Debating legalization

The New York Times has a "room for debate" section on drug legalization in Latin America. Unfortunately, it's not very useful, since it consists of short sound bites for an enormously complex issue. Case in point the argument that we should not legalize drugs because that would put a lot of criminals out of work. The unhappy unemployed criminals will therefore commit more crimes than before, and we'll be worse off. Therefore, apparently, we should allow them to remain in their current place of employment.

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Press abuses in Latin America

G. Philip Hughes, who was an Ambassador to Caribbean countries during the administration of George H.W. Bush, has an op-ed in U.S. News & World Report criticizing Barack Obama for failing to condemn press abuses in Latin America. Like many such op-eds, he notes only Venezuela, Ecuador, and Argentina (Cuba wasn't mentioned, though lack of any press freedom there is obvious).

Yet according to Reporters Without Borders, the Latin American countries with the worst abuses against the press are Mexico, Colombia, and Honduras. But since all of them are U.S. allies, he conveniently decides not to mention them. Or, in the case of Mexico, he claims that abuses are now gone because it is democratic.

In short, I don't disagree with the basic premise, namely that the Obama administration should be more vocal about attack on the press. But any such statements would have to start with government friendly to the United States.

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Chilean civil-military relations

One thing that became quite clear after hearing a number of paper presentations at LASA this year is that scholars of civil-military relations still don't agree on much. How do we know "civilian control" when we see it? How do we know if civilian authority is "effective"? Indeed, what should militaries be doing in a democratic context? What incentives exist for civilians to pursue democratic civil-military reform?

This was driven home to me when I gave my own presentation on civil-military relations during Chile's Concertación era (1990-2010). I discussed how economic reform--particularly the Copper Law--has been very elusive while some political reforms have been enacted. I added that the lack of economic reform did not conform to many rational choice analyses suggesting that politicians had an incentive to go after resources as a way to boost their own re-election chances.

From the audience came a very reasonable question--why? If Chile is so democratic, the armed forces are under control, and politicians naturally want access to resources, then why are these reforms not happening? Similarly, as I mentioned last week, the Brazilian government went so far as to announce its refusal to discuss the country's amnesty.

I didn't have a good answer. This is an empirical question worth chewing on. In no particular order, let me map out some possibilities, which can overlap.

1. The military is making some type of threat behind the scenes
2. The right (however defined) is blocking the reform efforts
3. There is insufficient political interest/lack of incentive across the ideological spectrum
4. The president believes the effort would distract too much and so won't pursue reform
5. Reform is not broadly seen as necessary in the first place

On the surface, none of these appear to fit Chile all that well. But something is going on under the surface.

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Opposite day for Cuba

This is the ultimate in logic for those who still believe in the Cuba embargo: "pro freedom" now means "stifle freedoms." So if you love freedom, apparently the best thing to do is to deny freedom of speech. Or if you don't like what is happening in a country, then copy that country!

This reminds me of when my kids proclaim that it is "opposite day," meaning that whatever they say should be taken as the opposite. For Cuba policy, this is how we should understand proclamations that the embargo will help the Cuban people.

My previous rant on this is here.

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Osama Wazan's The Last Moderate Muslim

Not long ago I met Osama Wazan, author of the novel The Last Moderate Muslim. He said he cried as he wrote parts of it, which I can imagine. It is a coming-of-age story during the Lebanese civil war. The main character, a boy named Ziad, sees terrible atrocities committed by both Christians and Muslims and tries to come to grips with his Muslim faith, his family, and his country. What a great book.

As the title suggests, ultimately it is a call for moderation, but Ziad has experienced his own feelings of intense religious fervor and hatred toward non-Muslims so that message does not come off as naive. Rather, it is a clear-eyed view of someone who looks pragmatically at what extremism on all sides actually achieves. Lebanon was ripped up, its population alternatively fled and killed each other, corruption flourished and the normal opportunities afforded young people were hard to find or non-existent (Ziad, for example, goes to college late because of the war, then finds the university periodically closed because of violence).

Unfortunately, it will likely also leave you feeling pessimistic about the outcomes of current Middle Eastern civil wars (or, indeed, almost any civil war). In the novel, Ziad is one of the few people who can overcome the true horror of war. It would be no easy thing.

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LASA 2012 paper

Later this afternoon I will be presenting my LASA paper on the military and the Concertación in Chile. It is really a basic overview that will become part of an edited volume examining Chilean politics during those years. You can see the paper here. Certainly a lot of progress has been made, but it is quite remarkable how much remains untouched--the amnesty, the copper law, lack of legislative oversight, etc. Even when you view reforms in terms of incentives the lack of progress in some area doesn't make much sense. There is a lot of money politicians could tap into if they reformed the copper law, but they have not done so.

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Cheyre on the Chilean military

Here at LASA I attended an interesting talk by former Chilean Army Commander in Chief Juan Emilio Cheyre, who had been central to publicly acknowledging the Army's human rights abuses. Today he discussed the concept of "participative professionalism," where the military would seek to be more integrated with society without becoming politicized (e.g. natural disaster response). He emphasized again the need to keep human rights front and center. Unlike many retired officers, he used words like "dictatorship." I plan on mentioning this in my talk on Saturday. It's nice to hear this sort of thing from someone who is so widely respected.

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Brazil amnesty

We need more research to answer why to this:

El gobierno de Brasil descartó entrar en cualquier tipo de discusión, nacional o internacional, sobre la ley de amnistía de 1979 que exoneró a los responsables de abusos de derechos humanos cometidos durante los gobierno militares entre 1964 y 1985.
...
"No nos vamos a meter en el debate sobre la ley de amnistía, ni domésticamente, ni a nivel internacional", dijo la comisionada del gobierno para los derechos humanos, María do Rosario.

My scholarly work on civil-military relations is periodically critiqued for being too negative in its assessment, but this is yet another example of how civilian governments stop short of dealing with sensitive issues. If the military is not a problem, is not politicized, will not be a distraction, then why refuse even to discuss the amnesty?

For a scholarly (and often pessimistic) look at Brazilian civil-military relations, Jorge Zaverucha has written a lot.

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El Americano in Cuba

David Grann has a lengthy article in The New Yorker on William Alexander Morgan, a U.S. citizen who fought for Fidel Castro during the revolution, and then was executed by firing squad as he became an opponent of the new regime.

It was March 11, 1961, two years after Morgan had helped to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista, bringing Castro to power. The revolution had since fractured, its leaders devouring their own, like Saturn, but the sight of Morgan before a firing squad was a shock. In 1957, when Castro was still widely seen as fighting for democracy, Morgan had travelled from Florida to Cuba and headed into the jungle, joining a guerrilla force. In the words of one observer, Morgan was “like Holden Caulfield with a machine gun.” He was the only American in the rebel army and the sole foreigner, other than Guevara, an Argentine, to rise to the army’s highest rank, comandante.

Interesting stuff, including J. Edgar Hoover, Rafael Trujillo, Robert F. Kennedy, and of course Che Guevara, who didn't like Morgan (they were the only two foreigners to hold the title of "Comandante").

