Monday, April 30, 2018

Arguing Against Venezuela Oil Sanctions

Amy Myers Jaffe and David Mares have a post at the Council on Foreign Relations arguing that U.S. oil sanctions against Venezuela are pointless. There's nothing really new in there but it's good to emphasize that the U.S. really needs to establish credibility in the region. Encouraging a coup will not achieve that.

With these points in mind, there are some efforts the United States could make in a supporting role to the Lima Group. Colombia has called for a reconstruction plan for Venezuela; the United States should encourage a Latin American conference to develop that plan with clear U.S. commitments. The United States also needs to adopt an active and visible role assisting Brazil and Colombia to deal with the refugees. This would not only be in line with U.S. disaster relief efforts in the past but could constitute a way of getting humanitarian aid to Venezuela, bypassing the government, if enough aid is provided by the United States, the Lima Group, and the EU to enable people to bring some back into Venezuela. While not the ideal means to provide humanitarian aid inside Venezuela, smuggling is a well-established activity and effectively closing the border to the influx of such aid would significantly add to the discredit of the Maduro government. The United States also needs to consider how it would respond to a sudden military take-over and change of leadership. In this case, the United States should coordinate with Latin American governments in an immediate call for a firm date for the restoration of freely organized elections and in which chavismo, minus government officials implicated in corruption and abuse of power, would be free to compete. Only a stable democratic Venezuela will be able to utilize its vast oil and gas resources for the benefit of its people and global energy markets.

What this really highlights is that U.S. options are quite limited, which is something we typically don't like to acknowledge. In the U.S., we like to think we can play an active role in doing something. The real problems come when our options are limited but we try to force them.

I get the feeling that Donald Trump's interest in Venezuela has waned, similar to the surge of interest in Cuba that then seemed to evaporate. That could change, of course, and Marco Rubio is definitely talking to him about it at every opportunity. However, he might be better off going on Fox and Friends than CNN op-eds. But at least for now Trump is focused among other things on North Korea and of course on the Russia investigation. There is only so much bandwidth.

Update: Juan Cruz, who is Trump's Latin America advisor in the National Security Council, gives a veiled hint for the Venezuelan military to overthrow Maduro. This makes it more likely that something is being cooked up. The big question is whether it is oil or more of what he's been doing up to this point.

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Saturday, April 28, 2018

Venezuelan Immigration and Brazilian Politics

The New York Times has a heartrending story on poor Venezuelan migrants going to northern Brazil, which is feeling overwhelmed. The governor of the state of Roraima sued the federal government to close the border and provide needed funds for the services it provides the migrants. The pictures are particularly devastating.

This made me think of Brazilian politics and Lula, which I wrote about two days ago. If Jair Bolsonaro wins, you know the response will be harsh nationalism, sealing the border with force. But of the left wins, then what? Lula has been cautiously critical of Nicolás Maduro but would he--or anyone on the left--become more assertive given the impact on Brazil? It's much easier for Evo Morales to remain fully supportive of Maduro when Bolivia does not border Venezuela and therefore feels no impact from the humanitarian crisis.

There does remain a stubborn insistence that this is fake news, cooked up by the international imperialist terrorist right. In this scenario I suppose I am part of "global propaganda." As firsthand accounts and reports from international organizations increase, this gets harder to maintain. At what point does the Brazilian left become more vocal?

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Friday, April 27, 2018

US and Ecuador Thaw

Ecuador and the United States have signed an agreement to cooperate in fighting drug trafficking, including the creation of a Transnational Criminal Investigation Unit, something the U.S. has across the world that is funded by the Department of Homeland Security but also reports to the respective ambassadors.

This is very positive and is yet another example of how radically Lenín Moreno has moved away from the policy stance of Rafael Correa, who hates him with a vicious passion (and Moreno returns the favor by investigating him). He is all over him on Twitter, for example.

The Ecuadorian government is quite pleased with the arrangement, as this statement indicates:

Tradicionalmente, Ecuador y EE.UU. han tenido una relación bastante fuerte. Durante la administración anterior bajó un poco, pero ahora, bajo el liderazgo del presidente Lenín Moreno, ha declarado claramente que quiere refrescar las relaciones con EE.UU. Eso ofrece nuevas oportunidades de cooperación y en eso estamos. Trabajamos en conjunto por los mismos intereses. Somos socios.

And another slap too:

EE.UU. está abierto, pero lamentablemente, por mucho tiempo, algunas cosas estuvieron pendientes por razones ideológicas. Ahora es diferente, con una visión bastante pragmática del Presidente para avanzar en los intereses nacionales.

Talk about a shift. Correa was hostile even to Barack Obama whereas Moreno is eager to work with the Trump administration.

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Thursday, April 26, 2018

Lula and the Brazilian Election

The Worker's Party in Brazil says Lula is still their candidate and publicly presented the party's seven point presidential platform. It's a plan that covers just about everything under the sun, to the point of being meaningless.

