Cuba and Argentina During the Dirty War

Newly declassified documents show that Cuba and Argentina had a close and positive relationship during the era of the Dirty War.

Although they kept it quiet, Argentina's dictators had a gentlemen's agreement with Castro. Under the pact, Videla supported Cuba's bid in 1977 to join the Executive Council of the World Health Organization, a diplomatic feather in Castro's beret. The quid pro quo was that Havana stump among nonaligned nations to name Argentina to the United Nations prestigious Economic and Social Council. Apparently Cuba's vote was the 18th and decisive ballot, landing Argentina the coveted UN seat. 

Both sides profited from the arrangement. "The Cubans always, always supported us and we supported them," Gabriel Martinez, then Argentina's ambassador to Geneva, said, though no one appeared to be listening at the time. 

The secret cables help explain the prolonged bonhomie between the two otherwise inimical regimes, highlighted by the cordial encounterbetween Castro and Argentine General Reynaldo Bignone, during a summit of nonaligned nations, in New Delhi, in 1983. 

It also shines a light on why Castro could carry on for hours in the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana railing against right-wing tyrants but never raise his voice against the Argentine junta, even as it threw scores of discontents in the dungeon or into the Atlantic.

Fidel Castro had quite a lot in common with Henry Kissinger, both consummate realists and friends of the junta. Ideology goes out the window for what you perceive as a critical national interest. If this means accepting the deaths of thousands, so be it.

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Misinterpreting Executive Action

President Obama's executive action on immigration has received plenty of criticism, but from Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog we get the most creative.

It will be construed in the developing countries ruled by Chavistas, Mugabes, and the like as encouragement to continue ruling by fiat whenever a troublesome legislature refuses to rubber stamp their will.

Apparently Nicolás Maduro would not continue exercising traditional executive authority in Venezuela on his own--he needed this "encouragement" from President Obama.

Meanwhile, a lot of bad actors running fake republics around the world are smiling, and that is not good for U.S. policy or interests.

Previously, Maduro (who is running a "fake" republic) had been frowning, wondering how to justify his actions. Now he is smiling because Obama followed the precedent of previous presidents.

Periodically I've noted the U.S.-centric view of U.S.-Latin American relations. This is an excellent example. The article suggests that leaders around the world make domestic decisions based on U.S. politics. If anything, Chavistas spent a lot of time comparing Maduro to other Venezuelan presidents, not to the United States.

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Guns in El Salvador

The British NGO Action on Armed Violence published a report on guns in El Salvador. It takes pains to explain how many different sources of guns that exist, but one inescapable conclusion is that the United States is directly responsible for many of them. By funding the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s, the U.S. was responsible for sending thousands of weapons--some very powerful--to the country. More recently, the massive gun trade in the United States has brought even more guns into El Salvador. (We can thank Cuba as well, because it funneled many to the FMLN.)

So El Salvador is hit both ways. The United States has a long history of intervening, then leaving countless guns post-conflict that make their way into criminals' hands. That's true in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Additionally, it is hit by the gun trade, which is currently a major problem for Mexico, which unlike El Salvador has strict gun control laws. It's not clear how you even begin to address the problem.

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Back Channel to Cuba

I read Leogrande and Kornbluh's fantastic book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (2014). It is really well researched and just fascinating to read.

My 10 year old daughter has a hamster, which gets into her little wheel and runs like crazy. Sometimes she even gets on top of the wheel and runs like she's on a treadmill. The poor thing never gets anywhere, but keeps trying, or at least there is the illusion of trying. So goes U.S.-Cuban relations.

Thus, one remarkable point of this book is that many different go-betweens--reporters, business leaders, exiles, diplomats, you name it--have spent countless hours traveling and talking, with very little to show for it. Sure, there are periodic breakthroughs, but the core sticking points remain equally sticky after 50+ years. As Robert Gates once remarked after a meeting, "The initiative had been worthwhile, but had failed utterly" (p. 184). But they keep trying. Each chapter starts to sound amazingly similar even though the names change (for obvious reasons they do so much more frequently on the U.S. side).

Talks have floundered in large part because both sides consider the preconditions too steep. In the 1970s, Cuba would not abandon Africa. Meanwhile, the U.S. would not abandon the embargo. More recently, Cuba would not hold elections while the U.S. still would not abandon the embargo. The U.S. wanted compensation for nationalized property, but Cuba would only discuss that if there was compensation for damages wrought by the embargo and exile attacks.

One great feature of the book is its judicious tone. Leogrande and Kornbluh don't often take sides--they just dig deep into the historical record. The book cries out, though, for a framework. For example, I am not convinced about Fidel Castro's commitment to negotiations. Sometimes, as in 1975, he happily blew off months of talks. We need a better grip on his own goals to know when he wanted advancement, when he didn't, and how far he really wanted them to go. The U.S. was committed to negotiations only to the extent that they required concessions solely from Cuba. So at what times was a positive outcome even possible or likely? Conceptually, what should we realistically expect?

And just now, we have a U.S. official saying maybe we can negotiate, but Cuba needs to take more steps first. The more things change...

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Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace

I read Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace (2013) and I was disappointed. As far as I can tell, it does not add to our understanding of why World War I started. Instead, it advances the vague argument that no one thought it would happen, then it happened because people did stuff.

It's a long book, so is filled with anecdotes--to be fair, many of them interesting--about how people didn't think war would happen even though we all know now it was about to erupt. But what annoyed me again and again were the brief and entirely superficial comparisons to the current day. They are so superficial that I assume some editor forced them in.

So when there is discussion of new powers, then she adds a single sentence to say she hopes the U.S. and China will handle things well, or with communication she mentions trying to deal with social media. Or she compares Nicholas II to Saddam Hussein because they both like uniforms (p. 275).

Meanwhile, the Tsar does stuff, the British do stuff, the Kaiser does stuff, etc. Which stuff was more important? We aren't told. Whose decisions were most critical? We aren't told. Which country did the most decisive stuff? We aren't told.

The book ends with "There are so many questions and as many answers again" (p. 645). That's true only if you don't engage the existing literature and think about which answers make more sense than others.

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Immigration and Presidentialism

There is plenty of uproar over President Obama's announced executive actions on immigration, piled on top of his past statements about how he wasn't authorized to do them. Republicans are talking of "anarchy" if he pushes them through. He is an emperor, a king, etc., etc.

This reminds me a lot of the long debate about presidentialism in Latin America, which sought to explain the breakdown of democracy. Perhaps most prominently, Linz and Valenzuela's book The Failure of Presidential Democracy argues that presidential systems are very rigid in part because they do not easily allow for the executive to leave if he/she no longer has the confidence of the legislature. Particularly in a second term, there is no way to hold a president accountable. Meanwhile, the president will inevitably blame Congress for gridlock.

