10 Year Blog Anniversary

As of today this blog is ten years old. A decade, and 3,978 posts. When I started on January 30, 2006 I was in my first year as a tenured associate professor and thinking about what kinds of new things to do. Blogging was one such idea. It grew naturally out of reading news and blogs to use as current events discussion in class. Over time I became dissatisfied with only reading and not writing.

Scattered thoughts:

I've written a number of posts on the benefits of blogging so I won't spend much more space on that. Suffice it to say that blogging satisfies a creative urge, has sparked research ideas, helps me disseminate research, supplements my teaching, leads me to meet a lot of interesting people, connects me to the public and the media, and is a really fun hobby. There is no downside.

Steven Taylor used to have a blog (PoliBlog, which seems gone from the interwebs) and as I remember it his subtitle was "a rough draft of my thoughts." I like that idea, and it is exactly how I see my own blog. (And he is one of many people I've met--first online and then in person--only because I was blogging).

Two Weeks Notice: the name doesn't really mean anything. Every so often I've had people ask me about that, I guess expecting a profound answer related to losing your job. The honest answer is that I had been thinking of starting a blog and was focused solely on how to set it up. Once I got it all set, I suddenly realized I didn't have a name. On the spot, I decided to do a play on my last name, and since I wanted to get started I didn't spend much time coming up with it. A year or two later I added "A Latin American Politics Blog" to make it clearer when people were searching.

I've been largely unsuccessful at getting colleagues to blog. Fewer people in general than I thought would start actually did, and I know a lot of people who started and stopped. (One exception is my dad!). I've talked to lots of people who see it as a chore, too hard, too time consuming or just don't understand it. Even as blogging became more widespread, that didn't change. In political science, the Monkey Cage blog has become a great way for scholars to write a single-shot post, but even that is hard for a lot of people. This is an unusual writing form, I guess, and you either take to it or don't.

The most popular post of all time is this one on the images of Che Guevara. It's deceiving, though, because I had used some pictures I found online, and gradually realized people were searching for the images. This bothered me because of course these images belong to other people, so I removed them. That has greatly slowed traffic to that one post, so it's not the real most popular one.

The real most popular post of all time is this 2012 post on Otto Pérez Molina talking about drug legalization. I don't see it as particularly remarkable, so I think it is just so happened that it got mentioned by some more prominent blogger or someone who was heavily followed on Twitter. There is never any way to predict when/why these things happen.

Twitter has been great for blogging. My comments come mostly from there, and my posts get more attention than they would otherwise. I've also routinely linked to tweets, both my own and others', in my blog posts. I feel like it's symbiotic.

I've been on Blogger this entire time, and have not yet seen any reason to change. I've read so many accounts of people getting hacked, going down, getting errors, etc. and I've never had a single problem, and have never paid a dime. That seems worth it to me.

I intend to keep doing this as long as it remains fun, and when it's no longer fun I will stop. For the past ten years I've had a great time.

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U.S. Policy Leverage in Latin America

I've been thinking about leverage and write a piece for Latin America Goes Global about it. The basic idea is that if you jump straight to draconian reactions, you make it even harder to achieve your policy goals. You need some creativity.

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Unaccompanied Minors Infographic

The Washington Post has an infographic about what happens to unaccompanied child migrants as they come to the United States. It makes it all sound...placid and easy. You take this train, happens to be called La Bestia, and it winds through Mexico. Then there is a series of people who will help you, and you'll be checked up on.

You'll fly in a plane!

It's all good.

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Pettiness and U.S.-Latin American Relations

Chris Sabatini has an op-ed in the Miami Herald about how petty vengeance in Congress is getting in the way of U.S. policy toward Latin America.

Raising policy criticisms is a legitimate function of the Senate, but hobbling broader and more weighty U.S foreign policy interests to those narrow policy squabbles — especially with small countries — not only makes us look small-minded and non-strategic, but also undermines our national interests. Superpowers and those who aspire to lead them shouldn’t behave that way, on either side of the aisle.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article56904748.html#storylink=cpy

Hard to argue with that. One point to make is that we can add election-year posturing. Rubio believes such a stance will pick up some votes--which he really needs these days--as he portrays himself as a security hawk. In general, during a presidential campaign foreign policy gets reduced to laughably simplistic bullet points, not much more than "I am tough and I will act tough with tough countries."

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Stopping Pregnancies in South America

Yesterday I wrote about the Salvadoran government telling women not to get pregnant for two years because of the Zika virus. I hadn't known that Colombia and Ecuador had done the same, as did Brazil. I'm still trying to get my head around the long-term implications, assuming the calls are actually heeded (which is open to question). If so, then at a minimum you'll end up with demographic "dents" (for lack of a better word) which will be felt later when the size of the working-age population is smaller.

But this scary stuff:

Nearly 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly have been reported in Brazil since October, compared with fewer than 150 cases in the country in all of 2014.

Incidentally, the role of mosquitoes in Latin America would be a great topic for research. Their effect on the development of the Panama Canal is legendary, and in general fighting them has been a highly political activity. This current Zika virus crisis shows how pervasive (and political) they continue to be.

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El Salvador Wants to Stop All Pregnancies

This is astounding.

When in human history has an epidemic become so alarming that a nation feels compelled to urge its people not to have children for two years?
 Grappling with a mosquito-borne virus linked to brain damage in infants, El Salvador is doing just that, advising all women in the country not to get pregnant until 2018 — the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass that, to many here, only illustrates their government’s desperation.

They quote several experts as saying they've never heard of such a thing. The article doesn't even mention that the demographic effects would be significant. Messing with reproduction will have unintended consequences.

But also:

Others are more conspiracy-minded. Veronica Velásquez suggested that the government’s recommendation to avoid having children was really an effort to stem population growth. Already, El Salvador is so densely populated that leaders might want to thin the ranks, Ms. Velásquez argued.

As conspiracy theories go, this is not so unreasonable, and actually popped into my head as I started reading the article. Regardless, this is a huge decision for a government to make.

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Holding Off Shock Therapy In Argentina

The Latin American left is lambasting Mauricio Macri for being too conservative, but this Bloomberg article shows how he's holding the crazy free marketers at bay:

“I would fast-forward the whole damned lot and do it all in six to nine months - go for shock therapy,” said Tim Love, investment director for emerging-market equities at Gam UK Ltd. which manages $130 billion in assets. “They’re missing an opportunity and running a bigger risk.”

Thank you, Mr. I Don't Have to Learn From History Because I Don't Give a Crap About Actual Argentine People. Crazy free marketers already had a go at Argentina and it didn't work out terribly well.

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Venezuela's Dues Blues

Via Caracas Chronicles: The UN has told Venezuela that it must pay its annual contribution or it can't vote.

This is an especially big deal for the Venezuelan government, which has always seen the UN as an important venue. Who can forget Hugo Chávez flamboyant denunciation of George W. Bush? Or the intense maneuvering to gain one of the rotating seats on the Security Council (which they finally got in 2014)?

