China After the Venezuela Invasion

There are, and will continue to be, fairly breathless analyses about the U.S. invasion of Venezuela has thwarted Chinese ambitions in Latin America. Or wording to that effect. But be careful with broad pronouncements.

Case in point: Argentina. China and Argentina have had mutually beneficial economic relations for a long time. Javier Milei, who is gushingly pro-Trump, just said in an interview that "I’m not going to break the trade links with China." This is the problem with so many takes on China--they assume it's ideological when it's not.

Latin America has been playing the field for several decades now and the Venezuela invasion won't suddenly change that. It's not just China, but rather the whole world. Latin America has strong trade and investment ties all over.

Things change daily, but for now I expect Latin American leaders to mostly stay quiet, stay off Trump's radar, and continue doing business. Since the U.S. has proved itself an unreliable partner, increasingly that business is spread out.

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Alberto Fernández Visits AMLO

I am quoted in this Associated Press story about Alberto Fernández visiting AMLO. The basic question is whether this means much for the future. Nicolás Maduro, for example, claimed AMLO could lead a new front against imperialism, with Argentina by his side. My take was that this wasn't going to happen.

On the Mexican side, AMLO does not seem to be interested in being a regional leader. He said as much:

"No (encabezaré un eje progresista), porque cada país tiene su propia realidad... su propia historia. Por eso es el principio de autodeterminación de los pueblos, de ahí viene, cada pueblo tiene su propia historia, su idiosincrasia, y cada quien tiene que actuar de acuerdo a sus circunstancias", expresó el mandatario mexicano.

He has his own problems and isn't going to make international enemies. He has been careful not to get Donald Trump's negative attention, so a high-risk, low-payoff anti-imperialism front does not appeal to him.

On the Argentine side, why travel to AMLO? My take here was that Alberto Fernández wanted to make a symbolic statement about his political orientation. That means a country with a stable leftist (or center-left) government. That rules out Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela. He could go to Uruguay, I suppose, but there are indications the left won't be ruling there much longer. That left Mexico. I will be surprised if there is much more to it than that.

Lastly, visiting a leftist president first allows Fernández to next visit countries in the southern cone that are much more important to Argentina.  I don't see a "Latin American left rising," as Reuters put it.

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Trump & Macri Show The Current State of US-Latin American Relations

Is there any better visual image of current U.S.-Latin American relations than this? Donald Trump and Mauricio Macri walk out on stage at the G20, in Macri's own country, then Trump marches off (even apparently saying, "Get me out of here") while Macri raises his arms in a universal "WTH?" motion and then is left lonely on the stage.

I don't know if it is prompted by confusion or what, but I don't think it is intended as a snub.  But in diplomacy you have to be careful because not bothering to know what you're doing in a high-level event is easily seen as snub.

Latin America reaches out, Trump has his own agenda and has no interest. Latin America looks around, wondering what the problem is. By then Trump has already forgotten about them. Showing that you don't care has a major impact even if you do not mean it to.

BTW, Trump has often wandered. Go to YouTube and simply do a "Trump wanders" search to see examples.

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Bolsonaro's International Priorities Do Not Include Argentina

Jair Bolsonaro announced his first trips as president: he will be going to Chile, Washington, and Israel. Dilma Rousseff's first trip was to Argentina, which makes sense given the historical importance of the bilateral relationship, and it's a common choice for either Brazilian or Argentine presidents. But Bolsonaro is not particularly interested in Argentina or Mercosur.

All three are highly ideological choices. There is an obvious affinity between Bolsonaro and Trump, even though their ideologies sometimes take them in diametrically opposed directions. Both are nationalist, which puts up an automatic barrier to trade discussions even as they agree on many other things. Israel (and where embassies are located) is just part of the same ideological track. Chile is more pragmatic--Sebastián Piñera is not an ideological soulmate, but Bolsonaro's Economic Minister is a fan of the Chicago Boys and in fact Bolsonaro once praised Augusto Pinochet and said he should have killed more people.

