Addressing Grade Inflation

UNC Chapel Hill has come up with a new way to address grade inflation. From now on, transcripts will provide additional context:

Next to a student’s grade, the record will include the median grade of classmates, the percentile range and the number of students in the class section. Another new measure, alongside the grade point average, is the schedule point average. A snapshot average grade for a student’s mix of courses, the SPA is akin to a sports team’s strength of schedule. 

The nuanced transcripts will provide more information for graduate schools and employers, who should be better able to judge the difference between good and excellent performance. An A- in psychology might not look so swell when the average grade in the class is an A. On the other hand, an A- in physics looks downright impressive if the class average is a C+.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/30/4106626_at-unc-chapel-hill-the-truth-about.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

My first reaction is that this will look so complicated that employers will continue to look directly at the bottom line, namely overall GPA, to the extent that they scrutinize the transcript at all. It may well be valuable to Ph.D. programs trying to decide who they will admit. Those are, however, a very small minority of all undergraduates.

Plus, it may well have a negative impact, as students will swap stories about what classes have the highest average grades, which of course immediately are more desirable if you want to pad your GPA.

Indiana University used to do it, but stopped because of a software change. Dartmouth College and Cornell University include median grades on transcripts. Cornell used to publish the information online, but quit in 2011 after a study revealed that enrollment spiked in classes with a median grade of A.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/30/4106626_at-unc-chapel-hill-the-truth-about.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

What's striking here is that the universities mentioned in the article seem to have abandoned the idea of asking professors why they are grading so high in the first place. There are vague references to students demanding more, but why not say no? I might be missing something because I rarely have the experience of students believing they deserve a good grade on everything. Yes, I get plenty of "well, I NEED a B in this class," though this is usually born of desperation rather than narcissism.  But this story is aimed at elite universities which seem to have a student body that feels more entitled.

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Why to Support Evo Morales

Tyler Cowen explains why he supports the government of Evo Morales, with nine separate points. Since he is an unabashed free market advocate, it says something that he pokes through the ideology and sees a pragmatic government with broad support that has brought stability to a country that has been lacking it. This in particular should be heeded by those who label Morales as a leftist puppet and yearn for Goni or whomever.

If a Bolivian government is not strongly connected to the country’s indigenous population, that government cannot have a strong base.  Yet it will still work hard to stay in power (#2), which will mean it will resort to oppressions and distortions, with high long-run costs.  Bolivian history has seen an especially large number of coups and attempted coups, illustrating this weakness of the power base, which you can think of as the major problem in historical Bolivian public choice. 

Bolivian elites and the U.S. government alike have pretty well ignored that common sense.

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Lack of Interest in Non-Intervention

I happened to buy a used book online--a 1955 book by Donald Shea, The Calvo Clause, which examines the question of intervention (or, as Calvo argued, absence of intervention) for foreign investors in Latin America (or indeed anywhere).

So this book was published at a time when U.S. policy makers were in a clearly interventionist mood and the Cold War would rage on for several more decades. As it turns out, the particular copy I got was originally from the State Department library (even with a stamp indicating the book was first received 1955 or 1956, I can't quite tell which), then subsequently withdrawn. In the back there is a check-out slip well glued in, with no evidence that there was ever any other previous slip. It was checked out a grand total of one time.

So I guess nobody in the State Department was particularly interested in learning more about Latin American ideas of non-intervention.

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The U.S. Does Not Face Threats in Latin America

Matthew Dickinson makes a very good point about President Obama's foreign policy that I think is relevant to Latin America as well. In sum, so many of the challenges the U.S. faces are not clearly immediate security problems, even though many people want to frame them in that way.

Lacking a consensus regarding the severity of the threat ISIS poses makes it difficult to fashion a coherent foreign policy response. More generally, this has been the problem that has plagued Obama throughout his presidency as he has confronted a series of regional hotspots. As Braumoeller writes, “Sometimes the main actors agree on fundamental values and policies—as the Great Powers did, for a time, during the Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. More often, though, no foreign policy is completely successful. What that means is that, while everyone ends up at least a little bit frustrated, no one is so dissatisfied with the status quo that they are willing to exert the effort that would be needed to change it.” As Braumoeller’s argument implicitly suggests, Obama’s foreign policy appears to lack an underlying principle in large part because the President does not appear convinced that the issues he confronts – the Ukraine separatist movement, the fight in Gaza, and now ISIS’ effort to establish a caliphate – clearly affect U.S. national interests. As Braumoeller puts it, “Simply put, the challenges that remain are not sufficiently compelling to prompt us to attempt them in the face of determined opposition.” The result is a foreign policy that appears reactive because although Obama appears unpersuaded that a stronger foreign policy response is warranted, neither does he feel free to completely disengage from each of these hotspots, particularly when the status quo is in danger of unraveling.

This fits Venezuela--not perfectly but still to a compelling degree. Despite the best efforts of some conservatives to label Chávez/Maduro as regional threats, it's hard to make that stick. Thus far Obama has decided--rightly in my opinion--not to risk alienating Latin American governments and possibly strengthening Maduro by imposing sanctions. This fits the "don't do stupid stuff" idea but also reflects a basic strategic calculation that such actions would very likely cause more harm (both to the U.S. and to Venezuelans) than good. In other words, there is not enough of a U.S. interest involved to take such risks. This then makes his administration appear rudderless.

The same logic pertains to Cuba, China's expanded trade relationships, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. that are commonly listed as threats Obama is ignoring. The fact of the matter is that the United States does not face threats from Latin America, which really should be seen as something to celebrate. There are major problems, to be sure, including the political climate in Venezuela, but the question is how much the U.S. should wield a big stick to deal with it.

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Poverty Reduction in Latin America

The UN Development Program has a new study (seems to be Spanish-only) about the reduction of poverty in Latin America. It is quite optimistic, arguing that the total percentage of people in poverty dropped from 41.7% to 25.3% while the middle class grew from 21.9% to 34.3%.

As is so often the case, the trends defy easy ideological identification. Argentina, for example, is doing quite well.

This is great news. We also need to be cautious. There is some fine print, for example, such as that in seven countries informality exceeds 60%. Plus, as the study (and other studies like it) note, millions of people are at risk of falling back into poverty.

CEPAL has noted that the 2000s were good for poverty reduction, but that the trend had slowed sharply.

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Venezuelans' Views of the United States

According to the Pew Research Center, in the aggregate Venezuelans have a favorable view of the United States and are not so favorable toward Cuba. As you might guess, ideology explains a lot:

This goes along with other studies showing how currently the United States is seen quite favorably across the region. It also shows the skepticism moderates in Venezuela have about Cuba's role in the country.

