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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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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Panama Policy Toward Venezuela

Beginning October 1, Panama will require a visa of all Venezuelans entering the country. President Varela and Mike Pence had already mentioned it during this joint remarks a few days ago.

Over the next few days, Panama will take measures which support the return of democratic order in Venezuela and strengthen our internal security together with migratory measures, always within the framework of respecting human rights of migrants.

I assume the measure is intended to stem the flow of money laundering being done by Venezuelan government officials. which will accelerate if the regime starts to crumble. Panama has already accused Venezuelan Vice President Tareck al Aissami of being involved.

Haltingly and cautiously, Latin American governments are making statements and taking action. Lenín Moreno recently acknowledged and expressed his concern about political prisoners in Venezuela. It's a big deal for a leftist president to publicly state that the Maduro government is throwing people in prison simply for their political beliefs.

So there's no unity yet (my dire prediction back in March still holds true) but there's movement.

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Pineapple Face is Dead

Manuel Noriega is dead. The main thing to know about him is that everything about him was sordid. And in the end, he had no friends or allies.

Randy Archibald has a good summary of his rise and fall, all of which is sordid. The United States government used him and overlooked his obvious cocaine ties (and personal proclivities) as long as he was useful. Once he was no longer useful, it was convenient for George H. W. Bush to get rid of him and look tough in the process. Stephen Kinzer, a journalist who has written a lot on Central America, tweeted the following this morning:

That about sums up the U.S. side. He was an asset until he wasn't. Then the U.S. got very high and mighty, conveniently pretending it hadn't been involved in propping him up in the first place.

Meanwhile, Yoani Sánchez tweeted this:

The Cubans had worked him too, but no one wants to claim him anymore. He's dead and no one will miss him.

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Panama Looks For Cuban Tourists

We don't hear much about what Latin America thinks of U.S.-Cuban relations normalizing beyond just being relieved that such a ridiculous saga may actually end. Panama, though, is looking closely at it.

Restoring diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Cuba will bring some new tourists and shoppers to Panama, though it won’t be enough to make up for the Brazilians and Colombians staying home, Varela said. He said Copa Airlines has cut flights to Brazil and now has seven daily flights to Havana. 

“How the U.S. handles this relationship is going to impact a lot,” Varela said. “We expect this new private sector that is emerging in Cuba to become an important customer for the free zone in Panama. We expect them to travel to our country.”

Panama is in a bind right now because currency slides in Brazil and Colombia have reduced the number of tourists going to Panama.

Fidel Castro famously would send people to shop in Panama and bring him stuff, but it seems premature to talk about a private sector in Cuba that produces a new middle class ready to travel anytime soon. But the basic point is that Latin American leaders are thinking about how they could potentially benefit.

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Berating Panama for Inviting Cuba

Senator Robert Menendez just published a letter he sent to Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela, berating him for inviting Cuba to next year's Summit of the Americas. I assume this is really aimed at a domestic audience, but this type of public calling out isn't productive for U.S.-Latin American relations.

As Menendez writes:

At the Third Summit of the Americas in 2001, the democratically-elected leaders assembled in Quebec, Canada stated that “the maintenance and strengthening of the rule of law and strict respect for the democratic system are […] an essential condition of our presence at this and future Summits. Consequently, any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the Hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of that state's government in the Summit of the Americas process.” 

The Government of Cuba remains this hemisphere’s must enduring dictatorship, having deprived the people of Cuba of democratic rule for more than a half century.  To this day, the Cuban Government continues to deny its citizens their most fundamental political and human rights, and criminalizes all forms of free expression, free association, and dissent in the country.  The Government of Cuba fails to meet even the most minimal standard of democratic governance required for its participation at the Summit of the Americas.

President Obama will now have to decide whether this merits boycotting the summit. I can't imagine Panama backing down, and the only other solution would be if for some reason Cuba decided not to attend. But Panama is actively courting Cuba to come.

My hunch is that before long we will start hearing public calls for such a boycott. At that point Obama has to decide whether he cares about the political fallout from ignoring those calls, which would mostly entail accusations of being soft on dictatorships (which will inevitably get tied to being too soft on Assad, etc., etc.). [Incidentally, the boycotters will not discuss whether the U.S. should use the same logic with, say, Saudi Arabia.]

I suppose this could also be seen as an issue for the 2016 presidential election, given the strong feelings of at least some Cuban Americans in Florida. But I have a hard time believing that participation in a summit will still generate such strong sentiment over a year later. In any case, as time goes on, Cuban Americans are looking more like the average voter and do not vote based solely on U.S. Cuba policy.

