Contemporary Politics Of Latin America

The PRI is back: A lot of familiarity, a lot less contempt

2011-07-06T23:46:00.003-04:00

06/07/2011

There were independence day celebrations and debates over whether Kate Middleton’s sleeveless crepe dress was by Joseph or Erdem, so if a few Mexican gubernatorial elections flew under your radar last weekend—it’s understandable. But even for those with a passing interest, last Sunday’s results in the states of Coahuila, Nayarit, and Mexico (D.F.) have done a lot to clarify the hitherto murky race to Los Pinos.

Up until the year 2000, calling the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world a one-party state was nothing short of completely accurate. No, unlike the caudillos who had run and were running other Latin American countries—Stroessner, Pinochet, Castro, to name a few—there wasn’t one figure who dominated Mexican politics. There was a structure. And that structure, which eventually came to be known as the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, enjoyed an uninterrupted 70 year dominance that lasted until that Vicente Fox victory.

Six years later, when Felipe Calderón won again for PAN (Partido Acción Nacional), it seemed as if the once invincible natural governing party had surrendered its role.

Lately, though, the tables are turning again.

Calderón’s fight fire with fire approach to the drug cartels has resulted in a few victories, but security is still the most pressing item on his agenda, and the war—as evidenced by the absurdly high murder rate—is certainly being lost.

That, many have thought, might just be the extra boost Mexico’s third party the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) has been longing for.

In 2006, the brashly leftish populist stylings of their leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, got them as close as ever to the presidency; Obrador even went as far as to claim he actually won.

As for the PRI, their candidate—Roberto Madrazo—finished a distant third.

But again, that was then, and this now, and as political vicissitudes brought the PRI back into the fold, the PRD made a peculiar decision.

Instead of allowing the PRI to win gubernatorial elections that polls showed them leading, they joined forces with their ideological opposites in PAN and decided that, regardless of those differences, anyone who wasn’t PRI was good enough.

Screw their unique visions for those states.

Whoever was leading the polls as of a certain date got to run with it—and they did.

The strategy worked—at least initially.

Though last summer’s elections showed the beginning of a resurgent PRI, the PAN-PRD alliance held on in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa.

Gustavo Madero, the PRD president, was defiant:

“2012 will be a completely different construction, a different agenda,” he said.

“At the local level, there are still states that need a shift in the balance of power, and that’s where alliances are fostered. It’s not opportunism, but rather democracy that’s been achieved in Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa.”

If the election Mexico City is any indication, though, that strategy has ceased to be an option. Eruviel Ávila won with 64% of the vote on Sunday, and the man he's replacing, Enrique Peña Nieto, will leave office as the clear frontrunner for the presidency.

Coahuila and Nayarit were just the icing on the cake.

The PRI, once a giant, appears poised to become a giant again. And an opposition that sacrificed their respective politics for short term gains is paying the price.

Rudy goes to Lima

2011-05-19T00:39:00.004-04:00

19/05/2011

By now it’s a pretty tired narrative: Sherriff Giuliani rolls into town and uses the strong arm of the law to straighten out all that’s gone crooked. He did it in New York. Then he took the road show to Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. And now he’s in Lima advising Keiko Fujimori, suddenly the frontrunner in the Peruvian presidential election run-off.

The timing couldn’t be better for the aspirant. Because though the former New York mayor is there in a “consulting” role, it’d take a healthy amount of audacity to deny his presence is anything but an endorsement. And that’s pretty important when your father’s legacy strikes fear in the hearts of the most moderate libertarians.

But that really depends on whom you talk to, because for Peruvians, Alberto Fujimori is either the man who saved the country from the terrorists or a sociopath whose would-be public safety agenda did a poor job of concealing his fangs.

Yes, Giuliani has shown where he stands.

You needn’t look further than the photos of him and Keiko smiling together… like some crime-fighting super couple.

Of course some will argue it’s just business; it doesn’t mean Rudy condones El Chino’s authoritarian regime, because even Keiko has said she has no plans to commute her father’s sentence or pardon him.

It’s just that she has this habit of mollifying any criticism with praise for his economic policies…

So is it really that much of stretch to conceive of her reneging on her word? To dare to suggest that the apple might not have fallen too far from the tree—that the daughter he once made First Lady at the age of 19 might show some gratitude?

Because the Shining Path and Túpac Amaru no longer terrorize the country—and that’s all that matters, right?

Kind of like how it’s safe to hang around Times Square these days…

But every city is different.

“Before making recommendations, it’s necessary to meet the city’s people, because there’s no single method that can serve all cities,” he said in Lima.

Interesting.

It makes you wonder if they’ve discussed that clever alternate theory about Rudy’s successful war on crime in New York—the one that Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner suggested back in their fun little 2005 book Freakanomics: Maybe it wasn’t the strong arm of the law that cleaned up the Big Apple. Maybe it was legal access to abortion.

Since she stated her position on that during the first leg of the campaign back in January (“I’m not in favor of legalizing abortion, I’m a woman, the mother of a family."), she probably wouldn’t take too kindly to Mr. Giuliani suddenly reconsidering his success.

So for the “violent crime, including carjacking, assault, sexual assault, and armed robbery” that—if you need a reliable source—the American State Department describes as “common in Lima”—you can expect a more conventional, piecemeal approach.

