Dusty foot

Really interesting article in the NYT about Cuban immigrants increasingly going through Mexico to reach the United States, which has become a multimillion dollar smuggling industry. There has been a surge of Cuba immigrants since Raúl took over (the most since 1994) and even the Cuban ambassador to Mexico is expressing concern.

U.S. immigration policy bears considerable responsibility for the Mexico route. In the wake of the 1994 crisis with Cuba, the Clinton administration created the “wet foot-dry foot” policy whereby Cubans reaching land in the U.S. would be given asylum, whereas those caught at sea would likely be returned.* Going through Mexico removes the threat of return—in fact, Cubans just need to walk up to Border Patrol and they’re golden. It’s being called “dusty foot.”

So guess what? The border fence, sensors, beefed up patrols, cameras, etc. are useless. In addition, other immigrants are trying to practice Cuban accents to trick immigration authorities, thus avoiding dangerous desert routes into the U.S.

On the Cuban side, the increased emigration suggests anxiety about the transfer of power, which contradicts the general sense of calm (noted even in the U.S. press). I’d like to see the specific reasons why people are choosing to leave now.

* You may remember the story of Cubans who reached a disused bridge in Florida last year and were returned because it wasn’t “land.”

Read more...

Leadership and fashion in Latin America

Through Juventud Rebelde we learn that Fidel is looking OK and is hanging out with Hugo Chávez—here is a link to the video, which begins with Chávez singing (not half bad, actually, and apparently he has released a CD).

That encounter prompted me to ask the critical question, “Why do some leaders wear the same clothes all the time?” With Fidel I can understand, it’s habit. Back in the day, he wanted to keep up the guerrilla vibe so wore fatigues all the time, so now he segued easily into eternal Adidas. Chávez wears a red shirt in pretty much every picture I’ve seen for years, save perhaps major speeches at the UN.

The list of same-clothes leaders isn’t one you’d want to be on. Kim Jong Il with his big glasses and plain dark gray suit, Ahmadenijad with the tieless light suit, or go back to Mobutu with the leopard-skin hat. I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting. Before long, it becomes schtick.

Granted, just wearing a suit and changing the tie color like everyone else can be pretty dull. But Chávez should get out of that rut, and take a cue from Evo Morales—the colorful sweaters are his trademark but it’s not obsessive and he mixes it up.

Are there any political theories about leadership and fashion? Probably not.

Read more...

At the NC State Fair...

...one of the longest lines was at the place with all the weird deep fried food. This, my friends, is a deep fried Snickers. Well worth the wait. Beware: you might gain weight just looking at it.

Read more...

Latin America and WHINSEC

Evo Morales has announced that Bolivia will no longer send soldiers to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, which is the name change for the School of the Americas). Other countries similarly refusing are Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Every year, there are failed efforts to get Congress to cut WHINSEC’s funding. School of the Americas Watch is working to get more co-sponsors for a bill to suspend operations, but it’s tough to get enough votes. The funding is a drop in the budget bucket and few members of Congress pay enough attention to Latin America to care much.

Military training, however, is both a supply and demand issue. Dealing with supply (i.e. the training) is difficult, and I also wonder whether, if even SOAW can put the votes together, something else will be created in WHINSEC’s place.

Even more effective, however, would be to dry up demand simultaneously—Latin American leaders (with some exceptions, such as in Colombia and El Salvador) may well be receptive to avoiding WHINSEC. I’m actually curious why Ecuador and Nicaragua have not made the same pledge. In fact, I think an interesting research idea would be to analyze the demand side over time—even in work I’ve done on WHINSEC/SOA, I’ve focused on supply.

h/t Plan Colombia and Beyond

Read more...

Blog stuff

Just a few blog-related things. Adding to the blogroll:

Backyard Briefing covers Latin America news, written by Ben Whitford, a freelance journalist in the UK.

La Plaza also covers Latin America news and comes out of the Los Angeles Times. One of the reporters is Héctor Tobar—he’s Mexico City Bureau Chief for the paper, but also author of Translation Nation, a book on Latino immigration I highly recommend.

Latin American Politics is the new blog for the Political Institutions Section of LASA.

Finally, I know I am late to this, but there’s a political science wiki. I am listed on there and I didn’t even know it.