Attending the summit may not yield a lot, but it will at the very least avoid digging a deeper hole. The United States has isolated itself badly in the region with regard to Cuba, and our strategy has failed miserable for many years. I assume boycott supporters will argue that it would be a potent symbol of standing with the Cuban people, but right now we're not doing them any good.

Further, there is plenty of criticism of the OAS in the United States, arguing that it should be strengthened and improved, but not attending the summit will ironically undermine it even more, while sending signals that Latin America should move on without U.S. participation.

This is one fairly rare occasion when I agree with Andres Oppenheimer, who says Obama should attend but find a prominent way to push Cuba on human rights. We're in a deep enough hole already.

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Panama's Election

Juan Carlos Varela won the Panamanian presidential election with a plurality of 39.14% but his party only received 11 of 71 legislative seats (the entire unicameral National Assembly), which put it at a distant third.

The basics of post-invasion Panamanian presidential politics have held. The incumbent party loses while power is shared within a small oligarchy (we are seeing a switch from big supermarket money to big rum money). Poverty and inequality are serious problems but economic growth is solid (very high recently) and the left has difficulty getting much of a foothold. Illicit money will keep flowing in to be laundered and corruption won't go anywhere in particular even while all the parties point fingers at each other and simultaneously skim what they can. Presidents get greedy and want another consecutive term but are rebuffed.

What all this leaves is divided government in the context of elite consensus that survives despite personal differences. Political disagreement remains at the margins (i.e. not core issues about the country's direction) and this election revolved much more around Ricardo Martinelli's efforts to keep pulling strings from behind the scenes (especially with his wife as running mate of his party's candidate José Domingo Arias).

There is talk about why the polls failed to predict the victory and showed Varela third, but on Twitter Orlando Pérez (who was there observing) argues that no polling was allowed past April 24 (for a May 4 election) and they had been showing him rising.

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John Dinges' Our Man in Panama

I happened to pick up John Dinges' Our Man in Panama, a 1990 book about Manuel Noriega's rise to power. The invasion itself is mentioned only briefly at the end, which was fine with me. What's more interesting is how the situation developed.

It is a reminder of how weird that invasion was. The U.S. government was split any number of ways about Noriega and only toward the very end did anyone consider him an "enemy." Even then, many still didn't. For the most part, he was the friendly leader who helped the DEA (including, ironically, the arrest and extradition of someone who later testified against him) and helped the Contras. He was a team player. That he was corrupt was no big deal--everyone was corrupt. Omar Torrijos had established the system that Noriega inherited. Noriega's own addition was drug trafficking, which the U.S. had first officially noticed in the early 1970s.

Dinges goes through all the evidence with care, showing how deeply involved Noriega was in the drug trade and how brutal he could be. As he notes, and it's still true now, no one feels sorry for him as he had almost no redeeming qualities. But going straight to invasion essentially for personal reasons is still amazingly disproportionate. Using similar criteria elsewhere, we'd be involved in even more wars than we are now.

If you haven't read it, the book is worth your time.

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The Tailor of Panama

John le Carré clearly had a lot of fun writing The Tailor of Panama, which is spy novel as farce. If you don't want spoilers then stop reading, because it's hard not to discuss it without giving it away. Not, mind you, that it is particularly intricate. There is a nod to Graham Greene's Our Man in Panama, which le Carré makes explicit in the acknowledgements.

Harry Pendel is a British tailor in Panama City in the 1990s, and a British spy shows up at his door to recruit him. The spy has something on him, so he needs to cooperate. He doesn't have much to tell, so he starts making things up: foreign threats, a Silent Opposition, betrayals, all of them false. As he makes things up, London and eventually Washington get excited. And, in fact, it leads to another invasion.

Sound implausible? Well, it is, but it's great reading, brimming with sarcasm, but also full of obvious affection for the Panamanian people and contempt for those who lead them.

Great Men in Panama have gorgeous black secretaries in prim blue bus-conductress uniforms. They have panelled, steel-lined bullet-proof doors of rain-forest teak with brass handles you can't turn because the doors are worked on buzzers from within so that Great Men can't be kidnapped (p. 9).

While much of the book is quite funny, the end is not, as it shows a reflection on the fact that Panama has always been tossed about according to the whims of the U.S. (in this case with the British alongside). Harry had suffered tremendously during the 1989 invasion as he watched Panamanian friends seriously abused, and watched again as Panama City was pummeled, knowing he had played an unwitting role in causing it.

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Anonymous Sources

Below is a fabulous quote:

"In the United States, "revelations" about Noriega have at times been based on putative intelligence reports related by anonymous sources. In at least one case, according to an influential Panamanian opposition journalist, a U.S. congressional staff member with access to classified material on Noriega seemed to encourage him to embellish, telling him: 'Put down whatever you want and it will be true.'"