But that was then, this is now. It is a stark reminder about what has changed over the past decade. Symbolically, it's a blow. Obviously, though, Nicolás Maduro has more important things to worry about.

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Latin America Coughs, Miami Gets A Cold

Here's globalization for you. The Chinese economy slows down-->commodity prices drop-->Latin American economies contract -->rich Latin Americans have less disposable income-->Miami Dade unemployment rises.

I'm guessing Venezuelans and Brazilians in particular aren't throwing around dollars the way they used to. I'm not sure how easy that it is to track.

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Happy Colombians

Simplistic happiness indices are painful to read about. Here is a WaPo article about how Colombians just shrug problems off and go with the flow. What a happy people! Even Telesur reports on it.

No one mentions that approximately 12% of the Colombian population is displaced. But they're cool with it. Just chillin'. Some of them are so happy that they move illegally to Ecuador.

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No to NL Designated Hitter!

This is truly alarming:

At an MLB owners' meeting on Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla., Commissioner Rob Manfred said the idea of the designed hitter coming to the National League is "gaining momentum." What's more: Deciding whether to implement a unified DH rule could happen this year and then get rolled out for the 2017 season. 

I like the pitcher hitting. I like the strategy of how to deal with the pitcher in the lineup. I like how some pitchers actually can hit and therefore help their team even more. I am too young to remember the DH rule starting (1973) and so I actually like the fact that the two leagues are not identical.

I am not excited about players with no defensive skills only hitting. I do not know if that puts me in the minority.

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Reassessing Thomas Mann's Latin America Policy

Thomas Tunstall Allcock, "Becoming 'Mr. America': Thomas C. Mann Reconsidered." Diplomatic History 38, 5 (2014): 1017-1045.

Abstract:

This article provides a new perspective on Thomas C. Mann, a Foreign Service officer best known for serving as Lyndon Johnson’s assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and coordinator of the Alliance for Progress. Mann is commonly portrayed as unsympathetic toward aiding Latin American development, often accused of dismantling John F. Kennedy’s idealistic aid initiative, the Alliance for Progress, supporting repressive regimes, and vigorously promoting U.S. private investment throughout the hemisphere. By focusing on Mann’s early career, up to and including the Kennedy–Johnson transition, this article seeks to undermine the common image of Mann, revealing instead a dedicated Latin Americanist who consistently advocated aiding hemispheric development. A more accurate understanding of Thomas Mann can provide a starting point for rethinking assessments of the Alliance for Progress, a crucial presidential transition, and Lyndon Johnson’s Latin American record.

This article caught my eye. Mann is universally criticized, including by me in my textbook, as anti-democratic and friendly toward dictators in Latin America. Allcock places Mann within the context of the tension between LBJ and Kennedy advisors:

Misjudging the depth of the antipathy toward him, Mann failed to pay sufficient lip-service to the more unrealistic promises of the Alliance, leading to the creation of the “Mann Doctrine” and reinforcing the view that he sought a dramatic shift in the U.S. approach to dealing with rest of the hemisphere. What was for Mann a simple statement of U.S. goals, the Mann Doctrine would cement his new reputation and the narrative of the presidential transition.

Allcock points out that Mann assured LBJ that his words were taken out of context, that he was being attacked unfairly, and that he had clearly expressed support for democracy in Latin America. In general, he argues, Mann was not good at political maneuvering and actually had a stronger commitment to non-intervention than generally assumed.

Interesting narrative. It's always fun to get long-held assumptions challenged.

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Jeb Bush's Outdated Take on Latin America

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I get tired of the "losing" or "ignoring" Latin America argument, which usually refuses to engage actual evidence. Now Jeb Bush is bringing it up.

His timing is not great. The Obama administration was bold with Cuba, used Thomas Shannon extensively in Venezuela, and otherwise is very involved in the region. Meanwhile, Bush cites China's rise precisely at a time when the Chinese economy is cooling. Its influence has been overstated to begin with.

If you really want to talk about poor relations with Latin America, then you mostly need to look to his brother, who was incredibly unpopular. Obama had to work to turn that around. Perhaps more importantly for Jeb Bush, this is not something primary voters care much about, particularly since he is not an immigration hardliner. So as an argument it is largely inaccurate empirically and useless politically.

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Cuban Success vs. Emigration

At Latin America Goes Global Gabriel Salvia asks a very logical question. If, as we hear from both international agencies and the Cuban government, the country offers a very high level of services such as in health and education, why do so many people want to leave and why do other Latin American countries block those migrants?

He dismisses the argument that the embargo has something to do with it, which I assume would be the primary answer for someone defending the advances of the Cuban Revolution. It would be useful, however, to explain that part more. Like many other Latin American countries, Cuba is heavily dependent economically. If it's blocked off from the U.S. market, that hurts. How much is an empirical question rather than an ideological one.

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Maduro Can Play The Game

Daniel Cadena Jordan at Caracas Chronicles has a really interesting take on the Maduro administration. He sees Maduro maneuvering pragmatically in a way that facilitates negotiation with the opposition while marginalizing Diosdado Cabello, who wants more conflict. And Maduro seems to be doing it pretty well.

We all know the military matters. But what also matters is that Maduro does not appear to believe that an autogolpe is a viable alternative. At least for now he does appear to like the image of being the pro-democracy president who can accept losing an election. Meanwhile, the opposition is working with him. In other words, as usual you need to dig beneath the heated rhetoric and see what they're actually doing.

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Granma's View of Cuban Migration

Granma has a bizarrely straightfoward story on the Cubans trying to get to the U.S. via a convoluted trip through Ecuador and Central America. It notes all the agreements different countries had to make, almost as if it doesn't recognize it's talking about its own citizens.

Their objective is to reach the United States, where the “wet-foot-dry-foot” policy and Cuban Adjustment Act remain in force, policies which encourage the illegal migration of Cubans.

Well, true, but only half the picture since it doesn't mention why all those Cubans want to get the hell out in the first place. I suppose that would also be fault of the United States. For Cuban state media, U.S. immigration policy works in a vacuum unrelated to the sending country.

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Middle vs. Working Class in Brazil

Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky, Christiane Uchoa, and Nelson do Valle Silva, "The Elusive New Middle Class in Brazil," Brazilian Political Science Review 9, 3 (Sept/Dec 2015).

Abstract

Against the background of the generalized reduction of poverty in the world, and particularly in Brazil, this article intends to gauge the socio-economic profile of Brazilian households that emerged from poverty and have been identified as integrating a "new middle class". Using indicators of standards of living from the 2008-2009 Survey on Family Budgets (POF/IBGE), we found out that, in contrast to what has been assumed on the basis of average income criteria, this social stratum is markedly heterogeneous, most of it being similar in their consumption patterns to the economically vulnerable or outright poor strata. So, we conclude that, from a sociological perspective that demands additional conditions besides income levels to identify social classes, it is a category mistake to call this social stratum a new middle class. We conjecture that this may be consequential in terms of policy priorities and choices.

