Mine!

Here'ssss our water, my preciousssssss...

The four living Chilean presidents had a photo op to show their support for Chile's case at the International Court of Justice. It all starts on December 3 and ends on December 14. They made statements, and Peruvians got mad. This sort of back and forth happens periodically.

Now, though, there's a bit more of an edge because a decision will finally be made, and it will come on the heels of a controversial decision in the Colombia-Nicaragua territorial dispute. Both sides have claimed they will abide by the ruling, though it's entirely possible "abide" will be defined as "try to continue dragging out because this decision sucks."

For documents related to the case, click here.

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Sugar and Pork

Via Mike Munger: the conservative (and anti-Latin American) case for sugar subsidies. Brazil and Mexico will destroy us if we don't slap a tariff on their sugar, and it'll be like World War II all over again. This is the same member of Congress who makes a big deal about keeping Washington out of the economy. But his pork is the good pork.

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Peña Nieto and the U.S.

Enrique Peña Nieto is meeting with President Obama and others today, but there's really not much "new" in that news. He'll mention immigration, security, blah, blah, and blah.

A more interesting question is what type of Mexico he's leading, and what his election means. For that I recommend the Foreign Affairs article by Héctor Aguilar Camín and Jorge Castañeda. Their basic view is that Peña will continue reforms--health care, tax reform, oil, among others--and the PRI will work with the PAN. It's a rather more optimistic view than you typically see.

The vast majority of Mexicans now agree that the only way politicians should get and keep power is through the ballot box and that the clamor for greater accountability and less corruption is legitimate. They believe that protecting human rights, adhering to the rule of law, and ending the culture of impunity are nonnegotiable goals. They demand due process rights and greater security, and they think poverty and social inequality must be reduced, along with the influence of Mexico's powerful monopolies and oligopolies. Yet they also reject any macroeconomic policy associated with large public deficits and consider the advantages of globalization, free trade, and economic integration with the rest of North America greater than the drawbacks. 

What goes within Mexico is more important than state visits. On immigration, for example, reform in the United States is critical but so is reform that provides employment. One point that Castañeda does not make is that NAFTA has been responsible for quite a lot of illegal immigration. Reforms within Mexico cannot just liberalize the economy without anticipating the effect on labor and, by extension, on U.S.-Mexican relations.

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U.S. Influence in Latin America

I agree with much of William McIlhenny's piece at Americas Quarterly. The upshot: can we please stop with the "the United States is paying no attention to Latin America" meme? I like this bit:

Some will always prefer to wax nostalgic for an era of nominal influence on elites and dysfunctional relationships with undeveloped societies.  But that time is gone for good, to our resounding advantage.

True. What was so great about that? Even when we thought our influence was working to our advantage, it often wasn't.  Batista and Somoza were our men, and look how great that turned out over the long run. We pushed for drastic market reforms in places like Bolivia to our own detriment. Not exerting such influence may be the best thing not only for Latin America, but for U.S. interests as well.

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Latinos and conservatives

My post about the Charles Murray op-ed made me think more about the Republican party's difficulties in embracing the Latino population. There are a number of dichotomies that the party is now publicly trying to sort out.

1. Latino immigrant as hard worker vs. Latino immigrant as welfare state moocher

2. Latino immigrant as Spanish-speaking enclave creator vs. Latino immigrant as bilingual asset

3. Latino immigrant as potential conservative vs. Latino immigrant as Democratic party lackey

4. Latino as "foreign other" vs. Latino as embodiment of "American dream"

5. Amnesty as rewarding illegal behavior vs. amnesty as rational response to broken system

Within the Republican party, of course, these dichotomies are filtered through different lenses--libertarianism, social conservatism, nativism, etc.--in sometimes contradictory ways. It's fascinating to watch a party sort itself out in such a public manner. Once we have a concrete proposal being debated in Congress, it will intensify even more.

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Free Stuff in Venezuela

Via Caracas Chronicles: Venezuela's Planning Minister says Venezuelans need to stop thinking they'll just get lots of things for free just because of oil revenue: "la gente tiene que pagar."