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Russia's Sanctions and Argentina

As Russia faces sanctions, it is looking to Latin America to fill its food gap. For example, the Russian government predicted confidently that Argentina would double its meat exports to fill the gap. There are various interesting dynamics all coming together.

1. Argentina is especially annoyed at the United States because of the U.S. judge blocking various Argentine efforts to resolve is debt problem. Politically, then, President Fernández sees it as an opportunity to boost domestic support.

2. This is a good way to shore up Argentina's reserves, which are $29 billion versus $53 billion in 2011.

3. At the same time, the Argentine government imposes caps on exports to keep inflation down at home, so even a major beef exporter seems skeptical of the plan to boost exports to Russia. So she can appease exporters but will have to be careful about the economic impact.

Notice I did not mention a threat to the United States, Russian incursion, loss of U.S. influence, or the like. I suspect that such arguments will be coming soon, but I think this situation is best viewed in terms of careful political calculations by Cristina that will be based largely on her own domestic position.

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Politics and Canonizing Oscar Romero

Tim Padgett argues that canonizing Archbishop Oscar Romero will help El Salvador heal its wounds. Mike Allison disagrees.

Recognizing Romero as a saint won't go over too well with those who see him as a communist and as a person who was leading the country down the path of revolution. The Nicaraguan Church's support for the removal of Somoza was important to convincing many Catholics to give the broad-based but Sandinista-led insurgency an opportunity. Romero wasn't at the point of throwing the Catholic Church's support behind the guerrillas (he had just supported the October 15 coup) but there was fear that he would eventually. That was unacceptable.

To the extent that I thought about it at all*, I had typically thought of canonization as a dependent rather than independent variable. In other words, politics is involved in determining whether a given person gets chosen, but being chosen doesn't create any new political effects.

I don't find Padgett's argument compelling at all--will gang members stop fighting because Romero is a saint? There are tons of saints and that hasn't stopped anyone from doing all sorts of horrible things. Following Mike's point, I think it would be interesting to research the political effects of canonization. I would hypothesize that the most likely outcome would be dialogue--it makes people talk about the person and his/her political context. But maybe that also can have a negative effect on deeply divided countries by making one side dig in more.

*not being Catholic, I find the entire process both fascinating and a bit bizarre.

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Venezuela and CITGO

Bloomberg takes a highly critical look at Venezuela's efforts to sell CITGO, arguing it is yet another sign of financial problems. But this is what caught my eye:

An official for the state oil producer known as PDVSA, who asked not to be identified because he isn’t authorized to speak publicly, declined to comment on the potential divestment of the company’s Citgo assets.

So a PDVSA official isn't authorized even to say that he or she won't comment.

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Fidel, Maduro, and Health Care

Nicolás Maduro came to visit Fidel Castro, who then wrote about the meeting in Granma. He dedicated a big chunk of it to Gaza, which included one particularly interesting discussion about Venezuela is sending equipment. I am trying to decide whether I am misunderstanding it.

Desde entonces los valientes pilotos venezolanos transportan su carga salvadora, que permite salvar madres, niños y adultos de la muerte. Leía hoy sin embargo un despacho de la agencia AP procedente de Venezuela, en el que se publican declaraciones de la “Asociación de Clínicas y Hospitales de Venezuela, que agrupa” a “centros de salud privados del país”, pidiendo al Gobierno que se declare una “emergencia humanitaria” para hacer frente a la “escasez de insumos, medicamentos, equipos médicos y repuestos” que, aseguran, “ponen en riesgo la vida de la población.” 

¡Qué enorme casualidad! Esta demanda se realiza precisamente cuando en la Franja de Gaza se produce el genocidio yanki-israelita de la zona más pobre y superpoblada de esa comunidad que ha vivido allí a lo largo de milenios.

Eso es lo que hace tan meritoria la conducta de Maduro y los militares y especialistas venezolanos que llevan a cabo tan ejemplar conducta ante la tragedia del pueblo hermano de Palestina. 

I am just trying to get the logic here. Fidel is referring to this AP story, which focuses on the serious shortages of medical supplies in Venezuela. The story focuses on private clinics. That, he says, coincides with shortages in Gaza, which is being attacked by Israel, backed by the United States. This, he concludes, shows how wonderful Maduro's efforts are to help out Palestinians.

My immediate reaction was that Fidel was saying that Palestinians deserved Venezuelan medicine more than Venezuelans who choose to go to private clinics. I guess because he assumes Venezuelans who go to private clinics are wealthier and therefore fascists who should be ignored?

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Another Losing Latin America Argument

I'm quoted in this Excélsior column, apparently from my blog. What's interesting, though, is that the author advances an argument I disagree with, namely that the United States is "losing" Latin America because it's not paying enough attention and so countries like China are moving in. I've blogged about that quite a bit, even going back seven years ago! Coincidentally, I've been putting together an op-ed on this very topic, saying that conventional wisdom is wrong and it tends to lead to bad policy prescription.

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Personal Security in Latin America

Gallup just released a poll on feelings of personal security. Latin America scores the lowest of any region of the world, and Venezuela the lowest in the world. I tend to doubt Venezuela is truly that low since the poll is taken by telephone (do people in Afghanistan truly feel less secure than Venezuelans??). But it does likely mean that Venezuela is the lowest of any country in the middle range of development.

Here are the Latin America numbers:

As with so much in Latin America, we don't see any correlations to ideology. The best and worst countries are leftist, for example. The same question about telephones also pertains here, as countries with large rural populations (e.g. Guatemala seems high to me) will be skewed.

In general, this reminds me what we already know. Violence is too prevalent and governments face major challenges in addressing it, while police are too corrupt. As a result, people don't feel safe. This isn't a way to build thriving democracies.

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Mexican Auto Production and the Middle Class

Nathaniel Parish Flannery has an article in Forbes about the auto industry in Mexico. He argues that it does not represent a threat to U.S. automakers because of strong integration.

I'm actually more interested in the demand side of things, which he also addresses. Mexico and the United States produce cars together, but Mexicans are buying far fewer of them than other countries--it exports 8 out of every 10 cars it produces. In other words, we're bombarded by proclamations of Mexico's middle class status, but what we actually see is that Mexico's wealthy buy most of the cars. The rest of the country has to wait until their wages allow it. Mexico is very unequal and has shown too few signs of changing that fact after a bit of success in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Critique of the Latin American Left from the Left

Via Robin Grier, I found this new working paper by José Gabriel Palma, an economist at Cambridge, with the casual title of "Latin America social imagination since 1950. From one type of 'absolute certainties' to another -- with no more (far more creative) 'uncomfortable uncertainties' in sight." Yes, that is in fact the title.

It's an ideological and intellectual critique of the Latin American left, which he argues is bereft of new ideas. His criticisms come from the left's left, so to speak, as he wants something new and radical. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, along with dependency theorists, provided a rich and critical body of work. Dependency theorists started to give up in the 1970s, and nothing new grew from it.