Especially these days, when you see the geriatric dictatorship that Cuba has become, it can be hard to imagine how romantic the revolution was, and how much hope it generated at the beginning.

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Level of speech

A new study argues that the speeches of members of Congress are now one grade lower than they were seven years ago:

Today’s Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level, and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Gettysburg Address comes in at an 11.2 grade level and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is at a 9.4 grade level. Most major newspapers are written at between an 11^th and 14^th grade level. (You can find more comparisons here)

We need to be careful about over-reacting to this. Comparing to the original documents of the country is not fair, because they were written by highly educated people for highly educated people. A better comparison would be the speeches by members of Congress once less educated people started getting elected.

Level of speech is an interesting thing. A few years ago I was a fellow at the Institute for Emerging Issues at N.C. State University, which was a great experience. A major goal of that program is to get scholars doing research on issues of interest to North Carolina (in my case, immigration) to translate their research into op-eds that could inform and contribute to public debate. In one workshop with a Communications professor, he told us to keep the op-eds at a high school level (incidentally, did you know Microsoft Word can tell you what grade level your document is? I did not know that before). The reason? Newspapers have broad audiences, and editors will more likely accept op-eds if they are accessible. I published several that reflected my research perfectly while using language more people could relate to.

In other words, we want to be educated but that does not mean we use fancy language just for the sake of it. The fact that MLK's famous speech was at a 9.4 level is an important reminder of that. It was pitched broadly while retaining eloquence.

It makes me think, in fact, that many academic articles and books might be greatly improved by making them more accessible. That doesn't mean dumbing them down. Rather, it means making them more clear.

h/t The Monkey Cage

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Warrior Dash 2012

Yesterday I ran in the Warrior Dash, a 5K that is both bizarre and really fun, while also raising money for St. Jude's Children Research Hospital. Throughout the race there are 14 obstacles, including three separate mud pits (one of which was too deep to stand up in), two climbing walls, rope ladders, jumping over fire and even running over junked cars. It took me almost an hour to run, at a 17:37 pace. When you go through mud, then try to go uphill on a slippery slope, you can't go too fast. Or at least I can't.

After you finish and get hosed off, you turn in your chip for a free beer, which at that point goes down very nicely. If you're in the Charlotte area, I highly recommend it.

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My Iran-Latin America op-ed

Another alarmist Latin America-Iran op-ed. It is too easy to refute--that one is a real doozy, including an acknowledgment that the argument sounds "comical"--and I've done so more times than I want to bother counting, so instead I offer you an easy-to-use template to write your own op-ed. If you use it, then just slip my name in there somewhere for credit.

First, assert that there is a bloc of leftist governments in Latin America that all think and act exactly alike.

Second, assert that Iran plans to join these countries in some sort of unified military operation.

Third, discuss Iranian activities in the region. There are a few real ones, but be sure to include several based on either anonymous sources or no sources at all.

Fourth, discuss how the United States is ignoring the threat and express amazement at its lack of leadership.

Fifth, throw in a few non sequiturs about drugs or immigration. That's always good.

And there you go!

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Cubans and LASA

The State Department is allowing Mariela Castro to visit the U.S., in part to attend the Latin American Studies Association conference next week. The bizarre thing is that other, less controversial, Cubans were not allowed to attend.

A copy of one visa denial letter, issued last week and obtained by The Washington Post, stated that Soraya Castro Marino, who directs a study institute in Havana and was a visiting scholar at Harvard in 2010, was found ineligible this time because her presence would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” All rejected applicants reportedly received the same letter.

This is flat out dumb. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, any of these Cubans can do that is detrimental to the interests of the United States. This has been a bone of contention for years with LASA, and for a while even prompted the organization to meet outside the U.S. in protest (which over time became an untenable decision). It doesn't make any sense at all.

They will come and speak their minds; much of that will have nothing to do with Cuban politics and will focus instead on their own research. This is called free speech, which is not present in Cuba. Why in the world would the U.S. want to censor Cubans while condemning censorship in Cuba?

Even if they do talk about Cuban politics, as indeed Castro will, then we can all listen and make up our own minds. There will be plenty of contrary opinions published everywhere. Again, this is called free speech.

Finally, this decision to allow some and reject others highlights the completely arbitrary nature of this policy. The Obama administration does not seem even to bother trying to follow any coherent logic.

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Economy and election in Venezuela

Here is another indicator of why Hugo Chávez will be hard to beat in October's presidential election:

Venezuela, South America’s largest oil producer and a founding member of OPEC, experienced economic contractions of 3.3 percent in 2009 and 1.4 percent in 2010, before expanding 4.2 percent last year. 

Of the 30 countries that have already reported first quarter growth, Venezuela’s was the fourth fastest after China, Latvia and Indonesia. The 5.6 percent expansion matched that of Kazakhstan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Net income for Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state oil company, surged 42.4 percent last year to $4.5 billion as the average price for the country’s crude oil rose to a record $101.06 a barrel. The price averaged $112.04 in the first quarter, according to preliminary figures by the Oil Ministry.

He's ahead in every poll (though the margin varies widely according to who is reporting) and when oil money keeps rolling, it is even harder to put a dent in his solid--if not spectacular--approval ratings. Thus far his health and lengthy absences, not to mention secrecy, do not seem to be affecting the presidential race much. If he can maintain an image of recovery and a semblance of energy, those issues may never matter.

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LASA app

The Latin American Studies Association conference is next week in San Francisco, and there is an app for that (for iPhone and Android). It's actually very cool. It has the entire program, maps (click on a panel and you can immediately see where it is). You can make your own schedule, type notes, or even tweet. I had hoped it would provide access to the papers themselves, but that might be asking too much (you can see them here).*

At large conferences, you get a program the size of a small phone book, and you flip through it constantly to figure out where you want to go and how to get there. Having it on my phone will be nice.

* I am old enough to remember photocopying 25 or so copies of my paper, then carting them to LASA, where a large room was dedicated to hard copies of the papers, which you paid about $1 each for.

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John Grisham's Calico Joe

I read John Grisham's Calico Joe on a whim, being in a baseball mood.

The narrator is a man whose father--a complete jerk--used to be a pitcher for the Mets, and in one fateful game in 1973 pitched to a young Cubs phenom named Joe Castle. Grisham mixes real players--as a boy the narrator even chats briefly with Willie Mays--with fictional, wrapping them together in a story about bad parents, adulation, pain and forgiveness. As always with Grisham, there are also bucolic, small town Southern scenes that make you want to sit out in the porch with a drink.

Corny? Well, yes. If you don't like baseball, you might gag.  Read the Amazon reviews and you'll see people who are really angry that this is not a legal thriller, or a thriller of any kind, or even unpredictable. I got the impression that Grisham really enjoyed writing this novel, with many references to baseball history, records, and especially unwritten rules of conduct--e.g. don't show up a pitcher when you hit a homer--that would never fit in The Firm or some such novel. I found it a quick and very enjoyable read.

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Cubans and the state

Robert Jackson gave a speech and this paragraph caught my eye.