For the moment, this leaves Argentina behind. Mauricio Macri is conservative but the economy is not doing well and Bolsonaro does not want to be tied to it. Interestingly, the Argentine and Brazilian militaries show signs of wanting to deepen relations, which can occur regardless of the presidents' priorities, just as U.S. military to military relations continue no matter what's going on at higher political levels.

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More Latin American Benefits From Trump Trade War

Because of Donald Trump's trade war, China is working to wean itself off U.S. soybeans.

The comments echo a growing confidence within China’s soybean industry and government that the world’s largest pork-producing nation can wean itself off U.S. soy exports – a prospect that would decimate U.S. farmers, upend a 36-year-old trading relationship worth $12.7 billion last year, and radically remap global trade flows. 

Just one prong of the strategy Mu detailed - to slash soymeal content in pig feed - could obliterate Chinese demand for U.S. soybeans if broadly adopted, according to Reuters calculations.

A bit breathless, I think, but the point remains that the Chinese government has a strategy here that will have long-term implications. As it turns out, those implications involve Latin America.

At the Kansas City conference, held by the U.S. Soybean Export Council, Mu highlighted reduced soymeal rations as part of a broader strategy, including seeking alternative protein sources such as rapeseed or cotton seed; tapping surplus soybean stocks, including a government reserve, and domestically grown soybeans; and continuing to boost soybean imports from Brazil and Argentina.

This is a recurring theme. Trump unsettles Latin America because he is unpredictable, but in some specific ways his economic policies benefit Latin American producers at the expense of the United States. In this case, U.S. farmers lose. I've been writing some variation of this in posts a number of times this year.

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Cycles of Argentine Economic Woes

In the 1990s, Carlos Menem pushed a series of market reforms (including the infamous dollar peg) to finally cure the woes of the Argentine economy. Then the global economy slowed, Brazil devalued, and things fell apart. The pain of austerity measures gave way to the rise of leftist populism under Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández. They were going to solve the problems that Menem created.

After years of their two administrations, Argentina had sunk back down again, and here we are. Since 2015, Mauricio Macri has been unable to deal with debt and the weak peso, and just announced his own austerity measures as the peso plunged and investors lost confidence. There will be pain again.

There is a sad and ideology-free flavor to this. If you are an Argentine voter, who do you turn to? Do you just retreat to clientelist relationships?

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Blacks in Argentina

Erika Edwards is a colleague of mine in the History department here at UNC Charlotte. She works on Argentine history and has a great post at the Urban History Association blog about the disappearance of the black population. Argentina had a policy--common elsewhere as well--of whitening (blanqueamiento).

In effect, Sarmiento, and similar intellectuals joined the larger Latin American process of blanqueamiento, or whitening. Blanqueamiento serves as an operative word to describe the late-nineteenth-century state-led modernization process. Like Argentina, many other Latin American countries looked to European immigrants as the way to bring civilization. Historians have argued that this ideological erasure is one of the main reasons for the disappearance of people who identified as black in Argentina.

Go check out the whole thing.

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Latin America Reacts to Trump's Trade War

Donald Trump announced a trade war on steel. Yes, he literally did that this morning. No joke. Trade wars are ugly and everyone loses. Brazil has already announced it is considering retaliation.

Brazil's Industry Ministry on Thursday expressed "enormous concern" about the proposed U.S. tariffs and underscored that Brazil may take "multilateral or bilateral" action to protect its interests. 

The ministry said its steel industry was not a threat to the United States, noting that 80 percent of its steel exports are semi-finished products that serve as an important input for the American steel industry. The statement also noted that Brazil is the biggest importer of metallurgical coal from the United States.

Mexico has done the same.

Mexico expressly asked Washington to exclude it from any steel tariffs and will have “no option” but to retaliate with tariffs of its own if the US does not, a source close to the Mexican position said after Donald Trump announced plans to levy a 25 per cent tariff on steel imports.

It will also hurt Argentina, which is responding with cautious alarm.