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Very interesting academic article on how the new Brazilian "middle class" is more of a working class.

A first approximation to the data shows that the households in the income bracket that correspond to the so-called "new middle class" amounted, in 2009, to 31.6 million, or 55% of the Brazilian households. The sheer width of the income bracket that has been identified as the "new middle class" is very large, and this suggests that different situations may have been considered uniformly when we look at the income bracket as a whole. 

In fact, a preliminary analysis indicates that this segment is characterized by a strong inequality within it, and the predominance is of dwellings in the lower NMC income segment, where apparently the largest growth occurred in recent years, be it in absolute terms or in percentage points. This lower NMC sub-segment alone accounts for almost one-third of all households in Brazil and about 60% of all NMC households

This is especially important in the context of the country's sharp economic slowdown. Last year there were countless media articles about how the middle class was slipping. Among other things, these authors argue that a very large proportion of that group was really struggling to begin with, and shouldn't be called "middle class" in the first place.

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How Sean Penn Failed

Sean Penn says his Rolling Stone article failed because it did not foster the conversation he wanted, which was the uselessness of the drug war.

I argued last week that glamorizing El Chapo is a terrible way of calling attention to the problems of the drug war. Now Penn says:

"Let's go to the big picture of what we all want," Penn said. "We all want this drug problem to stop. We all want them -- the killings in Chicago to stop. We are the consumer. Whether you agree with Sean Penn or not, there is a complicity there. And if you are in the moral right, or on the far left, just as many of your children are doing these drugs."

Yet what he achieved was to make El Chapo exciting. People are talking about him and not at all about the bigger picture. The interview was a bad idea. Exciting for him, I guess, but counterproductive.

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Whiny Latin America Diplomats

Two former diplomats have an article in the Miami Herald, arguing that the United States needs to punish Latin America more. For example, we need to punish Bolivia for kicking out the DEA and the ambassador: "the Obama administration has shown mostly patience, offering meager assistance to those seeking democratic change." I was unaware that expelling U.S. officials was undemocratic. That Evo Morales is democratically elected also goes unmentioned. Patience, meanwhile, is apparently a vice.

This is the Bush years doing their best to bubble back up. It's amazing, really, because that era was tremendously unproductive and damaging to U.S. interests.

But we do have aid programs and preferential trade agreements in place and we can suspend or alter many of them. We also could work to create a hemispheric free-trade zone for those countries that subscribe to and practice good governance. 

And we could speak out, unabashedly, from the White House and State Department, about our belief in basic liberties, human rights, and democracy. If that makes us unpopular, or if it leads to the bankrupt charges of Yankee imperialism or interventionism, so be it.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article54799360.html#storylink=cpy

Sheez, people. They rail against Ecuador and Bolivia but they've long been out of the Andean Trade Preference Act. Nicaragua is part of CAFTA but there is no simple mechanism for targeting one country within it for punishment, even if you thought it would be a productive move. As for good governance, what about Mexico? Its governance is worse than Bolivia's. As for the FTAA, remember how that worked out. But even if you really like FTAs, there are major initiatives going on.

As for "speaking out," Obama does it all the time. He even imposed sanctions on officials in Venezuela. That's pretty "unabashed."

In sum, their arguments consist mostly of empty whining. U.S.-Latin American relations are stronger than they've been for a long time. Incumbents are getting nailed in Latin America because democracy--while imperfect--is working. The last thing we need is a return to the Bush years.

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Venezuela Lurching But Moving

Perhaps I am feeling pollyanna-ish. I thought it was good news that the Venezuelan government accepted a major electoral loss. Its efforts to block three legislators, which conveniently avoids a supermajority, is ridiculous. But I also think it's good news that the opposition chose to set that issue aside temporarily rather than launch major protests or otherwise escalating the situation.

For opposition views, Caracas Chronicles is the place to look, with for example a proposal to have clearly focused legislative agenda, then make it more obvious that the packed judiciary is the problem. This makes sense to me. The government is hoping for an opposition reaction that will be viewed negatively, and remember that voters were often more anti-Chavismo than pro-opposition. Pushing #lasalida right now (as opposed to an eventual goal, which is openly there) is not the way to gain support and keep the military neutral.

Military intervention is what everyone should want to avoid, because it becomes a) violent; and b) unpredictable. This is a tenuous situation, though. If the government decides to completely annul the three candidates' victories entirely--and with the stakes high it may well do so--then I am not sure what'll happen. For now, the can has been kicked down the road.

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SOTU and the Cuba Embargo

It's remarkable to hear a president ask Congress to lift the Cuba embargo during the State of the Union:

Let me give you another example. 

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, it set us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people. 

(APPLAUSE) 

So, if you want to consolidate our leadership and credibility in the hemisphere, recognize that the Cold War is over. Lift the embargo. 

(APPLAUSE)

Lots of people, including me, have been making this case for many years, so it's nice to hear it from a president. The embargo defies all logic.

Update: here is the mention from the 2015 State of the Union. It was more forceful this year.

In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date.  (Applause.)  When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new.  (Applause.)  And our shift in Cuba policy has the potential to end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere.  It removes a phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba.  It stands up for democratic values, and extends the hand of friendship to the Cuban people.  And this year, Congress should begin the work of ending the embargo.  (Applause.)

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India's Stake in Venezuela

Here's an view you don't see much: the Indian perception of political change in Venezuela. Venezuelan stability matters to India, which imports 11.4% of its oil from there, a number that has been increasing in recent years. Indian companies are also having trouble getting their money out.

Indian pharmaceutical companies are also present in Venezuela. They have leveraged the shortage of basic medicines in that country, which the Venezuelan Pharmaceutical Federation estimated to be as much as 70%. The implementation of much-needed economic reforms, particularly the devaluation of the local currency (the Bolivar), will impact Indian companies that do business with Venezuela, like Dr. Reddy’s, Glenmark and Claris Injectables. These companies export so much to Venezuela, that its politics have an impact on their share price. Already, the shares of Glenmark pharma and Dr. Reddy’s fell by roughly 5% and 2% shortly after Venezuela’s elections, due to expectations of a currency devaluation. Indian pharma, which exported more than $140 million to Venezuela in 2014-15, has been unable to repatriate funds from their Venezuelan subsidiaries for about two years now. 

There is little the Indian government can do to resolve this issue, and the issue is likely to persist until the economy further stabilises and currency controls are lifted. Unlike China, which loans billions to Venezuela and arranges currency swap deals to safeguard bilateral transactions, India’s relationship with Venezuela is cordial but lacks the vigour to arrive at similar deals. Even if such reforms are passed by Caracas, they are unlikely to affect India or the India-Venezuela bilateral much, since our engagement is limited mostly to oil. India is a major buyer; Venezuela is a major seller. For now, that supersedes everything else.

The last sentence says everything. India needs Venezuela for oil, and that drives policy.

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Sean Penn and Moral Relativism

The Sean Penn interview with El Chapo is the hot topic. There is plenty to be bothered about with this interview. One thing that bothers me the most is the moral relativism (which he's very open about) that he uses as a rationale for doing the interview in the first place.