Regarding Cuba, we have a positive policy—one that seeks to support Cubans’ right to freely determine their future. The Administration has taken steps to ease travel restrictions and increase the flow of information and remittances for ordinary Cubans, as well as allowing more exchanges for religious, academic, or cultural purposes. We believe that these policies are enhancing the independence of the Cuban people from the state, and we will be the first to cheer when a democratically chosen government in Cuba resumes its full participation in the inter-American system.

Sounds nice, but it's not reasonable to argue that U.S. policy has any measurable effect on Cubans' ties to their state. The Cuban government is cutting those ties on its own, with economic liberalization. If the U.S. wants to give Cubans more economic space, then it should end the embargo.

Short of some sort of disastrous invasion, the U.S. cannot do anything about the political ties between the Cuban people and the state. We don't know when--or if--a Cuban spring will occur, but it will not come from Washington, DC or Miami.

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McCain on Romney on immigration

John McCain says that Mitt Romney will do a 180 on immigration and ignore everything he's said repeatedly in public for months.

“Look, Mitt Romney understands that we have a challenge with the Hispanic voter. I believe, as this campaign moves on, that you will see him addressing this issue of the need for immigration reform. We all know what we need to happen.”

I am not sure what "we" he's referring to. Certainly it has not included Mitt Romney. But I am not complaining: if Romney wants to pander and thereby do the right thing in a naked attempt to get more votes, then I am all for it.

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U.S policy according to Granma

Granma has an analysis of U.S. policy toward Latin America that is remarkably free of ideological fervor. As a matter of fact, I think this largely hits the nail on the head:

However, Carlos Oliva Campos, a faculty member at the University of Havana, commented to Granma, "The fact that the region is not a priority for a given administration does not mean that the region has lost its critical importance within the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Practically, throughout our entire history, we have served as a laboratory for policies and a proving ground for strategies." 

"Although the Middle East, Asia, and Russia under Putin, are priorities, Obama’s policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean is essentially a continuation," he said. 

"The Summit of the Americas was very important because the region is no longer the same. Now there is another relationship of forces, very interesting, because it’s the ‘left’, not just socialists, which is complicating the U.S. response. What’s more, the U.S. is no longer the only defining external factor for markets or trade in the region."

The "laboratory" angle is the subject of scholarly books by both Greg Grandin (Empire's Workshop) and Brian Loveman (No Higher Law). The point is that even though the United States appears to be "ignoring" Latin America (whatever that means precisely) it is keeping Latin America in a global perspective (e.g. all the talk about Colombian counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations being applied in Afghanistan). Meanwhile,  Barack Obama has not changed the policies of George W. Bush all that much.

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Losing or gaining?

Andres Oppenheimer's current column is an example of the difficulties many people have in figuring out Latin America's relationship with the United States. So we start with the notion that the U.S. is losing ground in Latin America:

My opinion: Washington has lost some of its former economic clout in Latin America, but that started under former President George. W. Bush, and is not an irreversible tragedy.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/12/2795531/us-parties-next-clash-who-lost.html#storylink=cpy

But then a funny thing happens when he examines this "tragedy":

As Latin America’s commodity-based radical populist fad of the past decade begins to unravel, Washington will no longer be an almighty superpower, but a big first among equals.

Aha! The tragedy is more equality. Therein lies the rub. There is considerable discomfort with the idea that the United States does not dominate the hemisphere as it did during the Cold War. Make no mistake about it, the U.S. is still by far the most powerful and influential state in the region. But it is not so dominant.

That's a good thing for everyone involved, including the United States. But it is leading to quite a lot of whining, even by those--like Oppenheimer himself--who have been at least in rhetorical support of greater equality.

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No Cuban transition

Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado and Gregory A. Petrow, "Stability, Transition, and Regime Approval in Post-Fidel Cuba." Political Science Quarterly 127, 1 (Spring 2012): 73-103.

Abstract (gated):

JONATHAN BENJAMIN-ALVARADO and GREGORY A. PETROW examine Gallup World Poll data from Cuba to evaluate both the level of Cuban regime approval, as well as its causes. They conclude that Cubans are satisfied overall with their leaders, and that part of this satisfaction stems from equating the regime with the state.

The authors come up with what they call a Collective Esteem Model, based on World Gallup Data. They call for a more sophisticated quantitative approach to understanding Cuban politics. Their basic argument is that dissatisfaction with the regime is the key requirement for political transition, but that dissatisfaction is not present.

It's not really clear to me, though, how this is different from qualitative analyses of Cuban politics, though it has an additional challenge that the authors address only briefly, namely the quality of the data. In a dictatorship, we would expect respondents to be more positive than in a democracy for fear of retaliation--even if the questions are framed in a way to make them non-life threatening, people will naturally be more nervous.

Whether you are a policy maker, media commentator, or scholar (of any methodological stripe) the fundamental point is the same: there is no sign of a Cuban Spring--see my recent article in Military Review on U.S. policy options--and we don't know when it will happen.

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Polling in Venezuela

Venezuelan state media reports that 57% would vote for Hugo Chávez, and only 21% for Henrique Capriles. Further, Chávez has 66% approval, at least among those age 18-29.

These numbers were much higher for Chávez than what I'd been seeing, so I was not shocked to find that the group who did the poll, Grupo de Investigación Social Siglo XXI is headed by one Jesse Chacón Escamillo, a former Chávez cabinet member who participated in the 1992 coup. A quick look at their website suggests that Venezuelans are happy about everything Chávez does.

Polling in Venezuela is far more politicized than any other Latin American country. Different organizations publish radically different results about the same topic. Expect this is to get increasingly intense as the election nears, especially if Chávez remains of the country for long chunks of time and concern about his health grows. Except for GIS XXI, which will likely report that Venezuelans are happy about whatever he's doing.

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Engagement as war

John Boehner jumps wholeheartedly onto the Iran threat bandwagon, and argues that free trade--perhaps with greater imports of orange tanning lotion--is the answer. He does not explain how those two things connect. Even worse, he frames U.S. engagement as a "war."

"We must be clear that we will be there, with our friends and partners in the region, committed to fighting and winning the war for a free, stable, and prosperous hemisphere," Boehner said in a speech to the Council of Americas, which represents companies that do business in Latin America.

Listen, people. There is no hemispheric war, and the U.S. will isolate itself even further by framing it that way. And I will repeat for the umpteenth time that Latin America does not view Iran as a threat, so the U.S. will isolate itself by huffing and puffing so much.

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Quote of the day: immigration

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) is “still deciding what his position on immigration is,” as RNC Hispanic Outreach Director Bettina Inclán termed it.

And that quote is from one of his own supporters!

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Colombian economic growth

In the Financial Times, former Colombian Finance Minister (under Ernesto Samper) José Antonio Ocampo serves up a rare dish, namely a discussion about Colombian economic growth and investment that does not include a) any mention of the time it took to ratify the U.S.-Colombia FTA; or b) wide-eyed accolades for the benefits of a more open economy.

Instead, he places Colombia squarely where it should be, namely as another Latin American country riding a commodity boom and needing to enact policies recognizing that fact.

Mining and oil exports have grown sevenfold since 2003. At $37bn in 2011, they accounted for two-thirds of exports. Traditional exports, such as agriculture and manufacturing, have also grown – but only by three times. Coffee, the traditional staple, represents only about 5 per cent of exports. 