Reading the political analysis of most ‘dependentistas’ at the time, one is left with the impression that the whole question of what course the revolution should take in the periphery revolved solely around the problem of whether or not a ‘proper’ capitalist development was viable. Their conclusion seems to be that if one were to accept that capitalist development is feasible on its own contradictory and exploitative terms, one would be automatically bound to adopt the political strategy of waiting (‘Penelope-style’) and/or facilitating politically such development until its full productive powers have been exhausted — and only then to seek to move towards socialism. As it is precisely this option that these writers wished to reject out of hand, they were obliged to make a forced march back towards a pure ideological position in order to deny any possibility of meaningful capitalist development in the periphery at the time — even if this was taking place in front of their own eyes. 

So they stagnated instead of offering a socialist critique of the way in which capitalism was developing in the region. This part seems overstated to me--he says that he wouldn't have enough material on such critiques to fill a review article, but those critiques were already plentiful when I was doing my doctoral coursework in the mid-1990s, though of course I was reading political science rather than economics journals.

At any rate, he criticizes the Latin American left for going from one certainty (socialism) to another (capitalism) instead of finding uncomfortable alternatives. He notes, for example, the Chilean socialists, who are so supportive of capitalism that the name "socialist" seems odd these days. Same with the Brazilian PT.

The result? Self-proclaimed leftist governments talk the talk, but actually end up producing more millionaires than their "neoliberal" counterparts.

And LA’s ‘new left’ has proved to be remarkably effective in the implementation of their upside-down hegemony; according to a the Wealth Report (2014), in the last ten years no other main region in the world has created so many millionaires as LA has done (i.e., individuals with US$ 30 million or more in terms of net assets, excluding their principal residence), centa-millionaires (those with net assets of more than US$ 100 million), and billionaires. And within LA, perhaps not surprisingly, those countries with ‘centre-left’ governments are the ones with a rate of increase of these types of millionaires well above-average. Among these, in terms of new millionaires created in the last decade (defined as above) Uruguay comes joint first with Venezuela, followed by Brazil Argentina and Chile; as for new centa-millionaires, Venezuela ranks first, followed by Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile; and for new billionaires, Argentina ranks first, followed by Brazil, Chile and then Venezuela.36 During this period, in turn, traditionally ‘right-wing’ Mexico had an increase of people in these three categories which was only one-fourth to one-sixth those in the ‘new-left’ countries.

That won't surprise anyone following the news about Venezuela.

He concludes with a certain amount of frustration because markets have wooed everyone and their negative effects are swept under the rug by just about everyone, but most frustratingly by a new left.

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Parties and Disruption in Bolivia

Jennifer Cyr, "Making or Breaking Politics: Social Conflicts and Party-System Change in Bolivia," Studies in Comparative International Development June 2014 (early online). Gated.

Abstract:

Why do only some social conflicts lead to party-system change? In Bolivia, the recent politicization of the regional autonomy movement represented a stark difference with how conflicts had affected party-system dynamics in the past. This study argues that social conflicts led to party-system change in Bolivia thanks largely to the strategies of ruling party elites. Motivated to preserve their position in power, elites had a menu of strategic options at their disposal to integrate, defer, or disregard demands from below. The study situates the recent regional conflict in Bolivia within the country’s longer history of mobilizational politics. It finds that ruling elites utilized different strategies of exclusion and inclusion to neutralize social conflict and preserve the status quo party system. They appropriated the regional autonomy demands as a last-ditch effort to remain electorally relevant in the face of successful party competition. In so doing, they helped transform the party system. Even from a position of electoral weakness and in the face of overwhelming demands from below, Bolivia’s elites shaped the transformative impact of those demands. This study relies upon a least-likely case design to highlight the impact elite agency can have in making or breaking politics under democracy.

This is an interesting analysis of Bolivian politics, examining in detail how parties dealt with periods of disruption.

This study finds that societal demands in Bolivia became politically transformative thanks in large part to the strategies of ruling party elites. Their responses to mobilizing pressures from below varied according to their coalitional interests and the nature of the electoral competition they faced. The decisions taken by status quo elites shaped the political impact of each disruptive mobilization. After 1952, 1985, and 1994, the ruling party elite undertook strategies of adoption, exclusion, and cooptation and effectively neutralized the mobilization in question. In 2005, they found themselves at an electoral disadvantage. To remain relevant, these politicians chose a strategy of appropriation, taking as their own the regionalist issues that the MAS, through its nationalist project, opposed. In so doing, they helped forge party system realignment. 

The implications of this study are multiple. First, it provides conclusive evidence regarding the theoretical importance of elite agency for party-system change. The case of the Bolivian status quo elite represents a least-likely case of the effect of agency vis-à-vis demands from below. The political system has historically faced mass mobilizations of different kinds. However, ruling party elites consistently enacted strategies that shaped whether those conflicts impacted party-system dynamics. This was true even after they suffered a major electoral loss. Elite actions are vital for explaining how mobilizations from below impact the party system.

Cyr argues that this is a least likely case of agency since it appears that parties get swept away. Instead, she says that agency is apparent as parties adapt and survive. It's crying out for comparative analysis, as I immediately thought of the Venezuelan case, where the opposition famously failed to adapt to disruption in the 1990s. At any rate, there's a lot of food for thought here about how party leaders respond to crisis in a way that keeps them politically relevant.

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Guatemala Hires Otto Reich

So it seems the Guatemalan government is hiring Otto Reich to help change its image.

Otto Reich Assocs., under a subcontract with Peck, Madigan, Jones & Stewart, is working to "improve the perception, reputation and the understanding of the reality of Guatemala," according to the contract. 

Reich will help devise a strategy to "move forward on the change of narrative from Guatemala to Washington, allowing representatives of both North American political parties that are willing to abandon the reference of the Guatemala of the 1970s and 1980s," according to the pact, which is referring to the era when the country was rocked by civil war and rampant abuses of human rights. 

Reich also will advance military cooperation between Guatemala and the US.

There are multiple layers of irony here. Reich was a part of Ronald Reagan's Central America policy, which helped produce the problems we see today, and now he's being hired to make everyone forget that fact. He was also part of a 1980s policy of strong military engagement, and he's being hired to resurrect that, at least to some degree.

It makes sense, though, for Otto Pérez Molina to hire someone who has experience putting Central America on the policy map. That the outcome was disastrous for Guatemalans is not mentioned, though OPM assuredly considered it necessary in the war against Marxist subversion.

CEPR also links to the disclosure document. Somehow the Cold War just never fully goes away.