Here is his logic:

As an American citizen, I'm drawn to explore what may be inconsistent with the portrayals our government and media brand upon their declared enemies. Not since Osama bin Laden has the pursuit of a fugitive so occupied the public imagination. But unlike bin Laden, who had posed the ludicrous premise that a country's entire population is defined by – and therefore complicit in – its leadership's policies, with the world's most wanted drug lord, are we, the American public, not indeed complicit in what we demonize? We are the consumers, and as such, we are complicit in every murder, and in every corruption of an institution's ability to protect the quality of life for citizens of Mexico and the United States that comes as a result of our insatiable appetite for illicit narcotics.

This logic claims it's OK to glamorize El Chapo because all of us are complicit. Je suis Chapo. What utter nonsense.

If you really oppose the U.S. war on drugs, then you should glamorize nothing. If you feel complicit, then find ways to help victims. El Chapo isn't a victim; he creates them. Don't pretend that bad U.S. foreign policy is an excuse for letting others off the hook. And definitely don't do so by pretending you're Hunter S. Thompson.

This is similar to the logic that we should not criticize human rights abuses in Latin America as long as, say, there are inmates at Guantanamo. No--you criticize it all.

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The Leftist Response to Current Change

In general I've found it interesting to see the leftist response to the elections in Argentina and Venezuela. Very often, it buys into the mainstream perception that the left is somehow suddenly done and the right is ascendant. I am not sure why.

But as this example from Counterpunch shows, buying into that simplistic vision is problematic because it completely discounts what Latin American voters think, versus what intellectuals believe they should think.

Latin American revolutionary leaders were given a mandate by the people, and they have no right to back up, to betray.

You have no right to change your mind and express that in elections! You bastards! Even corruption is viewed as a fascist conspiracy.

Corruption!!! That is the new battle cry of the elites and their lackeys. 

To be fair, this particular example is pretty extreme because it wants armed rebellion of some kind, or leftist authoritarianism, or something like that. What's abundantly clear, though, is that Latin American voters are more pragmatic than the left or the right want to admit. For whatever reason, many intellectuals and politicians alike are stuck in the binary way of thinking. That's a very bad place to be for incumbents. If you want to stay in power, break out of that and reconnect to your voters. Don't pretend real problems are imaginary.

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Academia.edu

I had been meaning for a long time to start uploading my stuff to academia.edu and have finally been updating my profile there. If you're interested go check it out, follow me, and I will follow back.

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Executive-Legislative Relations in Venezuela

I'm quoted in this Bloomberg story on the hubbub of the first day of the new opposition-led legislature in Venezuela. My comments are based in large part on my thinking in this December 2015 post about overwrought rhetoric. This is what I wrote then:

There is a lot of flap trapping going on, which is pretty inexcusable for people in the highest political positions of a country. It does mean, though, that their current statements must be measured by their past flapping. I have a hard time seeing an autogolpe happening in Venezuela. The election made clear that the domestic response would be violent, and the military has little appetite for such a scenario. I doubt a shadow congress will matter, even if it actually ever exists, but transferring power to it would be an autogolpe.

I still think that's true (not surprising, since it was only two weeks ago!). In the Bloomberg article I simply noted that this happens in presidential systems. The difference in Venezuela is that several prominent politicians, including the president and the former speaker, say lots of crazy things they don't actually follow up on.

The dynamic is very similar in the United States, where executive-legislative polarization is very high. My own member of Congress just called President Obama a "monarch." Take that out a bit more to the fringes, then have Obama say something crazy back, and you're Venezuela.

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Obama's Deportation Surge

Steven Hyland writes about the undocumented immigrant roundup going on in Charlotte right now, which is part of a broader deportation plan by the Obama administration, which focuses quite a bit on families.

Obama is big into deporting people, doing so in massive numbers.

And yet Obama somehow gets criticized for being soft on immigration. If deporting kindergartners is soft, then I don't even want to imagine "hard."

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Responding to the Venezuela Controversy

I'm quoted in this story about how the Obama administration is responding (or might continue to respond) to the decision in Venezuela to block some legislators until unspecified concerns about the election are decided. The main question was how the OAS would react, and I think the answer is weakly. By and large, it wants to reward the Venezuelan government for a clean election where it accepted a stinging loss. Invoking the democracy clause--meaning even possibly suspending a government--is very unlikely.

For now, we're waiting to see what the final response is. If the legislators are blocked, thus conveniently avoiding a 2/3 opposition majority, then it's a lot more serious but I still can't see the OAS doing much beyond Luis Almagro making a statement.

What can/should the Obama administration do? You have the choice of a strongly worded statement and some kind of sanctions. I don't think either one will affect the situation much. If the governments of Latin America sit back, there is little way to pressure the already desperate Venezuelan government. We can only hope that even those governments are quiet publicly, they are pushing privately, and that may be the case.

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Trump's Crazy Ad

This is no joke. This is actually Donald Trump's first TV ad. In a mere 30 seconds it manages to be amazingly offensive and stupid.

“That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what’s going on. He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.”

What? We already know "what's going on," there is no ISIS head to cut off (and anyway, remember how much killing Osama bin Laden has eliminated all our problems!), whatever oil they might have doesn't actually belong to us, and Mexico is not going to pay for a wall. The main result of trying to do such things would be to alienate a lot of people (at home and abroad) unnecessarily, look foolish, and damage U.S.-Latin American relations.

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Dealing With Corruption in Latin America

Jorge Castañeda has an article in Foreign Affairs about how Latin Americans are getting tired of corruption and are holding their leaders more accountable. Two things come to mind, one he mentions explicitly and the other he doesn't.

First, he mentions the importance of international influence. This is not just CICIG, but also the U.S. press, which investigated Mexican corruption. I think this should get even more attention than it does now. There are multiple ways that international actors, including the U.S., U.N., and media, can contribute significantly to accountability.

Second, he only alludes to it, but corruption and accountability are not correlated to ideology--countries with scandals and/or court cases are all over the ideological map. I am already tired of the "post-populist," "post-pink tide," and the like, and the response to corruption demonstrates that ideology is often a distraction.

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Comparing Venezuela and Colombia

An article in Telesur notes that 21 local elected officials haven't yet taken office in Colombia because of charges of irregularities. The explicit purpose of the article is to equate that with the situation in Venezuela. If it is not criticized in Colombia, the argument goes, it should not be criticized in Venezuela.

On the surface, this is true, and such situations are well worth noting. But similarity is not the same as being identical. The stakes of the two elections bear no resemblance to each other. The level of polarization is also very different. The incentive to block a specific number of legislators is present in Venezuela and not in Colombia.

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Why Consciously Remain In A Silo?

An English professor at NC State argues that academics shouldn't necessarily bother to connect to a broader public. He says that--especially for those in the humanities--we don't know what will become relevant and why.

So academics, stay in your offices. Write books that few people will read. The results might be more significant than any of us first recognise.