High energy and mining prices are a mixed blessing, however, as they threaten to undermine diversification of the economy, traditionally one of its strongest characteristics. As a capital-intensive activity, mining also generates limited employment, a big concern in a country that, despite significant improvements, has struggled to shrink unemployment. At an average rate of 10.8 per cent in 2011, it remains one of Latin America’s highest.

Exactly.

[The] redistributive possibilities of fiscal policy also need to be enhanced. This is particularly important in a country that, over the past decade, has largely missed the improvements in income distribution enjoyed by the rest of Latin America. Colombia now has one of the worst income distributions in a region famed for its inequality. At 0.578 the Gini coefficient is Latin America’s worst after Guatemala. Bettering that is essential to sustained and prolonged growth.

Also true. It's nice to go beyond the rah-rah attitude that the vast majority of editorials have about Colombia. The FTA is no magical being, and has multiple effects, some of which are negative. Like everywhere else, Colombia would benefit from a focus on diversification and explicit acknowledgment of potential problems even while enjoying the benefits of the boom.

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Putting Malvinas money where your mouth is

Argentina's ambassador to the UK says the Malvinas issue is regional and that British trade will soon suffer.

Argentina warned yesterday Britain’s trade with South America would be hit unless it handed the Falklands over to them. 

Alicia Castro, the country’s ambassador to London, attempted to drag its neighbours into the row after she described the islands as a “colonial enclave”. 

She added: “Argentina is very happy having this ­colonial enclave in the south of our country. 

“It’s not an Argentinian cause, it’s a regional cause. The United Kingdom, by not wanting to have a proper dialogue with Argentina, it’s turning its back on Latin America as a whole. 

“If Britain wants to improve is relations with Latin America, they have to settle this dispute.”

I doubt this. Yes, Argentina gets some rhetorical support from South American governments, most loudly from Hugo Chávez, and some countries even have blocked ships flying the Falklands flag. That is a far cry, however, from governments deciding to damage their own economies by imposing some sort of trade sanction on Great Britain. Latin American trade with Britain has jumped recently, especially with Brazil, and I can't see President Rousseff jeopardizing that for Argentina.

This is a classic example of words being cheap.

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Jim Bouton's Ball Four

I hadn't read Jim Bouton's Ball Four since I was a teenager in the 1980s, when a lot of the cultural references from 1969 went over my head but I had found it really funny. Reading it years later, it's even funnier. Bouton was once a Yankees ace, but arm trouble led him to take up the knuckle ball and by 1969 he ended up on the original Seattle Pilots team, and then the Astros after a trade. The book is his account of that season, by turns thoughtful and vulgar.

The key to Ball Four, as with Dirk Hayhurst's two excellent books, is the high level of honesty. He does not pull punches at himself, which makes the book real without being vindictive. He does not view himself or anyone else as exalted because they're major league baseball players, and always notes how what people are supposed to say (e.g. "I'm doing this for the team") often contradicts the truth ("I'm doing this to stay in the majors"). He skewers hypocrisy, but he's not a malcontent as he wants to stay on the team so swallows his pride when he feels it's necessary.

And it's so funny because he questions everything, especially things that aren't supposed to be questioned, like the eternal wisdom of managers and pitching coaches, who demand total control even if their decisions are illogical and/or contradictory. As he writes about his constant fight to be allowed to pitch more on the side, "What the hell was he talking about? Except that I knew. I was asking to do something unorthodox, and unorthodoxy does in baseball what heresy does in the priesthood."

It has a very well-deserved label as the classic book on baseball.

Trivia: Jim Bouton also invented Big League Chew, a staple of my little league days.

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FDI in Latin America

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean just released its report on foreign direct investment in Latin America, which reached a record high of $153 billion in 2011. Given the growing conventional wisdom about the rise of China and the decline of the United States, I was curious to see if that was reflected in FDI. The answer: not exactly.

U.S. companies comprised 18% of FDI in 2011, down from 23% in the 2006-2010 period. But can you guess what country had the highest total in 2011? The Netherlands. The report notes the obvious point that these are companies based elsewhere. But where?

Meanwhile, China represents just 1% of FDI in the region. More important is Spain, which went from 9% to 14%, and Japan, from 3% to 8%.

So the U.S. has been playing a smaller relative role, but not because of China. Why don't we ever hear the media talk about Japan? And why don't we ever hear about strange goings-on in the Netherlands?

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Policy Options for a Cuban Spring

In the latest issue of Military Review, a main journal of the U.S. Army, I have an article co-authored with a Latin American Studies graduate student on U.S. policy options for a Cuban Spring. We discuss both the legislation and official policy (both toward Cuba and general) currently in place, and further put it in the context of the Arab Spring.

The upshot: in the event of regime change in Cuba, the U.S. has a constructive role to play, but engagement should multilateral and non-military. Otherwise it would be counterproductive both for U.S. policy and for Cuban democracy:

The history of U.S.-Cuba relations and the experience of the Arab Spring provide a useful context for identifying the optimal policy responses to an eventual Cuban political transition. There is a fine line between caution and passivity, but this line is one the United States must walk. There will be strong resistance to a foreign presence, and the possibility of blowback is very real. The United States can and must play a role in Cuban democratization, but it cannot create it.

Gregory Weeks and Erin Fiorey, "Policy Options for a Cuban Spring." Military Review May-June 2012: 88-95.

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Cuban feminism

An article in the New York Times Rendezvous blog argues that Cuba might be the most feminist country in Latin America. The very first piece of evidence? The number of women in parliament. You know, that institution that rubber stamps whatever the Communist Party wants. But lots of women get to do the rubber stamping. Another piece of evidence is membership in the Communist Party, so apparently lots of women are also ordering what needs to be rubber stamped.

It is not clear to me how that necessarily equates to feminism, particularly since every single important decision in the dictatorship has been made by the same two men for the past 53 years.

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Unaccompanied child migration

The media and commentators have paid a lot of attention to net zero migration from Mexico. From the Associated Press, here is a troubling downside:

While the issue of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S. isn't new, the scale of the recent increase is. From October 2011 through March, 5,252 kids landed in U.S. custody without a parent or guardian — a 93 percent increase from the same period the previous year, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services. In March alone, 1,390 kids arrived. 

"The whole community right now is in triage mode," said Wendy Young, executive director of Kids in Need of Defense, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that matches pro bono attorneys with unaccompanied minors navigating the immigration system. "It's important that the resources and the capacity meet the need, and we're not quite there yet."

I spend a lot of time in my Politics of Latino Immigration class discussing incentives and unintended consequences of immigration policy. Both are in evidence here.

This week, the first ladies of Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala spoke at a three-day conference on unaccompanied minors in Washington, D.C. Mexico's first lady, Margarita Zavala, and Honduran counterpart Rosa Elena Bonilla de Lobo noted that tougher U.S. border security made it more difficult for parents working in the U.S. to return for their children, a suggestion as to why parents increasingly would put their children in a smuggler's care.

The "triage" part is indicative of the fact that no one in the Obama administration thought about how greater enforcement might change migrant behavior. No sane person should support an immigration system that produces this outcome. The article mentions a five year old girl. Five! So say all you want about Mexican economic growth, but don't pretend it ends misery.