Read more...

Iran and Latin America

Check out Time for a surprisingly insightful look at the relationship between Iran and Bolivia, emphasizing the fact that Evo Morales has almost nothing in common with Ahmadinejad and is just looking out for Bolivia’s economic interests. It also notes the ways in which the U.S. government has discriminated against MAS.

Then there’s this article in Foreign Policy about the relationship between Iran and Venezuela. It is among the worst analyses I’ve seen in some time, based almost entirely on rumors. You know an article is worthless when it constantly uses words like mystery, sinister, whispers, rumors and—my favorite—oozing. Check it out if you’re in the mood for a little paranoia.

There is nothing to applaud about Ahmadinejad and I wish he would receive no lauding as he deserves none. Nonetheless, an Iranian relationship with any Latin American country does not signify the end of civilization as we know it.

Read more...

Es otra cosa

Fifteen years after it gave up, Taco Bell is once again moving to Mexico with the slogan “Es otra cosa” (it’s something else). The slogan seems unnecessary, as I don’t think anyone in Mexico is under the impression that Taco Bell is Mexican food. Perhaps a better slogan would be “What exactly is it?”

The story has some great quotes. One is that it might succeed precisely because wealthy Mexicans will see it as a status symbol of the U.S.:

“It's like bringing ice to the Arctic,” said pop culture historian Carlos Monsivais. “Taco Bell wants to take advantage of the perception that if something comes from the U.S., it tastes better, that a country that has been Americanized is willing to Americanize food that is central to its cuisine.

“It is an absurd idea, and given that it's so absurd, it may just be successful in upper-class areas,” Monsivais added.

But even better, a taco shop worker in Tijuana gave his own appraisal of Americanized Mexican food:

“Competition? Please,” he said. “Personally, I like the Jack in the Box tacos. Now those are good tacos. How come those guys don't come here?”

There you go. Taco Bell might flop, but Mexico may be ready for a guy with an enormous ping-pong ball head. Go figure.

h/t Entérese Charlotte

Read more...

Punishment of recall signers in Venezuela

Via Political Science Weblog: a paper presented last month at the Stanford Business School argues that those who signed the recall petition in Venezuela suffered economically as a result. They use the Maisanta database and then link those names to both national household survey and manufacturing firm data. It’s a really interesting (not to mention time consuming) way of getting some hard data.

Chang-Tai Hsieh, Edward Miguel, Daniel Ortega and Francisco Rodriguez (2007), “The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela’s Maisanta,” unpublished paper

Do individuals who join the political opposition pay an economic price? We study this question using unique information on individual political activity from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, the Maisanta database. The names of millions of pro-opposition supporters who signed recall petitions (seeking to remove Chávez from office) during 2002-2003, and the names of progovernment supporters who signed counter-petitions, were made public. Media accounts detail how this information has been utilized by both sides: by the Government to punish opposition supporters and firms, and by the overwhelmingly pro opposition private sector to discriminate against government supporters in hiring. After linking this political database to both national household survey and manufacturing firm data, we find that pro-opposition individuals experience significant drops in total earnings after 2003. There is extensive churning in the labor market: pro-opposition individuals disproportionately leave public sector employment and progovernment individuals leave private sector employment. Pro-opposition firms have falling total employment, less access to foreign exchange, and rising tax burdens (possibly due to selective audits). The misallocation of resources associated with political polarization between 1999-2004 contributed to a decline of 5% in TFP in our sample. To the extent other regimes can identify and punish the political opposition, these findings may help explain why dislodging authoritarian regimes often proves difficult in less developed countries.

There are all sorts of interesting tidbits in the paper:

This is evidence that Opposition supporters had deteriorating labor market outcomes after 2003. The magnitude is -3.8% of average pre-Maisanta income for opposition supporters, not a trivial effect (p. 15).

…

According to our results, a firm in which all board members signed against the opposition could expect to pay 0.5% in additional taxes as a fraction of total revenue relative to neutral and pro-government firms (Table 7). This is a very large effect since the average tax rate across all firms is a bit over 1%, so this implies an increase of almost 40% in taxes paid by pro-opposition firms” (p. 19).

Since it is not common to see empirical analyses about this topic, I would love to see a rebuttal by an economist with access to the same data.

Read more...

