The Larreta Doctrine

Max Paul Friedman and Tom Long have an opinion piece in Uruguay's El Diario on the Larreta Doctrine. Not familiar with it? That wouldn't be surprising because it's not brought up very often. But it was an effort by former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Eduardo Rodríguez Larreta in 1945 to get Latin American states to collectively protect democracy and human rights. Here is a longer English-language analysis they wrote for Perspectives on Politics.

They argue that there are three key points to Larreta's case:

1. Human rights and democracy are inseparable, and violations are a threat to regional peace.

2. There should be precommitments with regional mechanisms that focus on popular sovereignty. Basically, by definition violation of democracy (e.g. a coup) would be a negation of sovereignty.

3. The United States must commit to working multilaterally.

The idea is that given the current ramping up of rhetoric against Venezuela in particular, but also the erosion of democracy elsewhere, it is worth reconsidering valuable ideas from the past that emphasize collective non-military solutions to crises surrounding human rights and democracy. Otherwise the region seems largely stuck.

The devil is in the details. Aside from the question of sovereignty, the really big challenge here is defining democracy or human rights violation. Latin America has never found consensus about either (or anything, for that matter). For example, when a political figure is arrested in any given country, the region is split about whether that individual is a political prisoner or a golpista who deserved it. When a president is removed in an irregular manner--Zelaya, Dilma, Lego--there is no regional consensus on whether a coup took place. And if you cannot agree on basic concepts, then you cannot agree on what action to take or whether to take any action at all.

That doesn't mean it's not worth trying, though. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has wholeheartedly rejected the third point. "America First" is by definition a unilateral approach to foreign policy. But go check out their arguments--they're worth reading and pondering.

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Uruguay and China

China's state news agency touts its economic ties to Uruguay. Unwittingly, it also provides an excellent summation of dependency theory.

China is now the largest buyer of Uruguay's wood, soy and cellulose. It also imports frozen fish, leather, meat, gemstones and dairy products from Uruguay. 

Meanwhile, Uruguay imports trucks, motor vehicles, computers, screens and telephones from China.

You export primary products and import finished goods. It seems OK when commodity prices are high, not so much when they drop. I've written about the great Chinese commodity grab a number of times before.

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Quote of the day: Guatemala

From the New York Times Magazine:

"I don't know that he took their money, but he certainly took their girls."

--the Chair of the UN Special Committee on Palestine, regarding how Israelis worked to get the favor of the Guatemalan committee member in 1947.

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Arias and the Uruguayan military

Abigail Poe at Just the Facts writes about Oscar Arias' letter to Uruguayan President José Mujica telling him to abolish the military.  From the letter:

Uruguay does not need an army. Its internal security can be handled by the police, and its national security gains nothing from a military that will never be more powerful than its neighbors, which are also democracies.

I agree with this 100%, but I wonder what Uruguayans think, as this seems to be some major meddling, and Arias takes the added step of addressing it to "Pepe the Revolutionary."

It's also worth noting the context in which last year Uruguayans voted down a referendum that would have repealed the amnesty.  Perhaps Arias only wants to generate debate, but Mujica cannot wave a wand and do something that most people would oppose.

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Elections in Uruguay: blasts from the past

The Uruguayan presidential election will go to a runoff because no candidate received a majority. However, Frente Amplio candidate José Mújica received just under 50% so will be the next president barring an utter collapse.

Much is being made of the fact that Mújica is an aged ex-Tupamaro guerrilla. Of more interest to me, however, is the generational angle and the fact that Luis Alberto Lacalle came in second. He is a former president (1990-1995), following that persistent pattern of Latin American presidents retiring for a while and then trying to come back (for example, right now we have Oscar Arias in Costa Rica and Alan García in Peru). The other candidate was Pedro Bordaberry, son of a former president and dictator.

A runoff between Mújica and Lacalle is a time warp. From a policy perspective, this is not likely to matter much. Either candidate would not change the popular policy direction of current president Vázquez (see Boz's discussion).

Lacalle is like Eduardo Frei in Chile, trying to convince voters why he is still relevant (and he convinced less than a third). And now he will be in a runoff with someone who became a guerrilla when the Cuban revolution was still new.

Not exactly inspiring.

Uruguayans did even more voting related the past, rejecting the repeal of the amnesty. That alone merits more attention than I have time to give it, since (also as in Chile) the dictatorship is now so far in the past but the amnesty remains.

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Arms purchases in Latin America

I am glad a Latin American president is talking about this. From the joint press conference with Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez and Secretary Clinton:

PRESIDENT VAZQUEZ: (Via interpreter) With respect to the arms race, not only is our country worried, but we have already expressed time and again our position against an arms race. We believe that it is quite inconvenient to the region to devote such significant economic resources toward purchasing arms. And – but it’s a fact, and we can’t deny it, that the countries are buying weapons.

And to make things worse, our region is the region that has the worst distribution of wealth. So with – under those conditions, it is still worse to be devoting those resources to weapons. South America has millions of people living in poverty, and there are thousands of children that die across Latin America and South America because of child diarrhea or diseases that could be prevented.

So because of all these reasons, all that should lead the governments of South America to decide to devote more money to promote health, to promote education and education to prevent diseases; to spend that money, instead of spending it in weapons, spending it in housing, good housing for our people, and to further deepen investment, especially in the field of education.

So we should devote our energies and resources to fight against the real scourges of our societies, that are drug – such as drug trafficking and terrorism. That would be certainly a much better use of our resources.