I immediately thought of my recent post about how, after years of making expropriation a core part of his government, Hugo Chavez mocked those who said he might expropriate. Now an official in his government is saying that the bedrock of Chavez's rule--subsidied goods paid for by oil revenue--is a negative thing.

There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.

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Latinos and Conservatism

Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute says don't hold your breath that Latinos are conservative. He looks at survey data to make the case that as a whole Latinos are not really more opposed to abortion or gay marriage, more religious, or more likely to be married. So far, so good. Then we get this.

I can understand why people think Latinos are natural conservatives. Just about every Latino with whom I come in contact is hard-working and competent. I don’t get into discussions with them about their families and religion, but they sure look like go-getting, family-values Americans to me. But note the caveat: “with whom I come in contact.” There’s a huge selection artifact embedded in that caveat—I always come in contact with Latinos because they are on a work crew that’s doing something at my house or office, or at my neighbors’ houses. That’s the way that almost all Anglos in the political chattering class come in contact with Latinos. Of course they look like model Americans.

Oh boy. The people he sees blowing his leaves are "model Americans" but all the rest are...not. Those who work in white suburbia are good, those that don't are the 47%.

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Cuba: No Catheters For You!

Damien Cave at the New York Times has a great look at the Cuba embargo, and unlike most accounts makes sure to mention the ways in which the executive branch has been tied up by the Cuban Democracy Act and Helms-Burton. It also focuses on how ridiculous the embargo laws are.

“The Treasury Department is asking me, in a children’s hospital, if I use, for example, catheters for military uses — chemical, nuclear or biological,” said Dr. Eugenio Selman, director of the William Soler Pediatric Cardiology Center.

I feel much safer knowing that we expend resources to protect us from terrorist catheters.

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Immigration and the Majority

At the Washington Post, Georgetown's Dan Hopkins uses survey data to show that Americans are actually not all that split on immigration. It's useful to disseminate that message as widely as possible, but it's not new at all. I've blogged about this numerous times, and way back in 2006 I referred to a Foreign Affairs article by Tamar Jacoby, quoting that very fact. She was wrong to predict quick action, but right to assert that there's no reason to be surprised by support for immigration reform.

A much better question to ask is why the belief persists in the face of so much contrary evidence. Part of the problem is that people get causation wrong. Since there is no reform, that must be caused by majority opinion against it. Instead, absence of reform has a lot to do with excessive political focus on a minority base opposed to reform. The media picks up on the extremes, and the public is left with the impression that the country is hopelessly divided when in fact it's not.

What we've seen, in effect, is tyranny of the minority, but a minority consistently--and successfully--peddling the notion that it's views are held by the majority (perhaps even a silent majority, to quote Richard Nixon). What Mitt Romney found--as everyone, including him, knew he would--is that he needed that minority to win the candidacy, but it became a liability in the general election.

Most Republican leaders seem to recognize this, which is why so many are talking openly about supporting reform. It required the trauma of losing the presidency to make it happen, but it happened. This may also mean that the message about a long-standing majority supporting reform will finally start to gain traction. We will have waited a long time.

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Signs of Political Change

The Republican Party is still trying to sort itself out with regard to immigration, but you know something is moving when big money gets behind it.

Gutierrez , along with the co-founder of the massive pro-Romney “super PAC” Restore Our Future, Charlie Spies, is looking to put his focus, and donor contributions, where his mouth is on immigration reform. The two are leading the formation of a new PAC, Republicans for Immigration Reform, with a clear focus on resolving an issue that played a role in Romney’s poor showing among Latinos on election day.

I immediately thought of Cuba. Students often ask me when political opposition to the embargo will reach a topping point. My stock response is that most people don't care, but that business leaders along with their governors will be a critical factor. Now maybe the real sign is when those businesses put together a Super PAC.

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Latin America trade

Shannon O'Neil echoes a point I made several times during the presidential debates--despite the chorus of voices proclaiming the decline of U.S. trade with Latin America, it is actually quite massive and growing.