1. The international system, sovereignty, and national defense.
2. Integration and national cohesiveness, as well as providing public services.
3. Justice and the rule of law in the country.
4. Improving the quality of life of citizens.
5. How to increase the availability of consumable goods.
6. The reduction of inequality and assurance of social inclusion throughout Brazil.
7. Economic and sustainable development, how to use natural and industrial resources, guaranteeing wealth for all.

Lula had said the PT could choose another candidate if it wanted, though it may be waiting at least for a Supreme Court ruling coming up soon about releasing him from prison. I am not sure whether he'd be eligible to run anyway.

This has major implications because Lula is the favorite to win the election. Take him out of the picture, and the lunatic Jair Bolsonaro is slightly ahead of Marina Silva, but you also have a slew of candidates just under them, splintering the left and the right. That's volatile because you won't need a high vote share to get to the second round and so the race will hinge on who manages to get that extra bit of margin. My colleague Fred Batista was just filling me in on all the possible permutations across the political spectrum.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Where Will Unrest in Nicaragua Lead?

I'm quoted in this Financial Times article about Daniel Ortega's standing amidst the large protests against him. Can this lead to regime change? Yes, it can, but it's also true that in authoritarian contexts your best bet is always on the incumbent.

The quote itself refers to protest fatigue, and we can see that in Venezuela. Simply put, it's hard to keep people on the streets. If the government holds firm, the initial excitement starts to wear off, and the reality of needing to get to work, live your daily life, etc. settles in. There were several moments in Venezuela where the opposition hoped the government was on its last legs, but that wasn't the case. People went back to get in line for food.

I've said this umpteen times and it's not novel, but if the security forces are behind the government, then you're not going to get too far. It's impossible to gauge this from the outside and it is fluid. For example, if (as is the case now in Nicaragua) the police are called on to restore public order and end up killing people, then you might see the development of discontent in the ranks. There are now rumors of that happening with some police officers. Where is the army in this? We don't know.

Meanwhile, the FSLN is understandably alarmed and wants dialogue, stopping short of asking Ortega to step down. The government has already backed off the social security policy and now is a turning point--will Ortega accept dialogue or keep cracking down? If he does the former, that likely defuses the situation, at least in the short term. If the latter, then we see how long protests can keep up and how far security forces are willing to go. It could even be a combination of both. In Venezuela, it's been a long time.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Cuba Podcast

I went on SECOLAS' Historias podcast with Steven Hyland and Carlos Dimas. We chat about the political transition in Cuba, using my article on US-Cuban relations as a springboard. There is also a segment on The Latin Americanist after that. Go check it out!

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Monday, April 23, 2018

Democratic Fragility in Latin America

This New York Times article about the Paraguayan election caught my eye, especially one quote:

“I didn’t live through the dictatorship, but I know that life was good, and I think we could use another period like that,” José Rodríguez, a 19-year-old medical student, said on Sunday night. “There are too many thieves and assaults, and it wasn’t like that before.”

A young, educated Paraguayan says dictatorship sounds OK. Of course, this is one cherry-picked quote so let's look at the data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project. A 2014 poll showed some indifference to democracy (see p. 64 and around there for that data). Almost 40% think a dictatorship can be preferable, or they don't care much one way or another.

This is troubling and reminded me of the calls for military intervention in Brazil. We are a full generation removed from the end of military dictatorships and so they are much easier to romanticize. In some cases the people are young enough not to have been alive at the time. LAPOP's 2016-2017 regional report notes "a significant decline in the extent to which the public agrees that democracy, despite its flaws, is better than any other form of government" (p. 24).

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Sunday, April 22, 2018

UNASUR on the Rocks

Half of the countries of UNASUR announced they were suspending their membership until the crisis of "rudderless" leadership was resolved. There is currently no Secretary General, which must be decided by consensus.

Responses are almost entirely ideological. Nicolás Maduro said unnamed "revolutionaries" would protect UNASUR (whatever that means for an international institution). An editorial in Ecuador's El Comercio made fun of the Kirchner statue erected in UNASUR headquarters and wondered whether there were better uses of money. The Uruguayan right argued there was on point in staying in UNASUR. The Kirchnerists in Argentina are upset. Leftists think this is all about pressure from the United States.

You get the picture.

A major question for UNASUR was always whether it could get out of the ideological shadow of its creator, Hugo Chávez. I thought it was, even if haltingly, though I had not paid much attention to it over the past year. Latin American unity is elusive, as I've written about before. Can governments at different ends of the ideological spectrum find consensus (without driving each other crazy?).

It would be good for the region if UNASUR recovers. It's good to have a forum for dialogue and conflict resolution without the presence of the United States. It's good to foster cooperation even when governments are polar ideological opposites. There must be some centrist figure out there who would fit the bill of Secretary General.

