a tremendous impact on U.S. policy and attitude toward the Pinochet government, as well as on human rights law more generally. I am not so sure it "brought Pinochet's terror state to justice," but the investigations that occurred did accelerate the push for justice within Chile (incidentally, Michael Townley, who placed the bomb, was convicted, then talked, and now is in witness protection).

It's highly readable and entirely accessible even if you have no background knowledge of Chile or the general context at all. It is a case of slow-moving justice against petty and murderous terrorists.

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End of Chile's Copper Law

J.C. Arancibia has the details on the end of Chile's copper law. This is long overdue. It was a 1958 law, later reformed by (but not created by) Augusto Pinochet* to guarantee 10% of copper revenue to the Chilean armed forces.

I followed it closely while researching and writing my dissertation, followed by subsequent publications. It was a major way for the military to evade civilian control and remain very well-funded, even to the alarm of Chile's neighbors. I started my fieldwork almost 25 years ago, which gives you a sense of how difficult it remained to get enough support from the right to pass it. Presidents continually tried and failed. There was a big push in 2011-2012 that I blogged and published about, but it fizzled.

It's good that it is gone, but it should also serve as a reminder that antiquated laws still pervade the military institutions of the hemisphere and give them power and autonomy that undermines democracy.

*Ironically, Salvador Allende's nationalization of copper is precisely what allowed Pinochet the ability to increase the total amount since revenue went through CODELCO, the state copper company.

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Why Did Fidel Castro Endorse Salvador Allende?

Rafael Pedemonte, "The Meeting of Revolutionary Roads: Chilean-Cuban Interactions, 1959–1970," Hispanic American Historical Review (2019) 99 (2): 275-302.

Abstract:

Fidel Castro's endorsement of Salvador Allende's revolutionary program in August 1970 was determined by global transformations and changing priorities within both Chile and Cuba. Since 1968, favorable prospects for the Left encouraged Havana to abandon its radicalism premised on the inevitability of armed struggle. Prior to 1970 Chile gradually promoted rapprochement with the socialist world and lessened Cuba's hemispheric isolation, imposed by the Organization of American States. It is within this framework that the meeting between Cuba's and Chile's revolutions has to be understood. Allende, knowing that Castro's support would push the radical Left to side with Popular Unity in the 1970 elections, sent a delegation to convince the Cubans that socialism could be achieved by peaceful means. These events and strategic discussions within Chile and Cuba reveal how the history of the Left needs to be placed in a broad context defined by the complex unfolding of domestic, hemispheric, and international transformations shaping Latin America in the 1960s.

It's a look at the local and global contexts that framed the Cuban decision to embrace Salvador Allende's peace road to socialism, which previously Fidel Castro said was impossible ("electoral opium" and all that). For example:

--The USSR was threatening Cuba if it didn't stop promoting revolution in Latin America, so this was a way to smooth things over.
--Fidel Castro was isolated in the region and wanted to expand trade and other ties. Allende's decision to restore diplomatic relations was a critical starting point.
--The Chilean Social Democrats started that process earlier, so Chile was a propitious place for Fidel to acknowledge political change that did not overthrow the existing order.
--Salvador Allende need the endorsement to get the radical left to vote for him.

Fidel and Allende needed each other:

The encounter between the Cuban Revolution and the Chilean road to socialism in 1970 was not just a response to the contemporary conjuncture but also the fruit of a long-term evolution rooted in previous developments and molded by a complex set of factors.

This is also a reminder that even radical movements can exhibit strong pragmatic impulses. I've made the case for some time that even leftist Latin American governments are more pragmatic than typically portrayed.

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Getting Young People to Vote in Chile

Chile switched from compulsory voting to voluntary in 2011. Claudio Fuentes writes about the support to switch back again. Previously, the vote was required but only if you registered. Younger people therefore stopped registering in the first place. The electorate therefore got older. Now a poll shows support within Congress to make that switch back. That support does not currently seem to be reflected in the general population.

He argues that the current system is worse. Turnout dropped as soon as the system changed. Therefore major decisions are being made by fewer and fewer.