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Obstacles to Latin American unity

Yesterday I wrote about the lefts in Latin America, and here a story that shows a) how hard it is to lump "leftist" countries together; and b) how hard it is to achieve unity (not to mention integration) in Latin America. The Uruguayan government says it will bail on UNASUR if Néstor Kirchner is made its Secretary-General during the current summit taking place in Brazil. The Secretary-General must receive unanimous approval, but apparently there was a move by Argentina to get those rules changed.

Bold move by Uruguay. It might just work, since no one wants UNASUR to flounder out of the gates. On top of the entire pulp mill saga, I can only imagine what the Kirchners are saying about Uruguay these days.

Update: Alex Sanchez and Andrea Moretti at The Council on Hemispheric Affairs have an interesting take on the issue, arguing that Kirchner is facing resistance elsewhere as well.

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Operation Condor

J. Patrice McSherry, “Death Squads as Parallel Forces: Uruguay, Operation Condor, and the United States.” Journal of Third World Studies 24, 1 (Spring 2007): 13-52.

The article doesn’t have a formal abstract, but the general argument can be summed up from a paragraph early on in the article:

The article argues that the death squads that emerged in Uruguay and elsewhere in Latin America in this era were parallel forces created and used by states as counterinsurgency tools. They resulted from a strategic and calculated choice by state elites seeking to neutralize social sectors that were demanding a fairer distribution of economic resources and political power. The death squads were instruments used to command and confrol civilian populations through the use of terror, and were part and parcel of unconventional warfare strategies and national security doctrine condoned by elite groups as well as Washington. Most importantly, the system of state terror was international, sustained by arms, technology, finances, and other forms of support from Washington and the collusion of Latin American military regimes, united in the inter-American military system as well as the covert Operation Condor. Inspired by a national security doctrine that legitimized harsh and illegal methods against "internal enemies," U.S-backed counterinsurgents built a parallel apparatus, a set of invisible structures and forces of the state, in order to eliminate political opposition while ensuring deniability. The case of Uruguay reveals the tight interconnections among U.S. military and police training programs, inter-American counterinsurgency strategies, right-wing death squads, and the Condor system of cross-border political repression. Theoretically, the case of Uruguay sheds light on why, and when, states form death squads.

This article builds on the framework she used in her book, which I reviewed here (and a formal review will be coming out at some point in Journal of Latin American Studies) but focuses specifically on the Uruguayan case. Uruguay often receives less attention, but its dictatorship was exceptionally brutal. The Uruguayan case is notable as well for the fact that construction of the parallel state began even before the 1973 coup.

Obviously, there there are tons of books and articles on the general topic of Cold War dictatorships in Latin America. For me, the key insight here is to view U.S. policy, Latin American dictatorships, and Operation Condor all as elements of a parallel state, linked to the government but operating according to its own rules. It’s not simply a matter of disparate organizations influencing each other, but rather all fit together organically. They come together when threats from below are perceived to be strong (and getting ever stronger) which also justifies the tactics used by parallel forces.

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Uruguay and nonalignment, one year later

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about how Uruguay seemed to be part of a new non-aligned movement. Not much has changed since then, which is all good for Uruguay.

Hugo Chávez was just there visiting, and announced that Uruguay would have continued access to Venezuelan oil and gas reserves. He also discussed how to help the country expand its one oil refinery. (There was also the obligatory insult, saying Bush is Dracula—I don’t think I’ve heard that particular reference before). In return, Uruguay offered its support for Venezuela’s entrance into Mercosur, which is being blocked by the Brazilian and Paraguayan legislatures. Meanwhile, on Friday the Uruguayan ambassador to Cuba talked about the relationship between the two countries are at their “best moment in history.”

Yet at the same time, in the first half of 2007 Uruguay was the fastest growing market in Latin America for U.S. goods. President Bush was in Uruguay earlier this year, discussing free trade and investment with President Vázquez.

I know that the Frente Amplio is split on whether to pursue a free trade agreement with the U.S., but I would imagine Vázquez can use that to his advantage when talking to U.S. officials. For now, he gets attention from Chávez and more access for Uruguayan goods in the United States (even, at least for now, without signing an FTA).

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Uruguay and a new Non-Aligned Movement

The NYT has an interesting article about how Uruguay is being courted heavily both by Venezuela and the United States, each of which is showering it with money and development projects. I’ve mentioned before how the left in Uruguay, even within the Frente Amplio government, is split. At the moment, the president is interested both in a free trade agreement with the U.S. and a closer relationship with Venezuela.

In this context, what really struck me is that the Non-Aligned Movement is currently meeting in Havana, but since the Cold War has been over for so long, it raises the question of what countries they are seeking to be non-aligned from.

In the case of Latin America, I’d say “non-aligned” would mean independent both from the U.S. and Venezuela, which are the only two countries constantly jockeying for position, seeking military advantage, doling out favors, calling each other evil, etc. This article would suggest that Uruguay is doing an excellent job of gaining benefits from both, while refusing to get sucked in too far.

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An FTA with Uruguay?

On the heels of my post about the contradictions of anti-U.S. rhetoric and expanded U.S. trade in Venezuela, From Uruguay discuss how the Frente Amplio government (which was supposedly part if the "leftist wave" in Latin America) is schizophrenic in its discussions about an FTA with the U.S. President Vasquez is in favor, but his cabinet is split, and it’s never quite clear whether negotiations are truly going forward.

Yet again, this highlights the fact that the “left” in Latin America is far more complex than portrayed, even within countries. I know I harp on this, but I can't help it.

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