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Saturday, April 21, 2018

Review of James Comey's A Higher Loyalty

I read James Comey's A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership (2018) and if you're looking for new details, you won't find them there. And in fact it's not the point of the book at all. Instead, it's an examination of leadership, where naturally Donald Trump falls quite obviously and publicly short.

It is a very human book, with Comey talking about his background (with some harrowing personal details I did not know about, such as being threatened by a serial rapist and the death of his infant son) and trying to explain how he developed his style of leadership based on people who had been leaders for him when he was young, especially the manager of the grocery store where he worked as a teenager. I liked these parts, as they seemed genuine (he takes pains to show his own doubts and imperfections) and smart.

Then of course there are the decisions he made about Hillary Clinton's emails. He talks about all the different ways a reasonable person could have addressed the new group of emails that came from Anthony Weiner's computer right before the 2016 election (and frankly, all I could think of as I did at the time was how disgusting it was that an asshole like Wiener could have affected an election). Comey doesn't ask you to agree--he just asks you to think about all the possible and very limited alternatives.

Lastly, there is Trump himself. He is everything we already know. Self-serving, narcissistic, and most importantly insecure. He cannot handle the truth, so to speak, and Comey compares him to the mafia bosses he investigated and prosecuted early in his career in New York. Trump needs personal loyalty and lackeys since he is too insecure or emotionally immature to handle push back or contradiction. Comey's whole point is that the truth is our higher loyalty, and it is something Donald Trump consciously rejects.

Update 4/23/18: An interesting take on the book by a top Hillary Clinton aide.

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Friday, April 20, 2018

World Bank Says Latin America Is Growing

The World Bank released a report saying that Latin American economies are recovering and growth will be stronger in 2018 and 2019. Here is the executive summary and here is the full report. To anyone who studies Latin America at all, it will sound familiar and for the many years I've done this blog I have written more posts than I can count about World Bank, IMF, and CEPAL economic projections. Growth goes up and down, but two things stay constant: reliance on global commodity prices and debt. Latin America needs to move away from commodities and reduce debt. It has been thus forever and there is no end in sight.

Their advice is measured and should once again make us wary of the vague term "neoliberal."

In terms of short-run costs, we draw several important conclusions from our empirical analysis. First, 85 percent of the 136 fiscal adjustment episodes that we identify in the region for the period 1960-2017 have involved only cuts in government spending, as opposed to 4 percent involving only tax hikes (the remaining 11 percent involved both). While this is, in principle, good public policy (especially if it is feasible to cut unproductive government spending), we show that the short-run costs of raising taxes (specifically, value-added taxes) are highly non linear: costs are essentially zero for low initial levels of the tax rate (around 10-12 percent) and quite substantial for high initial levels (above 20 percent). Hence, low-taxation countries may actually find it in their best interest to raise taxes as part of a fiscal adjustment rather than cutting public investment or reducing social transfers (particularly to the most vulnerable). Second, the shortrun output costs of reducing primary spending are also non-linear (i.e., marginal costs increase with the size of spending cuts), which makes a strong case for gradual versus shock fiscal adjustments. Finally, even when policymakers should be careful not to rely too heavily on cutting public investment, it should not be done at the cost of reducing social transfers which are found to have important costs on both output and poverty.

The disaster of structural adjustment and shock therapy in the 1980s is now permanently ingrained and the real advances that social spending has achieved is recognized as valuable and important.

As a side note, the Venezuela numbers look very much like the Cuban Special Period. Almost identical. As you might guess, the report shows projections both including and excluding Venezuela because it cannot be fruitfully part of any average.

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Thursday, April 19, 2018

Reorienting the Latin American Left

Great interview in The Nation of Gustavo Petro. In particular, he talks about reorienting the Latin American left.

There’d be a change in axis. Latin American progressivism used to revolve around the Havana-Caracas-Buenos Aires-Managua axis. That was an old progressivism, and I don’t think it gave us any solutions. It revolved around oil and coal, Havana included, since it aligned with Venezuela to get oil. It has since fallen apart, and while it was falling apart, neoliberalism got a second wind and began winning elections in Argentina, Peru, and other countries. But I don’t think that it’s lasted long yet—except in Colombia, where it always has been. Take a look at crisis in Peru, what is happening in Mexico, even in Brazil—they needed a coup to take down Lula.

The existence of the FARC prevented any moderate left from gaining traction in Colombia, and the silver lining there is that Petro has a blank political slate to work with. Eventually the Venezuelan left will face a similar situation since the Chavista left is being discredited.

He provides no details about how to move away from extractionism, and of course even Nicolás Maduro talks about it while doing nothing, but it's still important to begin with a goal of changing how the left views the economy.

It will be an axis that sees the transformations of Latin America toward a productive economy, and not one based the extraction of resources. We aren’t going to be primary exporters, as we have been for five centuries. We can also be an intentional society and produce on the basis of knowledge. 