As you might guess, I don't agree. At least for me, it is a lot of fun to articulate what I do to a broader audience. At UNC Charlotte, my dean (also an English professor) has created programs that, for example, involve events with faculty discussing their new books to a public audience, and these are really well-attended. I always read English professor Miriam Burstein's (aka The Little Professor) blog, which is all about her work on Victorian fiction. I don't know anything about the topic, but you can sense the enthusiasm.

In other words, you can have your cake and eat it too. Write about whatever topic you're passionate about and that passion should be infectious when you're communicating it to the rest of the world. Why only communicate with a select few other scholars if you don't have to?

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2015 on Two Weeks Notice

Mike Allison's post made me think of figuring out what post got the most hits in 2015. It was a January post on rumors of a Venezuelan coup. Of course, it is also a reminder that rumors are just...rumors. From a blogging perspective, Venezuela is always a hot topic. I don't see that changing in 2016. I am not big on predictions, but I predict the biggest post of 2016 will also be Venezuela, and may well be something on executive-legislative relations.

What's also interesting is that reviews of academic books often get a lot of hits. I still get tons of hits for a 2008 review of Leo Chavez's The Latino Threat. Same goes for a 2010 review of Tim Henderson's book A Glorious Defeat (on the 1846-1848 war with Mexico). From the searches, I get the strong suspicion that the books are being assigned in classes and students are trying to find synopses and/or some ready-made analysis.

This is my fourth year as department chair, and not coincidentally my number of posts decreased for the fourth year in a row in 2015, down to about 5.5 posts per week. I don't have any particular goals in that regard--I just write when I get an idea and have time.

The big blogging news for 2016 is that in January I will have my 10th anniversary writing this blog. After an entire decade, it's still literally fun. In some ways, it's even more fun because I am so busy with administrative work--it feels good to carve out a little time during the week to do something creative and to focus on a topic of endless fascinating for me.

Happy New Year!

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Raúl Castro's Pragmatism

Granma just published a speech by Raúl Castro that focused on the economy and foreign policy. Some highlights:

--the U.S. is to blame for anything wrong with the Cuban economy.
--the U.S. is to blame for Cuban migration
--the right (read: U.S.) is to blame for the Venezuelan elections
--the right (read: U.S.) is to blame for the Venezuelan economy
--the right (read: U.S.) is to blame for impeachment calls in Brazil
--Cuba is a responsible citizen of the global capitalist economy

There was no "viva" at the end, and presumably no shouting. Just "muchas gracias."

Basically, you have all the normal anti-U.S. rhetoric while Castro continues to work quietly to normalize Cuba's relationship not only with the U.S. but also with the rest of the world (e.g. debt). All the references to Venezuela lead very logically to that broader normalization because the combination of oil prices and an opposition legislative victory mean Cuba must make things right with other global economic actors. And now.

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Israel Trolls Brazil

Diplomacy is a delicate thing, especially when the relationship between two countries is not strong. If you actually want to strengthen ties, then intentionally angering the other side is self-defeating. Such is the case with Israel's decision to a) tweet the announcement of its ambassador to Brazil rather than use regular channels; b) choose the former head of a West Bank settler movement; and c) start pressuring Brazil publicly to accept him.

This is either a power play or the policy of a tone deaf government. Perhaps both. Regardless, it is a very bad move on Israel's part in a decidedly pro-Palestinian part of the world (and this is not about populism or ideology, but rather historical migration patterns). It just cements a negative image.

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Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem

I read Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem, which is a remarkable book. It ties together the Chinese Cultural Revolution, physics, and contact with another civilization in space.

It's the sort of book you read and realize how incredibly intelligent the author is, so that you sort of marvel at some of the ideas. Without spoiling it, the narrative follows Chinese scientists who are trying to make connection with space aliens, and how people in general react to that. In particular, many people feel that aliens--sight unseen--must be superior to humans and could solve all the problems we are unable to solve ourselves.

More philosophically, it asks the question of how we would respond if we started to believe that we would all be killed within a few hundred years. Would that simply lead to mass depression and suicide? Or, as the characters think about it, what can bugs do when they know they'll be squashed?

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Milicogate and the Copper Law in Chile

There is an infamous law in Chile providing the military with 10% of sales from Codelco, the state copper company. President after president has introduced legislation to derogate it, but all unsuccessful. Everyone talked about it ~20 years ago as I started my dissertation research on civil-military relations in Chile, and here it stands.

Could it possibly be venality that finally creates consensus? #Milicogate ("milico" is slang for someone in the military) is a multi-year (2010-2014), multimillion case of fraud, involving siphoning of the funds. In response, the Bachelet government announced it will propose reforms in 2016. The funds are shrouded in secrecy, which makes no sense at all in a democratic context. That secrecy predates the Pinochet dictatorship, incidentally. The entire structure of the law is from a distant era.

The army commander in chief, Humberto Oviedo, had to testify before a congressional commission, and is scrambling to convince legislators that such a thing won't happen again. Seems like a propitious time for change. The main challenge is to establish a new law that provides stable, long-term military planning, which has traditionally been the reason the right supports the law.

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Ominous vs. Flapping Your Trap in Venezuela

Here's an article in Foreign Policy about the "institutional civil war" brewing in Venezuela.

Last Wednesday, Diosdado Cabello, the head of the outgoing parliament, announced the creation of a new and unelected “Communal Congress,” whose members he then invited to convene at the parliament building. Soon after, Maduro rather ominouslyfloated the idea of transferring “all power” to the new body.

Here's my question. Over the past several years, both Cabello and Maduro have made all sorts of comments that have been labeled "ominous." Perhaps the most notable was the "civil-military union" thing. But for the most part, these ominous omens have in fact been leaders flapping their traps.

There is a lot of flap trapping going on, which is pretty inexcusable for people in the highest political positions of a country. It does mean, though, that their current statements must be measured by their past flapping. I have a hard time seeing an autogolpe happening in Venezuela. The election made clear that the domestic response would be violent, and the military has little appetite for such a scenario. I doubt a shadow congress will matter, even if it actually ever exists, but transferring power to it would be an autogolpe.

No elected official should make such anti-democratic statements. Oddly enough, though, they may well be a sign of weakness rather than true threat. Maduro is not having an easy time garnering forces to effectively block the opposition, so what he has left are incessant threats, veiled or otherwise.

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Self-Loathing in Academia

Perhaps because they're trained to be critical, academics seem to love criticizing themselves and their profession. We're even at a point where someone who left academia but coaches Ph.D.s to get into academia asks whether academia is "good" and defends herself from those who say it's odd to coach people to enter a profession you left and don't think is good. 

So I like this post by Martin Kich at The Academe Blog, responding to a piece in Salon that argued academia turns people into assholes and it's better to wait tables.

All of us bore the crap out of people by talking about our jobs, and because academics are more articulate than many other people, they are particularly adept at boring the crap out of people in this way.