Their pessimism has been criticized since then, such as by Shugart and Mainwaring. In particular, they note the importance of many other variables--inequality for example--that explain breakdowns of democracy. The overall point of rigidity, however, is an interesting one. Democracy will not break down in the United States, but the rigidity exacerbates partisan rancor. In the 2014 midterm elections, voters divided the government even more sharply, so the president was in a position to choose between capitulating or to fighting harder. Obama is choosing the latter, but short of impeachment/conviction--which is really difficult--Republicans cannot remove him from office.

I wish that the popular discussion about gridlock would come back to these institutional realities. Our presidential system is simply set up this way. At times we resemble Latin American cases, though plenty of variables--an apolitical military, for example--do not lead us down the same destructive paths. But as polarization increases, the system we tend to venerate (because it was set up by the "Founding Fathers") can actually make things worse.

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How to Make U.S.-Latin American Relations Worse

A member of Congress who happens to be mine has an idea to damage U.S.-Latin American relations. He argues that if the United States provides foreign aid to a country, then at the United Nations that government must vote the way the U.S. wants on the issue of Israel. According to the recording, he appears to like the idea of making this a law but first wants to "reason" with these countries.

So, for example, before the United States helps alleviate the problem of children migrants, all Central American countries must give their UN votes about Israel to the U.S. government. If the U.S. wants to provide anti-narcotics assistance to Mexico, the Mexican government has to hand its votes to the U.S. That will go over well, I think.

The really odd part of this idea is that it assumes foreign aid is not tied to U.S. interests. Foreign aid aimed at drugs, for example, is not there for the good of the receiving country. Once a country refused to give its UN vote away--as would immediately happen--the result would be harmful to U.S. interests. The hemisphere would turn immediately against the United States just for the naked attack on sovereignty.

This has no chance of passing, but is an example of how too many policy makers have thought over the years. The United States is correct and opposing views are not valid.

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Enabling Law in Venezuela

Nicolás Maduro announced all the laws he has passed through the Enabling Law that gives the executive decree power. It was about to expire. They cover a wide range of issues that he says will help the country combat the "bourgeoisie's economic war." It is a "new era in the revolution."

The enabling law was passed last year, and according to Maduro its main intent was to fight corruption. I would expect the current batch of laws aimed at the economy will be about as successful as the anti-corruption efforts.

The government defends the laws, arguing accurately that they were used by other governments in the past. This logic seems a little strange, since they also claim those governments were corrupt and inept.

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Aging (and Ageism) in Academia

I saw this article on aging professors at the Chronicle of Higher Education. The core argument is that older professors are selfish--they harm students and they're "hogs"!!--if they do not retire. If you don't retire by 70, you are not "honorable."

Set aside the issue of using anecdotes while claiming universality (I have plenty of anecdotes about great and productive older professors). Or the unsubstantiated argument about harm. The real problem I have with this argument is that it assumes that either younger professors are unselfish or it is fine if they're selfish because they're less expensive and more energetic.

A dirty secret of mine is that while in my 20s I entered this profession selfishly. I discovered many years ago that I got tremendous personal enjoyment reading, writing, analyzing, etc. about Latin American politics. This blog shows that I still do. I think my passion for it comes out in class. But it's largely selfish. The decisions I make are often centered on me--how exciting is this opportunity? Will it help pay for my children to go to college? I work hard and I think I do a good job, but it's not out of selflessness.

When I hit 70 years of age I will have to decide about what's left of my future. I will make that decision with me and my family first and foremost in mind.

Professors approaching 70 who are still enamored with hanging out with students and colleagues, or even fretting about money, have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves.

Curse those professors who love coming to work! I'm not even approaching 50 (well, OK, define "approach") and I openly acknowledge that I am doing this mostly for myself. I don't feel guilty about that.

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Obama v. Congress on Immigration

On immigration, President Obama and congressional Republicans have hit head on immediately, after all the talk of bipartisanship that no one actually believed. From the Washington Post:

Congressional Republicans said Friday they are considering a series of showdowns over funding the government if President Obama goes ahead with his expected plans to unilaterally overhaul the nation’s immigration system. 

Instead of passing a spending bill in coming days that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, they are now mulling a short-term measure that expires early next year, according to more than a dozen top lawmakers and their aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

These are signals. Whether or not Republicans will actually go through with a showdown over immigration is another story. Messing with government functioning is broadly unpopular and the last time it hurt Republicans more, so this is clearly a risk.

I don't see much risk for Obama. For several years, conservatives have criticized him for not securing the border, while his base criticized him for not pushing anything through. I don't think the conservative base can dislike Obama any more than they already do, so he has almost nothing to lose. The strategic upside is bringing back the people who chose not to vote in the midterm elections because they felt he was all talk and no walk. He can also claim that he's taking these actions because Congress refuses to pass legislation.

An interesting question is whether it would've been a good idea to do this before the elections. Instead, he used the rationale that pushing immigration would hurt candidates in tough races. Those candidates lost anyway, and perhaps might've fared better had his inaction not annoyed people who might actually have voted.

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Religion in Latin America

Pew Research has a bunch of thought-provoking polling data on religion in Latin America. There are plenty of political implications as well, though at this point we can only really speculate on them. Some highlights:

--Only 69% of Latin Americans are Catholic
--19% are Protestant
--8% are unaffiliated

Here is the trend over time:

What implications?

--Protestants are more conservative on social issues than Catholics, while unaffiliated are less so. This will likely lead to more tension on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.

The growth of "unaffiliated" is intriguing:

I wonder why we see it in some countries and not others? It's amazingly high in Uruguay, which corresponds as well to the more permissive social environment we see there. What's going on in the Dominican Republic?

On the other hand, Mexico remains very Catholic in comparative terms, yet we also see political support for more liberal social policy. That may correspond to urban versus rural divides. That in fact explains a lot here in North Carolina along the same lines!

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ISIL and Latin America

Carl Meacham asks the question of where Latin America is with regard to fighting ISIL.

Many of the countries in the anti-ISIL coalition are providing support via military aid and airpower. But with an adversary like ISIL, support is just as important on the domestic side. Much of ISIL’s threat stems from its ability to recruit support and militants from outside the Middle East. And the potential that those recruiting efforts could target Latin Americans is not farfetched.

I'm not buying this. Connecting the Arab population to ISIL is a big stretch. Maybe you get a deranged volunteer here and there, as you do in the United States, but I just don't see Latin America as a battleground for the Middle East (even with the always-cited Argentina bombings 20 years ago, the Triborder Area, etc).