I wrote about this back in 2011. There was hope that young people would start voting once they were registered automatically, but as Claudio points out, that just didn't happen.

His conclusion?

Pero difícilmente las cosas cambiarán. Como resulta altamente impopular retornar al voto obligatorio, ningún sector político se atreverá a plantear esta reforma. El pragmatismo dominará por sobre las convicciones y, mientras tanto, se seguirá vaciando el sistema democrático. Cada vez un menor número de ciudadanos y ciudadanas activos votarán por una élite que gobernará para los muchos.  El gobierno de los pocos, para los pocos y por los pocos será el resultado sub-óptimo de aquella reforma.

The problem here is that young Chileans really don't want to vote. If there is a penalty for not voting, they won't register. If they are automatically registered and it's voluntary, they won't go to the polls. I suppose if you put those together by making registration automatic and the vote required, then they're more likely to participate. When teaching Intro to Comparative Politics, I would often have discussions about whether forcing people to vote when they don't want to is democratic.

So we have to balance the empirical (you do see turnout increase considerably with compulsory voting) with the philosophical (is forced turnout democratic?). You can argue that voluntary voting is more democratic, but if it leads to dominance by only one group, that is clearly less democratic. Meanwhile, compulsory voting may seem less democratic even though it leads to a more democratic outcome (participation by the many rather than the few).

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Rejecting Immigration in Latin America

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;

In other words, arguing that the pact erodes sovereignty is a lie. It is simply not true. Bolsonaro's incoming Foreign Minister added to the absurdity:

“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.

Not all presidents of the right rejected the pact but we've already seen Mauricio Macri targeting Bolivian immigrants. This is where the right leans on the topic and it is starting to worsen.

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Chileans Want Out of Venezuela

The Chilean government is sending an Air Force plane to get hundreds of Chileans in Venezuela who want out. They've already rescued Haitians from there. The idea is to get people who do not have the means to leave themselves, though it's unclear how that is defined or checked. I can't get the iconic image of the last people trying to leave Vietnam on a helicopter off the top of a building out of my mind.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is retrieving Venezuelans in Chile, who initially fled but then could not find work or for whatever reason do not want to stay in Chile. We do need to put that in context, because around 177,000 Venezuelans arrived in Chile last year alone and only about 200 want to go back. So that's more of a PR thing (the capitalists lied to you!) than reality. The Venezuelan government has been doing this on and off all year.

If you take a step back, it's just madness. Way back in 1979, sociologist Saskia Sassen, who has published a ton on migration, wrote the following about Venezuela in International Migration Review:

Since 1973 there has been a pronounced increase in the numbers of permanent residents, registered entries of foreigners, naturalizations, and legalizations of undocumented workers. By October 1977, the total number of foreigners in Venezuela with residence permits had reached almost 1.2 million in a total population of 13 million. This figure is quite high considering that, in 1961, after a decade of massive immigration, there were only about half a million such foreigners and that by 1971 their number was only slightly higher. Although the 1960s saw the addition of almost 80,000 foreigners, there was also a loss of 57,800 persons with permanent residence permits. With the exception of 1969, each year of the 1960s recorded a loss of permanent residents. The reversal of this trend toward large increases in the number of permanent and temporary residence permits granted occurred over a rather short period of time, doubling the resident population between 1971 and 1977.

Venezuela was always known as a haven for those being persecuted by dictatorships. But it was also a magnet for immigrants because of economic growth and labor scarcity. For a long time, it was the most desirable location for Latin America. Everything now is literally the exact opposite.

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Trump Tariffs Take Hold in Mexico and That's Good for Chile

John, a former student of mine who has now lived in Mexico City for years, emailed me about a personal effect of tariffs. In response to Donald Trump's trade war, Mexico imposed tariffs on apples. Mexico's choices of tariffs were specifically aimed at conservative rural America where Trump support was highest.

John noticed how the price of the Washington apples he normally bought had shot up. Turns out, though, that Mexico also has a free trade agreement with Chile. Chilean apples were cheaper, so for the first time ever he bought them.

But the story doesn't quite end there, because some Chilean apples were Del Monte, whereas others were Frusan, a Chilean company. So if you bought red, you were supporting Chilean growers and a U.S. company, and with yellow you were supporting only Chile.