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Rory Carroll's Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela

I read Rory Carroll's Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela (2013) and enjoyed it. Carroll is a well-known journalist who reported from Venezuela for the Guardian from 2006-2012, and disliked by the left. Basically, if you think Venezuela is a thriving laboratory of revolution, you will hate the book. If you feel that Venezuela has tremendous promise that Hugo Chávez failed to harness, you will find it well-written and interesting, particularly because of his interviews. If you follow Venezuelan politics, it won't be new but you get a little deeper.

The book consists of vignettes with his interviews, which then serve to frame his larger point of a well-meaning revolution ripped apart by personalization of power, palace intrigue, and old fashioned cronyism. Carroll shows why Chávez was (and is) so beloved, the problems of personalization, and how utterly incompetent the opposition has been. Even the coup mongers screwed up. As one person who supported the 2002 coup put it, describing Pedro Carmona: "We won, or thought we had won. But then we made a terrible mistake. We picked that fucking dwarf" (p. 79). That encapsulates the basic sentiments of the radical opposition--failure to understand why Chávez was popular, or how even to attract support. Angry but clueless.

Carroll denies that Chávez was a dictator, and comes up with a counter-argument, namely that Chávez was so concerned about elections that he neglected details. Aló Presidente gave him a platform for votes but he didn't follow up. Lots of talking, no walking. He needed to win so badly that substance faded out while crime, insecurity, shortages, etc. soared. Those issues become the backdrop to judging the long-term success of the revolution.

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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Latin America

There have been quite a few stories on Latin America's response to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I tend to agree with this assessment:

As Gaza smolders, the anti-Israel drumbeat is likely to continue, but the smart money says the damage will remain confined to the rhetorical battlefield. "Latin diplomacy was correct in criticizing Israel's excesses in Gaza but no one is interested in severing relations," says former Brazilian foreign minister Luiz Felipe Lampreia. "There's too much at stake."

Palestinian and Israeli leaders alike have been courting Latin America quite aggressively. This isn't new--I had a spate of posts in 2010-2011 about recognition of the Palestinian state, which included the support of Chilean president Sebastián Piñera. Too many of the media stories give the impression that this is all new.

What I need to do is wrote a post sometime after the current crisis is over, and see how much concrete rejection of Israel--reduction of trade, cancellation of investment, that sort of thing, long-term severing of relations--has actually occurred. This makes me think of Venezuela's treatment of Honduras and Panama some time ago, both of which were vocally and publicly labeled as adversaries for a while, followed later by quiet restoration of normal relations.

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UDI Leader Arrested in Venezuela

The president of the far right Chilean UDI youth party has been detained in Venezuela. Rightfully, the party is very vocally calling on the Chilean government to do whatever it can to get him released.

The irony, of course, is that this is the party that stayed close to Augusto Pinochet and never embraced human rights. That may gradually be changing precisely because of younger members. Chilean democracy would be greatly strengthened as a result.

One interesting phenomenon in recent years is the left/right "shoe on the other foot." Leftists lauded human rights organizations until they started criticizing leftist governments. Conservatives hated those organizations during the Cold War and now embrace them. After years of supporting arbitrary detentions, now the right denounces them.

So either this pendulum will just keep going back and forth or we'll finally agree that there are universal rights.

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More Bad Cuba Policy

I am a bit late to this, but the Associated Press reports about how USAID had a program intended to foment unrest in Cuba by sending young Latin Americans into the country.

Beginning as early as October 2009, a project overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled around the island scouting for people they could turn into political activists.

In one case, the workers formed an HIV-prevention workshop that memos called "the perfect excuse" for the program's political goals — a gambit that could undermine America's efforts to improve health globally.

I would say this is unbelievably poor judgment but sadly it's too believable. These sorts of operations will inevitably be found out, thus legitimizing the Castro regime's use of the U.S. as a scapegoat. They will not create rebellions, but they could potentially jeopardize worthwhile programs like those intended to fight the spread of HIV. The long-term negatives clearly outweight the positives, as is usually the case with U.S. policy toward Cuba.

USAID issued a vague and platitudinous statement saying the article was mostly wrong while not specifying how. You can choose to believe that if you want, I guess.

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Padres Beat the Braves

Every so often I sneak in a baseball post--yesterday I went to the Padres-Braves game with family and had a great time. We were way up in the upper deck but at least behind home plate.

It was initially an odd experience because it was raining while we drove to Petco Park, and was still humid when we got there. That's normal for Charlotte in August but utterly bizarre for San Diego. Fortunately it never started raining again. The game was a pitching duel but also long, particularly after the 7th inning (eventually the Padres won in the 12th inning from a walk off single by Will Venable).

In general, Petco is a great place to watch baseball. An added bonus for my son is that he got to watch a steady stream of planes going by downtown on their way to land. Meanwhile, I feel very confident that my older daugher will be the only kid--indeed the only person at all--in Charlotte with a Jedd Gyorko jersey. She likes how his name sounds...

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Failing Migrant Children

Two weeks ago I made the point that child migrants really needed legal representation to have a chance at obtaining asylum. Now it seems they won't because the government is speeding up their hearings without helping them find the legal assistance required to have a chance:

The biggest worry is that children might not receive proper notice of hearings, and could wind up getting a deportation order if they fail to show up, immigration lawyers said. Advocates also say there aren’t enough pro-bono immigration lawyers to go around and that it takes longer to prepare children’s cases because it takes time to earn their trust.

“When the hearing date is three months out, it’s no big deal — it’s plenty of time to get yourself a lawyer. When it’s three weeks, that’s nowhere near enough time,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center in Falls Church, Virginia.

This is shameful. There's really no other word for it. The message seems to be that if we kick children out before they know their rights, we can make the problem go away! Let Central America deal with them.

Meanwhile, Congress is so dysfunctional it can't pass anything. Not even a bad bill--just nothing. So one of the richest, most powerful countries, itself made up of immigrants, is throwing up its hands and saying it just doesn't know what to do. Now that's exceptionalism!

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Accepting the FARC

Ana María Montoya has an analysis at AmeriasBarometer about Colombians' views of the FARC in an electoral context. Their poll was taken in 2013 in areas hard hit by the insurgency.

Executive Summary: The peace negotiations currently underway in Colombia between the Juan Manuel Santos government and the guerilla group known as the FARC are setting the conditions for the eventual electoral participation of FARC ex-combatants, including the opportunity for them to run for office. This Insights report examines the attitudes of Colombians towards the FARC’s formal participation in the country’s political system. In particular, I examine respondents’ reactions to a hypothetical electoral victory by a FARC ex-combatant in the 2015 local elections. While a majority disapprove of such an outcome, I find that those more satisfied with Colombian democracy and those in favor of peace negotiations are more likely to accept the election of a FARC ex-combatant. These findings could offer a path for the eventual acceptance by most Colombians of the FARC as a legitimate political organization in the post-conflict Colombian system.