I see Latin America as mostly irrelevant to ISIL. Sure, encourage countries to combat money laundering, which is actually far more important for drug trafficking than for the Middle East. But we shouldn't encourage sucking Latin America into a regional conflict created in large part by the United States.

So the real answer to the question is that Latin America is primarily on the sidelines and that makes sense.

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Nicolás Maduro Is In a Barbie World

AP reporter Hannah Dreier keeps her tongue firmly in cheek with this story, which highlights the bizarre ideological swirl that characterizes Nicolás Maduro. In the name of socialism, he mandated discounts on, among other things, Barbies.

Andrea Alberto, a 22-year-old student, managed to nab a stack of dolls for her stunned-looking 3-year-old, under whose arm she'd tucked an "I Can Be Cheerleader" Barbie, complete with sparkling pompoms.

The Venezuelan government apparently gives a lot of thought to Barbie. Back in 2007, Hugo Chávez went off on Barbie (and Superman) and made a point of how much he disliked the doll. And just one year ago, the Venezuelan state news agency had a story associating Barbie with the empty-headedness of the opposition.

It's a nice clientelist move to make the price of dolls artificially low, but it's not particularly socialist. Barbie remains a symbol of the United States and is produced by a U.S.-based multinational corporation, Mattel. Barbie is all about capitalism. Certainly that is the impression I get as my 6 year old daughter pushes her around in a fancy car and decides what jewelry she's going to wear. Viva la revolución! Barbie o muerte!

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Lamenting the Berlin Wall's Fall

Via Hugo Pérez Hernáiz, this is just priceless. Aporrea, a pro-government Venezuelan news site, ran an op-ed about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down.

It laments the occasion and yearns for the glories of the Soviet Union. Those were the days.

The wall protected the workers from the evils of capitalism, so he felt sad when it came down. It was absolutely necessary to build the wall because the United States was building a "Dollar Wall" of capitalism.

Hugo Chávez himself had rejected 20th century Marxism, preferring what he called "21st Century Socialism," which still has no real meaning but at the very least is not intended to copy the Cold War Communist model (or at least one of the models) as Cuba did. Clearly Aporrea thinks its readership would be interested in nostalgia about 20th century Soviet Marxism, though given what we know--e.g. "the people" were badly exploited--it's hard to understand why.

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Legatum Prosperity Index for Latin America

I happened across this prosperity index by the Legatum Group, which is focused on investment. What's funny is that I saw it on TeleSur, which quoted it uncritically despite Venezuela's poor showing. From that article, this interest seems to stem from the fact that the index tries to view "prosperity" in much broader terms than just GDP growth (so, for example, Chile ranks lower than Uruguay even though its economic growth is better). It has eight different ranked variables.

For Latin America, such indices generally show similar results. Uruguay is in great shape (1st in Latin America, 30th in the world) and Venezuela is in terrible shape (100th in the world, one place worse than Rwanda). Chile (33rd) and Costa Rica (34th) are also high. Panama is right up there as well (41st). Honduras is the worst in Latin America (105th overall) and it has been getting steadily worse each year.

As with any index, you take it with a grain of salt. At the very least, though, they're useful in sparking discussions about comparative progress in the region, especially in terms of how different areas can be high and others low. Eocnomic growth without improvements in education, health, etc. is not really prosperity.

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Is The Latin American Left a Disappointment?

Manuela Picq argues in Al Jazeera that there is a "collective sense of disappointment" about how little structural change has occurred under leftist governments. Further, "the revolutionary left disenchanted its supporters in the most overt ways."

I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly in one way and completely disagreeing in another. She is exactly right that there is a lot less revolution going on than claimed. Nothing being done is particularly new, and some of it is just ordinary capitalism. And she's pretty angry about it:

The problem with such development strategies inherited from the 1970s is not only that they perpetuate dependencies most leftists and progressives in the region are trying to reverse. They continue to treat Indigenous territories as terra nullius, dismiss Indigenous authority and allot their territories to extractive industries that fuel the global capitalist system.

The problem lies in making the jump from those facts to "collective disappointment." Rafael Correa and Evo Morales are perhaps the most popular presidents in the history of their countries. Venezuelans kept voting for Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro even while the economy tanked. Daniel Ortega has high approval ratings.

I can understand the idea that many governments had potential for political and economic transformation, and some people are disappointed they did not pursue it. But I am not convinced this sentiment is broadly shared by government supporters.

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Shlaudeman Memo on Cuba

I've been reading LeoGrande and Kornbluh's Back Channel to Cuba, which I will review once I'm done. As I read, I am struck by how much U.S. policy is on a treadmill, where we claim to be moving forward even though we're not.

In 1975, as the Ford administration--under Henry Kissinger's direction--prepared for some sort of normalization of relations, Harry Shlaudeman wrote a memo outlining the situation. It's declassified here at the National Security Archive.

Castro now has no apparent reason to concern himself further about the OAS sanctions. In fact, he has already succeeded in breaking the inter-American "blockade" without making a single significant concession and without ever having to deal with us. He may believe that a little patience will bring him the same happy result with respect to the U.S. sanctions...In brief, from where he sits, and from what he can see of the course of U.S. politics, there is not much to negotiate about.

Fast forward forty years--after the Cuban Democracy Act, Helms-Burton, changes in travel and remittances, agreements on immigration, etc, etc.--and this remains true. The United States has no leverage over Cuba. The status quo works quite well for the Castro regime, and it feels no need to make concessions.

Right after this memo was written, Fidel Castro sent troops to Angola and U.S.-Cuban relations went back into a tailspin. As always, he was in the driver's seat.

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Ditching The IACHR

The Dominican Republic left the Inter-American Court of Human Rights because of a decision about granting citizenship to the children of Haitian immigrants. Leiv Marsteintredet has an extensive discussion about the issue.

This is a dark moment for the Dominican democracy and the protection of the most vulnerable groups living in the country, the Haitian migrants and Dominican-Haitians. It is also a dark moment for the IACtHR and the whole IASHR, which now results weakened. Even thought the Dominican Republic may be a small and unimportant country in Latin America it is still the most democratic and democratically stable country to ever leave the IACtHR. Peru left in 2000 under Fujimori, an act that never took effect since Fujimori resigned not long after, and Venezuela withdrew under Chávez (in addition Trinidad and Tobago withdrew in 1998). The Dominican case, I fear, is likely to be the worst blow of them all. Peru returned after re-democratisation with Fujimori's resignation, and it is not unlikely that Venezuela would return should the Maduro-regime fall or the opposition win a future election. Today, however, the Dominican Republic is led by its most international human rights friendly government in decades, if not ever, and the regime is a stable electoral democracy, not any form of populist authoritarian regime. It therefore seems very unlikely today that the Dominican Republic will return any time soon.

