Nationalization, the U.S., and Latin America

Several weeks ago I posted about how the United States government was talking about nationalization, but refusing to call it that, and how it had criticized nationalization for any other government. Now the New York Times picks up the theme, at least with regard to the former (unfortunately not for the latter) and it is past due. It discusses how the U.S. has a long history of nationalization in times of crisis, including Montgomery Ward, of all things.

Elsewhere, government bank-investment programs are routinely called nationalization programs. But that is not likely in America, where nationalization is a word to avoid, given the aversion to anything that hints of socialism.

“Putting this plan on the table makes a lot of sense, but you can’t call it nationalization here,” said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “In France, it is fine, but not in the United States.

This is true. But this lie we tell ourselves about how we are not the slightest bit socialist is destructive. It makes us criticize others who are not as different from us as we like to think. After all the lectures to Latin American leaders about free market principles, tightening your belts, living within your means, reducing spending, etc., etc. we cannot even admit that we are nationalizing. The problem is that in the future, we will continue to criticize others for doing so because we will never accept that we actually did it ourselves.

We hear all the time about how the U.S. image in Latin America is badly damaged and that it exerts no leadership. One concrete measure to reverse these trends would be simply to admit, in a major speech to a Latin American audience, that the state plays an important and necessary role in the economy. That we can disagree about the extent of the state's role, but that even the most powerful economies cannot rely on markets alone. That there can be, and must be, a balance between the entrepreneurial impulses of capitalism and its destructive tendencies.

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Francisco Goldman's The Art of Political Murder

Francisco Goldman's The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? is remarkable investigative journalism, in a country--Guatemala--where it is no easy task. It is about the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, a champion of human rights. But it goes far beyond that, delving into the deep-seated corruption, the incredibly powerful military, and the fear that create serious obstacles to the rule of law and accountability in the country. It reads like a thriller.

I lost count of the number of judges, prosecutors, and witnesses who were threatened, killed, and/or fled into exile for their words and actions. Even in exile, they were followed and harassed by military intelligence. The fact that prosecutions took place and survived appeals is a major step forward for Guatemala, albeit an initial one. The case nabbed some of the small fry, but the higher-ups remain untouched. Threats were even made openly in court, using hand gestures in the shape of guns. Or, as one officer said during cross-examination, "There is no greater or more beautiful glory for a soldier than to see his enemy lying dead at his feet" (p. 242).

There is always good reason for fear. One of the key people involved in the murder was Colonel Byron Lima Estrada (and his son, a Captain). See here for declassified documents about him through the National Security Archive. They were both convicted, along with another member of the military (later murdered in prison) and a priest.

Goldman leaves room open for hope. He made one highly relevant point about generational change:

It was also significant that the prosecution and the judges were relatively young, all under forty, and hadn't believed what older, more experienced people believed: that you could never get a verdict like this in Guatemala (p. 259).

Along similar lines, he ends the afterword (an addition for the paperback version) writing about young Guatemalan investigative journalists he met. With luck (and courage), perhaps they can pry open the institutionalized corruption. Indeed, the publication of this book may well have helped push things in the right direction. An article in The Nation published in June talks about how widely read the book was, despite being in English. Parts were translated, made into pamphlets, and then possibly contributed to Alvaro Colom's victory over Otto Pérez Molina, who was also implicated in the murder.

My only small criticism would be that it can be hard to follow at times. There is a (non-alphabetized) list of people in the back of the book, but people change positions, disappear for a while and then come back, etc. It may well be that no author could juggle so many people.

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$7.5 million a mile

That is the current GAO estimate of the cost of the border fence. And how are things moving along anyway? Well, ''We do not keep a running total of miles as they are completed."

No worries, we trust you.

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State sponsors of terrorism

The Bush administration has taken North Korea off the list. Can anyone say, without giggling or avoiding eye contact, that Cuba is more of a terrorist threat than North Korea?

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Garcia accepts resignations of everyone but himself

And his approval is at 19%. This is why almost a third of Peruvians would vote for Fujimori again.

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Immigration policy and unintended consequences

The San Diego Weekly Reader published a long and really informative article (the reporter's name is Geoff Bouvier) about the changes taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border around San Diego. Although there is a lot of interesting stuff, one point in particular caught my attention. Time and time again, U.S. policies create unintended and unfortunately unforeseen consequences. In this case, a reinforced border wall, expanded Border Patrol, and technological gizmos were supposed to deter would-be migrants from crossing.

So what was the effect? Here is a quote from an ICE official:

“Since Gatekeeper began, the smuggling has become a lot more organized,” Rogers says. “Where there used to be a lot of mom-and-pop organizations or a lot of people who would come up to the border and wait around and then just jump the fence and try — and maybe even try four or five times before they’d get through — they can’t do that anymore now. There’s double layers of fencing and lights and cameras and helicopters and Border Patrol agents on motorcycles and ATVs and horses. There’s so much infrastructure built up along the border now, we’ve kind of interrupted that migratory pattern where someone would come up and work for a couple of months and buy up a bunch of furniture and TVs and take them back south after the picking season, and then they’d come back up after the holidays. But that doesn’t happen anymore because we have so much organization now. But that’s also caused the smugglers to get a lot more organized. And now we’re seeing the drug cartels getting involved. They’ve noticed that the price for smuggling aliens has increased to the point that it’s pretty lucrative now. So the drug cartels are starting to charge these smuggling organizations a fee or a tax to work in their areas.”

The policy has created the potential for immense profit, and thereby contributed to violence and other associated problems.

And does the wall stop people from trying? Nope.

Hopeful Mexicans will try to go over, under, or through the mesh fence. Panels of it are riddled with patches where cuts were made, areas near it show signs of digging, and Renteria explains that ladders are jerry-built with rebar poles to go over the top, despite the risk of injury from the concertina wire.

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Latino voting

I've been writing about the dynamics of bilingual campaigning--now the Washington Post has a short article about Obama's increased efforts to get some Spanish-language attacks on McCain. It concludes:

The ad will air for an undetermined amount of time starting Wednesday in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico, according to Obama campaign spokesman Federico de Jesus. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns have focused virtually all of their Spanish-language ad efforts in the "Latin quartet" of states, where Hispanic voter turnout could significantly tip the scales in favor of either candidate.

Despite periodic references to Latinos being a "swing vote." the Latino vote is already overwhelmingly Democratic. Just as with African Americans, as the article mentions the key for Obama is not convincing Latinos to vote for him but rather to get people registered and then get them to the polls.

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Political consequences of the economic crisis

The jokes are running rampant, like Hugo Chávez talking about "Comrade Bush" and his socialist policies. Clearly, Latin American leaders who have been labeled as adversaries by the United States are making much hay out of the crisis, which has involved truly massive state intervention by a government that proclaimed so loudly and confidently that massive state intervention was inherently evil. But what are the longer term political implications? Since we are in the midst of the crisis, it is still very early, but here are some thoughts.

First, the U.S. message about getting governments out of the economy will never be taken seriously again. This does not mean a rejection of capitalism per se, but for Latin America it means vindication of mixed economic models of its own choice.

Second, it gives a boost to more economic integration in Latin America. I am skeptical of the chances for integration because of historical antagonisms, rivalries, etc. but this crisis provides more support for those arguing that Latin America needs to come together. Let's see what happens in the summit later this year.

Third, it spurs further erosion of U.S. hegemony in the region. Bush administration policies had already contributed greatly, but Latin American governments feel more and more comfortable resisting U.S. pressure (of various sorts) and/or establishing relations with extra-hemispheric powers. Erosion is not the same as "disappearance" but things just ain't what they used to be.

The next question is whether the new administration will recognize the changes that have been taking place. There is a greater chance with Obama, but he or McCain will inherit so many problems that Latin America will barely register. But if U.S. policy (and rhetoric) is not altered to meet new realities, then the points outlined above will deepen to the detriment of the U.S.

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The so-called "new Cold War"

In previous posts I've been discussing the sudden references to a "new Cold War" in Latin America, based upon Russia's relationship with Venezuela and its mention of interest in other Latin American countries (for the moment, mostly Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua). I thought it would be useful to break down some of the key aspects of the real Cold War to see what similarities exist.