Cuba plan

Cuban exiles have formulated a plan for a democratic Cuba. And, of course, the best way to promote democracy is to outlaw political parties you don’t like.

Read more...

The former dictator blues

In the NYT, there’s an interesting Simon Romero piece on dictators living in exile and the possibility of extradition. I’ve written before that I’m always interested to hear about where ex-dictators have gone—I was surprised, for example, to learn about Alfredo Stroessner’s death in Brazil because I had assumed he was already dead. (In this article, I also learned that Isabel Perón is hanging out in Spain, which I didn’t know).

The article makes the argument (as Boz had a while ago) that the Fujimori extradition establishes a precedent. I don’t think this argument should be taken too far because of the political circumstances. The Chilean government never agreed to let Fujimori in the country (in fact, not knowing he was coming is considered a major failure of the National Intelligence Agency) in the first place and really wanted him out. The ex-dictators sunning themselves in places like Panama are there by explicit agreement with the government. Nonetheless, it’s true that just having extradition in the air is a good thing, and along with the Pinochet corruption case shows at the very least that even if you and/or your money leave the country, you might still be held accountable.

Read more...

When imperialism was good

While working on my U.S.-Latin America textbook (news of its release will be coming in the not-too-distant future) I've enjoyed reading old textbooks on the topic. One of the most important and influential was Samuel Flagg Bemis' The Latin American Policy of the United States. I have the edition published in 1943, though I think it went through more than one edition (or at least stayed in print).

Worth mentioning is his chapter, "The Advent of Imperialism (1895-1899). It is incredible reading because it provides a glimpse into a time when imperialism was openly called a good thing:

In the last decade of the nineteenth century imperialism laid its mantle over Manifest Destiny and galvanized that traditional faith of the American people in their expansive future with a purpose and a philosophy that went beyond the old blind instinct for the achievement and security of the Continental Republic, even one including all of North America (p. 123).

Ah, the good old days. Back when men sat in wood-paneled rooms with whiskey and cigars, mapping out the future of the heathen. The chapter is quite a read, as it culminates with a discussion of the Platt Amendment and how it wrapped Cuba warmly in "protective imperialism." Funny how they always seemed to resent it...

Read more...

Chile arrests

A Chilean judge ordered the arrest of Pinochet’s widow, his children, and 17 of his close associates on corruption charges related to the fortune that mysteriously appeared in foreign bank accounts under his control. One of those associates is retired army General Jorge Ballerino, who was very close to Pinochet and a key figure in the negotiations of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

I interviewed Ballerino nine years ago while doing research for my dissertation. I remember it particularly well because it was my most vivid, and highest ranking, sense of what you might call “interview cognitive dissonance.” Here was a guy so closely associated with the military government and Pinochet himself, yet he was one of the nicest people I’ve interviewed in Chile, military or civilian. He invited me to his house, where we drank coffee and he answered my questions for about an hour. I immediately understood why Pinochet chose him as a negotiator.

The fact that people like Ballerino (not to mention Pinochet’s wife!) are being arrested is extraordinary, certainly nothing I would’ve anticipated 9 years ago.

Update: Tomás Dinges has a very good, detailed discussion of the charges and people involved.

Read more...

How low can they go?

In late August, I wrote that Michelle Bachelet’s numbers were holding steady and that “Despite the intense criticism, she clearly has a base of support that remains solid.” I heard similar sentiments from other Chileanists at LASA, that Bachelet had a core constituency that would continue to support her and the numbers suggested it was around 40%.

Now we’re all trying to figure out exactly why that was wrong. The latest Angus Reid poll has her at 35.3% approval for September, down from 41.5% in August. Through the course of the Chilean winter she’s been in freefall, while protests, strikes and Transantiago continue to plague her. Inflation is also rising and the weak dollar threatens Chilean exports to the U.S. so in general she hasn't had much good news.

So the new question is how low can those approval numbers go? It is simply mind blowing, but bears repeating, that she is creeping awfully close to George W. Bush numbers.

Read more...

New blog

The State Department has a new blog. It is called "Dipnote." I solemnly swear that I am not making up that name. We are told ""Dipnote" refers to a diplomatic note. It is one of the many ways in which governments formally communicate with each other. " It is not, I gather, one of the many ways dips formally communicate with each other.