Aside from the particulars of the case, we're now seeing a country leave the IACHR not because of ideology (such as Venezuela, which claims conspiracies) but simply because it didn't like the outcome. This follows Colombia's decision in 2012 to pull out of the International Court of Justice because it did not like the ICJ ruling on Colombia's maritime border with Nicaragua.

One would think that in this more democratic era, Latin American governments would be more willing to accept decisions made by international institutions. Yet they're going beyond mere disagreement. I think that this merits collective attention in the hemisphere--Venezuela will rant about U.S. control, of course, but all governments need to discuss why they're suddenly ditching these commitments.

Adhering to international institutions requires giving up some sovereignty. Unfortunately, the United States is in a particularly bad position to lecture anyone on that topic, but should be part of a discussion about how a regional human rights regime should function.

Boz has a quick take here as well.

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French View of U.S. Election

Last week I spoke to a French reporter, who then quoted me in two articles. I can read French only to the extent that it resembles Spanish, so I'll trust he got my quotes right! I emphasized the challenge of getting anything done if Republicans took control of the Senate, and more locally the ways in which the Latino vote might or might not matter for the election given how President Obama has talked so much and done so little on immigration.

We're a funny people. We claim to hate gridlock so much but consistently vote to create it. Collectively we'll complain constantly for the next two years, blaming politicians for the mess we're largely responsible for.

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My Voting Day in North Carolina

2014 was really an election about pet peeves. Mine, at least. For example, why do you make people vote at an elementary school but not let school out? I've tried to vote in the morning before and it's a mess of cars and school buses. Today I went late morning after my class and the parking lot was full, mostly because a school was trying to function. We also seem not to like the idea of just having a federal election holiday, which would make it easier for working people to vote. But I digress.

Next pet peeve: normally I get practically attacked when I approach the polling station, as activists lunge at you and try to hand you stuff. It is very annoying and sometimes slightly creepy. Today only one guy could get close to me, and he was slow so I was easily able to side step him as I might do to a slow-approaching zombie. There was another person there, endlessly and oddly repeating "Thank you for voting" to anyone and everyone around.

Inside there were about 25 people in line and 8 voting machines. It took 20-25 minutes, which wasn't too bad. All the volunteers did a great job and all the signing in, etc. went very smoothly. No pet peeves there at all.

Choosing, though, can be problematic in my district. I live in a weirdly shaped district where only one party has won for over 50 years. This year the incumbent was simply running unopposed. North Carolina is an embarrassment in this regard--too many House elections are just jokes. Hooray for the strongest democracy in the world! So I wrote in my own candidate, who may or may not be fictional.

As for the high profile senate race, it was a dispiriting and uninspiring campaign between two--actually, three--terrible choices. On that one I just held my nose and chose. We've been saturated with ridiculous ads that seem to string together non sequiturs. It was the most expensive senate race in history. This too is an embarrassment.

They reached all media. In the past week we took to ignoring the phone. It literally got to the point that my apolitical 12 year son asked me not to vote for either Thom Tillis or Kay Hagan because he was so sick of their online ads. Way to inspire young people!

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Reassessing the Drug War (Or Not)

Check out Russell Crandall's article in The American Interest on the drug war. Great, nuanced stuff. The core of the argument is that the Obama Administration talks about changing the thrust of this war and gradually (but haltingly) has done so at home, but the militarized approach in Latin America remains unchanged and unquestioned.

It is simply not enough for the Obama Administration to tell the American public that it has “reason to be optimistic” about future drug abuse containment efforts, but then never reconcile this expectation to what the data actually tell us. Rosy predictions also undercut any effort to assess whether the amounts we spend on the effort are worth it. If cocaine use decreases but marijuana use grows over a given period, is that progress? Does that justify the budget expense? We don’t know, because we don’t even ask those kinds of questions. So we don’t know if the money could have been better used on one of the innovative programs that the Administration is so enthusiastically promoting, like drug courts or fair sentencing. Nor does the strategy address the obvious question of whether the drop in U.S. cocaine consumption simply reflects a shift to another substance. 

Since the strategy mutes any connection to what happens in Latin America, the attentive public also cannot readily know that, while domestic cocaine consumption has dropped by half, there has been a concomitant spike in consumption in Brazil and Colombia. Another less publicized development that might dampen our optimism is that Evo Morales’s Bolivia no longer cooperates with Washington on the drug front. That almost no Bolivian cocaine makes its to the United States (American consumption is almost exclusively from Colombian product) likely explains why Washington did not make more of the reality that the U.S.-led drug war is no longer operating in that heretofore vital South American “source” country—not because of any success it scored, but only because commercial patterns changed. 

Innovative programs or Sweden-style rhetoric aside, there is and will continue to be an inertial and almost impregnable military-narcotics-industrial complex, especially on the international side of the drug war—though it will always get less attention than the domestic side of drug policy, especially when punctuated from time to time by Mountain Sweep-style media spectaculars. The Obama Administration has shown that we can embrace, at least tentatively, a more holistic approach to our domestic issues. The question, though, is whether we have the courage to apply a new approach within the broader war on drugs, and tell the American people that the old way of doing things in Latin America just doesn’t work. Only courage can enable change. So far there is no sign of it.

He's right. Almost nobody anywhere beyond activists and concerned academics are asking the right questions. Plus, the phrase "inertial and almost impregnable military-narcotics-industrial complex" hits the nail on the head.

This means that at least for now we're stuck. It is incredibly difficult to get Congress and senior policy makers on board for a real rethinking of U.S. counter-narcotics policy in Latin America. Like so many other militarized programs, many are afraid to change because they'll be labeled as soft. That's one reason that long, counter-productive wars (from Vietnam to Iraq) drag on.

Sadly, we don't even know if we're "winning" because we've never defined winning. So you keep on fighting for the sake of fighting, of doing something.

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Hezbollah in Peru

There is a report that a Hezbollah agent was arrested in Lima and Mossad believes he was going to carry out an attack on Peruvian Jews. I am scratching my head about this because the Jewish population in Peru is tiny, only a few thousand in the entire country. The article suggests that maybe Israeli backpackers would be targets.

Here is the Interior Ministry's statement.

There is a lot we don't know here, but I keep wondering why Hezbollah would make this effort in a country that from a political perspective has little to no symbolic or strategic value.

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The Cuba Embargo Keeping Us Safe

Via Tracey Eaton, the latest on the Cuba embargo. Periodically, the United States Treasury issues its Specially Designated Nationals list. This list keeps us safe:

The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States. 