Exactly. One of the reasons there is a firehose of self-criticism and even self-loathing (e.g. "I chose a profession that made me into an asshole!!") is that we are used to writing arguments, much more so than most other professions. We like doing that. But too often we don't do it very well.

Academia can seem like a weird profession, and most people not involved in it have very little idea of what we do all day. But it is still just a profession, and all professions have their problems. I don't think academia has more--funding crises and corporate management are not exclusive to academia, for example--but we just write about it endlessly.

It's good to be self-critical, so we should be making sure we don't turn into assholes. The problem is that despite our analytical skills, we're too quick to take anecdotes and make them into generalizations about the entire profession. My department is actually full of nice people who hang out together and talk about non-academic things. I could write an article saying academia is full of nice people, and of course I'd be wrong. My truth is not everyone's truth, and vice versa.

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Melillo's Strangers on Familiar Soil

I read Edward Dallam Melillo's book Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection (2015) to review for Journal of Interdisciplinary History. It's a history of bilateral relations, and he paints a really interesting picture of how much California and Chile have influenced each other, but also how much of that influence doesn't get acknowledged. So, for example, the building of San Francisco during the Gold Rush had a lot to do with Chilean labor and agriculture, but few are aware of that.

That relationship is not always positive. A snippet from the review:

Chileans (like other foreigners, especially Mexicans) were also harassed, attacked, hanged, and lynched, all in the name of civilization. Indeed, the tone of the book tends toward the negative, where Chile gets the short end of the transnational stick. Californians brought wine knowledge and Monterey pines to Chile, for example, but that had all sorts of negative social and environmental repercussions. Californian academics in the 1960s celebrated scientific exchanges that took more than they gave (though, to be fair, they called for their termination after the 1973 coup). As Melillo notes, “Chile’s landscapes underwent profound transformations to supply the ingredients for California’s increasingly ravenous metabolic cycles” (200). 

It would be interested to do an analysis of the post-dictatorship era. How much is that ravenous appetite still going?

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Ending the Cuban Adjustment Act

The New York Times has an editorial calling for the end of the Cuban Adjustment Act.

This system has been a boon for human smugglers in Latin America and created burdens for countries from Ecuador to Mexico through which they move. It has also been used by Cuba as a pretext to impose strict controls on its people and prevented the American government from conducting the type of thorough security vetting that all other immigrants receive.

I was once asked by a reporter whether I thought ISIS could exploint Cuban
immigrants, and my answer was no. I don't see the security issue as critical, though from a strategic perspecitve it clearly could be used very effectively to gain some votes.

More importantly, the current environment creates a strong incentive for Cubans to come now, anticipating the policy will end. The human smuggling and dangerous crossings will continue. The Band-Aid should just be pulled off quickly, and Cubans treated like other migrants.

I've made this argument for years, and so far the Obama administration isn't listening. The State Department just released this statement:

One topic of particular interest this past year was immigration. U.S. policy, which has not changed, emphasizes the safe, legal, and orderly migration of Cubans to the United States. Both the U.S. and Cuban governments are concerned by the efforts of human traffickers to exploit the fears of some Cubans and to encourage a mass exodus to the United States. We are in regular discussions with Havana about how to prevent smuggling organizations from achieving their illicit aims.

Riiiiiiiiighhhhttt. Our "wet foot, dry foot" policy is the opposite of safe, legal, and orderly. It's a big fat mess and was made on the run 20 years ago. Of course, it's important for the administration to say it's a great policy right up until the moment that it gets changed. I get that.

So we're stuck for the moment, and that isn't good for anyone.

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Imaginary Moderate Rebels

From yesterday's Democratic candidate debate:

Mrs. Clinton all but accused her rivals of naïveté. “I think it’s fair to say Assad has killed, by last count, about 250,000 Syrians,” she said, adding that she had wanted to arm the moderate Syrian opposition years ago to avoid the creation of a dangerous power vacuum. “I wish it could be either-or,” she said.

This is a pet peeve of mine. When there is a civil war, U.S. policy makers seem to always convince themselves there is a third option between regime and radical opponents. We did so in Cuba in the late 1950s and again in Nicaragua in the 1970s. It is a way to signal to your domestic supporters that you oppose a dictator while assuring your opponents that you won't let bad guys take over. This middle ground is pretty much imaginary.

Hillary Clinton is basically saying she clung to the mirage for a long time and now just wants regime change. It's not good policy but at least it's more honest.

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Non-State Actors in U.S.-Latin American Relations

Frank Mora and Brian Fonseca have an interesting article in Prism, a security studies journal connected to the National Defense University. Their main argument is that we need to look more at non-state interactions to really understand U.S.-Latin American relations.

The “real action” or impact is occurring below the state at other levels of interaction where non-state actors and individuals, such as universities, small to large companies, churches, transnational civil society organizations, media, etc. interact with their counterparts throughout the hemisphere in an organic way giving texture and meaning to U.S.-LAC relations. 

I agree with this, and have argued before that the "grand strategy" approach, which is tied to the "we're ignoring Latin America" thing, is wrongheaded.

I'd like to think about how to measure this because it is ripe for more study. It's harder than simply analyzing aid, trade, treaties, pacts, etc. It's really about measuring soft power.

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Sweaty on Immigration

I like this graphic from The New York Times about how Republican candidates insult each other's stances on immigration.

This is of course going to matter later once the party determines their candidate and has to appeal to a broader swath of voters. But for now we'll be seeing more over-the-top insults.

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More Unaccompanied Children Arriving

A new influx of unaccompanied children are arriving, once again from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

In October and November, more than 10,500 children crossed the U.S.-Mexico border by themselves, the vast majority from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to U.S. government data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank. That’s a 106 percent increase over the same period year, reflecting a steady increase that began in March.

In the past two years there has been quite a bit of debate about causation, which remain mostly unanswered because you can't explain variation (changes in the numbers) with a constant (violence and insecurity).

One possibility the article suggests is how the smuggling of unaccompanied children has become a booming illegal business. Some of the increase could there be attributed to more active recruitment by human smugglers making promises.

You may have noticed that in the past two years we've seen pretty minimal response rather than reactive. There is this massive Central America aid bill floating around but it's not even always clear how it'll get to the heart of this particular matter. Because of the Paris and San Bernadino attacks, unlike in the past this issue will likely get less attention than it did before.

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Pragmatic Shift in Latin America

Eric Farnsworth has a very nice piece at the Huffington Post on Latin America's "pragmatic turn." The current mood is about rejecting what hasn't worked, which is not the same as shifting to the right. Money quote:

They are not looking for alternatives to populist governance due to a sudden conversion to Friedrich Hayek.

This is like my recent post on binary thinking about Latin America. It's not a shift from left to right. It's a shift away from incumbents. The more this is recognized, the better.

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Unemployment in Latin America

The International Labour Organization has a new report out on unemployment in Latin America. The news isn't pretty.

In 2015, the unemployment rate in Latin America and the Caribbean increased for the first time in five years to 6.7 per cent, causing at least 1.7 million people to join the ranks of the unemployed, according to the ILO's annual report released today, in which the impact of the slowdown on economic growth in the labour market is recorded. 