1. Two adversaries with opposing ideologies, accompanied by strategies of spreading one at the expense of the other. This is clearly not currently in evidence. Russia is not spreading ideology--I'd be hard pressed to define Putin's ideology in any case. He has interests that are based on power, not ideology. In other words, Putin is not trying to "spread" a counterpoint to the United States in Latin America.

2. Proxy wars that avoid direct confrontation. Russian support for Venezuela is not intended to keep a Russian-friendly government in power, though it is intended to send a message to the United States. Unlike the dynamics of the Cold War, the United States government dislikes Hugo Chávez because of his own characteristics, which have nothing to do with an outside power.

3. Threat of devastating war. The stakes now are important, but not life or death. There will no nuclear war over this and most likely no armed conflict at all.

In short, I hope the "new Cold War" label is soon discarded. It is both overly alarmist and misleading.

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Chilean presidential candidates

Ricardo Lagos has said he will not be running for president next year. In August I posted about a poll showing Lagos second behind Sebastián Piñera when Chileans were asked who they thought the next president would be. I would think front runner status for the Concertación now goes to José Miguel Insulza.

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Colombia and a new "Cold War"

It seems that this "new Cold War" theme is all the craze, no matter how inaccurate it is. The new twist is that Colombian Defense Minister (and future presidential hopeful) Juan Manuel Santos is now also playing it up:

"Russia, with its 16,000 nuclear bombs, has a great desire to be a key player in the world. But its presence in the region will promote a return to the Cold War," Juan Manuel Santos said on Colombian radio Caracol.

Speaking ahead of an official visit to Russia, he said the plans for Russian naval exercises in the Caribbean in November could "affect the balance of power in the region and its stability."

In reality, all Russia's maneuvers do is provide an excuse to claim that regional stability is at risk. Colombia has the most to gain by far of making a big deal about Russia's presence, because that will be used as ammunition for passage of the FTA and for more weapons, training, etc. from the United States.

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The VP debate and Latin America

Unless I missed something quickly, the only reference to Latin America during the debate was from Sarah Palin, who continued the line about Obama saying he was open to dialogue with adversaries, such as the "Castro brothers."

The McCain campaign clearly believes this is a winning argument, because it gets repeated over and over. But does it resonate? The Havana Note reports a recent poll showing 60 percent of likely voters believe we need to revise our policy toward Cuba. Support for the embargo is eroding over time, and I have cited many Republicans who think our current policy is a failure.

McCain and Palin need to convince voters in the middle, but I really wonder whether those voters agree that it is a bad idea to meet with people like Raúl Castro.

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Russia and Latin America

The media is playing up the idea that we might be entering a new Cold War of some sort, which among other things entails deep Russian involvement in Latin America. Russia is playing this up, with Venezuela deals and military maneuvers, discussion of a closer relationship with Bolivia, and rumors about Cuba. Boz had a good recent post on the topic.

There is one point, however, that I never see mentioned but which is important and has historical precedent: Russia is primarily interested in the United States, and so all of these alliances are contingent upon relations with the U.S. If U.S.-Russia relations improved, Putin would feel no compunction about backing off and/or ignoring promises he's made to Latin American leaders. The Soviets screwed Fidel Castro and humiliated him more than once. Putin doesn't care about Latin America. He is not trying to "compete" in any significant way in the hemisphere, and likely won't in the future either.

If I were a Latin American president, therefore, I would hop on the bandwagon as quickly as possible and get some goodies before they're gone. My hunch is that Hugo Chávez is well aware, and so is successfully milking the situation while it lasts. I doubt he has any illusions about brotherhood with Russia (or Iran, for that matter). Thomas Shannon, who has been one of the few people in the Bush administration to talk sense about Latin America, argues that Russia-Venezuela ties are no threat and "aren't likely to endure."

So let's see what signals the next administration sends to Russia. That will tell us a lot about what Russia does next in Latin America.

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Quiz

According to the UN, Sudan has the highest number of internally displaced citizens. What country is second? Iraq? Afghanistan? Maybe Kenya or Zimbabwe? Nope, it is Colombia. In the first half of 2008, 270,000 Colombians fled their homes, which is up 41 percent from the first half of 2007. If that doesn't blow your mind, then nothing will.

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Tim Weiner talk

Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes, came to campus for a talk, which was fascinating. He is a very smart guy and a really engaging speaker. I reviewed his book way back in January, and some commenters came down very hard on him. I also noted in the review that the CIA's declassified in-house journal had slammed the book. I noted that and asked him, therefore, what reactions he had personally received from the CIA. He said he truly believed that he had written a book based on facts rather than any ideological slant, and that he had received quite a bit of feedback from people in the CIA, to the effect that the book was not easy for them to read because of the criticism, but that "it was true."

In fact, if anything his talk was very pro-CIA, in the sense of believing in it as a potentially positive contributor to U.S. foreign policy (certainly not in the sense that it is doing a great job). He argued that we should blame presidents much more than the CIA itself, which is following presidential orders--I felt he was much harder on the CIA in the book, and so in this regard I agreed more with the book than the talk. He argued that poor intelligence hurts everyone, so we need more experienced people with language skills to take intelligence jobs. This, however, requires restoring the credibility of the U.S. and the government by stopping torture, respecting constitutional rights, etc.

It was a fascinating talk, with some great questions and much food for thought. With popular opinion of government in general at abysmal levels, we all should be thinking about not only who to blame (which is indeed a critical issue) but also how to move forward and create a national strategy that doesn't just end up screwing ourselves in the long run and killing people with no thought of either morality or consequence.

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Just a small request

From the Colombian office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights to the Colombian government and military: could you perhaps stop killing people?

The Colombian office of the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights has asked the government and its military to ''clarify and put an end to the practice of alleged extra-judicial executions'' that may have left as many as 80 dead.

The bodies of 45 young men have been found in the past week alone in unmarked graves, 23 of them in northern Santander province, sparking a furor in this violence-riddled South American nation.

Although the identity of the killers has not been determined, Colombian authorities have said they are investigating the possible existence of death squads within the military that portray the dead as enemy combatants killed in firefights.

The "fake uniform" or "pretend regular people are enemy combatants" trick is an old one, but never seems to go out of style.

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Celebrate!

The Padres won their 63rd game, thus avoiding a 100 loss season. There hasn't been much else to celebrate with the team.

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The debate and Latin America

Latin America came up briefly:

Senator Obama twice said in debates he would sit down with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Raul Castro without precondition. Without precondition.

Two quick thoughts. First, McCain could not pronounce Ahmadinejad or Chavez (sha-VEZ) and he mangled the former in all new ways. Second, no matter how much you may hate Chavez, he was elected freely and fairly, and Venezuela should not be lumped in with Iran or even Cuba.

I was also glad to hear Obama zing McCain for the nonsensical interview in which he said he wouldn't meet with Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain, who he apparently believed was some sort of Latin American enemy.

He even said the other day that he would not meet potentially with the prime minister of Spain, because he -- you know, he wasn't sure whether they were aligned with us. I mean, Spain? Spain is a NATO ally.

McCain didn't respond to that.

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Leo R. Chavez's The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation

I read Leo R. Chavez's The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. The book is organized around the idea of what he calls the "Latino Threat Narrative," which is a neat way of describing the paranoid discourse about Latinos. Even more so than other immigrant groups, Latinos are persistently viewed as a threat for many reasons, based on myths, or rather "taken-for-granted" truths that are perpetuated, particularly in the media. Chavez takes each of these components of the Latino Threat Narrative apart, examining their origins and explaining empirically why they are false. It's very effective.

He concludes with the idea that the entire notion of "assimilation" is misunderstood, since as commonly used it suggests there is a linear path toward something called "American." Yet, in fact, "American" is a constantly changing amalgam and, as he points out at the end of the book, historically has strong Mexican influences (he uses the cowboy as an example).