Peruse the list and you can see how important it is that these companies are targeted and punished. Here are a few examples:

--there are lots of tourism companies, and they help Americans travel freely. We all agree that such activity is un-American. Some of them promote "fun," which is especially bad.

--some of the companies sell cigars, which are bad for your health. Terrorists can use them to make us die too quickly.

--there are companies promoting baseball. Baseballs are small and can easily be bombs in disguise.

--there is a company called "GOCUBA," which clearly wants to encourage people to go see Cuba and become Communists.

So rest easy tonight and every night. Those baseball playing, cigar smoking, eco-tourist encouraging terrorists will not threaten our national security. Uncle Sam will do his best to make sure you don't even get to see them, much less interact with them. You need not ever worry about having fun with those Communists. The U.S. Treasury will make sure of that. This is Merica.

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Incumbent Presidents Win in Latin America

An article at the Pew Research Center brings up a really important point about presidential elections in Latin America: incumbents rarely lose.

Since 1980, incumbents in South America (not including Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana) have won all 17 presidential elections in which they were on the ballot. During the same period, four American presidents (Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama) won re-election and two (Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush) were defeated. 

Please make sure to keep this in mind as you read all the op-eds explaining grand trends, ideological pivots, etc. This is happening a lot with the Brazilian election since it had so much ideological drama.

A key reason is Latin American presidentialism. The presidency is stronger in Latin America than in the United States. The position provides incumbents with resources that the U.S. president does not have (including state media). It doesn't even matter what the economy is like.

So when you read about why Dilma Rousseff was re-elected, a more interesting question is what unlikely confluence of events would've led to her defeat.

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The Future of Voters in North Carolina

Here is the political future of North Carolina in one visual:

This is a slow motion disaster for Republicans in North Carolina, who rely largely on the white, and especially older white, population for support. The number of Latino voters will definitely continue increasing, but it's hard to see the trend of white voters doing the same. The number of African American voters increasing is also interesting, and the gradual increase predates Barack Obama's election so may well continue beyond his administration.

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Condemning the Embargo for the 23rd Time

The annual ritual of the United Nations vote calling for an end to the Cuba embargo just happened again, with the same results as last year. The U.S. can only count on Israel and a tiny handful of tiny Pacific countries. I first blogged about this eight years ago and my feelings--namely that the embargo can't be defended with logic--haven't changed.

The Reuters article adds some insight about how this vote has evolved over time.

When it first passed in 1992, it received 59 yes votes and three votes against. But there were 71 countries that abstained and 46 that did not participate in the vote. The gradual shift to a near-unanimous vote in favor is a clear sign of the widespread disapproval of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

This is indicative of the United States choosing to isolate itself with a Cold War policy even as the Cold War fades into distant memory. It's hard for anyone but a small minority to take the logic seriously anymore.

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United Fruit is Brazilian

I talked about the Chiquita deal in my Latin American Politics class today, though I couldn't really think of a snappy conclusion to sum it up. I mostly wanted to show the strange twists and turns that now makes Charlotte, NC part of a transformation of what used to be United Fruit.

We start with United Fruit, which is well known by any Latin Americanist for its exploitation, especially in Central America and the Caribbean (plus Colombia). In 1990 the company (which had already undergone various mutations) became Chiquita Brands International.

In 2011 it moved its headquarters from Cincinnati to Charlotte. At the time I blogged about its human rights problems as well as the money the city threw at it. Not long after moving here, the company was imploding because of poor business decisions. Now, after a length fight, it is being bought by the Brazilian Cutrale and Safra Group. It's not terribly likely the headquarters will stay in Charlotte, so the city is reminding the country it must pay the money back.

But stop and think for a moment. What was United Fruit is now owned by a Latin American company! That's quite a symbol of Latin American economic ascendance. And somehow it landed on my very doorstep to boot.

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"Re-Industrializing" Latin America

UNASUR Secretary General (and former Colombian president) Ernesto Samper made some comments you don't hear much anymore. He noted that growth would be slowing across the region:

But he also pointed out to the existence of strong points such as the strategic reserves of oil, nickel, copper, hydro power and water resources. “But to all this we must inject added value, and the objective of Latin America should be to overcome the situation by launching an ambitious re-industrialization process”.

This sounds so much like the process I discuss in my Latin American Politics class about the development of import-substitution industrialization in the middle of the twentieth century. Or at least I assume this is the sort of thing Samper is thinking about, though he does not specify. I talk about adding value a lot in the class.

The idea of "re-industrialization" is problematic because many countries barely went through it in the past. Would Guatemala really be re-industrializing? If this is restricted only to the larger economies, then it is also confusing. Is Brazil not industrial? I guess any country could become more industrial, but that's not quite the same thing.

Setting aside that parsing, I actually like the idea of making this a greater part of the development discussion. I've been repeating constantly on this blog that relaying on commodities remains a problem--it's not easy to overcome, but should be seriously discussed.

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The Evo Generation

From an interview with Evo Morales:

"I believe that some revolutions, some transformations, are driven by a person. I don't like it, but I am happy that there is now an Evo generation, a new generation of young men and women with a great deal of knowledge, principles, and values, who are assuming leadership. I am very pleased with the way young people are getting involved. Obviously, much depends on the process, on the steps we take to ensure good economic stability with social benefits," Morales says. 

This is a populist vision. On the one hand, he's the indispensable leader--which is why more re-elections are necessary--while on the other there is an Evo generation assuming leadership. But not the presidency.

The most positive outcome for democracy, in Bolivia or anywhere, is to bring more potential leaders into a structured party system and then step aside. Then you can avoid the logic of Rafael Correa, who sees the push for term limits as a right-wing plot.

It's like Captain Kirk said and Information Society repeated, "In every revolution, there's one man with a vision."

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"Declining" Influence in Latin America

I've constantly been lamenting the lack of evidence for the "U.S. is losing Latin America" meme (such as here). One of the very interesting things about this argument is how it brings the left and the right together in agreement, but with different assessments about whether it is positive or negative.

There is an example today in The Week. The author starts with an assumption:

The decline of American influence in Latin America is long overdue and great news to boot, for two major reasons.

He then cites the historically negative effects of U.S. policy, and how that spawned authoritarianism, going back to the colonial period. Nowhere, though, is there an examination of precisely how influence is declining or why. He concludes with something I agree with completely:

Evo Morales may well try to hang on to power indefinitely — it wouldn't be the first time a populist leader has done so. But there's little the U.S. can do about that but make it worse. It's time we left Latin America to manage its own internal politics.

Absolutely! But there is no evidence presented for the influence decline--it is assumed. Whether or not Evo Morales is re-elected isn't necessarily an example, as plenty of presidents the U.S. doesn't like have done so over the past century or so.