I am not sure what he means here by "producing on the basis of knowledge." He has said this before.

“Over the last 30 years, Colombia has exported oil, coal and cocaine,” he said. “I don’t see how this benefits humanity. I want to export food and knowledge-intensive industrial products.”

Perhaps he means high tech. Regardless, it shows a recognition that the Venezuelan and Argentine models had serious problems and should not be copied. A reorientation is what the Latin American left needs right now if it is to win votes again in more countries and carry on its core goal of reducing inequality.

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Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Context of the Paraguayan Presidential Election


This is a guest post.

Samuel Fishman lives in Paraguay where he teaches English with an English Teaching Assistant Fulbright grant from the U.S. Department of State. He graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. in Political Economy. He is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. .

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the political protests that reverberated through Paraguay on March 31st of last year. On that day, thousands of Paraguayans of all ages and political stripes took to the streets of the capital city Asunción and throughout the nation. Over the course of the chaotic night the national Congress building was lit on fire by demonstrators and a young protester was shot and killed by police. In spite of the violence however, over the course of this year the protests have showed themselves to have a number of durable effects, most notably a dramatic increase in youth political involvement and the strengthening of local independent media outlets. These two effects will be critical factors when Paraguayans go to the polls this Sunday to choose their next president.

The demonstrations were a response to a proposed constitutional amendment to allow Presidents to seek re-election, which is verboten by the national constitution. Opposition to the amendment stemmed from two objections, once substantive and one procedural. South America’s longest continuous dictatorship ended in Paraguay in 1989, so Paraguayans remain skeptical of any strengthening of executive power. On the procedural side, the amendment (enmienda) emerged from a secret closed-doors session of the Paraguayan Senate, and received support from traditional bitter political rivals from the two largest political parties. These strange bedfellows were seen as cooperating for self-serving political strategy; both parties stand to gain from extended term limits.

However, it appears that backlash to the enmienda triggered some positive changes. Historically, levels of youth engagement in Paraguayan politics have been low. A recent survey by the Centro de Información y Recursos para elDesarrollo showed that thirty-four percent of respondents believe many young people do not vote due to a lack of interest in politics and elections. Yet, a series of growing youth mobilization efforts following the enmienda suggests March 31st marked a turning point of sorts. Ever since, the streets have flooded with massive youth-led non-violent demonstrations to raise awareness for women's rights, LGBT rights, the environment, and other progressive causes. Notably, these events often unite trabajdores, empleadas, universitarios, campesinos and many disparate groups into broad, inclusive coalitions.

Clearly, the enmienda counter-protests spurred increased youth political engagement. However, other parts of civil society were also affected, namely, the media. The mainstream Paraguayan media has long been dominated by a handful of brazenly partisan newspapers, some of the largest of which are owned by the outgoing multibillionaire President Horacio Cartes. As the night´s events unfolded, citizens spurned traditional media outlets and increasingly turned to social media and independent media for crucial real time information. As I huddled with a group of university students, they ignored the talking heads blaring from a nearby car radio, and refreshed Twitter for updates. On the other hand, alternative media outlets were thrust into the spotlight with innovative coverage techniques. These sources racked up tens of thousands of views with Facebook Live streams of Congressional debate, shot on personal cell phones. Online streams of the burning Congress building and bloodied opposition politicians immediately went viral, dramatically increasing the viewership of independent media outlets.

Throughout Latin America, as nations have transitioned from dictatorships to democracies, many have struggled with “flexible” term limits for heads of state. A series of countries including Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have lifted presidential term limits. In Paraguay however, citizen outcry was strong enough that the controversial enmienda was retracted and the executive term limit remains in force. When Paraguayans go to the polls this Sunday to choose their next president, the politically empowered Paraguayan youth and the strengthened independent media will play a critical role. University students are organizing on-campus debates between candidates while new media sources are using YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp memes, and other web platforms to broadcast information about the election directly to voters. While the enmienda project itself failed, one year later its political legacy later remains strong. These two factors, youth involvement and independent media, could play a deciding role in this Sunday’s presidential election and the future of Paraguayan politics.

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Wilbur Ross on Latin America

Voice of America published an interview with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. It's an unsurprisingly disheartening interview because it's so wooden and false.

--When asked about Argentina increasing trade with China because of Donald Trump's trade war, he says:

we are exploring all sorts of things, bilateral things, things that Argentina can sell us, and things that we can sell Argentina.

Things. That clears it all up.

--On Venezuela

Venezuela is abusing its population and that is not a satisfactory thing to happen. 

Strong words!

--And then a real, honest-to-goodness whopper.

So we are going to try to facilitate that, an example is the gesture that the United States made through Vice President Pence. I hope that people understand what it is. We are sharing the hardship with them of the refugees that have come out of Venezuela.

Holy smokes. There are about 600,000 Venezuelan refugees in Colombia alone. There is no sense in Latin America of shared hardship.