En la Argentina, la noticia fue recibida con cautela. El gobierno de Mauricio Macri optó por eludir cualquier pronunciamiento oficial. La Cámara Argentina del Acero (CAA), que agrupa a las principales empresas siderúrgicas, manifestó "su preocupación" a través de un comunicado, y destacó que "aún no se conoce el alcance preciso de la medida en términos de productos y países afectados".

It is difficult to overstate what a bad idea this is. These three countries are all U.S. allies in Latin America and aside from hurting all the economies involved, it is a statement that the United States wishes not to be a regional leader. The economic hurt will ripple out.

Update (3/5/18): Paul Ryan says he is opposed:

“We are extremely worried about the consequences of a trade war and are urging the White House to not advance with this plan,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan said in a statement. “The new tax reform law has boosted the economy and we certainly don’t want to jeopardize those gains.”

Since he has been right in line with Trump, this is an important dissident voice. We'll see whether this constitutes the shooting down of a trial balloon.

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LGBT Legislation in Argentina vs. Brazil

Omar G. Encarnación, "Gay Rights Landscapes in Argentina and Brazil," Human Rights Quarterly 40, 1 (February 2018): 194-218. Link here but gated.

Abstract:

Why did Latin America’s most famously sexually liberated country, Brazil, fall behind one of its most socially conservative societies, Argentina, in expanding LGBT equality? This essay examines this puzzling question through the lens of the divergent landscapes of gay rights that have erupted in Argentina and Brazil since both countries became liberal democracies in the mid-1980s. Looking beyond differences in support for LGBT legislation by the executive branch, the religious context, the composition of the party system, and levels of social and economic development, this study focuses on the gay rights campaign. While in Brazil the campaign for gay rights followed the model of a conventional political struggle for civil rights, in Argentina it was framed as a human rights crusade, a strategy that, among other things, resonated profoundly with the country’s search for justice, equality and the deepening of democracy.

I think this is really interesting. A bit more:

In Argentina, gay activists waged a “human rights crusade,” animated by a very expansive, even idealistic, notion of gay equality, especially in connection to the issue of same-sex marriage. It regarded the freedom of sexuality as a fundamental human right. Argentina’s influential human rights community served as the campaign’s political anchor. This grounding in the human rights movement helped boost the framing of the campaign for gay rights as a human rights crusade and as part of a larger struggle by civil society for justice, citizenship, and democracy. It also enhanced the campaign’s success in mutually-supporting ways, such as prioritizing changing hearts and minds about homosexuality over enacting LGBT legislation; giving the campaign tremendous resonance within the culture at large (given the prominence of human rights in Argentine politics); and affording the advocacy of gay activists a rare moral significance that worked to undercut societal opposition to gay rights.
 Brazilian gay rights activists, by contrast, engaged for the most part in a “civil rights struggle.” Its overarching goal was to legitimize gay rights under Brazilian law. For instance, there was no marriage equality campaign in Brazil. Instead, gay activists demanded “stable unions,” which are recognized under the Brazilian Constitution. For its political anchor, Brazilian gay activists depended upon an alliance with the Workers’ Party (PT), the first party in Latin America to embrace gay rights. This alliance was a mixed blessing for the gay rights movement. On the one hand, it gave Brazilian activists visibility, organizational expertise, and access to state resources unparalleled in all of Latin America. On the other hand, the close affiliation of gay activists with the PT undermined the ambition of the gay rights movement; discouraged building support for gay rights within civil society by focusing the struggle for gay rights squarely within the legislature and the courts; and solidified opposition to gay rights by foes of the gay community, who were quick to label gay rights as “special rights.”

A key point here is that the struggle in Argentina was conducted outside political institutions, whereas in Brazil is had started within the Worker's Party (despite later being ignored by Lula) and focused primarily on state mechanisms to advance. In Argentina the focus was first on human rights and then on the nuts and bolts of legislation. The lesson: if you're an activist, be careful about hitching your wagon to a political party.