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The Uribe-Santos Spat

Alvaro Uribe is infamously on Twitter daily (here is one from this morning), lambasting President Juan Manuel Santos for his negotiations with the FARC. Simultaneously, news keeps leaking out about how as president he attempted to do precisely some of the things he claims to hate.

So, for example, he offered the FARC congressional seats, which he now says is an example of impunity. And in 2006 he offered $500,000 in "social project" to the FARC for joining talks. He even offered a demilitarized zone.

Santos has taken the high road. He recently sent a public invitation (via Twitter, actually) to Uribe to discuss the negotiations with him, but so far Uribe has not responded. When asked directly by reporters, he either criticizes the negotiations or speaks in generalities.

The fallout between these two politicians and their political trajectories is incredible. Back in 2010 when Santos was first elected, the Heritage Foundation loved Santos because he was so close to Uribe, and Hugo Chávez said Santos would be a disaster.

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North Carolina & Nicaragua in World War II

In 1942, there was a battle 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina. A German U-boat sunk a Nicaraguan ship (the Bluefields) officially on its way from New York to Havana though the news article says it was going to Key West with cargo to help with the war. It was then bombed by a U.S. Navy aircraft and sunk. Now both the U-boat and the Bluefields have been found. It's remarkable to be reminded how close the war came to the continental United States, not to mention my own state.

Incidentally, Nicaragua had already declared war on Germany after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Anastasio Somoza García was no dummy and knew he needed to stay on the good side of FDR. He was receiving arms and getting rich in the process. Further, as Lars Schoultz points out in Beneath the United States, he was rewarded by allowing his son Anastasio Somoza Debayle to enroll at West Point, where he graduated in 1946 (p. 313).

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Rafael Correa Not Fond of Term Limits

Rafael Correa says that opposition to unlimited presidential terms is a right wing plot  (along with the evil press) to take the country back to the past and rob the people of their right to choose their leaders. He's annoyed that they want a referendum on the question, but is confident--with reason to be--that he would win a referendum and 2017 presidential election anyway.

The hubris is strong with this one. But this is a typical populist stance, whereby you do not build up a party structure that can groom young politicians to become your eventual successors. Or at the least, it appears Correa is not ready to allow his party, Alianza País, to do so. You keep power in your own hands and try to remain president as long as possible. There are exceptions, like Peronism, but all too often things fall apart without the charismatic leader.

Precisely because he hasn't done such political grooming, Correa is correct that without him as candidate, the opposition has its best shot. Unfortunately, that's not positive for democracy in the longer term.

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Argentina as Model for Human Rights Justice

Kathryn Sikkink is interviewed in the Buenos Aires Herald. She makes the argument that Argentina is really the model for accountability of human rights abuses during dictatorships:

Argentina is currently starting to examine the role played by business leaders during the dictatorship. What do you think about this strategy? 

Argentina is once again on the cutting edge of international justice. Companies are not being investigated. They are probing civilians who were involved in the repression. 

In your book, you say that South Africa analyzed the Argentine experience to prosecute criminals after the apartheid. Aren’t the South African and Argentine models at odds? 

People tend to speak romantically about South Africa, saying that it was a model that led to reconciliation. But if you talk to people from there, they do not believe that their truth commission was exemplary. It was supposed to give amnesty to those providing information and to send to court those who refused to admit the truth. But that didn’t happen. According to our records, only 11 trials were conducted. 

Would it be right to say then that the Argentine strategy to prosecute dictatorship crimes was more successful? 

Yes. The Argentine case is really important because it combines many transitional devices, such as a truth commission, trials, economic compensations, memorials. South Africa lacks of many of them.

One point to make is how--at least in Latin America--the efforts to bring justice are ongoing even though they don't necessarily always make headlines. This is true elsewhere as well. For example, Cristián Labbé, a former Pinochet cabinet member and mayor of Providencia (one of the upscale parts of Santiago), was just arrested.

It is, in effect, permanent, or at least until so much time has passed that all participants are deceased. Think of the continued investigations into the Holocaust, where you see 93 year olds arrested for crimes committed seven decades prior.

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U.S. Influence & Latin American Democracy

The New York Times has an editorial arguing that Latin America would enhance democracy by resisting efforts to take limits off of the number of terms a president can serve. Fine. But then we get this:

This regional dynamic has been dismal for Washington’s influence in the region. In Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, the new generation of caudillos have staked out anti-American policies and limited the scope of engagement on development, military cooperation and drug enforcement efforts. This has damaged the prospects for trade and security cooperation.

In other words, please limit presidential terms so we can re-establish our traditional hegemonic position. That should not somehow be confused with the promotion of Latin American democracy, though in the U.S. such confusion is not uncommon.

Incidentally, I can't actually think of a single policy in Latin America that is "anti-American," unless we equate "America" with Chevron, bondholders, etc. Or take the case of something like Bolivian anti-narcotics policy, which in the U.S. is seen as "anti-American" because it's being done in a way that the U.S. government does not like, yet is succeeding and therefore actually advancing U.S. security interests.

Even from the narrow perspective of U.S. interests, we need to think less in terms of "influence" and more in terms of "security." And these days there are no threats coming from other Latin American states, so greater influence won't make the U.S. more secure. Our problems relate to non-state actors, and those cannot be defeated with "influence."

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Kevin Powers on The Yellow Birds

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a dinner on campus with Kevin Powers, the author of The Yellow Birds (here is my review from last year) after which he gave a talk. We had a very big turnout and great discussion, led by student questions (even through Twitter). He is a very nice guy, and was very thoughtful about and attentive to every student question.

He actually touched precisely on a point I made in my review, namely the question of thanking people for their service. He said he always appreciated the gesture as well-meaning, but that the question had a superficial quality and inherently generated a lot of negative memories as well. He says soldiers coming home are also commonly asked, "What's it like over there?" and he doesn't know how even to respond. In a way, the book reflects him struggling to articulate what the combat experience (he was a machine gunner in Iraq) meant to him.

That struggle makes the book very worth reading. He said he chose fiction so that he could explore themes without having to constantly wonder whether his exact memories were accurate or not. Through characters, he could wonder about what would happen if he had made different decisions, if he had followed different paths.

One interesting point came from a student question about why he chose not to present the narrative in chronological order. He said he originally wrote it like that, then felt that he could dig deeper into the book's themes by moving them around. Doing that and making the pieces fit together again took him about a year and a half.

Incidentally, he also has a book of poems that I will need to buy at some point.

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Competitive Opposition in Venezuela

Yordan K. Kutiyski and André Krouwel, "Narrowing the Gap: Explaining the Increased Competitiveness of the Venezuelan Opposition." Latin American Politics and Society Early View 2014. Gated.