My only quibble is the academic lingo. He discusses the emphasis on the "other" to underline how Latino immigrants are stigmatized, but the argument is not really enhanced by sentences like "Policy makers, using Foucauldian techniques of governmentality, construct classifications to further bureaucratic control of populations, including, and perhaps most especially, migrants" (p. 25) or "Biopower includes modes of subjectification, through which individuals are constructed as subjects who work on themselves in the name of the individual or collective life or health" (p. 175). How governments use power with regard to "others" is very important, but I felt the postmodern influence tended to obscure rather than illuminate, though I should note that most of the book is very accessible.

It is worth checking out.

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Debates

So Sarah Palin only gives a few painful interviews, but no one else is allowed to ask her anything about her views. John McCain wants to get out of the debate because he can't multitask.

It was therefore a breath of fresh air to watch the NC gubernatorial debate last night, where Libertarian candidate (and Duke political science professor) Mike Munger made reference to Jedi powers in his closing statement.

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Critics at the UN

Given the U.S.-Bolivia spat, we would expect Evo Morales to rip the Bush administration at the UN meetings. And he didn't disappoint. But it turns out there's this huge line because everybody around the world wants to take their turn saying how much the administration has screwed up.

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Sarah Palin's Latin America experience

Finally, Sarah Palin will be getting some Latin America experience. The only problem is that it consists of meeting with Henry Kissinger and Alvaro Uribe. She's killed moose so I guess at the very least she knows what it's like to have blood on her hands.

But another "world leader" she'll be talking to is Bono. Is he a world leader now? Maybe as someone who goes to disaster-stricken areas, he can explain what to do after she follows the other two's advice.

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Multilingual campaigning

Last week I mentioned John McCain's latest ad in Spanish (and the tenuous link it had to facts). Now a Washington Post reporter who is following McCain notes how rarely he brings up immigration in front of English-speaking audiences. He doesn't avoid it entirely, but "immigration reform is not something that McCain often mentions as a priority, unless the subject is something of particular interest to his audience, or he is asked about it."

This is making me think more about how a new strategy has now become part of presidential campaigns, that of sending different messages in different languages. Candidates have released ads in Spanish for years, of course, but my sense (if I am wrong, let me know) is that they were essentially copies of the English ads, tweaked for the audience. The McCain ad is an example of a campaign not wanting speakers of one language to hear the message being sent in another language.

There must be plenty of literature on this phenomenon, given the number of multilingual democracies. I wonder what effects, if any, it has. Does it create resentment? Or are most people simply oblivious? From a purely pragmatic point of view, is it an effective tool for winning elections?

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UNASUR momentum

Michelle Bachelet is grabbing onto something positive by announcing she will convoke another meeting of UNASUR during the UN meetings in a few days. Contributing to dialogue in Bolivia has obviously given UNASUR an auspicious start. Convoking it again is a good move politically, as she is associated with something successful (which she needs!) and regionally it keeps the momentum going for a regional body that can--hopefully--help nip political crises in the bud.

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Sicko

Reading Fujimori on Trial's discussion of how Alberto Fujimori keeps coming up with new illnesses makes me think of Augusto Pinochet, who famously used ill health (dementia, strokes, heart problems, etc.) as a way to avoid going on trial. Fujimori, of course, is already on trial, but seems to be hoping for similar weaselling success.

Since the beginning of his human rights trial on Dec. 10, 2007, former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori has allegedly suffered from hypertension (suspending the very first trial session), leg and foot inflammation, exhaustion, a gastroenterological problem that could lead to diarrhea, a benign lesion on his tongue that was surgically removed and a pancreatic tumor, among other various ailments.

And that's after less than a year. If this trial goes on for a while, we may well hear about more and more exotic ailments. Just take a Pepto Bismol and get back in there.

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How the Venezuelan government responds to criticism

Pick up the Americas director for Human Rights Watch (Chilean José Miguel Vivanco), drive him straight to the airport, and force him onto a plane. Criticism by a foreigner, apparently, is illegal, though it's not clear whether he was officially arrested.

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Nationalization: evil, yet good

I am not an economist, but this has been nagging at me. From today's New York Times

This episode started when the Treasury nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on September 8. Their combined assets are over $5 trillion. These firms help guarantee most of the mortgages in the United States. The Treasury only got authority from Congress to take this action in July, and in seeking the authority had insisted that no intervention would be needed...The Treasury has replaced the management of both companies and will presumably oversee their operation.

--University of Chicago Economists Douglas W. Diamond and Anil Kashyap

The critical term here is "nationalization," which no one seems to be using. We like to lump all the cases together and refer to them as a "bailout." But even in the case of A.I.G., as explained by Diamond and Kashyap, "the Fed has the option to purchase up to 80 percent of the shares of A.I.G., is replacing A.I.G.'s management, and is nearly wiping out A.I.G.'s existing shareholders."

For anyone who has paid even passing attention to U.S.-Latin American relations in recent years, this development induces a double take. We have heard, in no uncertain terms and from the highest levels of the Bush administration, that nationalization is the worst possible solution to any problem. No matter what, it makes everything worse.

“Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world" (Tony Snow)

Nationalization is "a well-worn path that history has shown doesn’t usually benefit the population" (State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack). Both quotes from 2007.

"Some see the nationalizing of economic sectors as the way of the future. But, they are really just returning to the failed policies of the 20th Century." (Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, 2007).

"[T]he nationalization of businesses in Latin America is troubling...this kind of backward looking activity is contrary to our country's belief in the power of property rights and free enterprise." (Toe Tapping Senator Larry Craig, 2006).

There are a number of conclusions I can come to, but they're all pretty depressing, as they involved lying, double standards, and hypocrisy. Better just to go have a cocktail.

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Congress and immigration, sort of

Just a strange story. The son of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Allen Boyd, D-FL) has been arrested for smuggling in immigrants.

According to a criminal complaint outlining the accusations, John Boyd was driving his pickup Sunday near Wilcox, Ariz., when it was stopped for inspection at a Border Patrol checkpoint.

"At the primary inspection area, a Border Patrol K-9 alerted to the possible presence of illegal aliens in the bed of the truck," states the complaint.

"The four individuals all admitted that they were not citizens or nationals of the United States and that they did not have permission to be in the United States legally," the complaint states.

They said they had agreed to pay $3,000 each to be smuggled into the United States.

So this is what we've come to. Congress fails to pass immigration reform, so its children become coyotes, stuffing people into their trucks at $3,000 a pop. I guess where some see failure, others see a business opportunity.

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McCain's immigration ad

McCain has put out an ad on immigration in Spanish, blaming Obama for the failure of immigration reform. See here for the NYT's editorial criticizing it. Although it is a lie--or really, because it is a lie--this ad is ingenious. Since it is only in Spanish no one who is English-only will know that it is intended to show McCain's support for immigration reform, including a guest worker program. Meanwhile, as a McCain campaign strategist you bank on convincing at least a few Spanish-speakers that your lie is the truth. Brilliant!

But I am also deeply impressed by what is clearly a joy of lying. Most people lie out of necessity, or to get what they want, but they don't really like it. Judging by his campaign, McCain's team obviously enjoys it. And the best lie, the most fun, is accusing your opponent of doing what you did. Over and over. Did McCain go from immigration maverick to Base-Panderer Man? No, that is just what the lying liberal media wants you to believe. On immigration, McCain believes...well, I have no idea what he believes, but I do know that Obama is against what John McCain believes. And that's no lie.

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Some thoughts on UNASUR and Bolivia

UNASUR had its emergency session in Chile, and voiced very strong support for Evo Morales' government, releasing the "Declaration of La Moneda."

Given how quickly events move, we won't know for some time whether this helps shores up Bolivian democracy. That said, it is worth pondering its relevance. The first thing that comes to mind is liberal institutional theory. I use it in my textbook, along with realism and dependency theory, to help students understand U.S.-Latin American relations. The basic idea is that international institutions can constrain behavior. Normally, this refers to state behavior, but I think it can be usefully applied to both sides--though particularly the opposition--in Bolivia. UNASUR has no enforcement mechanism, no troops, no economic leverage. So why pay any attention to its declaration?