U.S. growers lose in all scenarios, as then of course do the workers. Mexico is the top export destination for U.S. apples, so the 20% tariff hurts a lot. It is not yet clear whether the tentative new agreement fixes that. The only bright side for the industry is that the 2018 pre-tariff exports were higher than normal so they had a cushion. Growers are still concerned:

“The apple harvest is just kicking off across America and that’s normally a season of enthusiasm,” U.S. Apple president and CEO Jim Bair said in the release. “But this year the impact of disputes with Mexico, India, Canada and China, our No. 1, 2, 3 and 6 export markets, will be felt deeply across the industry. Our growers want Congress to know the damage being caused in their jurisdictions by these trade disputes.”

This is a nice boost for Chile, which to this point barely registered in the Mexican apple market. Chile exports apples all over the world (India is its largest market) and I would imagine that a new market is entirely welcome.

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Chile's Trade With China

While Donald Trump was attacking free trade in 2017, China and Chile were updating their free trade agreement, originally signed in 2005. Combined with the Trump Administration's trade war with China, we are seeing the following:

--Greater wine exports to China

--Greater, walnut, prune, and blueberry exports to China

--Greater pork exports to China (a product that does not typically come to mind for Chile)

--Oregon producers are worried about Chile increasing its blackberry exports to their detriment

--Chilean nectarine exports to China are booming

I could go on and on.

It is also worth noting that China is Chile's main trading partner. 28.5% of Chile's exports go to China, whereas the U.S. accounts for 14.1%. Meanwhile, 24.1% of Chile's exports come from China, versus 17.4% from the U.S.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion, which is now approaching conventional wisdom, that this trade war will increase China's presence in Latin America. How well Latin America and other regions make up for China's disrupted trade is unknown. Another unknown is how Latin America responds to U.S. producers trying to push into new markets after being re-routed away from China. I am sure they are scrambling right now to identify those markets.

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Review of Neruda

I saw the movie Neruda last night. I was asked to give some introductory remarks as part of an international film festival on campus. I talked briefly about Chilean politics mid-century and how political Pablo Neruda was.

The film, in fact, is about how he went into hiding and then exile after the Law for Permanent Defense of Democracy outlawed the Communist Party and led to his arrest warrant. Director Pablo Larraín does not bother with a straight biography, but instead has Neruda leading an introspective police inspector on a wild goose chase, leaving copies of crime novels for him to find, which taunt the inspector since he knows he just missed him. I thought it was great. We see Neruda as an ardent communist who is viewed suspiciously by rank-and-file communists, who don't have access to the movie, women, wine, and influence that he has. But they still respect him for giving them an international voice through poetry. We see Chile struggling with political polarization (there is even a cameo by Augusto Pinochet at a prison camp) and the curious mix within Neruda of political fervor, love of luxury, and creativity. Many scenes bent reality (e.g. urinals inside the Senate chambers where everyone was eating, drinking, and debating?) but it all came together nicely.

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Constitution Problems in Latin America

Niall Ferguson and Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez have a working paper on "disposable" constitutions in Latin America. I always make this case in my Latin American Politics class. Constitutions come and go frequently in the region and often get tied to individual leaders. That undermines long-term stability.

They conclude by arguing that Chile is better off amending the 1980 constitution rather than writing a new one, which Michelle Bachelet is pushing right now and which has been on the agenda for years. It has Pinochet roots. I wrote about this in my first book, with ultraconservative Jaime Guzmán on the commission as intellectual godfather. Put simply, the status quo argument is that despite warts, the country is stable. The change argument is that democracy has been held back because of it. In fact, that constitution was intentionally authoritarian, intended to limit democracy in many ways, so it's easy to make the case that it should reflect the democratic times. The critical issue is not necessarily a new constitution per se, but making sure a new one does not reflect an individual. You want a new one, built with consensus, that lasts. The 1980 constitution was not built on consensus.

But I digress. To be less disposable, constitutions should be de-personalized, set aside from the political projects of specific people. Make the process broad and consensual to the extent possible rather than personalized.

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