Abstract:

This article seeks to explain why electoral support for the Venezuelan opposition has increased substantially, using Venezuelan public opinion survey data from LAPOP and an opt-in sample collected through the online vote advice application Brújula Presidencial Venezuela. It analyzes why Venezuelans who had either voted for Chávez or abstained in 2006 defected and started to support the opposition in subsequent elections. It proposes several reasons: negative voter evaluations of the economy, concern for public safety, and dissatisfaction with Venezuelan democracy. While the finding that negative policy evaluations boost support for the opposition aligns with theoretical expectations, this study finds a strong relationship between having different evaluations of the quality of democracy and supporting Chávez, which shows that the advocacy of two competing visions of democracy by the incumbent and the opposition also affects voting patterns in Venezuela.

This article mostly confirms with data what seems quite clear, namely that anxiety over the economy and public safety are making more voters willing to cast their ballot in favor of the opposition. Another important point is that the opposition gained once it stopped attacking popular social programs and instead promised they would not be dismantled. The mention of democracy refers to the fact, also not surprising, that Chavistas and anti-Chavistas have different conceptions of democracy. The latter are greatly concerned about the extensive role of the state. Nonetheless, economic concerns overshadow that.

The opposition gained a lot from previous abstainers, and that will be an important group to hold on to and add to. The 2013 presidential election was very close, and declining fortunes will push more people into the opposition camp.

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Arguing the Cuban Embargo

Carlos Alberto Montaner explains why the United States should maintain the embargo and not normalize relations with Cuba. It rests on four pillars, which are so easily undercut that the logic topples down.

1. We can't do so because Cuba on the state sponsor of terrorism list. I see. Well, since it is well documented that Cuba shouldn't be on the list, then just take them off. North Korea isn't even on it.

2. Cuban American members of Congress speak for every single Cuban American in the country, and they like the embargo, so it should stay. I am not joking--he really argues this. Discard.

3. Cuba actively tries to undermine the interests of the United States. If so, it's quite bad at it. I can't think of anything the U.S. has done for many years that the Cuban government has been able to undermine.

4. Normalizing relations would signal to the Cuban government that they don't need to reform. The problem with this argument is that the embargo sends that message even more strongly. If anything, normalizing gives the Cuban opposition more space--especially economically--than they would otherwise have.

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Bolivia's Economic Success

The Wall Street Journal has a story (in Spanish) about Luis Alberto Arce, the Minister of Economy and Public Financing in Bolivia. With a picture of Che in his office, he oversees a conservative approach to the economy, which has allowed for growth, foreign investment AND poverty reduction.

In the United States, we mostly hear about how Evo Morales makes some speech criticizing the United States, or even how he's just one of the clones of the Latin American left. Yet with help from people like Arce, he's brought unprecedented stability to Bolivia--truly amazing when you consider it in historical perspective.

Arce is also one of the rare people to get favorable coverage in the WSJ and TeleSur, each emphasizing their own particular slant. No small feat.

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U.S. and Latin American Relations Update

I just submitted the revised manuscript of the 2nd edition U.S. and Latin American Relations to Wiley (my last update on the book was a month ago). I had three excellent reviewers, who will see the fruits of their considerable labor. There wasn't much overhaul but a lot of small things added up--I also switched the order of two chapters.

I've already been trying to address various permissions issues (for photos and primary documents) and now we hopefully will be able to move forward fairly quickly. But there are still various tasks to complete:

1. Permissions get finalized.
2. The manuscript will have to be formatted and copy-edited.
3. I go over all the copy-edits
4. I get a fresh set of page proofs and make an index
5. We agree on cover art

Looking back, I see that it was exactly one year ago that I signed the contract with Wiley and started work. There has been a lot of intense work since then.

This will be out in 2015, likely spring, knock on wood! It will be fun to see it in print so many years after the first edition was published. If you want a taste, go buy a cheap used old edition and see if you would be interested in having it all updated and expanded.

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Central Planning and Big Data in Allende's Chile

Simply fascinating article in The New Yorker about consultant Stafford Beer being invited to Chile to help the Salvador Allende government set up what we would now call a "Big Data" project to coordinate central planning. It is based on Eden Medina's book Cybernetic Revolutionaries, which I have not read but should.

The idea was science fiction-like. You would sit in a futuristic chair--of course equipped with ash tray and glass holder--in a room with screens, which would feed constantly updated data about production, supplies, etc. and even allowing for quick projections of the probable effects of your decisions before you commit to them. "La vía chilena" would therefore be as scientifically based as possible. It never actually worked, in part because of the difficulties inherent in such a project but also because the Allende government had so little time in office.

It made me think of how interesting a comparison would be between different efforts at central planning, and what kinds of political and economic impacts those strategies had. Both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez seemed much more whimsical, focused on their gut feelings.

h/t Mark Healey on Twitter

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Textbook Skyping

Today I skyped with a class on U.S.-Latin American relations that is using my book, which was fun (even though I am slowly getting over a cold and had a brief coughing fit in the middle!). I know anecdotally that people (instructors and students) who use one of my books often check out my blog, so I want to let you know I am more than happy to do the same if you're interested. I love engaging with students who are reading my stuff--it likely will sound terribly cliche, but they're the ones I'm really writing for. Just shoot me an email.

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Interview on Understanding Latin American Politics

If you want to hear me talk about my book Understanding Latin American Politics, here is the link to an interview I did with Keith Simmons for New Books in Latin American Studies. Incidentally, it is not what I normally sound like--I am slowly getting over a cold that left me hoarse.

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Cuba and the Summit

Dan Restrepo has an op-ed in the Miami Herald, taking Latin America to task for focusing so much on Cuba for the 2015 Summit of the Americas.

With proper preparation, the summit presents an opportunity for others in the region to also be more creative and hopefully more effective in defending the basic rights of the Cuban people as well as of others across the Americas.

Doing so will require Latin American leaders to unmoor themselves from domestic political calculation, vanquish historical ghosts and let go of unrealistic desires to go down in history as the person who bridged the divide across the Florida Straits.

The funny thing is that U.S. leaders refuse to unmoor themselves from domestic politics, continue living in the past (something the embargo embodies) and create strong incentives for Latin American presidents to obsess on Cuba. So Restrepo is asking Latin America to do precisely what we won't.

I agree that the region should be more critical of human rights in Cuba and that the summit should move past Cuba and into more substantive areas. Although the Obama administration could help with that, it likely won't.

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Interpreting Latin America's Slowdown

Latin America's economic growth is slowing. By chance I happened to see two accounts that use the same variables but come to completely different conclusions. So the Wall Street Journal and a political economist writing for Telesur both say the slowdown is due in large part because of China's decreased demand for commodities and the United States winding down its stimulus.