I think, though, that much of the problem is not volume of trade, but rather the fact that other trading partners exist at all. This phenomenon is new and threatening. It is not enough for us to be involved in the lion's share of trade with Latin America; we have to be all of it or we're weak.

It is therefore zero sum. If China buys more commodities, that means we're somehow losing out, even if we don't want to buy those same commodities. What the chorus wants, really, is to get extra-hemispheric governments out. The Monroe Doctrine is, after all, something of a talisman for U.S. policy and we've never lost the knee-jerk reaction to fear involvement by outside powers.

What this also means it that no matter how many agreements the U.S. signs with Latin American governments, the chorus will keep singing because no agreement guarantees exclusion.

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Op-ed Fail

This op-ed from Otto Reich is really something. We learn three main points:

First, Latin America does not get much attention from the United States because "Latin America does not present its best face to the world."

Second, Latin Americans vote for leaders Reich does not like because they don't have any information and don't know better.

Third, current corruption in Honduras is entirely the fault of Mel Zelaya.

A bonus point is that Rafael Correa is "rabid."

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Latin American Middle Class

Outstanding article in Financial Times on the middle class in Latin America. The problem is that things are not changing as much as often claimed.

Rising incomes are, of course, to be cheered. But the World Bank also points to “abysmally low” levels of intergenerational mobility in the region: while people’s fortunes have improved within the current generation, there are still enormous barriers to social mobility between generations. In other words, the class you are born into is a bigger factor than any other in determining your future prospects. The children of poor parents still face daunting challenges making their way in the world. 

“We are measuring the extent of correlation between parents’ backgrounds and their kids’ achievements,” says Augusto de la Torre, the World Bank’s chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean (though not one of the report’s authors). “The correlation is very high in Latin America compared with other regions. Family background is much more important.” 

De la Torre describes this as a probable result of “self-sorting” behaviour. 

“Better off families send their children to schools that less well-off families can’t afford,” he says. “That’s different from Asia, for example, where public education is relied on by everybody.” 

It’s not just education. Better-off Latin American opt out of public health systems by buying private health insurance. They opt out of public security services by paying private guards – typically sitting in a makeshift hut on the street, collecting monthly payments from residents. They even opt out of public electricity services by buying their own generators.

Yes to all that. Rising incomes are good for everyone, but they can often obscure long-standing barriers to advancement. There's a tremendous amount of de facto segregation.

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Selling to Cuba

Interesting story about how the once vaunted cash trade--including multiple currency swaps--with Cuba has declined in recent years as the country finds other trading partners with less onerous terms.

U.S. sales of food and agricultural commodities to the communist-run island began more than a decade ago with the Trade Sanctions Reform Act enacted in 2000 under President Clinton. Modest sales of $138 million the following year rose steadily to a peak of $710 million in 2008, according to statistics calculated by Kavulich's group. 

The value of U.S. exports to Cuba has since plummeted to just over half that last year at $358 million. It was $250 million through the first six months of 2012, with no sign of improvement.

Cuba is turning instead to Vietnam, Venezuela, and China.

As with virtually every other aspect of U.S. policy toward Cuba, our trade policy makes no sense and hurts us much more than it hurts the Cuban government. We want to punish you by not trading, so we will just trade in a peculiar way and say we're punishing you. And we will only allow exports of a very particular type, defining "agricultural commodities" in new and fun ways. So, for example, you can export semen but not cardboard boxes. For the full list of goods in all of its glory, just click here.

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American exceptionalism and the Cuba embargo

In what has become an annual spectacle, the entire world minus the U.S., Israel and a tiny handful of tiny Pacific countries condemn the U.S. embargo against Cuba. This year the vote got the highest number of countries--188--joining in the condemnation.

This perhaps is the essence of American exceptionalism. Unlike so many countries, we are deeply committed to continuing uselessly punitive foreign policy even in the face of clear evidence that it is failing.

It is indeed the ironic curtain.

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Senator Uribe

Rumor has it that Alvaro Uribe will soon announce his senatorial candidacy in Colombia. He hates Juan Manuel Santos--and many other people as well (take a look at this Twitter feed!)--and his goal seems to be derailing all of his security policies. It's fascinating to see how many former Latin American presidents seek to remain in elected office. More so than other recent examples, this one is fueled by rage.