The answer, if liberal institutionalism works, is that institutions become important in and of themselves, sometimes simply with moral authority (work on liberal institutionalism in Latin America has generally focused on human rights) and therefore can facilitate cooperation. In the current case, the hope is that UNASUR, by showing a united front, raises the perceived costs for anyone to subvert democracy. They know ahead of time that there will be a clear regional opposition to their actions, which have been defined as undemocratic, and therefore make choices accordingly.

So will this hastily assembled session and hastily drafted document matter? We'll see. At the very least, however, we've just seen a commitment in South America to reacting quickly to a political crisis. This is especially notable given the ideological variety in evidence--Hugo Chávez and Alvaro Uribe, for example, are not exactly bosom buddies.

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Some regional responses to the Bolivian crisis

Brazil:

“This meeting only is meaningful if on request of Bolivia and with a proposal, because if both sides of the conflict don’t ask us to meet, if we come to a decision and no side abides, it will have been a useless exercise”, Lula da Silva was quoted Sunday in the Brazilian press.

“It must be plain clear we have no right to make any decision without the previous coordination of the Bolivian government and opposition; it’s only them who can decide whether we participate or not”, emphasized Lula da Silva.

“Otherwise it will mean interference in internal affairs of Bolivia and Brazil rejects this point blank”, he underlined.

Chile:

Convoked the meeting of UNASUR and will push for a declaration that emphasizes non-intervention in Bolivian affairs and avoids mentioning the United States.

Colombia:

At the UNASUR meeting Uribe "will carry a message of prudence, of support for democratic institutions, and will show a commitment that our brothers the Bolivian people can overcome, in a bloodless manner and a constitutional manner, their present difficulties."

Ecuador:

"I send a huge hug to President Evo Morales and hope the crisis could be solved as soon as possible." [Note: the "huge hug" sounds strange in English, but I assume the Spanish was "fuerte abrazo," which just works in Spanish but not in English]

Honduras:

Refused to accept credentials of U.S. Ambassador in solidarity with Bolivia.

Nicaragua:

Daniel Ortega won't attend a meeting with Bush in solidarity with Bolivia and says the U.S. is trying to foment a coup.

Paraguay:

"We meet not to come up with magic formulas, but to show our solidarity with the people and the government of Bolivia, and hopefully we'll be able to see a little bit of light."

United States:

We regret the actions of both President Hugo Chavez and President Evo Morales to expel our ambassadors in Venezuela and Bolivia. This reflects the weakness and desperation of these leaders as they face serious internal challenges and an inability to communicate effectively internationally in order to build international support.

Venezuela:

Expelled U.S. Ambassador.

"If they overthrow Evo, or kill him, that would give me the green light to support any type of armed movement in Bolivia."

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Paranoia and the border

You may remember three years ago, when several members of the House of Representatives from NC made a big deal about how members of Al Qaeda were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border. Turns out that was false, though the "terrorists surging across an open border" has been a popular theme since 9/11.

Now, both the U.S. and Mexican governments have revealed how many Al Qaeda-linked arrests they have made: zero:

Officials from both nations say there hasn't been any sign of the southern U.S. border becoming an entry point for terrorists, as had been feared after the suicide jetliner hijackings that struck New York and Washington.

There is no sign at all of Al Qaeda in or around Mexico. Here is an even more interesting argument:

Thomas Sanderson, deputy director of the transnational threats project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said al-Qaida usually sends its members through Europe because, unlike Mexico, citizens of those countries can enter U.S. territory without a visa.

"We are more likely to see people come in through airplanes," he said.

He also doubts al-Qaida operatives would expose themselves to organized crime or smuggling groups in Mexico. "They'd be concerned that their cover or their effort would be exposed. It's unfamiliar territory for them," he said.

In other words, it's much harder for Middle Eastern terrorists to get in through Mexico than through Europe.

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The electoral effects of the Bolivia and Venezuela flaps

Check out Adam Isacson's post, arguing that Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales have just given McCain/Palin a boost.

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An anniversay of ignorance

Two weeks ago today, I wrote a post about how we know nothing, zip, nada about Sarah Palin's views on Latin America. I have since noticed that said post comes up at the very top for a Google search, "Sarah Palin Latin America" (or combinations thereof). I feel faintly proud, as if my own ignorance is leading everyone else's.

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Alaska must be proud

If you think the Bridge to Nowhere is cool, then you will love the Never Built Fence.

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Persona non grata

Evo Morales has declared U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata, which apparently means he has to leave the country within 48-72 hours. Strangely enough, Goldberg was meeting with the Foreign Minister at the time, discussing the DEA. In a speech, Morales said, "The ambassador of the United States is conspiring against democracy and wants Bolivia to break apart."

I can't find any mainstream media making reference to the meeting Goldberg had with Santa Cruz governor Ruben Costas, a leader of the autonomist/separatist crowd. So the idea that Morales' suspicions are "baseless" is disingenuous to say the least. For the U.S., the eternal problem is that the history of U.S. policy means that Latin American leaders have a reason to be suspicious--even if Goldberg is not involved in some plot, there is very good reason to think he might be.

We'll see where this goes. Morales is doing it also to show his own supporters that he is strong and independent. For the most part, the U.S. response to him has been measured, so will that change?

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Why baseball players should avoid politics

Curt Schilling has been writing blog posts that are adamantly pro-McCain. Fine. Now, however, he apparently believes that Democrats have been in control of Congress for "almost the entire" Bush presidency, and that we should blame Nancy Pelosi for any failures attributed to Bush.

Perhaps he just figures she was wearing a Dennis Hastert mask.

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Juxtaposition

Michelle Bachelet's approval rating drops to 42.1%

AND

Forbes names Michelle Bachelet 25th most powerful woman in the world

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Ammon Shea's Reading the OED

It takes a unique person to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary and then to write a book on it. The thing is, Ammon Shea's Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, is one of the most entertaining books I've read in some time and so I have put it on the side bar. I laughed out loud at several points. If you like words, and dry wit, then this is a book for you. Each chapter is a letter of the alphabet, beginning with Shea's commentary, followed by little known words he found and a short description of those words.

One example:

Unbepissed (adj.). Not having been urinated on; unwet with urine.

Who ever thought there was an actual need for such a word? Is it possible that at some time there was such a profusion of things that had been urinated on that there was a pressing need to distinguish those that had not?

Of course, Shea realizes that his project is highly unusual, and one of the funnier parts of the book comes in the "R" chapter, where he recounts his trip to the conference of the Dictionary Society of North America. Even the most hard core dictionary devotees think he's crazy.

Some of the words are even useful for politics. I especially like "gobemouche," where means "one who believes anything, not matter how absurd." I will have to get that into a blog post at some point.

As he writes at the beginning of the book, "If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on, and enjoy the efforts of a man who is in love with words. I have read the OED so that you don't have to" (p. xiv).

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Coffee drinkers beware in Colombia

I laughed at this story, though I must admit it wouldn't be too funny guzzling Coffee Mate at rifle point:

A Conservative MP today described the terrifying moment he was held at gunpoint and forced to eat coffee whitener to persuade a group of excitable Colombian soldiers that he was not a drugs trafficker.
...
"It took some explanation, as I don’t speak more than two or three words in Spanish, for them to accept it was Coffee Mate," the MP, now safely back in Westminster, said today.

“They didn’t want to taste it as pure cocaine is fairly poisonous so I had to eat several mouthfuls in front of them, with guns aimed at me, until they could see that it had no ill effect - except afterwards I felt as sick as a dog.”

h/t BoRev.Net

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Civilians and the military in Latin America

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a speech at the Defense Ministerial of the Americas, and made some points I've mentioned a number of times in this blog, and which have been emphasized a lot in recent years:

For example, combating transnational crime, defeating terrorism, and responding to national disasters requires coordinated action across a range of government departments and agencies. In certain cases, militaries may be called upon to play a supporting role to civilian authorities when responding to these threats – but the exact nature of their role requires careful thought and discussion within each nation’s government and society.

By the same token, in areas such as law enforcement and public administration, civilian capacity may not match the expertise found in many of our armed forces. It is important that non-military capabilities receive adequate manning and funding – a point I emphasize frequently with respect to our State Department’s budget.