The blog also notes that "Blogs.state.gov offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information." The State Department is "alternative" and I never knew it! I'm very happy to have them give me the straight scoop and not have to deal with all those crazy non-government types.

I really can't wait for the first Latin America entry, just out of curiosity. Actually, I can't successfully subscribe to it--I hope that gets worked out.

h/t BoRev.Net (where I actually thought it was a joke when I read it)

Read more...

We're winning the war on drugs...again

The U.S. government claims that a rise in the price of cocaine shows that the drug war is succeeding. However, thanks to the way the BBC shows links to previous articles, a problem with the analysis is immediately apparent.

The Head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy tells us that for the first time in twenty years, there is a cocaine shortage that has led to a price increase. The timing is extremely important because the the Bush Administration wants to tout it as a way of getting a $1 billion anti-drug package to Mexico. President Calderón’s militarized policies have changed everything! We’re winning!

Oh wait. A convenient link to the side shows that in November 2005, the same U.S. official claimed that the price of cocaine was up, so the drug war was succeeding.

Critics say the price rise is just a temporary blip, and the war on drugs has made no real progress in 20 years.

And critics were right.

Read more...

Training local law enforcement

Following up on my post from this morning about training local law enforcement about immigration, here is a story from Arizona. Turns out a Sheriff's Office has been questioning crime victims and witnesses about their immigration status. This is, of course, exactly the problem noted by opponents of the 287(g) program, since it sends a very clear signal that if you are the victim of a crime, you need to keep your mouth shut. It also sends a very clear signal to potential criminals that they can target Latinos and have a better chance at getting away with it.

Read more...

Hasta la vista Pendergraph

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph, who became well known for implementing a 287 (g) program (which trains deputies about the process of identifying undocumented immigrants and then deporting them) here in Charlotte, is taking a job with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security created a new job, the executive director of state and local coordination.

The program is in desperate need of study, as both supporters and opponents throw around arguments based on the scanty raw numbers released by the Sheriff’s office. A comprehensive study at the very least would break down the specific arrests, look at the outcome, and even look at where the arrests were made and why they were made. Then it would need to include a survey of the Latino population, since the major criticism is that it is making a significant part of the population feel more insecure, while everyone else feels good that they’re getting rid of “criminals.”

The Spanish-language paper Mi Gente has reactions from the local Latino community. The general response is to be glad he’ll no longer be in Charlotte, but concerned that the new post will be a platform for targeting the entire Latino population.

I think the new post reflects the utter failure of the federal government. It can be summed up as the following: if you cannot get any significant legislation passed, then make the bureaucracy bigger and proclaim victory. We can only wait and see what kind of impact Pendergraph will have on a national scale.

Read more...

Just painful

What a long, ridiculous, crazy, and ultimately horrible game. Up by 2 in the top of the 13th, and Trevor comes in and blows it. Ouch.

Read more...

Revista Diplomacia, Estratégia e Política

I’ve been receiving an interesting journal, Revista Diplomacia, Estratégia e Política, put out by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I’m not sure how I got on the mailing list, but I see it is also free online and so I thought I would call attention to it. It can be read in Spanish, Portuguese, or English.

It is policy oriented, with diverse speeches and analyses by Latin American public figures. The current issue includes Chávez, Correa, Uribe, and even includes a speech by Cristina Kirchner. In addition, it has an article on Mercosur by Luis Alberto Lacalle, a former Uruguayan president, who laments Argentina’s behavior (of course) and the introduction of politics into an economic agreement.

For those interested in current events and policy, it’s worth a look.

Read more...

163rd game

The Padres had two games left, and all we needed to do was win one to reach the playoffs. Trevor blew one to T. Gwynn Jr. and then Brett Tomko lost yesterday. If you need to rely on Brett Tomko then you know you’re screwed…

Tonight we play a one-game playoff against the Rockies and Jake Peavy will pitch, which at least makes me feel a bit better (a fun side note is that he will be going for his 20th win, which would be the Padres’ first since Gaylord Perry in 1978). The problem, however, is that if we win, then he won’t be ready again quickly because he struggles on three days of rest. In two games this year, his ERA was 8.10.

On the bright side, the Mets are out of it, and the Giants finished last.

Read more...