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Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Ken Godwin

Ken Godwin passed away on Sunday, April 15. Here is our department statement.

The Department of Political Science and Public Administration is sad to announce that Dr. Ken Godwin passed away on Sunday, April 15. From 2001 until he ended phased retirement in 2013, Dr. Godwin was the Marshall A. Rausch Distinguished Professor of Public Policy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1972 and over his career he published 12 books as well as over 70 journal articles and book chapters. He was highly respected both professionally and personally in the department. His funeral will be held Thursday, April 19, at 2:00 p.m. at Park Road Baptist Church in Charlotte. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Crisis Assistance Ministry at https://crisisassistance.org/.

This comes as a shock to all of us. Ken was smart, perceptive, blunt, and helpful to everyone. I sought his advice numerous times, especially since he had served as department chair before coming to UNC Charlotte. It's been a somber day here. Hard to say much more than that right now.

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Change in Cuba

The U.S. commentariat on the right tends to argue that change isn't happening in Cuba, generally to justify criticism of President Obama's normalization of relations. This article in Dissent is a leftist view of the actually radical economic changes taking place and how much controversy it is generating among Cubans.

When Raúl Castro succeeded his brother, official policy substantially shifted. Raúl Castro’s government shelved the Battle of Ideas, set in motion large-scale layoffs in the state sector, and encouraged the expansion, within limits, of private businesses. A small number of Cubans were able to take advantage of the more favorable atmosphere to push the boundaries of what was possible, legally and illegally. With money from relatives in Miami, or embezzled from the state, the new rich opened large, garish restaurants, bought properties to operate upscale Airbnbs, ran small and not-so-small import operations. Many flaunted their newfound affluence.

Capitalism and inequality go hand in hand, and Cuba is experiencing that now. Those with access love it, those without lament the betrayal of the revolution. The article shows how the Trump administration's policies are squeezing people once again. The problem, an age old one, is that U.S. policy makers believe that hurting the average Cuban will help bring about political reform. Instead, what it really causes is emigration.

Although Cubans across the board tell me they are disaffected, it is very unlikely they will act collectively, much less take to the streets. Cubans’ traditional form of resistance is to leave. Now leaving is more difficult than it was before President Obama ended the immigration program designed to lure Cubans to the United States, and before President Trump dramatically downsized the U.S. Embassy in Havana. Nevertheless, Cubans continue to plot ways to emigrate. For decades, leaving has been the escape valve that prevented Cuba’s pressure cooker from exploding.

What should we take from all this? Isolating Cuba is proven not to achieve U.S. policy goals. Especially given the historic political transition that will soon take place, the U.S. should be ready to engage. Nothing else has worked. Change is indeed happening and the U.S. should not be punishing Cubans as it occurs.

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Monday, April 16, 2018

The Summit of the Americas and Venezuela

Here is the Venezuelan opposition summary of how Venezuela was treated during the Summit of the Americas. It can easily be taken as weak, with talk of "solving the crisis themselves" and focusing more on humanitarian assistance than on condemning repression and calling for release of political prisoners, allowing candidates to run in the election, etc.

On the other hand, it's rare to see even this much public consensus that the political situation in a Latin American country is dire. Half the countries did sign a declaration condemning the breakdown of constitutional order and although there will be some hardcore opposition, I can see that number gradually increasing if no solution is reached, especially as the emigration problem increases.

In large part because of the history of U.S. policy, Latin America is deeply suspicious of intervention. There is always a lot of hesitance no matter the ideological orientation. Overcoming that is no small feat and is delicate, which also means that given Donald Trump's current tirades against James Comey, his attendance could easily have been counterproductive.

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Saturday, April 14, 2018

Fading Luster of the Summit of the Americas

The Peruvian newspaper El Comercio notes how many presidents decided not to attend the Summit of the Americas. In addition to the United States, there was Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. Lenín Moreno came briefly and then returned to Ecuador. And of course Nicolás Maduro was not invited. It is worth noting that these countries are not ideologically similar.

The question going forward is whether Trump has helped accelerate a process of disinterest in the summit altogether. Already, the summit's original purpose of free trade has been badly undermine by the United States, to the point that Latin American countries don't have any idea where he stands (rejoin the TPP? Destroy NAFTA? Trade war?).

Remember the first summit in 1994 with its statement about "the Americas are united in pursuing prosperity through open markets, hemispheric integration, and sustainable develoment"? Trump does not believe in any of those three things and has made it clear he is not interested in having the U.S. play a leadership role in the hemisphere. It would be natural for leaders to wonder what the whole point is.