When I meet with my colleagues from the Americas and around the world, a consistent challenge I hear about is the need to work more collaboratively with legislatures and parliaments. The more we can educate legislatures and their staffs, to improve their expertise on defense matters, the better choices they will make when it comes to security funding and policy.

Unfortunately, change in this regard is slow. It will require a real change in how civilians view the armed forces, to develop lasting interest that allows for greater interaction, particularly with legislatures. This is not impossible (Michelle Bachelet is a good example) but it is incredibly difficult.

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The candidates and Latin America

Eric Green at the State Department asked me some questions about the candidates' views on Latin America, and wrote this article for State's news site. I doubt anyone who follows the topic will be too terribly bedazzled, but still.

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Uribe and a third term even yet again

Alvaro Uribe has hinted many times at running for a third term. Now, for the time that I know of, he has hinted that he won't.

But still he remains coy. The fact that he will not come out and clearly state his intention of leaving office suggests he has not yet decided for certain.

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McCain, immigration, and the state of maverickitude

McCain is running as a maverick, a guy who reaches out across the aisle and is willing to take risks in order to do what's right. Over the past few years, he has argued time and again that immigration reform is the right thing to do. He prides himself on reaching out to someone like Ted Kennedy to co-sponsor legislation.

But then he started winning primaries, and so controversial aisle-crossing issues had to be dumped overboard. In his speech, he warned the "do nothing" crowd in Washington that change was coming. On the scale of do-nothingness, congressional refusal to do anything substantive with regard to immigration ranks very high.

Immigration, however, was ignored by everyone. The elephant in the room, if you will (no pun intended). It's a tough issue, so is better swept under the rug. Let's see if he mentions it again in the next two months.

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Republican policy toward Latin America

In honor of the Republic convention, I give you the party's platform on Latin America:

The United States has an especial interest in the advancement and progress of all the Latin American countries. The policy of the Republican Party will always be a policy of thorough friendship and co-operation. In the case of Nicaragua, we are engaged in co-operation with the government of that country upon the task of assisting to restore and maintain peace, order and stability, and in no way to infringe upon her sovereign rights. The Marines, now in Nicaragua, are there to protect American lives and property and to aid in carrying out an agreement whereby we have undertaken to do what we can to restore and maintain order and to insure a fair and free election. Our policy absolutely repudiates any idea of conquest or exploitation, and is actuated solely by an earnest and sincere desire to assist a friendly and neighboring state which has appealed for aid in a great emergency. It is the same policy the United States has pursued in other cases in Central America.

Well, from 1928.

UCSB's American Presidency Project website can be addicting.

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When more is less

The Washington Post has a pretty even-handed article on the increases in coca cultivation in Latin America, particularly in Bolivia. Nothing all that new, but what I like is to see how U.S. officials rationalize it. Here is the logic:

There is more coca, but it is being cultivated on smaller plots, and in more remote areas, so requires more labor. This means less profit. Therefore "the cocaine market is in decline."

I love a world where losing really badly means winning.

Here's my previous post on drug logic fun.

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Argentina VP update

I had been following the political saga of Argentine VP Julio Cobos, but with vacation and research projects I lost track. Of all the possible permutations, however, I had not anticipated that he would go back to the UCR but remain vice president (see Boz for links to the Argentine press). It is worth remembering that the Radicals had kicked him out last year for running with then candidate Fernández. So now we have a rather strange brand of co-habitation.

Apparently President Fernández's order has been to refrain from talking about the situation at all, and as far as I can tell, she has spoken to Cobos only one time since he voted against her. If the VP's role is only to keep a heartbeat and break ties in the senate, then from an institutional standpoint she can ignore him. However, his high profile position means that he will keep getting a lot of press, and will be a constant embarrassment. He obviously shows no signs of resigning.

At the same time, though, according to a recent poll a greater percentage of Argentines view her positively (29%, with 34% seeing her as "average") in August than they did in June (20% positive, and 33% average). So who knows, she may well weather this.

I do not know of any other examples of a VP changes his/her party affiliation after taking office. This also makes me wonder about the vetting process (such a hot topic in the U.S. right now) because Cobos stabbed Fernández in the back very quickly.

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Brazilian intelligence scandal

Brazil's national intelligence service, ABIN, is accused of wiretapping the head of the Supreme Court and other officials. This is a problem across Latin America, where intelligence services often remain unreformed or poorly reformed after authoritarian governments left power.

All too often, the armed forces' role is too prominent and not accountable enough. From the article:

Low-ranking Brazilian police and security officials are known to tap the phones of politicians and others in attempts to mount extortion schemes, said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia. But he said such schemes rarely reach someone as powerful as the head of the Supreme Court.

Intelligence is an area that is crying out for democratic reform.

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Hugo Chávez checked his calendar...

...and realized it had been a while since he last threatened to expel the U.S. ambassador.

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The Venezuelan military

Hugo Chávez backed off a previous plan of intelligence reform, but through decree now is restructuring the role and function of armed forces, and increasing their role in intelligence--responsible for the "organization, planning, management and control of a national intelligence and military counterintelligence system.'' The reforms also give the president more personal control by giving the executive sole authority to appoint military command and giving the president the option of bypassing regular chains of command by naming anyone he/she wants in "command" regardless of their rank. (Article 80: "military personnel in all grades or hierarchies will be subordinate to the officer named in command.")

Once again, he used decree power to make a decision that, by its nature, should entail intense discussion and debate in the legislature. Further, it is a bad idea to have the military deeply involved in intelligence, especially domestic. It is also a bad idea to screw around with the normal chain of command through presidential whim.

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Keep your rebels to yourselves

Rafael Correa has requested that Colombia increase the number of troops on the border to prevent the FARC, drugs, and refugees from spilling over into Ecuador. Presumably he added "and tell those troops not to bomb us."

At the same time, the Ecuadorian government announced that it was extending refugee status to 50,000 Colombians until the middle of next year. Ecuador is simply awash in refugees.

These are issues that get lost in the shuffle in most accounts of Colombia. Despite all the fanfare, Colombian political violence is still displacing thousands of people, who feel they have no choice but to flee. Uribe has, of course, scored some very important victories against the FARC, but the general impression we now get is that the war is somehow won.

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Sarah Palin and Latin America

I like to keep the readers of this blog informed about the candidates and their views on issues related to Latin America. I can give you the kind of analytical depth you won't find elsewhere.

Having said that, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been named McCain's running mate. Now we get to the in-depth part: I first heard of Sarah Palin approximately three hours ago. She seems to have no views on Latin America at all. Neither does she seem to be interested in immigration, as Alaska is not the first destination of choice for many immigrants from Latin America.

I hope you now feel a bit more informed.

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Chile poll numbers

When asked "Who will be the next president of Chile?" here are the responses:

1. Sebastián Piñera (58.9%)
2. Ricardo Lagos (11.5%)
3. Soledad Alvear (4%)
4. José Miguel Insulza (3.4%)
5. Eduardo Frei (1.7%)
6. Joaquín Lavín (1.3%)

Note, however, that this did not question who the respondent would vote for, but rather just who they thought would get the most votes. When asked which coalition they would vote for (I don't know why they didn't ask which specific candidate) they got the following results:

40.3% Alianza por Chile
32% Concertación

President Bachelet herself has an approval rating of 46.9% and disapproval of 51.5%. Those numbers are more favorable than anything I've seen in a while.

Much will depend on the how the rest of Bachelet's term goes, though the right would be hard pressed to explain how it would handle the economy (or even Transantiago) any better. I would like to see responses to a question like, "Do you think the Concertación has been in power too long?" I think many people will have that in mind when they vote, regardless of the candidates.

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Frei's trip

In June I wrote about the potential presidential candidates in Chile, two of whom (Frei and Lagos) are former presidents. Now Frei is going around the country, but denies it has anything to do with a presidential run. Quote: "If my going around the country makes anyone nervous, it's their problem." He's just hanging with his peeps, nothing more.

Frei is a dull candidate. He was a dull president. He may figure that being boring will work in his favor, as Concertación voters will find that appealing after the relative tumult of the Bachelet years.