--John Dinges, Our Man in Panama (New York: Random House, 1990): x.

That was written 23 years ago, but fits many conservative accounts of Latin America today. Neither Mary O'Grady nor Roger Noriega could ever write much of a column without using anonymous sources to give them the juicy anecdotes they use to vilify what they don't like. I would guess that the sources themselves, along with their disseminators, figure it is worth it because the politician in question is so vile. If I think it could be true, then it is true.

Very often, of course, these sources need no encouragement because they are trying to get something they want, perhaps a prominent position after some sort of intervention. Those sources are especially insistent when it appears that intervention is imminent, reassuring policy makers that everything will work out fine.

I expect in the coming months we'll be hearing a lot from such sources about Venezuela. They will say lots of unverifiable things that will get picked up in the MSM and will confirm people's worst fears. There will be calls to do "something."

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Panama Canal Children's Book

I went to a book sale of the Friends of the Mecklenburg County Library and came across a children's book on the Panama Canal, by Bob Considine. I bought it without hesitation because I find it fascinating to read about how Latin America was portrayed in the past in the U.S. Normally it is a lot of superior tone and chest thumping.

So I was surprised when the book actually rejected chest thumping. Could America just go in there and do the job easily? Well, no.

The Americans who believed that the hacking out of a canal across Panama would be a simple task, easily solved by American cleverness and drive, had many disappointments in store for them (p. 95).

It talks about labor conditions:

Deaths were greatest among the Chinese (about 400). Many of the Chinese either bought or were supplied with opium, to make them forget the hardships of jungle and mountain grade. The Chinese produced the greatest number of suicides (pp. 35-36).

It talks about race, with even a baseball reference:

Because of Jim Crow laws, Panamanians were unable to get proper schooling, housing, wages and equal opportunities. These unjust laws also applied to people who were grouped into the "Panamanian" class by Zone officials--notably the large number of Jamaicans who did so much of the manual labor attending the digging of the canal.

The color line was extended even to the American Negro who found work in the Canal Zone or visited there. When the Brooklyn National League baseball team appeared in the Canal Zone in the late 1940s during a Spring training tour, their Negro star "Jackie" Robinson was not permitted to eat with his teammates." (pp.157-158).

Finally, it even has extended quotes from primary documents. I had not heard of Bob Considine before, but my hat is off to him. We need a kid's book like this for the Middle East.

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Panama Canal

I saw the Panama Canal yesterday. So impressive. The lock doors are still original.

What also hit home was how big the canal zone is. It was much easier to internalize how resentful Panamanians were about being excluded from this huge chunk of prime Panamanian real estate. There was just an enormous American bubble. The canal museum in the old part of town hammered home the problems with the 1903 treaty.

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Panama Construction

I am in Panama City for the annual SECOLAS conference. What immediately strikes me is the construction. Of course, the canal is being widened, but a new metro is being built, the old part of town (Casco Viejo) has tons of work being done on it, and there are high rises going up. There is work being done all over the place

My first thought was debt, which may well be the result. Somone has to be paying for all this.

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To jail or not to jail

You could argue for compassion for Manuel Noriega from a, well, compassionate point of view. He's old (77) and has been in jail a long time. However, I have to disagree with COHA about going easy on him because the United States is entirely to blame for everything he did:

COHA calls for compassion. House arrest is the proper sentence to mete out to a man who was but one of countless U.S. officials and Central American operators who worked outside the law and would never qualify for a red badge of courage.

This type of argument bothers me not because the U.S. is blameless, since I agree with many of the accusations in the article, but because it robs Latin America of agency. Individuals are simply puppets, pulled by the all-powerful strings in Washington. In this view, domestic Panamanian politics fades into the background or disappears entirely and Noriega is simply a product of circumstances. Given the canal, of course the United States always played a large role, but it was not the only player. The article doesn't even mention Omar Torrijos.

Anyway, why go easy on a dictator just because he received support from the U.S.?

As an aside, Randal Archibold at the New York Times writes that there's far more fuss about Noriega outside Panama than inside.

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FTAs and labor rights in Latin America

I hope this is true. Layna Mosley, a professor of political science at UNC Chapel Hill, has an op-ed in the New York Times about the effects of international trade on labor rights.

THE passage this month of free trade agreements may be a victory not only for President Obama, but also for workers in Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Although the anticipated economic consequences of these agreements are small, these pacts also offer a mechanism for improving workers’ rights in partner countries. 

... 