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Podcast Episode 41: Mining Protests in Latin America

In Episode 41 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast I talk with Michelle Bonner, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria. She studies democratization and human rights in Latin America. Going from an article she recently published in Latin American Research Review we discuss the state response to mining protests. How does the ideology of the government matter? What is "dialogue"? What does this tell us about democracy and repression in Latin America?

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Podcast Episode 39: Muslim Immigration to Argentina

In Episode 39 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast, I talk with Steven Hyland, an assistant professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Wingate University. He specializes in modern Argentina and international migration. He has a new book coming out entitled More Argentine Than You:Arab-Speaking Immigrants in Argentina with University of New Mexico Press. We discuss Muslim immigration to Argentina how that fit with Peronism, and broader patterns across Latin America.

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Ex-Latin American Presidents Become Legislators

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced she is running for Senate, soon after creating a new party that may well split the Argentine left in the October elections.

Aside from the Argentine context, it's fascinating to see how it's common for former Latin American presidents to go into the legislature, even when they've been removed through means of dubious constitutionality.

It's not a natural choice. If you want to maintain political influence, then the legislature is a difficult place to do it. You are but vote, one voice amidst a cacophony. It's especially striking in a region with a strong presidential system. On the other hand, as an elected official you cannot be ignored the same way a former president with no official position might be. But does anyone think Alvaro Uribe really needs to a be a senator (which he is) to be influential? His senatorial position is secondary to his reputation.

Some of the answer may just be the personalization of parties. Kirchner created a new party, as did Uribe. Mel Zelaya joined a new party created precisely because of his ouster. If you're in a new party and it is focused on you, then it's harder to gain momentum if you are not deeply involved in the electoral process itself.

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Immigrants in Argentina

Thanks to my student Nashaly Ruiz-González for pointing out this article about the mirror image of the immigration debates in the United States and in Argentina. Mauricio Macri has been aping Donald Trump's anti-immigrant language and policy, and is also getting an indignant response. There were recently protests/strikes to highlight how much immigrants do in Argentina.

"Soy mexicano, soy peruana, soy boliviano, soy psicóloga, soy costurera, soy estudiante.... soy migrante. También aporto a tu economía, a tu cultura, a tu sociedad", sintetiza una convocatoria replicada en las redes sociales.

Just like the U.S., Argentina is a country of immigrants but more hostile to the non-white variety.

Update: Fittingly, Macri will be heading to the White House in a few weeks. They have a lot in common.

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Thomas C. Wright's Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy

I read Thomas Wright's Impunity, Human Rights, and Democracy: Chile and Argentina, 1990-2005 (2014) for review in an academic journal. Here's a sample:

Thomas Wright has written a well-researched and succinct account of the efforts in Argentina and Chile to bring human rights abusers to justice after the transition from military to civilian rule. His goal is to understand how impunity eroded and justice advanced, even if slowly and imperfectly, in the face of stiff resistance from the military, its political allies, and even cautious policy makers. 

He combines a synthesis of the existing literature with over forty of his own interviews and a variety of primary documents. The essential argument of the book is that human rights activists laid the initial groundwork in each country even when conditions were decidedly negatively due not only to the military’s political power but also to lack of funding.  Yet at the same time, buoyed by increased attention from the United States, international human rights NGOs increased the scope of their work. Then a confluence of precipitating events gave new life to domestic activists and judges.

It's worth checking out.

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Argentina and Immigration

In my classes students often ask why Latin American countries seem unable to unite more. So we spend time talking about nationalism, racism, cultural differences, etc. This story in the New York Times about how Argentine President Mauricio Macri issued a restrictive immigration decree (here is the long-winded text) is a good illustration. Macri's government argues that this is about crime and in practice is focusing on Bolivians, Peruvians, and Paraguayans.

In general, it appears that Bolivians are to Macri what Mexicans are to Donald Trump. The different-looking scapegoat "other" (complete with calls for a wall!). And of course it seems no coincidence that this comes just after Trump issued his own Executive Order. Like the US-Mexico border, the Argentina-Bolivia border has been a magnet for smuggling and organized crime. As a result, Bolivian migrants are easy targets, just as Mexicans are in the United States.