This may well go in the "we shouldn't be surprised" category, but it highlights how people like Alvaro Uribe who oppose peace talks and political incorporation are not reflecting a consensus--they are hardliners. More importantly, it emphasizes how the opinions of those who live in conflict areas need to be taken into consideration as they are more in favor of accepting an election. They are war weary and deserve a voice.

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Outrage Over Migrant Children

Cartoonist Joel Pett nails this perfectly:

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U.S. and Latin American Relations Manuscript

I just submitted the manuscript for the 2nd edition of U.S. and Latin American Relations to Wiley. My deadline was August so I am slightly ahead of the game. It's been roughly seven months of sometimes pretty intense reading, chopping, writing, and re-writing while continually searching for new sources and documents to highlight. Several snow days during a busy time of the semester in February helped me tremendously because I sat at home with no meetings, classes, etc. and just worked. I am thinking of thanking the snow in my acknowledgments.

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Berating Central America

President Obama is going to lecture three Central American presidents about how they need to stop the child migrant crisis, and I suppose migration in general.

In particular, officials said Mr. Obama will urge the presidents to amplify the public message that most people trying to get into the United States will not be permitted to stay. Mr. Obama will also ask the leaders to do more to go after the smugglers who, for a price, are bringing the children to America.

OK, fine. But this is mostly symbolic and solves nothing. People will listen to what their friends and family say, plus what smugglers tell them--if they hear labor is still welcome in the United States, then that's what they will listen to. If Otto Pérez Molina gives a speech it's hard to imagine a major impact.

And sure, tell the leaders to crack down on smugglers, but why do these smugglers exist in the first place? With immigration and drugs we run smack into supply and demand. Put some guys in prison and it will not make a dent in the problem. There are jobs and/or family in the United States and people want to reach them. The demand for labor and for drugs are solely the responsibility of the United States (and really, all of us). No one in Central America has any power to affect that. Only we do.

Here's the point that lawmakers in the U.S. don't acknowledge: there are too few legal economic opportunities in Central America so people emigrate, but there are significant illegal economic opportunities that exist only because of a U.S. market. In other words, demand in the United States helps lock Central America into this position.

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Venezuela Conspiracy Theories

I'm quoted in this Associated Press article on the Venezuelan government's conspiracy theories. What I was trying to get at was that Nicolás Maduro uses domestic conspiracies a lot more than Hugo Chávez and apparently feels he needs to rely on them more. This is not to say Chávez didn't talk about them because of course he did--but under Maduro they are coming fast and furious and are aimed more at domestic opposition specifically rather than, say, the CIA.

And I love the end of the article, which cites Hugo Pérez Hernáiz:

But Hugo Perez, a sociology professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, says activists have reason to worry. When a government starts talking about opposition plots, any target "is no longer a political adversary - it is the local agent of a foreign conspiracy and therefore an absolute enemy," he said. 

For two years, Perez has run a blog devoted to tracking Chavista conspiracy theories. Lately, he's had enough material to post several times a week.

Indeed!

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Discussing the Child Migrant Crisis

I'll be live on WFAE's Charlotte Talks tomorrow at 9 a.m. to discuss the child migrant crisis. That's in part why I've been blogging about the past week. So listen if you can!

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Political Science Job Market

Mike Allison pointed out this article by Aaron Hoffman (from Purdue) on the political science job market and it is encouraging.

Combined, there are more academic and nonacademic job openings advertised than candidates and, overall, competition for assistant professor positions is less intense than it was in 2009-2010. However, the market for assistant professors has not loosened up for everyone. On the contrary, in some sub-fields there were more applicants per assistant professor position in 2012-2013 than during the recession-hit 2009-2010 market.

As you would expect, political theorists have by far the toughest time--small departments may not have one at all and larger departments may only have one:

But overall the market isn't bad:

• Slightly more than 79% of Ph.D.s in political science secured employment at the time of their graduation in 2012-2013. This success rate is about 10 percentage points better than Ph.Ds in other social science disciplines.

Good! He also tackles the question of going on the market while ABD and comes to a sensible conclusion:

A more difficult question to answer is whether students should wait to complete their dissertations before searching for jobs. The APSA’s data suggests that finishing is a key to success on the market. This convinces me that students with uncertain completion dates should consider delaying their job searches. My experience on job search committees and watching students from my program on the market, though, suggests that those who can credibly tell hiring committees that they are close to defending are still able to secure good positions.

Speaking from experience as a chair who has run four assistant professor searches in the past two years, I agree completely. Being ABD is fine if your advisor tells us you will finish before you arrive--for a job starting in August that obviously means finishing no later than the summer.

In general, this is nice to see.

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Congressional Response to Child Migrants

In an electronic newsletter, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) pretty well sums up the conservative response to the child migrant crisis. He gives viewers a poll to fill out:

What do you think is the first step in solving the humanitarian crisis at our southern border?Secure the borderEnforce current immigration lawsHold Mexican and Central American governments accountableReunite children with their families in their home countriesI don't know.

Every response except "I don't know" is disingenuous. "Securing" the border is obviously not as binary as everyone makes it out to be--you can only be more or less secure, and we're more secure than ever in history (total security with a new Berlin Wall would completely strangle the economies of all border cities on both sides). We're at a point of diminishing returns there as well--every $1 billion more in border enforcement will not get you very far. 

Immigration laws are currently being enforced so aggressively that record numbers of people are being rounded up and deported, such that judges are well over a year behind. 

The idea of solving the problem holding Mexican and Central American governments "accountable" is a chimera--punishing them will very obviously make the problem worse. 

Reuniting children with their families gives the impression that they simply need to return to their loving parents and siblings and we can return to regularly scheduled programming. But those same parents sent them in the first place. Assuming you can even find the family (no mean feat) they will likely send them again immediately.

None of these options resolve anything. They only give the impression of doing so. There is absolutely no hope of finding a solution if you stick to only one side. It requires a complicated combination of enforcement, amnesty, acknowledgment of labor needs, intelligent and directed foreign aid programs and a willingness to admit what won't work and why. Compassion would be nice but I'd take a good bill even without it. It might be asking too much anyway, when people literally protest children.

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Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century

I read Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The reviews by economists intrigue me (Tyler Cowen, who wrote his own critical review in Foreign Affairs) links to a lot of them, which is useful). The book seems to have generated a lot of heat within the discipline itself. Most seem really annoyed by him:

Piketty’s further policy views come in two chapters to which the reader is bound to arrive, after almost five hundred pages, a bit worn out. These reveal him to be neither radical nor neoliberal, nor even distinctively European. Despite having made some disparaging remarks early on about the savagery of the United States, it turns out that Thomas Piketty is a garden-variety social welfare democrat in the mold, largely, of the American New Deal.