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Obtaining asylum

I happened across a Department of Homeland Security report from last month on the numbers of refugees and asylees admitted into the United States in 2007. If we take a look at asylees, that is, those people already in the U.S. who argue they would be persecuted in their country of origin, we see the following:

--Colombia is consistently second on the list (to China) but the numbers are decreasing significantly every year. An important question, of course, is whether the number of people wanting asylum has dropped, or just the number of people getting it.

--Venezuela has been fourth on the list (with Haiti third) for the past three years. This is very politicized (as refugee/asylee status was for Nicaraguans vs. Salvadorans in the 1980s) and would be a great topic of research.

--Guatemala and El Salvador are also on the top 10, a reminder that civil wars (not to mention U.S. foreign policy) reverberates for years.

--Finally, China is first on the list and far above the rest in volume and went up in 2007. Hope those Olympics were fun.

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Viva ref kicking

According to Fidel, Olympic athletes may attack the referee because there is a racist plot against the Third World in the Olympics. He blames the Olympic Committee for the lack of a Cuba gold medal in boxing. (See also Boz on this story).

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Economic reform in Paraguay

Check out Upside Down World for a first rate analysis of Paraguay's economic challenges as Lugo takes office, written by a Political Science Ph.D. student (Gustavo Setrini) at MIT.

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Hispanics and the Florida vote

The Miami Herald has an interesting story about the dramatic growth of non-Cuban Latino registered voters in Florida. We've already heard Obama talk about changing (albeit in small measure) U.S. policy toward Cuba, and now McCain is the first Republican to have a non-Cuban as the state's presidential campaign chair. As the election nears, it will be interesting to see how the candidates craft their Florida messages.

I wish the story examined the potential political effects more closely, but then it meandered on to interview people in Florida, such as the Venezuelan who thinks Obama may end up just like Chávez, simply because both had a platform of change.

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Brought to you by the federal government

Remember Operation Scheduled Departure, the self-deportation pilot program? You know, the plan that had no chance of working? Turns out it doesn't work. A single person in Charlotte came forward, and a grand total of eight nationwide.

Maybe I have a libertarian streak in me, because what annoyed me the most was the fact that they spent money developing a plan they knew would not work. It didn't even work as a PR tool, as it was ridiculed by everyone. The immigration process is a mess, yet we direct government employees and their budgets to implement a DOA pilot program?

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Biden and Latin America

By now everyone knows that Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. He is known primarily for his foreign policy experience and his really big white teeth.

What would this mean for U.S. policy toward Latin America? We have to start with the obvious point that VPs (usually) don't make policy, and even if they do, they don't care much about Latin America compared to other hotspots around the world.

In general, though, I think we can characterize Biden as Mr. Status Quo, and left to his own devices my hunch is that his policies would be scarcely different from George W's. He likes the Cuba embargo (though, to be fair, he has said tentatively that we should talk to Raul), he likes Plan Colombia, he likes military solutions, and rails against Chávez. He does support immigration reform. (For a quick take, Erwin at The Latin Americanist has links to Biden official policy positions).

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Yet another post about Uribe and a third term

I've posted about this many times, but wanted to point out a very good NYT editorial on the topic:

The region needs democracy, underpinned by strong institutions. It does not need more strongmen — however popular they may be or indispensable they may consider themselves. Mr. Uribe should make clear — now — that this will be his last term.

Amen.

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Just get in line to nowhere

Check out this flowchart from Reason.org that spells out why people can't just "get in line" when it comes to entering the United States. The idea that it is easy to get in is a very common misconception, and I don't really know why that is the case.

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Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend

I read Timothy M. Gay's Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend, which I liked though clearly you need to be a baseball fan to get into it. I found that it is really less a biography than a chronicle of early 20th century baseball that centers (no pun intended) on center fielder and Hall of Famer Tris Speaker. This didn't bother me much, as I appreciated the opportunity to read about how great a fielder he was, playing very shallow center in the dead ball era, the rivalries that emerged at that time, and the bitter fights between players and management.

However, as the book went on I wondered more about Speaker himself. In particular, he went from a vicious bigot, who played an active role in segregating clubhouses by religion, to a guy who married a Catholic woman and eventually worked closely as a coach with Larry Doby, the first African American to play in the American League. I think the book could have done more to explain whether his shifts in opinion mirrored baseball more generally, or were exceptions, and what the effects were.

Gay also occasionally tends toward hyperbole, perhaps a natural reaction to reading sportswriters of the era. A particular 1912 game was "among the most anticipated--and hyped--regular season baseball games in history" (p. 104). Or "No ballplayer in history was as beloved by a community as Tris Speaker was in Cleveland in 1920" (p. 207). And he veers toward colloqualism, as Babe Ruth's baserunning gaffe in the 1926 World Series might be explained in the following manner: "Maybe old Judge's [Ruth's] flatulence had finally gotten to his brain" (p. 245).

Nonetheless, if you're a fan of baseball history, you will very likely enjoy it.

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Chilean tourism

The price of copper is falling, so Chile needs to pursue every angle to bring in revenue. Therefore Sernatur, the country's tourism agency, is promoting UFO tourism. That actually led to me to the website of Chile's national UFO watcher organization. But what really caught my eye was the money quote from Sernatur's brochure:

"In no way can we guarantee that a tourist coming to San Clemente will see a UFO."

Bummer.

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Undocumented immigrants in NC

Check out Libertarian gubernatorial (say that three times fast!) candidate (and Duke Poli Sci professor) Mike Munger's take on the dispute in North Carolina about whether undocumented immigrants should be allowed to attend community colleges. At least temporarily now they are barred. They pay out of state tuition, which means their tuition subsidizes others. The governing board apparently does not like receiving extra money.

Peruse his blog generally to see how politicians in NC really, really want third parties to go away.

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New flash: Latin America is unequal

In the "better late than never" category, we have Andres Oppenheimer noting that the commodity boom has further concentrated wealth at the top in Latin America:

My opinion: The steady concentration of wealth within Latin America should set off alarm bells.

It suggests that the region's recent five years of steady economic growth may not have translated into creation of a new middle class of tens of millions of small entrepreneurs, but rather led the very rich to become even richer.

True. But this should not surprise us, since Latin America historically has had the highest regional rates of inequality in the world.

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Immigration reform

The Washington Post has a good editorial on the need for immigration reform. The basic theme has been echoed in many such editorials, but bears repeating: the "pull" factors of immigration persist despite enforcement, and therefore must be addressed by Congress.

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Back later

As everyone may have guessed, I am on vacation. Hasta pronto.

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Your daily dose of paranoia

Check out the Washington Times for yet another assertion that Iran is trying to take over Latin America. This argument keeps popping up periodically. As I mentioned a year and a half ago, they never take Iranian political realities into account--it is in fact not popular in Iran to stretch too much into Latin America.

The current offering discusses countries falling into Iran's "orbit." Is Iran big enough to have an orbit?

"They use their embassies to smuggle in weapons. They used them to develop and execute plans," Oliver "Buck" Revell, a former FBI associate deputy director, has told the San Francisco Chronicle. "[The Iranian presence] is definitely an area that will be of concern to our national security apparatus."

So Iranians "develop and execute plans" that may be of concern to our "apparatus." That sounds like bad movie dialogue. As always, we have lots of rumors, but nothing very concrete. I am no fan of Iran, but I need more than this to consider them a threat to the hemisphere.

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Protests in Venezuela

I saw the headline "Venezuelans Protest Chavez's New Socialist Push" and that sounded pretty juicy. Streets clogged? Massive disruption in Caracas? Not exactly. The very first sentence referred to "hundreds." The second paragraph mentioned "about 1,000."

That is a meager protest, even by U.S. standards. Earlier this summer, the same amount of people protested in Raleigh against the General Assembly. Not even a specific issue, just the GA itself. So I am less than impressed that Chávez generated hundreds of complaints. A better headline would have been "Venezuelan opposition fails to generate large protest."

Chávez's response, however, was interesting:

"This is a democracy. They call me a tyrant — tyrants govern without laws. We're making laws, and all those laws are for the benefit of the country," Chavez said.