And an interesting tidbit at the end:

There is just one complication that threatens to bog Uribismo down. 

Should Uribe become a senator he will lose his presidential immunity, and with that perhaps an inevitable slew of lawsuits awaits…

Just Google Alvaro Uribe lawsuits to get a sense of that.

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Chavez's Fairy Tale

Hugo Chavez wants foreign investors to come with their money because there will be no expropriation:

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Chavez made light of nationalization concerns, urging businesses not to fear him.

"Come and invest! Don't believe the fairy tale that we're going to expropriate you," he said in comments on state TV.

Once upon a time, there was a president who nationalized quite a few industries, doing so publicly and proudly. That is the fairy tale, which also happens to be true. In fact, it has been a core part of the "revolution." Companies deemed to be working against the state for whatever reason--not producing housing quickly enough, for example, are taken over. Here is a lenthy list of companies he took over. The government itself noted that in 2009 it had nationalized 131 companies. When he nationalized some supermarkets, he made the point that he had a plan.

“This isn’t Chavez going around expropriating any old way, as the bourgeoisie says. There’s a plan here, a strategy, a policy,” he said."

Chavez has given countless speeches on the topic, so it's unclear who he thinks he's going to convince.

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Tim Wendel's Castro's Curveball

Tim Wendel's Castro's Curveball is a light, pleasant novel that brings together pre-revolutionary--late 1940s--Havana, Fidel Castro, and baseball. You need to suspend disbelief, but it plays on Castro's love of baseball and the rumor that he'd been signed by the Washington Senators. In this book, Havana Lions catcher Billy Bryan is the one who is trying to sign him. After many years, Billy returns to Cuba during the Special Period with his daughter to come to peace with his past.

Castro and his early political activism is woven into the book, along with a fictional female photographer he falls in love with, and who is part of Castro's political circle. Wendel does a nice job of bringing that era to life.

Also noteworthy, for me at least, is that this book was an impulse buy at my local used bookstore, The Last Word. Leisurely browsing still a really fun way of finding books.

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Voter Turnout in Latin America

Roque Planas has a good discussion of voter turnout in the United States and Latin America.

We obsess a lot about turnout in the United States, including the incessant but well-meaning exhortations to vote from our fellow citizens, with talk of "civic duty." Often it mirrors the age old demand to clean your plate since kids are dying in Africa. You need to vote because people elsewhere in the world cannot. It doesn't matter if you don't want the food on your plate. Eat it.

In the spirit of contrarianism, then, it's worth thinking about the negative side of voter turnout.

First, it can mean your country is so polarized that the election is viewed as life or death. In Venezuela, turnout was high because the two sides detest each other. This is not a desirable state of affairs, and so lower turnout would signal more contentment and less hatred.

Second, it can mean your government is forcing you to vote, giving you no choice but to make a choice. After many years of obligatory voting, Chile changed the law, which led to lower turnout but sighs of relief.

Third, your government is authoritarian. Turnout in Cuba is high, and many votes are fabricated. The same was true in the heyday of the PRI in Mexico.

This is not to knock voting, as in fact I vote regularly. But sometimes it is useful to step back from the knee-jerk "vote or else" attitude that is often prevalent.

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Ideas are scary

Mike Munger posts about the Venezuelan government refusing to give approval for conference travel to an academic whose views were not sufficiently revolutionary. This immediately made me think of the US government's refusal to give permission for Cuban academics to come present papers at the Latin American Studies Association (though, unlike Venezuela, the Cuban government was fine with those professors coming here, which may have been sufficient proof to the Obama administration that they were all potential terrorists).

Ideas can be scary, and many governments want to suppress them, or at least discourage them. The odd part of all this is that we're talking about suppression of academics whose views are likely not terribly controversial to begin with. It's suppression for the sake of suppression.

UPDATE: Now el profesor Munger says the letter is a hoax, leaving only the U.S. government that's afraid of ideas.

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