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Wanting Fast Results is Problematic

Mauricio Macri fired his Finance Minister because the Argentine economy is still struggling.

Inflation is forecast to rise to around 40% in 2016, while the economy is expected to contract by 2%, according to the International Monetary Fund. In 2015, Argentina’s economy grew 1.2%, the IMF said.

Of course cabinet members are famously scapegoated, but wanting fast results is problematic. The Kirchners were in office a long time and so change either has to be gradual or destructive. Argentina already tried the destructive kind and it led to...the Kirchners.

The wanting fast results then gets back to promising fast results, whether you believed your own promises or not. Macri was to going to "build concrete things" and Argentina would have a "happiness revolution." Economic contract is not particularly happy.

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Operation Condor Documents

The U.S. government just released newly declassified documents related to Operation Condor, which come after President Obama's visit to Argentina earlier this year. The National Security Archive has a sampling. There is no sugar coating it--the documents show how much the U.S. knew about Latin American military governments finding targets for assassination, including NGOs.

As more documents find the light of day, the scope of how bloodthirsty the Condor architects were keeps expanding. The complicity of Henry Kissinger cozying up to the Argentine junta also becomes ever more disgusting.

If you're interested in more detail, check out my review of Fernando López's new book on Condor.

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Trump and Macri Talk Buildings

According to Argentine journalist Jorge Lanata, when Donald Trump called Mauricio Macri, he asked if he could build a Trump building in Buenos Aires.

"Macri llo llamó. Todavía no se contó pero Trump le pidió que autorizaran un edificio que él está construyendo en Buenos Aires, no fue solo una charla geo política", contó Jorge Lanata en su monólogo del programa Periodismo para Todos. Trump le pidió al Presidente el permiso para poder formalizar la obra de su nuevo desarrollo inmobiliario que, según contó LA NACION estaba interesado en hacer hace muchos años pero no lo hicieron antes por las dificultades que imponía el cepo cambiario y las trabas a las importaciones.

If this is accurate, then it's ridiculous (we do know, however, that Macri used business ties as a way to connect to Trump, so it's a plausible story). Sadly, however, I think there will be many such examples while Trump is president. He is more interested in making money than actually governing, and there will be no shortage of politicians and investors eager to curry favor.

Update: Trump denies the story. So does Macri.

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Kissinger Didn't Understand South America

The Argentina Declassification Project has been getting some attention for the bits on Henry Kissinger. As anyone with a passing interest in Cold War Latin America knows, Kissinger was a big fan of the Argentine dictatorship, and the Dirty War did not bother him a whit. So the fact that he continued to praise the dictators shouldn't surprise us.

What I found more interesting about the documents is how nicely and accurately Robert Pastor skewered Kissinger. Pastor was a Latin America expert whereas Kissinger knew very little.

Pastor expands on that:

So it's not just indifferent to human rights abuses. It's a lack of understanding about how South American governments relate to each other, which then made him believe such indifference was necessary. Court authoritarian Argentina in order to avoid South American dictatorships come together? This is not a reasonable argument, for the reasons Pastor lays out.

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Money, Nuns, and Guns in Argentina

Kudos to Charlie Devereux at Bloomberg for one of the most entertaining ledes I've seen in some time:

When a man was caught hurling bags of money over the walls of a monastery in a sleepy town outside Buenos Aires last week, President Mauricio Macri benefited more than the nuns. 

The man turned out to be former Public Works Secretary Jose Lopez, second-in-command at the Planning Ministry for more than a decade and a close collaborator of the late President Nestor Kirchner. The bags contained more than $9 million in U.S. dollars, euros, Japanese yen and even Qatari riyal. Police also seized a Sig Sauer assault rifle and several watches.

You can't make this stuff up. It has split Kirchner supporters, and of course can only benefit Macri, who is pushing a variety of controversial economic policies with decidedly mixed results.

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