I immediately thought that sounded exactly like George W. Bush. We're making laws for your own good, so we're democratic. But dictatorships spew out laws all the time. The mere fact of making laws means nothing--it is all about how they are made.

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On stupid arguments about people becoming stupid

I've finally reached the tipping point. Thomas H. Benton's article in Chronicle of Higher Education pushed me over the edge and so I have to write something about the latest cottage industry of "young people are messed up." I remember this very well from my early 20s, when the term "Generation X" was thrown around all the time. We were slackers, more interested in video games than reading. Reading, in fact, was disappearing entirely. The future looked grim.

Now back to 2008. To be fair, Benton doesn't just say that students are dumb. He says that everyone is dumb. But he says the same stuff that I read about myself in the early 1990s. No one reads, no one can write, everyone thinks their opinion is most important (incidentally, when did people not feel that way?). Everybody is obsessed with technology so they don't communicate. Young people have "diminished verbal skills." OMG! The future looks grim. And people make money writing books about it.

These arguments are cyclical. At some point, people become adults, establish careers, and then start complaining that younger people are all screwed up, unlike them. We then make up a new name for the generation and congratulate ourselves on how we're perfectly normal while the younger generation will send the country into the toilet.

OK, I had to get that out. These arguments just annoy me. Maybe that's a problem for Generation Xers like myself.

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Fidel and sports defections

Fidel Castro's latest column is about sports, particularly the defection of Cuban athletes. What's interesting is that he refuses to acknowledge any agency on the part of the athletes themselves. They must simply have been sucked into the imperialist machine, for which they are traitors. No one freely chooses to leave: they are "plundered" and the country is "robbed." They are "bought" or "bribed." The male soccer team "let itself be drawn into an act of betrayal inside the United States."

He mentions the embargo several times, using it as a primary reason why Cuba faces such an uphill battle at the Olympics. It bears repeating that the embargo helps the Castros enormously.

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Brazil to retaliate

Here's an issue that you won't likely hear Obama or McCain talking about, though they should: Brazil is tired of U.S. subsidies and so is soon to retaliate. The collapse of the Doha round meant that no deals had been reached on cotton, ethanol, and other agricultural goods.

The essential problem, of course, is hypocrisy. On the one hand, the U.S. wants Latin American (and other) countries to open up their economies, especially with free trade agreements. We hear platitudes about a bit of short-term pain for long-term benefit. Comparative advantage, efficiency, and all that good stuff. But the U.S. government refuses to accept the same rules for itself. This is damaging U.S.-Latin American relations, but especially with Brazil because it is an agricultural powerhouse and wants the U.S. to follow the same rules it does. Brazil's foreign minister was quite clear:

But they are the biggest subsidisers in the world in terms of what affects us, so we will have to see them in court.

The U.S. needs to decide. If you want free trade abroad, then you need to accept it at home. If you want to protect domestic industries you feel are important, then you need to allow other countries to do the same without bullying them.

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The cold shoulder

Cristina Fernández held a press conference on Saturday, and mentioned VP Julio Cobos once, saying she wanted to "de-dramatize" the situation. She is isolating him, but it is not clear where that isolation will lead--she did meet with him a few days ago but no word on what was said. On Thursday she is going to Mendoza, which is where Cobos is from, but he will not be with her.

So things are settling down, but the essential question I've been asking remains unanswered. What will the president do with a disloyal vice president? The three main possibilities are 1) isolate him and create a situation within which he would prefer to resign; 2) make up and work with him; or 3) ignore him.

Trivia note: reports all mention that this was her first press conference. I did not know that Néstor never held one at all. Also, click here if you want a lesson on how photos can be used in a news story to convey an opinion about the subject.

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More on Vice Presidents

An Argentine blogger (El Criador de Gorilas) links to the discussion Matthew Shugart and I were having, and mentions that an Argentine professor, Mario Serrafero, has already written a book on VPs. There is a link to a review, which itself does not resolve our debate but suggests that Serrafero has addressed at least some of them.

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Obama, Latin America, and Latinos

Thanks to Mike for sending me a link to the new McCain ad in Spanish. Accompanied by a thumping beat, it simply shows excerpts from Obama's Germany speech, where he lists a large number of countries, and notes that he doesn't mention a single Latin American country. It is an effective ad if you want to make the point that he is not interested in Latin America. However, it tries to make the jump that it also means Obama is not interested in Latinos. I don't see the ad convincing at all in that regard.

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Talking to Raúl

Both WOLAblog and The Havana Note note that Arlen Specter has requested a meeting with Raúl Castro. His quote: "I'm a firm believer in dialogue." Even further: ""I've been to Cuba three times and I think the chances are really on the horizon for re-establishing relations with Cuba now that Fidel Castro is no longer in charge." He's part of my collection of Republicans against the embargo--the previous two entrants were George Will and Brent Scowcroft.

Raúl hasn't responded to Specter's request. If he does, it'll throw the Republican Party into even more turmoil because of McCain's constant assertions that anyone who wants to speak to adversaries is soft and naive.

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Operation Scheduled Departure

Thanks to another former student, Daniel, who has been working closely with Latino immigrants in Charlotte and is keeping me apprised of the latest federal government plan. First we had virtual fences, not we've got "self-deportation." If you turn yourself in, the government will deport you expeditiously. The government dubs it "Operation Scheduled Departure." What is the incentive to do so, you ask? There is none, which is why no one outside the government, no matter where they stand on the issue, thinks it will work. No one at ICE says whether the voluntary deportation would hurt people in the future if they sought to enter the U.S. legally.

Now we find out that Charlotte is one of the cities the program will be tested in.

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Chevron in Ecuador

Thanks to my former student Kelby for alerting me to this Newsweek article on Chevron's efforts to avoid getting hit for a large judgment by a court in Ecuador for environmental damage. Chevron wants the Bush administration to punish Ecuador in response. Execs have approached the U.S. Trade Representative, who apparently is amenable to the idea of removing trade preferences if the Ecuadorian court doesn't back off.

But the juiciest part of the article is the quote from a Chevron lobbyist, which is priceless:

"We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this—companies that have made big investments around the world."

We don't need to look too much further to understand why U.S.-Latin American relations are at an all-time low. We invest, so we're unaccountable. You're small, so you don't have a say in the matter.

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Question for Bolivianists

I am doing work on Latin American immigration to the South. Looking at the latest DHS statistics on naturalization, Bolivians do not show up, except for Virginia. In fact, the number of Bolivians becoming naturalized citizens is second only to Salvadorans in Virginia.

Why is that? Obviously, VA includes the DC suburbs, but does that affect Bolivians more than people from other countries? Or is there some particular attraction in VA? Or just chain migration?

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Hugo Chavez and the U.S. election

Nikolas Kozloff, who has written a lot about Hugo Chávez, just published a curious article in the latest NACLA Report on the Americas. I say curious because he's always written very approvingly of him, but his main argument here is that Chávez's success in international relations and domestic policy is dependent upon the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Within this framework, even Rafael Correa deals with Chávez strictly in terms of the U.S. election:

At this point small, impoverished nations like Ecuador are no doubt eyeing the upcoming U.S. presidential election. If Obama should win, perhaps the wider region might receive greater economic assistance from Washington. Given this fact, Correa and some of his regional counterparts may believe that it is better to wait rather than precipitously embrace a plan like ALBA.

In other words, Obama takes the wind out of Chávez's sails because Latin American will love him and his policies. A McCain win, on the other hand, might even allow Chávez to improve his party's chances in the Venezuelan elections:

If McCain were to win the upcoming presidential election, Chávez could then turn to the Venezuelan electorate and say: “McCain’s right wing agenda for Latin America is clear. We must now do our utmost to preserve Venezuelan sovereignty from U.S. imperialism.” By cultivating such rhetoric, Chávez might rally the PSUV party faithful just three weeks before regional elections in Venezuela.

Even further, a McCain victory could be the spark for the spread of Chávez's socialist project:

Within such a polarized political climate Chávez might even succeed in passing his constitutional reform, thereby extending presidential term limits. If the reform contains many of the progressive measures of the original proposal, Chávez might regain political momentum throughout South America, consolidate his socialist state, and rekindle some of the political enthusiasm that characterized his movement from 2002 to 2006.