And as I keep repeating, remember that net zero does not mean zero migration.

h/t my dad

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Uruguay and China

China's state news agency touts its economic ties to Uruguay. Unwittingly, it also provides an excellent summation of dependency theory.

China is now the largest buyer of Uruguay's wood, soy and cellulose. It also imports frozen fish, leather, meat, gemstones and dairy products from Uruguay. 

Meanwhile, Uruguay imports trucks, motor vehicles, computers, screens and telephones from China.

You export primary products and import finished goods. It seems OK when commodity prices are high, not so much when they drop. I've written about the great Chinese commodity grab a number of times before.

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Food prices in Latin America

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has a report on food price instability in Latin America. It notes a number of problems, such as interrelation with energy and financial markets, information problems, demand in Asia, climate change, and others. It also notes the problem of oligopolies that not only affect prices but also don't necessarily address the food needs of the population. This latter point is particularly important, since it becomes a source of political instability.

El alza y la volatilidad de los precios internacionales de los alimentos se produce en un contexto de crisis económica que implica menores oportunidades de empleo e ingreso, lo que agudiza el impacto sobre la seguridad alimentaria. Asimismo, el contexto de crisis financiera genera gran incertidumbre y falta de confianza, lo que amplifica la volatilidad y dificulta las medidas de política pública. 

Food inflation is currently higher than general inflation, though there is clear volatility:

It's funny how these days there is a relentless push in the media to portray Latin America in entirely positive economic terms, ignoring issues like this. That follows a previous trend of viewing everything in Latin America as negative and violent.

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Supreme Court signals

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about Arizona's SB 1070, and the MSM has reached consensus that the justice's lines of questioning suggest they are favorable to Arizona. I wonder whether this is true, especially when the questions quoted are cherry picked. There must be research on this, but some digging in Google Scholar didn't bring anything up. To what degree do their questions point to an ultimate decision?

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Marco Rubio on Latin America

Marco Rubio has an L.A. Times op-ed on Latin America, the basic message of which is that we need to tell Latin American governments more about what they should be doing. The United States needs to:

--tell them we need an FTAA, which many governments do not view positively
--tell them they need to be more concerned about Iran, which is not seen by many Latin Americans as a hemispheric threat
--tell them to think differently about Cuba, even though our policy has long been rejected by our allies
--tell them to make sure we have access to their oil

Regardless of what you think about each particular issue, the overall tone is not really one of engagement, as there is virtually no discussion about what Latin American countries want. The irony is that policies intended to demonstrate we "care" (his word) can actually lead to greater isolation.

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Net zero and the Mexican economy

The Wall Street Journal notes positive economic news from Mexico, as economic activity expanded in February. With all of the talk about net zero migration, we have to remember how critical immigration remains to the Mexican economy:

Increases in employment and credit in Mexico, and growth in remittances from Mexicans living abroad, have contributed to domestic consumption, while domestic demand is expected to play a bigger role in economic expansion this year.

Overall, remittances to Mexico are increasing as the U.S. economy slowly recovers, up 8.6% in February 2012 versus February 2011, and now bring in more dollars than foreign tourism. People are still leaving Mexico in large numbers, and then sending money home, but there are so many migrants already in the United States that we're seeing equilibrium.

If anything, then, net zero migration is occurring in the context of increased Mexican economic dependence on the United States. It is fine to laud economic growth in Mexico, as long as there is acknowledgment of the increased dependence on Mexican migrants in the United States.

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Quote of the day: immigration

“What are you going to say to the people who say that you’re creating a climate of fear?” Hethmon recalled someone asking him recently. “I say, ‘Well, yeah, it’s not great. But it’s the best choice.’ ”

Read more heartless details at the Washington Post. Ironically, this part of the of the Republican Party is going to make itself extinct through measures aimed to protect itself--openly attacking Latinos is not a sustainable political strategy. Much of the demographic change they're trying to stop has already occurred.

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Unnamed sources

From Caracas Gringo: a really interesting and thought provoking post about Roger Noriega and the politics of unnamed sources. Who are they, and what are their political goals? This actually has much broader implications than Latin America, because U.S. policy all too often hinges on information peddled to influential people by sources claiming to have insider information (e.g. exiles like Ahmed Chalabi). The information may be true, but it may be intended to influence policy in ways the policy makers do not understand and mistakenly take at face value.

Another takeaway from the post is a reminder of how Venezuelan politics are a mess.

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Getting beyond populism

Here's a simplistic article in the Washington Post about populist governments in Latin America. Here's a simplistic response from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. To be fair to the latter, the drumbeat against governments the U.S. doesn't like in Latin America is old and tiresome. In popular parlance, "populist" means "critical of U.S. policy." Lumping them together in any other terms does not bear much scrutiny, since their economic policies diverge greatly. However, it is equally misleading to argue that all of them are doing just great.

It is unfortunate that collectively we still don't scratch under the surface sufficiently, so that public discussions of Latin American politics--which are relatively rare anyway--don't get anywhere, even after years.

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Terrorism talk

After Cartagena, everyone and their grandmother has written something about U.S. failure in Latin America. Most of the analysis is overblown. Voice of America, though, pinpoints part of the problem in an article that actually is intended to show U.S. engagement.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta heads to South America as part of Washington’s efforts to build partnerships in the region in the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism.  

... 

Panetta hopes to turn attention back to the issues of drug trafficking and anti-terror efforts.

Terrorism? Even close allies will start rolling their eyes when U.S. officials go on about Iran and Hezbollah. It is perhaps one of the ultimate signs of being out of touch.

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Beyond the Border Buildup

I wanted to make sure everyone out there knew about the newly released Beyond the Border Buildup: Security and Migrants Along the U.S.-Mexico Border, written by Adam Isacson and Maureen Meyer from the Washington Office on Latin America. It's an extensive empirical overview of border security, with policy recommendations. I plan on reading and commenting on it, but don't have time now.

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Argentina and oil production

Mark Weisbrot, who commonly defends the economic policies of left-leaning governments in Latin America, defends the nationalization of YPF. The crux of his argument is that Argentina needed to do so in order to increase oil production.

There are sound reasons for this move, and the government will most likely be proved right once again. Repsol, the Spanish oil company that currently owns 57% of Argentina's YPF, hasn't produced enough to keep up with Argentina's rapidly growing economy. From 2004 to 2011, Argentina's oil production has actually declined by almost 20% and gas by 13%, with YPF accounting for much of this. And the company's proven reserves of oil and gas have also fallen substantially over the past few years.

However, has anyone made a convincing argument that nationalization will increase production? Steven Bodzin recently wrote that this assumption is wrong:

Oil output and investment were the key issues here, but like Noel, I don’t see anyone stepping in with adequate money to really increase investment. The Chinese might loan some money (Venezuela style) or try to send their own work crews (Sudan-style) but if there’s one thing China likes, it’s stability — and that’s not on order in Argentina. Other companies? Talk to Americas Petrogas, an explorer with big chunks of Argentine shale under license. It’s lost a third of its value in two months as this whole drama has played out. It’s going to be tough for them to get money from the public markets, and the bonds and banks have been shut off since Argentina defaulted a decade ago. I could see a few of import-dependent countries investing, including China and Chile, but with heavy conditions, and not with the kind of money Argentina needs.