He does return throughout the book to criticisms of economics as a field, arguing it is so centered on empirical models that content is ignored (the same argument, it must be said, goes on within political science). So the reciprocal antipathy isn't any big surprise.

Others are haughtily dismissive. One example is here:

The book is aimed at thoughtful non-specialists who don't know about all the cognitive illusions in the public finance literature.

Ah, that is me. I am smart but not as smart as him. Sorry for being reasonably smart but ignorant. Let me offer some ignorant thoughts.

1. This is a powerful argument that touched a big nerve. Critics are too tempted to attach ideology to it as a way to dismiss the argument. But I would say the massively defensive reaction demonstrates why we need such a conversation in this country. It's worthwhile for that alone, really. What he argues that if inherited wealth becomes dominant, then democracy will suffer and violent responses become more likely. When the rate of return on capital is high and growth is low, unrest becomes more likely. At the same time, I agree with reviewers who say he doesn't pursue that correlation enough--he mentions it multiple times but does not go into detail.

2. The debate over data doesn't refute Piketty. It just makes the conversation more interesting. In particular, it's a good thing to argue whether it's a problem to focus so much on labor income when so many people rely on more than that. People may not inherit wealth but they are vested in different types of retirement plans, for example, along with social security. Yet if people's wages are relatively low, they have little to contribute to those plans.

3. All the controversy about his policy prescriptions miss an important point--a core part of his argument is that we have the power to change things, which means we should talk about it. With regard to inequality, "There have been many twists and turns and certainly no irrepressible, regular tendency toward a 'natural' equilibrium'" (p. 274). And, incidentally, there are plenty of responses that are not Marxist! On the other hand, global catastrophe also changes inequality--the rich people who started World War I weren't aware of that at the time.

4. His policy prescriptions, such as the global tax, should be seen as the beginning of a conversation rather than the end. He makes it very clear he considers it utopian, as a reference point. Further, he also argues that making government a lot bigger isn't the answer because that creates organizational problems--not exactly a Marxist viewpoint.

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Using Leverage in Central America

Members of Congress are starting to echo each other about using leverage on Central America.

The argument is that the United States is so powerful that we can compel Central American governments to bend to our will to resolve the problem and punish them if they fail. That they are clearly incapable of solving the problem seems not to enter into the equation.

The United States can indeed punish Central American governments by withholding aid. Doing so will almost certainly lead to more migration as whatever meager economic gains they make are slowed. That outcome is not in the interests of the United States.

Their argument hinges on the pervasive belief that immigration problems result from lack of will. If President Obama would just try harder, there would be no problem. Since IRCA, Presidents Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II apparently had no such will either. If we don't have the will, then maybe we can force it onto Central American presidents, then whack them if the result is unsatisfactory.

Objective conditions and historical realities therefore slide easily into the background; complexity give way to simplicity; and responsibility shifts to blaming others.

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Are Unaccompanied Children Refugees?

Media headlines commonly refer to the surge of unaccompanied children from Central America as "refugees." In fact, it's a precise term that's not easy to qualify for.

Even before getting to that, it is worth noting that many of the children do not legally qualify to be called "unaccompanied." I know that sounds weird, but to qualify you must not have legal status and you cannot have a parent in the United States. If your parent (with legal status or not) is already here, you are not unaccompanied even if you came alone.

Refugee status requires demonstrating persecution. From the Immigration and Nationality Act:

(42) The term "refugee" means:
(A) any person who is outside any country of such person's nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or
(B) in such circumstances as the President after appropriate consultation (as defined in section 207(e) of this Act) may specify, any person who is within the country of such person's nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, within the country in which such person is habitually residing, and who is persecuted or who has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The term "refugee" does not include any person who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. For purposes of determinations under this Act, a person who has been forced to abort a pregnancy or to undergo involuntary sterilization, or who has been persecuted for failure or refusal to undergo such a procedure or for other resistance to a coercive population control program, shall be deemed to have been persecuted on account of political opinion, and a person who has a well founded fear that he or she will be forced to undergo such a procedure or subject to persecution for such failure, refusal, or resistance shall be deemed to have a well founded fear of persecution on account of political opinion.

For the children, "persecution" seems to refer largely to being forced into gangs or suffering abuse from family members. Providing evidence of that is no easy matter. Plus, if you are a minor whose parents are in the United States, you are ineligible to seek asylum.

One study argues that 40% of children would have a valid claim of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which focuses specifically on parental abuse or abandonment. Not only does that exclude 60% (still tens of thousands of kids) but even those 40% aren't automatic--they need to make a convincing case. The only way these children can have any hope of staying is to have extensive legal assistance, which is not likely given the sheer numbers.

The bottom line, then, is that popular usage considers the children refugees whereas most of them will likely never actually legally qualify as such. The only way that could happen would be for President Obama to declare them refugees en masse, a la Cubans. It's very hard to see that happening in the current political climate. The number of children exceeds the normal amount of refugees typically accepted in a year (there were 58,000 in 2012) but the Mariel boatlift is an example where it got very high one year (207,000 in 1980) so there is precedent. There were also 130,000 in 1975 when the United States left Vietnam.

One final note on the political side. Bill Clinton attributed his gubernatorial loss in 1980 to the Carter administration's resettling of Cubans in Arkansas. The logistics of refugee resettlement are formidable.

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Immigration Case Backlog Crisis

I've written periodically about the immigration case backlog. Syracuse University's backlog tool has detailed numbers. Right now (at least as of June 2014, with the fiscal year ending at the end of September) the total number of backlogged cases is 375,503. Of particular note is the fact that Central America is already high on that list. Here are the five countries with the most:

Mexico: 124,408
El Salvador: 48,319
Guatemala: 40,807
Honduras: 36,842
China: 26,969

This of course is why President Obama is seeking emergency money for judges. There is no possible way the children currently here (and the more arriving) can even get in front of a judge for a long time. The average number of days to wait is 587. He is asking for 40 judges (in addition to 35 in his regular budget request), which really seems inadequate. Some is better than none, but how much will that decrease the wait? The administration provides an estimate that each judge will decrease the caseload by about 1,000 per judge per year. That requires the judge to do almost three cases a day, 365 days a year. Once you insert weekends, federal holidays, vacation time, snow days, etc. it seems a stretch. Cases involving children also take longer.

And the backlog gets worse and worse--it has skyrocketed under Obama, which is more evidence that he has been enforcing the law aggressively despite efforts to claim the opposite.

2009: 223,809
2010: 262,799
2011: 297,551
2012: 325,044
2013: 344,230
2014: 375,503 (and counting)

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2008 Trafficking Law and Unaccompanied Minors

Increasing attention is being paid to the "William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008," signed into law by George W. Bush. I note that primarily because it was signed back at basically the last moment that immigration policy was bipartisan. Once President Bush left office, it disappeared.