The idea that the U.S. election is the linchpin of Chávez's political future is bizarre. Kozloff views Latin American domestic politics essentially as driven primarily by events in the United States. Venezuelans have a host of different domestic concerns that they will weigh when going to the polls. Who is president of the United States is, in my opinion, will be very low on the list. Despite what is written in the U.S. media, Rafael Correa is no Chávez clone, and so we should not automatically expect him to follow every suggestion Chávez makes, and then attribute deviation to the U.S. presidential election.

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Following Cobos

I am really curious to see how the Argentine President-VP spat works out. Julio Cobos returned to Buenos Aires, where he met with fellow "Radicales K," or members (or former members--I'm not sure how many have been expelled) of the Radical Party (UCR) that support the Kirchners. Part of the president's dilemma is that if she pressures Cobos to resign or otherwise freezes him out, she will alienate his fellow Radicales K and perhaps lose cruciail political support.

Matthew Shugart started a discussion on VP independence. He suggests that the rarity of a VP voting against his/her president is due only to a shortage of cases. I disagree, but neither of us has any data. I think we should expect the VP to vote with the president, and that failing to do so would normally incur political costs. The only exceptions would be countries where the president does not get to choose the VP, and so a rival may be elected alongside the president. Obviously in that case the dynamic is quite different.

What we need, then, is a list of all instances in which a Latin American VP cast a tiebreaking vote, and what the outcome was. There is little (perhaps none?) academic work done on vice presidents because, like everyone else, academics don't see the VP as important. Anyone out there want to fill the niche? The title of "Vice President Expert" awaits.

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Why Latinos are not swing voters

The Pew Hispanic Center released the 2008 National Survey of Latinos, which reaffirms the fact that Latinos are not swing voters. Instead, it shows that Latinos are more solidly Democratic than ever. In 1999, 25 percent were Republicans or leaned that way, compared to 26 percent today. Basically no change. Meanwhile, in 1999 58 percent saw themselves as Democratic, versus 65 percent in 2008. There is no swinging going on.

It is entirely possible that in the near future, the Democratic Party will just see the Latino vote as in the bag, and we will hear less about how sought after it is and more about how the constituency is taken for granted. This, of course, has been a common lament for African American voters.

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Leonardo Padura Fuentes' Adiós Hemingway

I was in the mood for some fiction, and had heard about Cuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes, who writes crime fiction/mysteries. I bought Adiós Hemingway, the first to be translated into English. His main character is detective Mario Conde, a self-proclaimed bibliophile, aspiring writer and former cop. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and definitely will read more of his work.

A caveat, though—if you are not interested in Ernest Hemingway, then the book may not be for you. You don’t have to like Hemingway. In fact, one of the book’s themes is Conde’s ambivalence between his love of Hemingway’s writing and his intense dislike of him as an individual (though ultimately even that hatred is eroded a bit). The plot centers on a body discovered at Hemingway’s Finca Vigía, and goes back and forth between Conde’s investigation and a recreation of 1958, just before Hemingway left Cuba for good and while he is undergoing a severe personal crisis that ultimately led to suicide. I won’t say much about it to avoid spoilers, but one of the main questions is whether the FBI was after Hemingway.

One reason Conde dislikes Hemingway, and distrusts the Cuban fascination with him, is that he was an icon in the country, and lived there off and on for many years, yet knew nothing about it: “more than twenty years living alongside Cubans were not enough for the artist to understand a damned thing about their island” (pp. 46-47). However, he also comes to pity him and, to an extent, even identify with him.

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Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooose!

It was fun yelling that way back when. Never knew his name included "Rich."

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The FARC in Europe

Police in Spain arrested a Spanish woman accused of helping the FARC coordinate meetings and funnel money through Europe (primarily Switzerland and Sweden). Her name came out of Raúl Reyes' files. Interestingly, she will be facing Judge Baltasar Garzón, who is famous for going after Augusto Pinochet.

I assume that more information about the FARC's European ties will be forthcoming, and more arrests will be made. However, I am not sure how much having these contacts disrupted will hurt them, since their primary sources of revenue come from within Colombia. Nonetheless, the Colombian government is clearly reaping the benefits of the information from the laptops and flash drives. Now they have this woman's computer and, as Boz pointed out a few days ago, the government seized another FARC member's laptop as well.

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Aftermath in Argentina

Vice President Julio Cobos is still hiding out in Mendoza, and through a spokesperson said he approved of Cristina naming Sergio Massa as chief of cabinet. Cobos is expected to come back to BA on Monday.

Meanwhile, a recent poll shows a jump in Cristina's disapproval numbers, from 61.8% in April to 71.8% in July. Approval dropped from 23.6% to 19.7%. Obviously, relations with farmers is a major issue, but in the larger scheme of things she needs to keep her coalition together to avoid more confrontation.

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If you hate it, Chávez funds it

Norman Bailey, who for a short time was the administration's intelligence point man for Venezuela and Cuba, testified before the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Relations. You can see the full text here. He says that Hugo Chávez has funded ETA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Grinch in Whoville. Further, Venezuela currently resembles Nazi Germany and the Panama Canal is at risk because of Chávez. Lastly, there is no reason to expect any Venezuelan election "will be conducted with any greater even-handedness than previous electoral contests in past years." You know, like the ones he lost.

It occurs to me that one thing that will (hopefully) be nice about a new administration is a reduction in the absurd levels of alarmism. Chávez can't be a rival, he has to be Dr. Evil. You don't just want FTAs to be ratified, but the forces of darkness will win if we don't pass them.

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Latinos and Charlotte suburbs

I've done work that includes discussion about how the Latino population in southern cities (focusing on Charlotte) is moving directly to the suburbs, which are closer to where the jobs are. There are also many anecdotal indicators, especially at supermarkets, which have expanded Mexican food sections and advertisements at the door for wiring money.

It became even more apparent when a few days ago I found a bilingual flier on the door of my house.



Typically, Latinos in Charlotte live in apartments, of which there are many in University City (where I live--since it obviously encompasses the university, I assume we have more apartments per capita than elsewhere, but I do not know that for certain). Without reading too much into one ad, it seems Western Union believes more Spanish-speakers are living in homes (whether owned or rented). Indeed, in Charlotte the number of Latinos who own versus rent is increasing every year.

But it also demonstrates that companies like Western Union are hurting from the leveling off of remittances, caused in large part by the economic slowdown, but also by more enforcement. They need to drum up more business, and so are expanding their advertising campaign. Most remittance research has been done on the effects they have on the country to which they're being sent, but it would be interesting also to consider how U.S. businesses have begun to rely on the fees they charge. The remittance slowdown ripples out everywhere.

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The FARC: we're gonna win

In the past few months, not much has gone the FARC's way. They screw up a hostage release, get duped about a release, Hugo Chávez tells them to demobilize, even Fidel Castro tells them their tactics are going too far, and millions of Colombians march against them.

But the FARC just released a statement telling the world they will fight on. It is a long, rambling statement. Basically, there is still much kidnapping work to be done and the fight can only be successful with more drug trafficking perseverance. They always treat their enemies like slaves with "dignity." And they assure the Colombian people that they will never submit and will fight until everyone deserts until the end.

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The gift that keeps on giving

A few weeks ago I mentioned the immense amount of money being spent on the border fence, and the many laws being circumvented to build it. But, of course, the end result will make us all better off, right? According to the Department of Homeland Security, the answer is no if you happen to live on the border:

The U.S.-Mexico border fence will make life harder on some South Texas farmers, damage valuable wildlife habitat, impair views and generally become an obstacle to border life, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged in an environmental study of the fence's impact.

I love the smell of steel and barbed wire in the morning. It smells like victory.

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Who needs reality TV when you have this?

Julio Cobos is in Mendoza, you know, just a normal family vacation, and he isn't sure when he plans to get back to BA. He says he's thinking of calling the president in a few days. Cristina finally referred to him, but wouldn't say his name, referring to him only as "mi compañero de fórmula." She's talking a lot about loyalty, but what will the Kirchners do with the disloyal?

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