See also Boz on distribution problems. Is there reason to believe, as Weisbrot does, that the government "will most likely be proved right once again"? Right now, Argentina is trying to get more investment from Petrobras, which seems lukewarm to the idea:

Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobao said during a news conference following the meeting that Petrobras would invest all that it could in Argentina, which he said would amount to roughly $500 million in 2012, unchanged from 2011.

So let's wait and see.

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Romney's Latino DREAM

In the L.A. Times Tamar Jacoby (who is in favor of immigration reform) has a good Republican take on the non-citizenship DREAM Act proposed by Marco Rubio. She makes a number of points that echo a discussion I had in my Politics of Latino Immigration class yesterday (a somewhat more sluggish discussion than usual since student papers were due that day as well). She argues that Romney needs to jump on this because he can nail Democrats who claim to be in favor of reform yet oppose this bill in no small part because they do not want to give Republicans a boost on immigration in an election year.

Immigration will not decide this election but softening Romney's stance on immigration will help in a few key swing states with large numbers of eligible Latino voters. Passing this bill could neatly remove immigration from Obama's quiver during the campaign.

This isn't just the right thing to do. It would also help Romney solve his problem communicating with Latino voters. Truth is he has a lot to say that Latinos could find appealing — if they could hear him. But they can't hear him because some of what he says on immigration is so off-putting, many stop listening to the rest of his pitch. 

For many Latinos, immigration is a threshold issue and Romney is stuck on the wrong side of the threshold. That's why he's doing so poorly among Latino voters, winning just 14% to President Obama's 70% in one poll.

However, she omits one critical point, namely that the non-citizenship aspect is ideological. Latinos vote Democratic overwhelmingly, so Republicans do not want to enfranchise a group that will vote against them. She is correct that the proposal does not rule out citizenship, but it does makes it extraordinarily difficult. From an immigrant point of view, however, that may be far preferable to the precarious undocumented status.

This last point is under-analyzed. We don't really know is what potential DREAMers and their families, along with Latino voters more broadly, think about the proposal. Is citizenship a deal breaker? My hunch is that it's not, but I'm sure we'll soon see polls to give us a clue.

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YPF in comparative perspective

I like this article by Joshua Keating in Foreign Policy, which is a quick comparative historical view of the YPF nationalization in Argentina. He notes five steps in the anatomy of a takeover:

1. Choose your moment
2. Build your case
3. Make them an offer they can't refuse
4. Put the boot down
5. Don't get overthrown

Given the stakes involved, the last point deserves more attention. When do governments get overthrown and when do they not? Argentina is less polarized than Venezuela was in the first few years of Hugo Chávez's presidency, and Spain will react differently from the United States. Meanwhile, Iran in 1953 is tightly bound to the Cold War.

Fernández's nationalization of YPF seems like the latest in a series of provocative international gestures, including efforts to reassert control over the Falkland Islands. While she's clearly counting on the political benefits of these bold movements making up for the international backlash, she's entering very dangerous waters.

Dangerous, I suppose, but the backlash is likely to be more economic than political.

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Blogs not dead yet

Henry Farrell writes at Crooked Timber about the academic blog wiki he started that is now going to be kept up by the Center for History and New Media. I agree with the following:

However, as best as I can tell from personal browsing, academic blogs appear to be relatively robust. It’s a lot harder than it was nine years ago to create an academic blog that can attract substantial public attention, but if you’re primarily interested in talking to other academics and a few interested bystanders, it’s still relatively easy. Academic blogs, unlike e.g. tech blogs or some political opinion blogs, don’t usually have sufficient potential audience to become commercially viable. But most academics are used to talking to smaller audiences, and as long as blogging technology is cheap or free, there will be some people at least who’ll be interested in doing it.

Just like Fidel Castro and the Concertación in Chile, the death of blogs has been predicted for a long time but hasn't yet happened. After more than six years, I'm still really enjoying and deriving a lot of benefits from it, and in fact UNC Charlotte is working to encourage more faculty to use social media, including but not limited to blogs. Blogs will likely persist as long as there are professors (and now more graduate students as well) interested in using short form writing to discuss their research interests and/or current events.

So when the death cart comes around, don't put blogs on it yet.

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Romney and Obama on immigration

It seems clear that the Romney campaign is committed to a strategy of pretending he has a moderate stance on immigration, then accusing Obama of not passing immigration reform.

"We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country," Obama said, referring to the state's laws that call on police to check the immigration status of people they suspect of being in the country illegally. 

"Very troublesome," he added. Critics of Arizona's approach say it could lead to ethnic profiling and Obama said it allowed people to be stopped "based on an assumption." 

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Romney, said the former Massachusetts governor was committed to repairing the U.S. immigration system, "respecting those who are waiting patiently to come here legally, and finally ending illegal immigration in a civil and resolute manner." 

She stressed Obama had also promised in 2008 to tackle immigration reform in his first year in office but failed to do so. "President Obama only talks about immigration reform when he's seeking votes," she said.

There's quite a bit wrong here. First, if you deport record numbers of people then you're not in a position to call anyone's policies "troublesome."

Second, Romney has never explained how he respects those waiting to enter the country. In fact, he has rejected the idea of a temporary worker program for low-skilled labor. He also has never mentioned the insane backlog of immigration cases.

Third, Romney has definitely never advocated a "civil" end to illegal immigration. A "resolute" one, maybe, if by that we mean ramped up law enforcement.

Fourth, oh forget it, as there's really no point in going on. From now until November we will hear all sorts of outlandish comments about immigration, many of them unrooted in reality. I just have to get used to it.

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Chávez absence

Everyone very interested in Hugo Chávez's decision not to attend the Summit of the Americas, and instead go to Cuba for more cancer treatments. Nelson Bocaranda claimed that Chávez needs to stay there 1-2 weeks, and that seems to be confirmed. Over the next week or two, rumors and news will be mixed together even more.

I'm quoted in this Businessweek article on the topic. The bottom line is that this is not something Chávez wants to miss. There are relatively few opportunities to overcome the power imbalance between him and the U.S. president, but having a summit where both are present is one. International institutions offer that possibility at times. He can say whatever he wants, bring some sort of symbolic gift, etc., and the U.S. president has to deal with it. The fact that he is giving that up says more about his health than any rumor.

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Predicting the Latino vote

A student emailed me this article in Time about predicting the influence of the Latino vote in November. It points out accurately that the idea of Republicans needing some particular share of the national vote is misleading since the national vote is irrelevant in U.S. presidential elections. I agree with this assessment:

Latinos are expected to make up about one in ten voters this year, but many of those votes, in big states like Texas, California and New York, will have no impact on the electoral college, since those states are not in play for Romney. But Latinos can have a big impact on the outcomes in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and Florida, and a marginal impact in states like North Carolina and Ohio, all of which both parties will contest.