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Thursday, April 12, 2018

Podcast Episode 51: Political Decentralization in Latin America Can Kill Parties


In Episode 51 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast I talk with Jana Morgan (on Twitter too), who is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee and a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. She works on inequality, exclusion and representation. She explores how economic, social and political inequalities affect marginalized groups and undermine democratic processes and outcomes. She recently published an article in Latin American Research Review (click here for the open access full text) on political decentralization and party decay in Latin America, and that’s what we talked about. I couldn’t help bringing the United States into the conversation as well.



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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Review of Levitsky and Ziblatt's How Democracies Die

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die (2018) is two political scientists writing a comparative historical analysis of democratic decay in an accessible style. For that alone, this is a good book for a wide audience and you'll learn a lot. They argue that the two cornerstones of democracy in the U.S. are mutual toleration and forbearance, and these have eroded badly. The comparative analysis is really useful for putting all of Donald Trump's actions in their proper context. Like other authoritarian-minded leaders, he breaks democratic norms on a regular basis and they provide ample examples.

But I do have a few analytical quibbles. First is that they never actually define democracy and when we can consider it "dead," or what "dead" really is. This matters so that you're comparing apples to apples across cases. Further, they discuss the problems of gerrymandering, among other things, which happen more in some U.S. states (e.g. North Carolina, which they use as an example) than others. In North Carolina this has ebbed and flowed--is that democracy "dying"? They argue that the civil war "broke" U.S. democracy (p. 122) but is that the same as "killing" it?

Second, they don't mention much about the nature of presidential vs. parliamentary systems. For the United States, this really impacts the way that Donald Trump deals with Congress. When they start to catalog his actions since his election, the institutional relationships matter quite a lot.

Third, their discussion of constitutions mentions how Latin America copied the U.S. model but that didn't stop coups (p. 98). One problem with that argument is that Latin America blended the U.S. model with the Spanish, which allowed considerable leeway for constitutional military intervention. This matters because the erosion of democracy is different in those constitutional contexts than in the U.S.

Their key policy prescriptions are to build a democratic (and multiracial) coalition, to refound the center-right free from extremism (they use Germany as an example), and to decrease economic inequality through universal rather than means-tested policies. Sound suggestions and of course really difficult.

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Thoughts on Trump's Non-Attendance

Some thoughts on Donald Trump's decision not to attend the Summit of the Americas.

1. This isn't shocking. He has made abundantly clear that he has little interest in Latin America and does not like traveling anywhere except to Mar-A-Lago and Trump Tower.

2. I agree that it will be harder to convince Latin America to do something difficult like sanction Venezuela without the POTUS, but Mike Pence is better at delivery than Trump.

3. There is no doubt that many, if not the majority, of Latin Americans attending are relieved. Who wants to deal with stupid tweets and awkward photo ops?

4. I am unconvinced that this is Marco Rubio's moment. Even if he has the president's ear, senators' influence can only go so far.

5. I will be interested to hear Pence's message for Latin America, but it's hard to know how much Trump might change on a dime anyway. It is literally true that what he hears on Fox News can shift his thinking within minutes.

6. Trump is not going to use this time to deal with Syria. Presidents have often balanced international affairs while traveling. Chances he plays golf one of those days is quite high.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

My Free Latin American Politics Textbook

I am pleased to announce that my textbook Understanding Latin American Politics is going to be published as an open access ebook. It will be published through the Open Monograph Press platform and will be hosted by UNC Charlotte. It is the exact same version as the originally published one, using the same digital files, and will be free and open to everyone. Hopefully this will be ready by next month. Plans are in the works for a second edition and I will write more once I get that all set because there is some cool news attached to it.


I published two textbooks with Pearson and was really unsatisfied (and at times actively unhappy) with the experience so with this book I asked for and received a reversion of the copyright to me. In particular, I was bothered by the price, which was over $50. A book of this type shouldn't cost that much. So I started exploring non-traditional avenues, wanting to get the book out to as many people as possible. As it turned out, a great answer to my questions came from my own university library, which has some really smart and creative people.

So watch for this. If you want an entirely free textbook, the exact same version as the expensive paper one, for your classes, I will have one ready.

BTW, you can get a sense of the original version from the Amazon box on the left of this screen. I will leave that link there for reference until I get the new link.

Update 6/12/18: The book should be available by the end of next week (about June 22). I'm psyched.

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Pushing Panama

Trump Organization lawyers sent a letter (here is an image) to the President of Panama asking him to intervene directly in a dispute about a Trump hotel.


“We categorically reject any assumption or assertion that the letter sought to ‘pressure’ the President of the Republic of Panama,” or other officials, the firm said. It continued: “The authorization of Trump Organization for its delivery was not requested, and nobody at Trump Organization was aware [of] the letter until today.”

This is disingenuous. Panama is heavily dependent on the United States and the lawyers know that full well. The clear intent was to make Juan Carlos Varela nervous even without a stated threat. As you might guess, the Panamanian reaction is not positive. This is viewed as intimidation of a kind that has long plagued U.S.-Latin American relations. We'll see whether Trump can maintain silence or whether he'll make it worse with a tweet.