Republicans want to amend the law to speed up the processing and removal of the children currently in the United States. As it stands, only children from contiguous countries are processed quickly. Since the surge of children is coming from Central America, they go under the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services, getting hearings and staying with families (sometimes their own) while they await a final decision. They get an immigration judge rather than a border patrol agent. That is why the Obama administration is asking to hire more judges, which are in embarrassingly short supply.

That is potentially a reason for the surge--word has spread that if children arrive in the United States, they are not immediately deported. As with other potential reasons, it suffers from timing--if the law was passed in 2008, why would it take six years for a surge? But it's possible.

But what should we do? There is evidence that from a humanitarian perspective, it's a mistake to treat Central American children like their Mexican counterparts. From Dara Lind (who has been writing a lot of interesting stuff at Vox):

It's not that Border Patrol agents aren't sympathetic to the plight of Mexican children — indeed, they're personally very kind to the children in their care. But the secret report shows that Border Patrol agents simply don't know what to look for to figure out if a child is being victimized, or what to do if he or she is.

It's a rushed, confused process that would become more even chaotic given the numbers we're dealing with. I tend to agree that we should treat children the same, but we should take the most humane approach, not the least.

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Unaccompanied Minors and Causation

The puzzle over the surge of unaccompanied minors is tied directly to the difference between correlation and causation. The essential problem is understanding the surge. On one side--usually associated with the Republican Party--the argument is that President Obama's promises about deferred action acted as a catalyst. From Senator Ted Cruz:

Is it really your testimony that granting amnesty to some 800,000 people who came here illegally as children had no effect in causing a dramatic increase of children being handed over to international drug cartels to be smuggled in here illegally?

There are problems with that when we start trying to move from correlation to causation.

First, the timing is off. From Adam Isacson:

Border Patrol statistics, depicted above, show that arrivals of unaccompanied Central American children began increasing during U.S. fiscal year 2012, which ran from October 2011 to September 2012. DACA was not announced until June 2012. Immigration reform legislation had not yet been proposed, and the review of deportation procedures was far off. In fact, in 2012 the Obama administration broke the United States’ single-year record for deportations of undocumented foreign citizens (409,849 people): hardly a welcoming message for would-be migrants.

Second, there is no evidence that immigrants knew about DACA at all. From Elizabeth Kennedy, who was doing fieldwork:

“The rumors did not start until Obama called it an urgent humanitarian situation,” she said. “In over 300 interviews, only one asked about DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]. Otherwise, no one ever named any specific U.S. legislation. Some asked if children should lie about their age and say they were over 18.” 

Third, if rumors about DACA are rampant, why are there so few sending countries? From federal officials:

Federal officials have said that if migrants were coming to the U.S. because of the DACA program, there would be many more families arriving from countries other than Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — such as India and China — to also take advantage of the program.

There is no surge from Mexico, for example, which makes no sense if this logic is to hold. Incentives like DACA would spread southward through Mexico, yet somehow affect only Central America.

On the other side of the debate, violence in Central America is blamed. From Tom Wong:

Violence is among of the main drivers causing the increase. Whereas Central American countries that are experiencing high levels of violence have seen thousands of children flee, others with lower levels of violence are not facing the same outflow.

He equates "violence" with "homicide." Mike Allison notes that homicide rates have actually improved so cannot explain a surge, and attributes emigration to gang violence instead:

What seems to be a better explanation for what is driving people to leave their homes is the threat from the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street gangs that have been operating in Central America for two decades. Violence worsened in the 2000s when governments adopted mano dura ("strong hand") security policies rather than investing in social programmes, education, and gang prevention and rehabilitation strategies. Regional drug cartels and gangs have grown increasingly powerful as the region has become a much more important transit point for drugs.

This is really hard to measure, though. If the "mano dura" approach was taken a decade or so ago, how do we explain the lag?

Correlation is easy to find, causation much harder. I probably buy Mike's hypothesis more than any other, but even then I would have to see more data to be convinced. It's a sad, tragic, and still largely unexplained phenomenon.

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U.S. Occupation of Cuba

On September 14, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt informed the Cuban foreign minister that he did not think they were capable of governing themselves and so invoking the Platt Amendment he was sending William Howard Taft to clean things up. It's quite an insulting message, as you would expect, though of course couched in terms of how much he wants the country to be independent.

"For there is just one way in which Cuban independence can be jeoparded, and that is for the Cuban people to show their inability to continue in their path of peaceful and orderly progress."

Replace "Cuba" with Chile, Guatemala, Panama you name it, and it's almost like a motto of U.S. foreign policy.

Here it is from FRUS:

I will be including this collection of digitized FRUS pages on Cuba for the "further sources" part of my U.S. and Latin American Relations 2nd edition textbook chapter that covers the first third of the 20th century. The University of Wisconsin has a lot of stuff digitized that is not on the State Department's own website.

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Luis Vicente Leon on Venezuela Sanctions

David Smilde translates Luis Vicente Leon's comments on potential Venezuela sanctions from a WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) event. If you want a really good, concise argument about why they are a bad idea, then you've got it.

Using poll data, he shows that Venezuelans see the sanctions as an excuse for the United States to meddle and force regime change. Leon sees the sanctions stemming in large part from legitimate concerns mixed with a typical election-year gimmick in anti-Chavista Florida districts, but Venezuelans are understandably suspicious of U.S. motives.

The money quote:

Taking the individual route of Big Brother usually ends up being a Big Mistake, or as Marino Alvarado of Provea says, an own goal from midfield.

This sentiment is exactly the same as the post I wrote about President Obama's approach to foreign policy, which involves a credo of "don't do stupid shit." Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons the chances are good we will.

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Admitting Immigration Failure

Boz makes an excellent point here about the well-intentioned ad campaign to let would-be migrants in Central America and Mexico know that the journey is too dangerous to undertake. What it indicates is policy failure--that journey actually shouldn't be that dangerous.

I would take this a step further and note some specific ways that specific policies have failed:

--the Immigration Reform and Control Act had as an explicit goal the regularization of immigration, thus greatly reducing illegal border crossing.

--NAFTA was explicitly framed as something that would reduce migration. I don't recall off the top of my head whether the CAFTA debate was quite so emphatic in that regard but its logic is obviously similar.

--the War on Drugs (or whatever you want to call it) was explicitly intended to reduce drug-related violence.

--the Obama administration's response to the 2009 coup in Honduras was explicitly phrased as helping to bring democracy and stability to the country.

This doesn't mean all these policies (or elements of them) are bad or that there was a magic answer to the problem. But it does mean that collectively we need to figure out why they failed and how to improve them.