There is, however, a more general way in which trade agreements — and the economic ties they generate — benefit workers in developing nations. As Colombia and Panama expand their trade relationships with the United States, workers stand to gain more than just the job creation and higher wages that often come with expanded trade. Research I conducted over the last several years with the political scientists Brian Greenhill and Aseem Prakash suggests that trade with developed nations helps developing countries expand labor rights themselves. 

Why? International trade gives producers incentives to meet the standards of their export markets. When developing nations export more to countries with better labor standards, their labor rights laws and practices tend to improve. Our findings, which are based on newly collected measures of labor rights around the world, demonstrate a “California effect” on workers’ rights, in which exporting nations are influenced by the labor rights conditions that prevail in their main trading partners.

This is an interesting argument, though I would need to see Latin America-specific data/analysis to be more convinced. I have never heard anything about labor rights expanding in Central America, for example, despite recent implementation of CAFTA-DR (and things are worse in Honduras, though that is related more directly to the 2009 coup). To be fair, she says labor rights will expand, not that they will expand very noticeably.

Henry Farrell at The Monkey Cage mentions the op-ed but for some reason does not offer any comment.

h/t Kindred Winecoff

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Politics of free trade

Kezia McKeague at Americas Quarterly takes a good look at the politics of passing FTAs with Colombia and Panama.  It is sausage making at its worst.  Further, after reading about this issue for several years, I have to wonder whether many legislators care much whether an FTA passes.  Democrats want to make a point about human rights, while Republicans want to make a point about Obama's failures in Latin America.  The economics of the agreement often seem tangential to the debate.

In fact, there is obvious concern that an FTA with Colombia would actually mean a net loss for the United States.  We are even contemplating punishing Mexicans and Canadians as a result!

Canadian exporters warned Friday of a possible deterioration in North American trade relations due to a push in Congress to slap U.S.-bound Canadian and Mexican travelers with a surcharge.

The surcharge, estimated at $5.50 per passenger and proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee, is designed to offset lost revenue resulting from a free-trade pact with Colombia.

Not exactly a good neighbor policy.

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Reagan and Panama

As the Ronald Reagan 100th birthday commemorations really get going, the Charlotte Observer notes the importance of North Carolina to his presidential aspirations, and reminds us how Latin America was the main connection.  What is perhaps most remarkable to remember is that Reagan successfully generated outrage at something that was irrelevant.

He had failed in his early primary challenges against President Gerald Ford. But when he got to North Carolina, his campaign was taken over by Republican Sen. Jesse Helms and his sidekick, Raleigh attorney Tom Ellis. They made the Panama Canal the signature issue, as Reagan pulled off a historic upset, breathing new life into his presidential effort.

"We bought it, we paid for it, it's ours and we're going to keep it," Reagan said of the canal.

The transfer of the Panama Canal was ultimately smooth, untraumatic, and perfectly compatible with U.S. national security to boot.  Even Henry Kissinger supported it, yet Reagan and Helms managed to get people riled up all the same.  Happy 100th!

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CAFTA and other FTAs

The Obama administration is filing a labor law complaint against Guatemala, saying treatment of workers violates CAFTA rules.  The article quotes Chris Sabatini at Americas Society/Council of the America:

He said the decision to file the complaint was in part “an attempt to appease some elements of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. by demonstrating that the labor protections built into Cafta were not empty gestures.” 

I agree, but I would add more for a regional context.  The administration has continually expressed support (albeit tepid) for FTAs with Colombia and Panama, but treatment of labor has slowed them down to almost a halt.  By taking such a measure, the administration is also sending a signal to those who oppose those FTAs that it will take labor issues seriously.

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The FARC and Panama

From Semana: the FARC is ticked because they wanted freedom at the Panamanian border and yet are being attacked by Panamanian forces.  This was "unjustified" and "inexplicably aggressive" because they had agreed not to attack the armed forces of other countries as long as they were allowed to traffic drugs, camp out, and do whatever they wanted.

This may well be the whiniest message I've read from the FARC.  Here is the entire thing.  It's all about how Panama has been mean and they wish Omar Torrijos was still around.

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Obama and FTAs

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the Obama administration "absolutely" plans to pass free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama (in addition to South Korea) this year after mentioning them in the SOTU.

Obama is currently close to admitting failure in his bid for health care reform, which is frustrating the Democrats he needs to pass either FTAs or immigration.  Once health care is either passed or scuttled, everyone turns to the midterm elections and refrains from sticking their necks out too much.

With regard to FTAs, he may get the worst of all worlds.  He supports them rhetorically, which annoys Democrats concerned about human rights abuses in Colombia.  But then he will be unable to match the rhetoric with action, which will make him look weaker and annoy pro-market Democrats.

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