One key things missing here is the percentage of the Latino population that is eligible to vote in each state. In states with long-standing Latino communities, of course that will be much higher than places like North Carolina, where it is a relatively newly arrived constituency, has a lower proportion of eligible voters, and a much lower proportion of registered voters. But it is true that the impact will be marginal.

Nonetheless, as the race heats up I expect my phone to start ringing with robo-calls and my mailbox to fill up with fliers.

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Latino vote and Latin America

Businessweek has an article with an argument I've heard before and don't really buy, namely that Latinos in the United States will turn out in part because of Obama's visits to Latin America.

“The president desperately needs high voter turnout among Hispanic Americans,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “It doesn’t hurt for him to be in Colombia, and being seen with Latino leaders of the hemisphere is not a bad photo-op in an election year.” 

Obama’s campaign is gearing up for a close election fight against Republican Mitt Romney, putting a premium on gaining an edge with any voting group. Obama is actively courting Hispanics -- who gave him 67 percent of their votes in 2008 -- with a Spanish-language website and by recruiting Spanish-speaking volunteers and using Spanish-language voter registration forms and phone banks. 

“Key swing states that have large Hispanic populations will be extremely attentive” to the trip, said Susan MacManus, professor of political science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “Many feel that Latin and South America has been ignored.”

I just don't see evidence for this. Check out this December 2011 poll from the Pew Hispanic Center on the most important issues for Latinos:

Latinos are concerned about their lives here, not policy toward their country of origin (Cuba excepted, of course). I can't figure how a visit to Colombia will suddenly prompt a Colombian-American to vote when they otherwise wouldn't have, or vote for Obama when they were thinking of Romney. Or at least there will be so few as to be inconsequential.

Update: The Miami Herald has the same argument. But where's the empirical evidence?

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Michael Lazzara's Luz Arce and Pinochet's Chile

There is a large and still growing literature on traumatic memory in Chile.  Nearly forty years after the coup and over twenty since Augusto Pinochet left power, the powerful psychological effects of political violence remain painfully relevant. The academic literature has gradually though incompletely responded to understand it. In Luz Arce and Pinochet’s Chile:Testimony in the Aftermath of State Violence, Michael Lazzara grapples with some of the most difficult aspects of memory through a series of interviews with Luz Arce.

The case of Luz Arce is unsettling and tragic, not only because of the suffering she depicts but because she forces all of us to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions about how we would react under extreme duress. As she detailed in her book El infierno (published in Chile in 1993, with an English translation, The Inferno, in 2004) she became part of Salvador Allende’s inner circle in 1972 and worked as a militant in the Socialist Party. The military government abducted her in 1974, tortured, raped, and shot her, then worked to make her a collaborator.  She subsequently provided not only details about the structure of leftist organizations, but also specific names. She became a formal employee of the dictatorship’s notorious intelligence agency, the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), and its successor, the Centro Nacional de Informaciones (CNI). That book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the depth of repression of the Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Lazzara begins with an abridged version of her statement to the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1990, which is essentially a boiled down version of The Inferno. He follows with seven thematic chapters consisting of interviews he conducted with Arce from 2002 to 2007. It ends with a discussion by a number of participants in a 2008 forum in Santiago based on the based on the book, which was first published in Spanish but then updated and expanded in an English version.

It isn’t easy reading, because of course the interviews probe the very architecture of authoritarian repression in all its naked brutality. When confronted by the reality that her work with the DINA led directly to four deaths, she quickly responses that “as a functionary I bore no responsibility for deaths linked to the detention of people or to torture” and that “I was forced to be a functionary” (p. 80, emphasis in original). She struggles to reconcile her personal need for catharsis by writing the book in the first place with the fact that she worked for the DINA for an extended period of time, an experience she admits was not entirely negative.

What the book demonstrates is the need for a framework within which we can better understand not only memory but also collaboration.  The complexity of Steve Stern’s trilogy on memory in postauthoritarian Chile (TheMemory Box of Pinochet’s Chile) attests to the difficulties inherent in explaining the experiences even of those who did not switch sides. When perpetrator and victim get blurred together, analysis is even harder.  For example, the forum itself demonstrates how problematic the term “collaboration” can be. The discussants—one of whom suffered the loss of her husband because of Luz Arce--differ greatly in their treatment of Arce, and come to no agreement about how to determine where the line can be drawn between victim and active participant. Rather than acting as a real conclusion, the forum is characterized by the raising of multiple and sometimes contradictory questions.  Arce’s testimony reflects the fact that her answers to such questions change over time.  When asked whether she felt that she was a victim, she responds that initially she did not, but then later did, especially after talking to the Rettig Commission (p. 87).

Ultimately, then, this is a book that seeks not to answer questions, but to leave them open intentionally.  In the introduction, Lazzara notes that he hopes the book can serve a pedagogical function (p. 9).  Of that, there is little doubt.  For an instructor, it would be a useful addition to courses on Latin American politics or on authoritarian rule more generally for the issues it forces the reader to contemplate.

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New website

For anyone who goes to my academic website, here is the new link. By now the old address should be redirecting automatically. For all the constant work I do online, I had always found website updating to be clunky. Now the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is using WordPress. It took a bit of getting used to, but is much easier than anything else I've used because it is just blogging.

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Santos interview

Juan Forero interviews Juan Manuel Santos in the Washington Post. Very rational discussion about drugs, particularly in terms of wanting a broader discussion about strategies without trying to force a particular proposal. Here is a particularly good point about measuring success:

“When I was minister of defense, we were very successful. We took down all the members that were in the list of high-value targets in the drug trafficking, all of them. They are either in jail or dead. We confiscated unprecedented amounts of cocaine. We eradicated unprecedented amounts of hectares of coca, and the DEA director came here and congratulated me and congratulated our people, saying we are doing very well. And you know how success was defined? By the price of cocaine in Los Angeles or in New York or in Washington. And so, because the price went up, we were being successful. But at the same time, if the price goes up, the incentive goes up. So there is a structured sort of contradiction in the whole setup.”

Meanwhile, Moisés Naím recently had a worshipful interview with Alvaro Uribe, who is really mad about Santos' moderation (and also does occasional Twitter rants).

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Net zero migration

It can be frustrating to read stories like this one in the Christian Science Monitor. The topic is "net zero" migration from Mexico, which means the number of Mexicans going to the United States is roughly the same as the number of Mexicans returning from the United States. The problem is that this is too often conflated with a massive exodus, but they are not the same thing.

There remains no evidence of any large scale exodus. Instead, as readers of our book will know, the demographic fit between the United States and Mexico is gradually disappearing. Young Mexican migrants came in large numbers, and now we see not an exodus, but rather a demographic equilibrium. The U.S. economy no longer needs so many young workers, and there are some more economic opportunities in Mexico than there were in the past, which means fewer Mexicans are prompted to emigrate. Of course more Mexicans came back when the economy crashed--the article notes an increase from 2005 to 2010--but there is no tsunami. Even that increase can be attributed in no small part to the Obama administration's commitment to deportation. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of deportations increased by about 150,000.

In short, I am hesitant to proclaim, as is now fashionable, that there is a remarkable transformation going on. If you view the situation from a demographic perspective, it seems more a gradual and inevitable shift. This also means it can last quite a while, but is not permanent.