The 2015 Labour Overview of Latin America and the Caribbean warned of a "turnaround" in the employment indicators, with a deterioration in the employment situation of women and youth, and indications of rising informality through "increased generation of lower quality jobs."

Here are the numbers by country.

Note that, like with so many things, ideology doesn't matter. Countries with center-right or left governments alike have better (Ecuador and Mexico) or worse (Colombia and Brazil).

It's interesting that for all the legitimate concerns about economic slowdown, current unemployment numbers are still better now in most countries than they were in 2005.

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Transnational Dreams of Chavez and Lula

Chris Sabatini has an article in Foreign Policy analyzing the problems in Venezuela and Brazil, and how they eroded the dreams their governments had of transnational influence. Unfortunately, the title is really misleading--the article has nothing to do with the "sad" death (or any other kind of death) of the entire Latin American left.

One point I would make is that it's not just economic crisis that hit the dreams of Hugo Chavez and Lula. It's also that their successors simply didn't share the dream. Neither Maduro nor Rousseff had anywhere near the same kind of transnational ambitions, in part because they had to deal with problems at home, but in part because they're just different people.

Anyway, go check it out. He takes some pokes.

At the same time, with oil prices surging to $100 a barrel, Chávez became both the champion of the extreme anti-globalization left and the bête noir of the U.S. right. Seemingly respectable economists like Mark Weisbrot and members of the Hollywood glitterati, like Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, and Sean Penn, embraced his populist petro-patronage, under which the government established subsidized food banks and pumped up state employment as a viable economic and political alternative to the United States and the economic orthodoxy of Washington Consensus reforms of the 1990s. 

The left’s embrace of Chávez was, in part, a reflection of its mutual disregard for the George W. Bush administration and, in part, a genuine-but-misguided belief that Chávez’s self-proclaimed Bolivarian revolution was sustainable. This pro-Chavista solidarity required that one ignore his silence on progressive issues like the environment and LGBT rights, and the very real economic and institutional damage he was doing to his country by making it even more dependent on oil exports, inflating its currency, politicizing the military, and packing the judicial system with partisan allies.

So, food for thought.

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Binary Thinking About Latin America

The presidential election in Argentina and legislative elections in Venezuela have unleashed a torrent of low-quality analysis, the likes of which we haven't seen in years (maybe not since the 2009 Honduran coup). Front and center is the persistence of binary thinking. I used to criticize the Bush administration for its insistence on Cold War/GWOT binary perceptions of good guy/bad guy and capitalist/communist, but it is apparently deeply embedded universally.

Thus, we have left/right, which is painfully inadequate for understanding what's going on in Latin America. But we also have populist/non-populist; pro-U.S./anti-U.S, and others.

And this is so very deeply embedded, even across the ideological spectrum. So we even have self-proclaimed socialists analyzing the elections, and coming up with yet another: left/pseudo-left.

Pseudo-left organization, both in Latin America and internationally, promoted Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution” as some new road to socialism. These political elements, whose politics reflect the interests of more privileged layers of the middle class, were attracted to chavismo precisely because it represented not an independent movement of the working class from below, but rather a bourgeois movement that subordinated the workers to a charismatic “comandante,” whose policies were directed at mediating the explosive class struggle in Venezuela.

From a psychological perspective, it's interesting that everybody seems to buy into the binary way of thinking. People like heuristics. It represents an easy shortcut people can use that makes complicated situations appear simple and perhaps therefore also easier to solve.

The problem, of course, is that it's all bullshit. If forced to apply a binary category to these elections, the only one that really works is incumbent/challenger. But the prevailing categories are all rooted in ideology, which of course represents another simplistic shortcut people use to understand the crazy and complex world around them.

In short, ideological binary thinking pretty much gums up the works. Using it makes you understand the situation less and greatly increases the chances that you will not accurately assess it (e.g. why we saw the electoral outcomes in Argentina and Venezuela). If applied by the winners themselves, it will means screwing up by overestimating how ideological the votes were.

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The Diversity of Chavismo

I highly recommend Hugo Pérez Hernáiz's roundup of the Chavista reaction to the Venezuelan elections. The key point: diversity.

Government and pro-government forces have been reacting to Sunday’s adverse elections results. Comments have ranged from the self-critical to the blaming of an “economic war” waged by the opposition.

It is tempting and easy to portray Chavismo as a bloc.This usually involves taking quotes from Nicolás Maduro and/or Diosdado Cabello, both of whom are relentlessly hyperbolic, and attributing that to their constituents. But that isn't even close to accurate.

That fact is also important for understanding why Maduro would choose not to take the extreme measures his opponents feared he might, and which he indirectly alluded to himself. Knowing the diversity within his own loose coalition, he knows such measures would not receive universal acclaim. Perhaps not even majority support.

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U.S. Congressional Reaction to Venezuela Elections

I'm quoted in this story about the reaction in the U.S. Congress to the Venezuelan elections. The regular suspects want to punish Venezuela more  even though Nicolás Maduro did what they wanted, which was to hold free elections and respect the results.

“I call on the administration to denounce the environment leading up to the elections and impose sanctions on those individuals that caused voting irregularities on election day, a dangerous atmosphere for opposition political parties and a lopsided playing field,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/latin-america/article48509125.html#storylink=cpy

This doesn't make any sense. Even Mauricio Macri has backed off his calls to suspend Venezuela from Mercosur. Any sanctions or other punishments isolate the U.S. and would make us look foolish. Instead of a carrot and a stick, it's just a stick and a bigger stick. We already saw how well that worked for 50+ years with Cuba.

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6D Aftermath in Venezuela

The opposition won in yesterday's legislative elections in Venezuela. Current totals are 99 seats vs. 49 for the PSUV, with 22 still not reported. How those 22 shake out will be important because they add up to a supermajority. No analysis will be very useful until we know those numbers.

This is a huge deal, but a normal one. Venezuela will undergo the same pains that other Latin American countries have experienced when the left and right stop dominating the political system. This is vertical accountability and the incumbent regime took an electoral beating. That does not mean the "end" of Chavismo. So far the government's response is measured, which bodes well, but it's going to be a tough road ahead.

One important takeaway, and one the New York Times noted very well, is that Venezuelans were not really voting for the opposition. Many didn't even know--or care--the name of the person they were voting for. The biggest electoral mistake opposition leaders can make is to assume they have a mandate for sweeping change. This isn't #LaSalida.

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What To Watch In The Venezuelan Elections

I wrote at Latin America Goes Global on what to watch for in the Venezuelan elections. If you were really interested, you could read it in tandem with yesterday's post on Venezuelan malapportionment. Anyway, go check out Latin America Goes Global.

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Rejecting the Word Reject in Political Science

Jeffrey Isaac, editor of Perspectives on Politics, has a thoughtful post in Duck of Minerva about not using the word "rejection."