This is not a good way to go into the Summit of the Americas, which starts in three days, though at this point it's hard for Trump's image to get worse. Already, a widely shared quote from a Latin American diplomat was that most intended to "smile and nod" around Trump, who is viewed as a blowhard.

Update: shortly after posting I saw that Trump has decided not to attend. Chances he plays golf instead are quite high, I think.

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Monday, April 09, 2018

Chile's Trade With China

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

--Greater wine exports to China

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

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

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

--Chilean nectarine exports to China are booming

I could go on and on.

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

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

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Maduro's Self-Defeating Retaliation

I'm quoted in this story about Nicolás Maduro's 90 day retaliatory sanctions against Panama, including banning Copa Airlines from flying to Venezuela. My argument is that this hurts Venezuela more than anyone and will not deter other Latin American countries from imposing their own. They're choosing not to do so for other reasons.

The Copa decision is particularly self-defeating because fewer and fewer airlines are interested in flying to Venezuela, so this is a form of self-isolation. Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela basically said as much.

“Panama is a logistic route,” he told reporters. “Venezuelans rely on Panama to supply medicine and food that they lack.”

In sum, this action hurts Venezuelans. At least Maduro was smart enough not to make the sanctions indefinite.

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Sunday, April 08, 2018

The Petro Savior

I'm basically bookmarking this for future reference. A cryptocurrency news site has a story about Venezuela, focusing on the government's claim that Donald Trump's statements and actions against the Petro have served to double the number of investors. There is no reason to believe this, just as there is no reason to believe any of the government's claims about the amount of investment. Even the Russians are skeptical.

What I found more interesting was this bit of specificity:


“Petro’s impact will be felt within three to six months. We have already advanced fast. As the gringos know that we are going to quickly reorganize our economy, they attack the Bolivarian Government; but they will not stop the economy’s growth, they know it.

There you go: three to six months even with the "attacks." There is no reason to believe this either but it's more specific than the government tends to be.

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Saturday, April 07, 2018

Latin America Links

It's been a while since I've done links. Click to see smart people doing work on Latin American politics in some manner.

--Mike Allison writes in frustration about the U.S. response to Central American migrants.

--Chris Sabatini argues that the Venezuelan opposition should participate in elections.

--Geoff Ramsey on sanctions against Venezuelan officials. This is a few weeks old but has a useful database.

--Boz makes five points about the Costa Rican presidential election. These days it's nice to see tolerance in an election.

--Merike Blofield and Christina Ewig write about reproductive rights in Latin America. Less evidence of tolerance there unfortunately.

--Patricio Navia has a funny take on the Summit of the Americas.

Here are some Twitter feeds you might check out:

--Tim Gill (sociologist and Venezuelanist at UNC Wilmington)

--John Polga-Hecemovich (political scientist at the US Naval Institute)

--Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS)

--Orlando Pérez (political scientist at Millersville University)

--Christina Wade (political scientist at Washington College)

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Friday, April 06, 2018

Weird Diplomacy With Venezuela

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) went to Venezuela to talk to Nicolás Maduro. This sort of thing happens from time to time, but here's the weird part:

A U.S. official said the private trip was not taxpayer funded and that Sessions had received a letter of invitation from the Venezuelan government and met with Maduro. He said State Department officials played no role in organizing the trip, which ended Tuesday and added that they were not invited to sit in on Sessions’ meetings as they were by Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, who arrived in Caracas on Wednesday for his own meetings with Maduro and government officials.

You would expect such a visit to be in coordination with the State Department, but Durbin's is and Sessions' isn't. Sessions has a good relationship with Donald Trump so maybe he's going at his behest.

I don't know anything about Sessions, who has been in the House since 2003 and has a 100% rating from the American Conservative Union.  I don't see any previous interest in Venezuela or Latin America in general. So I can't think of why him in particular. Maybe it's just a combination of loyalty to Trump and relative anonymity (for all we know, he's gone other times without notice).

Maduro sent a letter of invitation so wanted Sessions to come. Dialogue, however weird, is better than no dialogue. This seems sloppy and ad hoc, though.

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Thursday, April 05, 2018

U.S. vs. China in Latin America

Reuters has a story about the Trump administration's unhappiness with greater Latin American attention to China. Here's the key quote:

The U.S. is forcing countries in the region to choose between the U.S. and China,” said Margaret Myers, director of the Latin America and the World program at the Inter-American Dialogue. “It’s putting Latin American countries in a very challenging position while at the same time not offering a particularly attractive policy.”

The article itself actually doesn't provide much evidence of this "forcing to choose" hypothesis. That doesn't mean it isn't happening because there is a lot going on privately. But I would need more to be convinced that the Trump administration is putting pressure on Latin America. There is also the problem of greatly reduced leverage. What can Trump threaten a Latin American country with? Central America receives a lot of aid, but the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling U.S. leverage in the region.