The WSJ conclusion is mostly "glass half full":

There is a silver lining to the slowdown. After decades of going through debt-fueled booms followed by costly busts, the current downturn appears to be part of a more conventional business cycle, which the World Bank describes as an “unprecedented experience” for the region. 

“That is good news because the bust is very bad for equality, very bad for growth and can set the region back several years,” Mr. de la Torre said.

The Telesur conclusion is conspiratorial and even apocalyptic:

It should also be noted that certain recent USA government policies have also been exacerbating Latin America’s emerging recession.  The USA is taking advantage of the emerging recessions in Latin America to put additional economic pressure on two of the region’s most important economies: Argentina and Venezuela. This further destabilization suggests that the USA may be ‘turning’ again toward a focus on Latin America in an effort to reassert its hegemony in the region and to roll back the progressive developments and governments there that have arisen in recent years. But how the USA is now attacking both Argentina and Venezuela—i.e. by defending the vulture capitalist hedge fund billionaires in the case of Argentina debt payments and by working with US multinational corporations to artificially create a dollar shortage and runaway inflation in the case of Venezuela in a USA effort to still further destabilize the slowing economies of both countries—s the subject of a subsequent essay and analysis.

Take your pick!

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Chile Taking on Bolivia

The Chilean Foreign Ministry put together a short video outlining why Bolivia has no legitimate claim at the International Court of Justice for the land lost as a result of the War of the Pacific.

It's a frontal assault and includes clips from Michelle Bachelet, Ricardo Lagos, Eduardo Frei, Sebastián Piñera, as well as Heraldo Muñez (FYI, it is in Spanish but with English subtitles). They argue that Bolivia's claim basically tries to undo the fabric of the international system, even while Chile spends millions and millions to provide port access and acts like a good neighbor.

Evo Morales was not pleased:

"Son promesas solemnes de otorgarnos el acceso soberano al mar, Bolivia no es un país sin Litoral sino que es un país privado de Litoral, ya que nació como país con 400 kilómetros de costa que le fueron arrebatados por Chile tras una invasión violenta de 1879", fundamentó. 

El Jefe de Estado boliviano argumentó que todas las naciones mediterráneas gozan de facilidades equivalentes a un acceso soberano, "mucho más que quien lo pide tuvo por más de medio siglo 120.000 kilómetros cuadrados de territorio ribereño" 

En esa dirección, apuntó que Bolivia no presentó una demanda contraria al derecho internacional ni pretende alterar el orden mundial de límites. 

"Por el contrario si el derecho internacional fuera inmutable no se justificaría la existencia de la Corte Internacional de Justicia, que ha resuelto en justicia y en derecho decenas de disputas entre estados", dijo. 

Agregó que en el video chileno, Bachelet hace referencia a un espíritu de integración y de diálogo con Bolivia y expresó su coincidencia con esas ideas. 

"Invocó a su sensibilidad (de Bachelet) y la del pueblo chileno cuyos representantes pidieron mar para Bolivia con soberanía, ayer en Palacio de Gobierno de La Paz, para hacer realidad espíritu de hermandad y de proyección de ambas naciones en este siglo XXI, que se logrará cuando las palabras se conviertan en actos de voluntad y de buena fe", afirmó.

Sorry, I don't have time to translate. If you don't read Spanish, the quick version from Morales is "you're full of crap."

And what about the timing? Bolivia filed its case with the Hague in 2013, delivered documents earlier this year, and it will take years to sort out. The latest move in the case was in July 2014, when the court told Bolivia it had until November 2014 to respond to the Chilean argument that the court had no jurisdiction. I suppose this is some early spin, though I do wonder how many people see such a video.

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Blocking Venezuela from UN Security Council

The drumbeat to try and deny Venezuela the rotating seat on the UN Security Council suffers from many logical deficiencies. I wrote about this before. It would be a terrible idea for the Obama administration to expend any political capital trying to accomplish it.

Why?

1. Latin America agreed in 2006 to take turns. It is Venezuela's turn. The U.S. would therefore have to assert publicly that Latin American agreements are null and void if it doesn't approve.

2. Given #1, the chances of success are slim to none. A failure for no reason hurts the U.S.

3. Given #1 and #2, success would require such massive maneuvering that the U.S. would find it harder to achieve more important goals (e.g. construction of international coalitions instead of unilateral action) later.

4. Having allies in that position doesn't necessarily work out well. Remember that Chile and Mexico blocked the Bush administration in 2003. The Bush administration's strongarm tactics backfired very badly.

5. Having adversaries in that position doesn't necessarily work out badly. Venezuela is replacing Argentina, which has never been friendly and is in a bitter dispute with U.S. courts but hasn't somehow used the Security Council for nefarious purposes.

If you support the effort to block Venezuela, you have to accept the fact that you advocate failing and losing influence for short-term symbolic reasons. That seems not to be a good use of political capital.

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Samper Enters the Venezuela Fray

The crisis in Venezuela has become increasingly entangled with Colombian politics. While they were presidents, Hugo Chávez and Alvaro Uribe sniped at each other constantly. At a 2010 summit they even almost brawled, with Raúl Castro (of all people) calming things down. After leaving the presidency, Uribe has been on a Twitter rampage, often tying the FARC to the Venezuelan government and blaming Juan Manuel Santos. There is even a birther movement claiming Maduro was born in Colombia! More recently, the Venezuelan government constantly blames violence on the Colombian right.

Now there is a new twist. Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper is blaming the murder of Robert Serra on Colombian paramilitaries. In other words, the accusations usually came from Venezuela, but not they're also coming from a Colombian. As you might guess, the Venezuelan press ate this up. Especially since Samper is the new Secretary-General of UNASUR and therefore has an international platform, this Venezuela-Colombia tangle will get more attention. Uribe has responded to Maduro, but I have not seen him respond to Samper. As it turns out, Samper has poked fun at Uribe for all this tweeting, so now may become the recipient of it.

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Presidential Approval in Latin America 2014

Consulta Mitofsky put together a report on Latin American presidential approval based on national polls. Some thoughts:

1. As always, forget ideology. The populist left is both the most (Correa, Morales) and least (Maduro, Fernández) popular.

2. On average, Central American presidents are more popular than those in North or South America. That's about the definition of "counterintuitive."

3. When Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff meet, at least we know they have one thing in common, which is that they similarly unpopular. Both can laugh at Stephen Harper.

4. Danilo Medina of the Dominican Republic has Alvaro Uribe-type numbers, with 89%. Even economists like him.

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Berating Panama for Inviting Cuba

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

As Menendez writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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