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Measuring the drug war

Tyler Cowen argues that Mexico is winning the drug war because it is experiencing economic growth.

If Mexico keeps on getting richer, and the drug lords keep on killing each other, eventually Mexico will win.  Think rates of return, or think of government revenue as rising over time.  I’m not saying the drug problem will ever disappear there.

I don't believe I've ever seen success defined in this way, and I don't understand the causal logic. Economic growth leads to more government revenue, which leads to...what? More resources to fight the drug war? Maybe, though right now the problem seems more about strategy than funding per se.

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Professors writing stylishly

From the Wall Street Journal, on professors writing "stylishly."

Unfortunately, the myth persists, especially among junior faculty still winding their anxious way up the tenure track, that the gates of academic publishing are guarded by grumpy sentries programmed to reject everything but jargon-laden, impersonal prose. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Nearly everyone, including the editors of academic journals, would much rather read lively, well-written articles than the slow-moving sludge of the typical scholarly paper.

This is an interesting point. Junior scholars feel that they have to prove they understand their particular research niche, which can definitely lead to bad writing. That can persist into senior scholardom as well. And, of course, some people are just bad writers no matter their intention. We fall in love with polysyllabic words, like polysyllabic, and throw them like confetti into article manuscripts.

Unfortunately, she doesn't explain why a professor should bother. If arcane language gets where you want to be, then what's the point of being "stylish"? She does mention that it makes work more accessible, which is true, though she doesn't explain why that is necessary. In some cases, it isn't. In political science, however, I think it is, at least to the extent that professors hope their work spreads as far as possible, including the non-academic world. Not everyone cares about this, to be true, but a lot do.

My opinion is that good--if not necessarily "stylish"--writing also increases your chances at publication. Of course, it cannot overcome a bad analysis, and I don't want to overstate the case, but good writing makes the reader and editor more favorably disposed toward you. And that's always a good thing.

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Alabama's buyer remorse

Prior to passage of the Alabama immigration law, everyone with a modicum of sense knew it would be a disaster. Now after its gone into effect, even people without any sense are realizing it is a disaster, and so are proposing revisions.

Unfortunately, the real lesson is going entirely unlearned. These laws hurt the states that pass them. They will never achieve the goals intended by their authors. What's so strange is how proponents believe that putting immigration reform on the backs of state businesses will create jobs.

It doesn't matter what revisions you make. In fact, they simply may make things more confusing, because constantly changing already complex rules just leaves everyone clueless. The bill will hurt Alabama, as the average Alabaman will pay the price that their elected officials refuse to acknowledge.

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More Cuba and the OAS

U.S. News & World Report has a story about Cuba's potential inclusion in the OAS. The article makes it sound like there will be some huge push coming.

The Communist nation has made significant economic policy changes in recent years, but is still far from meeting the political criteria set forth by regional leaders at a previous summit in Quebec in 2001. As a result, according to Piccone, further efforts to push for Cuba's inclusion in the OAS—without the appropriate political changes from the country itself—could be detrimental the idea of democracy in the hemisphere.

The problem here, which I discussed last time the OAS issue came up, is that Cuba has never expressed an interest in joining the OAS. In fact, it has explicitly said it doesn't want to. Until that changes, this is all much ado about nada.

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Quote of the day: Alabama

On the screw-up that is currently E-Verify from the new Alabama immigration law.

While the law says "every business entity or employer in this state shall enroll in E-Verify," Bentley spokesman Jeremy King wasn't able to say Tuesday which employers must register. 

"That's for the lawyers to figure out," he said.

That is the governor's spokesman talking, and he does not seem unduly concerned. That sums up exactly what I've been saying for months and months. State-level immigration law is primarily about paying lots of lawyers. And creating new paperwork for small businesses to deal with.

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Sanity in the South

So some semblance of sanity shines through. In North Carolina, a specially created immigration committee in the legislature decided after a number of hearings that the state will not pursue its own copycat legislation. Meanwhile, Mississippi's copycat legislation died in the senate.

This does not necessarily mean no such legislation will be pursued in the future. In the North Carolina case, there is a clear sense that it is a waste of time and money to push anything before the Supreme Court issues a ruling. Interestingly, though, in Mississippi it seemed the economic impact was more important than the Supreme Court, thus perhaps making it less likely it will pass in the future.

But Laura Hipp, a spokeswoman for Reeves, indicated that not all of the self-proclaimed conservatives in the state were on the same page. 

"Lt. Gov. Reeves believes we need to do something to rid our state of illegal immigrants, but he respects the fact that the chairman listened to concerns expressed by the Mississippi Economic Council, Farm Bureau, the Mississippi Poultry Assn., and local cities, counties, police chiefs and sheriffs, about the potential impact of this bill on taxpayers," Hipp said in a statement.

Either way, a little sanity is nice.

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Romney and immigration

These comments from Mitt Romney is really something else. He criticizes Barack Obama for failing to pass immigration reform while having Democratic control of Congress, which is an entirely fair criticism. The wee problem, though, is that Romney is dead set against immigration reform and so wouldn't have even bothered pretending to try.

“This has always been a priority for the president he chooses to do nothing about,” Romney said. “Let the immigrant community not forget that while he uses this as a political weapon, he has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have.”

So that argument won't take Romney too far. Then he slips straight into the rabbit hole by saying we need to we make it too hard for immigrants with skills we need to get into the country while also saying we need to stop illegal immigration. The uncomfortable truth, so to speak, is that those are the workers we need. The idea that we only need high skilled workers is fantasy.

“My own view is our immigration policies are upside down,” he continued. “We make it very hard for people who have skills that we need — education and English-speaking and workplace skills — make it very hard for those people to come here and to stay here. On the other hand, those that don’t have any of those things are often times able to come either across the border or over-stay their visas and remain in this country indefinitely. So we’ve got it backwards.”

I guess he does not think that a farm, construction site, hotel, etc. represent "workplaces."

In all, these arguments aren't going to do anything for him, good or bad. His views on immigration are well known, and voters will not be thinking much about them when it comes time to choose.

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Terrorism again

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the Latin American drug routes could become bomb routes.

Dempsey is wary of a dangerous network of drug traffickers, weapons smugglers and organized criminal elements in South and Central America. They have developed transit avenues — by land, sea and air — that one day could be used to move far more dangerous things, like weapons of mass destruction, across the southern U.S. border, he said in an interview with reporters traveling with him.

Framing Latin America in terms of terrorism has an old and essentially unpleasant history. It is particularly unfortunate to lump disparate threats together and serve them up on one undifferentiated plate.

Rhetoric matters, and especially with regard to terrorism can too easily lead to hasty and likely unproductive policies. He was talking off the cuff, so hopefully this does not mean too much. But the threats to U.S. security as well as citizen security in Latin America are quite a lot more complicated than this.

And, incidentally, we don't fight this effectively by trying to regain "lost" jungle skills.

On Wednesday, Dempsey visited the Brazilian city of Manaus, near the confluence of the Amazon river and the Rio Negro. He toured a steamy outpost where Brazilian troops train in jungle warfare, a skill that U.S. soldiers have lost during a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

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