The irony here is that U.S. policy toward China is having the direct effect of pushing Latin America and China together. As China slaps retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports like soy, Latin America is right there to fill the gap. The more the United States enacts protectionist policies, the more Latin American countries will seek to trade with China. It's really that simple.

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Wednesday, April 04, 2018

AMLO's Message to Investors

Andrés Manuel López Obrador can smell victory. He's way up in the polls and there are a variety of ways his opponents help him. Now he has written a public letter to investors.


Tengan confianza. No somos rebeldes sin causa y tenemos palabra. Sabemos cumplir nuestros compromisos. No se dejen asustar. 

He says he wants to combat corruption and to responsibly increase the role of the state in the economy without reverting to previous models (i.e. the ISI model). He promised there would be no confiscation of anything and all civil liberties would be respected. He is fine with renegotiating NAFTA but wants it to wait until after his election.

No descartamos la posibilidad de convencer al presidente Donald Trump de su despectiva y equivocada actitud contra los mexicanos. Estamos dispuestos a mantener una relación de amistad y respeto mutuo.

I don't see AMLO convincing Donald Trump of anything but it's worth a try.

He's trying to calm investors generally and Mexican currency markets, which are nervous. Is he Hugo Chávez? Or is he, as Patrick Iber has argued, more like Jimmy Carter? AMLO is in a position where if he can get some public confidence from investors, he can put it over the top if he's not there already.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Mexico Is Loving RT

I hesitate to call this causation, but as Donald Trump has publicly attacked and insulted Mexico since his election, so has RT expanded its audience in Mexico. As Trump creates vacuums, Russia is ready to fill them.

El mayor incremento de audiencia se ha registrado en los países de América Latina. En esta región, la audiencia semanal de RT ha crecido casi 3 veces, alcanzando los 17 millones de telespectadores en 7 países: Venezuela, Ecuador, México, Argentina, Colombia, Chile y Perú. En el estudio del 2017 se sumaron tres países latinoamericanos. Teniendo en cuenta esos países, la audiencia semanal de RT en América Latina alcanzó los 18 millones de espectadores.
 El líder de aumento de audiencia en esta región es México, donde la audiencia semanal de RT se multiplicó por más de 4,5 en 2 años.


Russia, of course, wants AMLO to win so RT is on the job in Mexico. If nothing else, it's plenty of extra positive news coverage for AMLO, packaged for Mexicans who want to consider themselves "alternative."

And, incidentally, more people in the U.S  watch RT than ever before even though it is registered as a "foreign agent." I imagine they consider themselves alternative too.

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Monday, April 02, 2018

Trump Tries to Figure Out Central American Migration

Donald Trump "vented," as the The New York Times put it, about immigration yesterday. What that means is he was watching television, likely Fox News, and then got on Twitter. Yesterday he focused on DACA, showing that he isn't clear on exactly what it is. He believes that DACA is serving as a magnet for migrants moving northward from Central America. This is interesting since he in fact ended DACA. You may recall headlines from September 2017 reading "Trump Ends DACA." Something that does not exist cannot be cited as an attraction. I am in fact curious what Trump thinks DACA is.

There is a broader problem here that goes well beyond Trump and includes the Obama administration. When we hear of Central Americans on the move, we have to think of failed past policies, notably the 2009 coup in Honduras, which worsened political and social conditions there. We have to think of current support for a fraudulent election there. And no politician ever discusses the effects of 1980s policies on El Salvador. It's a bipartisan problem--our policies in Central America are never long-sighted and they keep on biting us.

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Sunday, April 01, 2018

Review of David Maraniss Clemente

I read David Maraniss' Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, which I liked quite a bit. Clemente was larger than life even while alive.

Clemente was peevish and tended toward whiny. But that wasn't without reason because he had suffered segregation and discrimination. He didn't get endorsements the way white players did. He didn't get the same accolades (though in part that's because the Pirates were not a big market team). Even worse, and Maraniss comes back to it numerous times with quotes, the press routinely quoted him in phonetics. English was his second language and it became caricatured ("Eef I can geet better...") and justifiably made him mad.

Maraniss depicts the extreme and disgusting corruption of the Somoza government when it sucked up all the aid it could for profit and let people go hungry after the 1972 earthquake. Clemente was angry and that compelled him even more to take the trip to Nicaragua so that he could force the aid where it needed to go. Roberto Clemente could (and would) stand up to a dictator. He was a real role model, on and off the field. He was an elite player who was idolized by both African American and Latino teammates. He was a fan favorite and a devoted family man.

Maraniss gives substantial attention to the history of the DC-7 that took him into the Caribbean shortly after takeoff. I had no idea about any of it, and I felt impotent and useless anger at the owner, who was both stupid and negligent. Many people knew that plane shouldn't be flown. I don't know about being baseball's "last" heroes but Clemente was one of its greatest.

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