The purpose of decision letters is not to say “yes” or “no.” It is to communicate honestly with every author in a way that is substantive and scholarly, and also collegial, constructive, and encouraging—which I take to be important scholarly values. And by communicating in such a way, we are fostering an intellectual community based on intellectual seriousness and mutual respect.

I'm undecided on this. Being polite and collegial is important, and so I can see how "decline" could be viewed as much more collegial than "reject." At The Latin Americanist we do use the "decline for publication." It would be interesting to go through a list of journals and catalog what language they use.

At the same time, I wonder how much this changes the relationship between editor and author. In other words, I am not sure how transformative it is for that relationship or for the discipline. Regardless of what you say, the person's paper will not get published in that journal, and they must now sort through discussions of why reviewers felt that way. Does "decline" make that an easier process?

I've submitted plenty of articles, and had plenty rejected/declined. Frankly, I don't remember much about the language of any of them. For fun and self-flagellation, I went back over a few in recent years. I see "decided not to accept." Another actually never said "decline" or "reject" but simply explained, finishing with "this is not a great fit." Another was "I am sorry to inform you that your manuscript will not be published." I tend to submit to interdisciplinary journals so I am not sure if straight political science journals are different.

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Venezuelan Malapportionment and 6D

At The Monkey Cage, John Carey argues that not believing in the Venezuelan government's conspiracy theories mean a major win for the opposition. He, Brandon Nyhan, and Thomas Zeitzoff even conducted a nationwide survey in Venezuela.

Looking ahead to Sunday, these survey results suggest that a clean election (if the government allows it) should deliver a massive setback to the PSUV. The numbers look bad for chavismo in terms of outright loyalists, and the opinions that underlie political identity suggest that far more ni-nis should break toward the opposition than the PSUV.

Interesting, though one big question is where these opinions break down. It's very likely the opposition will win a majority, but because of malapportionment the size of that majority (i.e. "massive setback") depends in large part on the opposition's ability to win over rural voters. Their case would be stronger if the mapped it, showing how the perceptions of conspiracy theories were tied to seats.

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Venezuelan Election Quote

I'm quoted in this story on the Venezuelan elections. My bit focuses on the fact that the opposition has not been good at admitting that some of the Chavista reforms are popular and--gasp--maybe even good. Maduro is unpopular and there are all kinds of problems in the country, but yet that does not mean voter support necessarily shifts to the opposition. People may not like Maduro but they are not big fans of the opposition either.

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Quantitative Social Science Latin America position

I am very excited about a new position we just got, and I am chair of the search committee. Please take a look and apply! At the very least, please let others know about it. I am happy to talk to anyone who has any questions.

This position is a tenure-track Assistant Professor who studies Latin America in any social science discipline. A successful candidate must use quantitative methodology. We seek a scholar who will contribute to the interdisciplinary Latin American Studies program at both the undergraduate and graduate (M.A.) levels. The tenure home will be in a disciplinary department: Africana Studies, Anthropology, Communication Studies, Criminal Justice & Criminology, Geography & Earth Sciences, Political Science & Public Administration, or Sociology. Required qualifications are: 1) a Ph.D. in any social science discipline; 2) expertise in quantitative methods; and 3) a commitment to excellence in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

The Latin American Studies program offers an M.A., B.A., and a minor. It has 14 core faculty members over eight departments and two colleges. The successful candidate will assume a 2-2 teaching load, two of which will be graduate and/or undergraduate courses in Latin American Studies.  The successful candidate will normally have the opportunity to develop new courses which support Latin American programming. 

Review of applications will begin January 4, 2016 and will continue until the position is filled. Applications must be submitted electronically to https://jobs.uncc.edu. Please attach the following documents with your electronic application: (1) letter of application outlining your scholarly interests and agenda, including teaching experience, related to the qualifications outlined above; (2) curriculum vitae; (3) a copy of graduate transcript; (4) one sample of professional writing; and (5) the names and contact information for three references.

Questions may be directed to Professor Gregory Weeks, LTAM Search Committee Chair, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Fretwell 430, Charlotte, NC 28223 or gbweeks@uncc.edu.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a doctoral, research intensive university located in one of the country’s fastest growing metropolitan areas on an expanding, modern campus. One of sixteen campuses in one of the oldest public university systems in the United Sates, UNC Charlotte offers over 27,000 culturally diverse students a wide range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs.  The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences houses twenty departments in the humanities, social and behavioral sciences, physical sciences, and military sciences, as well as eight research centers and institutes and thirteen interdisciplinary programs. 

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte is an AA/EOE and an ADVANCE Institution that strives to create an academic climate in which the dignity of all individuals is respected and maintained. It values diversity that includes, but is not limited to ability/disability, age, culture, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. Applicants will be subject to a criminal background check.  

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Regional Response to Elections

Andreas Feldmann, Federico Merke, and Oliver Stuenkel have an article worth reading about the silence of Latin American governments with regard to the Venezuelan elections.

The typical way of understanding this is a "history of non-intervention" argument. Primarily because of the U.S. proclivity for widespread intervention, Latin American governments have responded by going far in the opposite direction. But the authors suggest that individual leaders matter. Lula was effective for a while, but then later wasn't. They also mention the "will" of individuals.

I think this would be an excellent research topic. How heavy is the weight of history, or is it just a convenient explanation? If we want to emphasize individuals, how should we measure that?  What are the structural factors that contribute to those individual decisions? Most importantly, we should look for domestic considerations that might show us patterns about when presidents/administrations are more or less likely to become vocal about elections in other countries. Further, we would also need to explain timing--at what point do concerns become so great that they speak out.

In short, I don't think the "history of non-intervention" is satisfactory, and this article is at least getting at different ways of thinking about. Latin American governments do push their counterparts sometimes. We just don't have a good handle on when and why.

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Latin America on the Campaign Trail

Hillary Clinton made some comments at the Atlantic Council, and the Republican Party lashed back.

"I believe firmly that no region in the world, no region, is more important to our long-term prosperity and security than Latin America," Clinton said to applause. 

Not forgetting that she's on the campaign trail, Clinton used the forum to take a jab at some of her GOP rivals regarding Latin American and Caribbean issues. 

"I know there are Americans who only think of Latin America as a land of crime and coups. They're very out of date," she said. 

"They want to return to a failed policy on Cuba and cut our ties instead of strengthening them. They talk about deportation and walls, instead of recognizing that America's diversity is our greatest strength and supporting meaningful reform that will keep families together, benefits all of us," she said. 

The Republican Party jabbed back: "As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored our allies in Latin America, leaving the region vulnerable to brutal dictators, violence, and oppression. Hillary Clinton's actions, or lack thereof, speak louder than words," party spokeswoman Ruth Guerra said in a statement.

It's hard to see how the region is vulnerable to brutal dictators, or what allies we ignored. If anything, the statement almost literally proves Clinton is right. This is likely the sort of thing we'll keep hearing when Latin America--especially Cuba--is mentioned. In this particular quote the Republican Party seems to be describing Latin America as a nasty cesspool, which is the fault of the Democratic Party to boot. The "land of crime and coups."

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