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U.S. and Latin American Relations writing (part 9)

It's been a while since I've updated but I've made tons of progress, to the point that I don't need to think in terms of chapter goals anymore. Every existing chapter has been revised and I've completed a draft of the new chapter (on the challenge to hegemony) that I am now attacking with a pen. There is more work to do but it is doable--it involves finding another book or two for suggested additional readings to replace old ones that perhaps are dated; making some additions to the chapter timelines; going over sources, especially internet ones that disappeared or changed (my thanks to those websites that did not change over what was sometimes 10 years since I last referenced them!); cleaning up footnotes; and checking a few facts for updates (like ratification of treaties/agreements).

In short, I will have this book manuscript submitted by the end of this month. What I hope is that the final book is ready for adoption for Fall 2015 classes. But what authors hope for books and what happens rarely match (for me, they have never matched). There are all sorts of unexpected delays and that's just the way it is. For my recently published Understanding Latin American Politics book among other things I spent months dealing with permissions issues. It was maddeningly slow but it had to be done right. I was sent long Excel spreadsheets that I had to read and comment on, which sometimes entailed changing or deleting content because a permission just couldn't be obtained.

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The U.S. and Brazil's National Truth Commission

Peter Kornbluh at the National Security Archive discusses the documents that Vice President Biden gave President Rousseff when he visited for the World Cup. It's awful stuff. Brazil tends to get less attention for human rights abuses because the intensity of repression during the dictatorship was not as severe as in Argentina and Chile. But it deserves more scrutiny:

It's sickening to read. All of this helps Brazil's National Truth Commission, which is working on documenting the period. This is a great step for the United States government--it has the benefit of being the right thing to do while also improving U.S.-Brazilian relations (and indeed the naysayers paid no attention to it).

During his meeting with President Rousseff, Biden announced that the Obama administration would undertake a broader review of still highly classified U.S. records on Brazil, among them CIA and Defense Department documents, to assist the Commission in finalizing its report.  “I hope that in taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on the immense promise of the future,” he noted.

That's good news.

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Cuba and Menendez

From the Washington Post: so was the Cuban government involved in trying to concoct a story about Senator Robert Menendez? If it is the case, then it demonstrates the Cuban government is pretty unimaginative. The story about underage prostitutes fell apart almost immediately, as the women admitted they were coached and there was no evidence of anything. If the Cuban connection is true, then I assume they figured any sort of splash would possibly derail him. Instead, he won easily.

But if this story has legs and is true, then it will have been a Cuban blunder. There is a slow, painstaking process in the United States to rethink the fundamentals of our attitude toward Cuba. Unfortunately, doing something stupid like this can derail it, or at least postpone it.

Not for the first time, I wonder how much Raúl Castro really wants rapprochement. The status quo serves him well.

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FOIA Virtual Reading Room

I had a nice chat with Steven Hyland today, who mentioned the State Department's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) archives online. What a cool resource. The document collection includes Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Henry Kissinger's phone (where he plotted in favor of the military in all four countries). Indeed, I did a quick search for Chile within that particular archive, and the first document is a 1975 phone conversation with Robert McNamara (who after his disastrous stint as Secretary of Defense went to the World Bank) telling him the Chilean dictatorship really needed help with loans (or Chile would go to an "extreme form of Marxism").

The whole thing is searchable and very easy to navigate. I am really busy this afternoon so have to resist the urge to poke around much more at the moment.

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Tom Rob Smith's Child 44

Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 is both engrossing and frustrating. The setting is the late Stalinist era in the Soviet Union (the fact that he dies during the novel is an important part of the plot) and the main character is Leo, an MGB (State Security) officer. He discovers there is a serial killer but the state is unable to acknowledge such a thing can even happen in the USSR unless it can be easily attritibuted to a deviant.

There is a lot of complex plot building in the first half of the novel, especially as Leo and his wife Raisa try to sort out their complicated relationship, a development that intersects with his self-propelled (and therefore illegal) investigation. Roughly 2/3 of the way through the book you discover what's going on (and I had been guessing before that) but it doesn't ruin the story.

The frustrating part is that you must be willing to accept coincidences, a huge one in particular. For me, at least they were worth the price of admission.

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The Venezuelan Assassination Saga

Via Hugo Pérez Hernáiz: The Venezuela assassination* stories are reaching new levels of absurdity. The government makes accusations literally almost on a daily basis. Now one of the people they've accused has struck back, saying the government forged emails to make its case. As far as I can tell, the government has yet to respond, not even with a "the alleged forgeries are forgeries."

What I'd love to know is how these play with Venezuelans. A reasonable hypothesis is that chavistas will be more likely to believe the threats and support the government's responses (such as issuing arrest warrants) but how strong is that support? To what degree do the constant announcements start to decrease it? I would think that at a certain point even many government supporters will be lulled into a "crying wolf" attitude, especially in the context of the counter-accusations.

* in Spanish the word used is magnicidio. There is in fact an English word "magnicide," which means the murder of a prominent political figure, but I've never actually heard it used.

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Understanding Latin American Politics Textbook

My new book is officially out and I received my copies today. I mentioned it a while ago with some details here. If you're an instructor, go over to Pearson's website and request an exam copy.

According to me, it is the best book written about the topic ever, and likely will never be topped. But that's just me.

Having a book come out is always a great feeling and even more so when it took so long to write.

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Writing Drugs & Terrorism in Latin America

I am just finishing revisions of the drugs and terrorism chapter for the 2nd edition of U.S. and Latin American Relations. The tone of the chapter has changed quite a bit, more so than any other chapter, I think, though immigration also shifted. This goes along with not only how my thinking of the topic has changed since the book went into print back in 2007, but also how the Bush and Obama eras are different.

The idea of "terrorism" itself has evolved, as the U.S. is far less obsessed with talking about it in the Latin American context. Bush GWOT included Latin America, and Obama retired the term. Bush played up terrorism quite a lot, and now the Obama administration consistently pushes back on the idea that, for example, Middle Eastern terrorists are setting up shop in the region.

The military obsession has also waned. Yes, there is plenty of military presence in the fight against drug trafficking now and there are serious issues attached to it, but the U.S. push doesn't play the same role it did 7+ years ago (on the current situation in this regard, see Adam Isacson et al's report from September 2013). Instead, I am noting the increased discussion of decriminalization, which was absent (or at least very muted) back then. Latin America pushes back.

There is so much more written on Mexico now than back then, while Colombia has receded. I was all about Colombia when I first wrote the chapter and now had to cut big chunks that are just too dated, while adding more on Mexico and Central America.

In all, U.S.-Latin American relations in this regard (and pretty much every regard) are much improved since the Bush era (certainly not perfect, such as the case of Bolivia). This does not mean we're necessarily any closer to resolving the problems associated with drugs and violence, but it's something.

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