Reducing the crime rate doesn’t happen “in two or three months” Giuliani told the Peruvian media—it took years in New York.

Now show him where the squeegee kids are, Keiko.

Another presidential kick at the illegal immigration can

2011-05-13T14:13:00.014-04:00

13/05/2011

Still basking in the approval of his presidential decision to take out the most badass jihadist of them all, President Obama got his groove back and used that political capital to again ruffle some Republican feathers on illegal immigration.

Er, kind of.

Delivering his speech this week in El Paso, Texas—for obvious reasons—the President spoke euphemistically of the estimated 11 million “undocumented immigrants” who are “just trying to earn a living and provide for their families”.

Then he joked about what’s been done to appease the nativists, “Now they're going to say we need to quadruple the Border Patrol. Or they'll want a higher fence. Maybe they'll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They'll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That's politics.”

So what’s his solution, his panacea?

Well, first and foremost he’s a politician who needs to get reelected, so anything truly innovative had to be somewhat counterbalanced by big, juicy carrots like promises to maintain border security and continue expelling “undocumented criminals”.

The latter he boasted having done—thus far— to the tune of 70%—which, while a-ok for U.S.A., is much less so for the poor resource-starved Latin American countries required to welcome those delinquents back home.

But again, as the President said, “That’s politics.” And in order to really fix “the broken immigration system,” the fat kid can’t get on the policy teeter-totter till the skinny one finds a friend. They usually call this ‘compromise’; I call it confusing.

Especially the third pillar of Obama’s proposed “reform”:

“Third, those who are here illegally, they have a responsibility as well. So they broke the law, and that means they've got to pay their taxes, they've got to pay a fine, they've got to learn English. And they've got to undergo background checks and a lengthy process before they get in line for legalization. That's not too much to ask.”

So how will this work for José the Guatemalan dishwasher?

He’s gruelingly worked various menial jobs over the course of his undocumented decade chez Uncle Sam, but suddenly he’s given the gift of “reform”…

¡Qué bien! He thinks.

Or does he?

Ok, let’s think about what the president is saying…

José broke the law and has to pay taxes.

Does that mean retroactively?

All ten years?

How would the IRS go about determining what he owes?

Anyway, whenever that’s sorted out—he has to pay a fine.

Well, what kind of fine?

How much?

You remember he came to the United States because there was no work at home, to make a measly wage and scrape by on the money he didn’t remit.

Can he afford this reform?

Then he has to go learn English. But wait—if he’s made it this far without speaking any—isn’t that just a little bit ingenuous on his part?

The icing on the cake, though, is that once he’s complied with all those requirements, he has to undergo a background check and a “lengthy process” before he gets in line for legalization.

A background check? By the letter of the law, isn’t he a criminal?

And as far as waiting in line for this “lengthy process” with 10,999,999 others: he didn't or couldn't wait the first time, so why would he wait now?

Evo the Unpopular

2011-04-20T10:56:00.006-04:00

20/04/2011

Alexander the Great; Ivan the Terrible; William the Conqueror; it’s easy enough to pigeonhole historical leaders with flattering and unflattering sobriquets (nicknames if you feel like being less pretentious…or French), but it gets a little harder with modern day heads of state.

To suggest something flattering would sound like a pathetic attempt on the part of the obsequious party faithful; to suggest something unflattering would sound like a pathetic attempt on the part of the opposition.

Nonetheless, here’s a contemporary suggestion: Evo the Unpopular...

Things haven’t been going too well for the Bolivian President lately.

In a country where protests are the norm, and where the President rose to power after leading protests against the nationalization of the country’s resources, setting the record for “expressions of discontent” during his presidency has to be a perverse irony.

But that’s the dubious distinction the Bolivian NGO CERES (the Cochabama Centre for Economic and Social Reality) bestowed on Morales last week with the release of their study on protests in the country over the last 41 years.

The study counted 811 “expressions of discontent” in 2010, which they defined as “strikes, street protests, road closures, and prison rebellions.”

That makes for about 67 a month. And it’s only getting worse—according to the study, anyway.

There have been 240 conflicts registered so far in 2011—up from 207 for the same period in 2010.

But…

There was an agreement reached yesterday between Morales’ MAS (Movement Towards Socialism) government and the COB (the Bolivian Workers Center)—the biggest trade union in the country.

The government is heralding it as a MASSIVE breakthrough.

But is it?

The agreement, which the Communications Minister called the result of massive “efforts and sacrifices”, is little more than a 1% salary increase for teachers and healthcare workers. And though that’s 1% on top of the 10% raise they got in April, it’s still far below the 15% for which the COB was asking.

Ok, let’s be reasonable—a 15% raise? Who asks for a 15% raise?

Well, people living with 11% inflation (18% when it comes to basic foodstuffs).

The poorest and most malnourished population in South America isn’t looking for luxuries; their salaries just aren’t paying them enough to feed themselves.

The proximate cause of this particular inflationary crisis was a government decision in December to end gas and diesel subsidies. The gasolinazo, as it was known, led to price increases of 80%.

Apparently MAS didn’t see the food cost corollary...

But while in February the vice-president confessed to making mistakes and asked for forgiveness, yesterday the Communications Minister was much less conciliatory.

He accused certain leaders of using the protests as a pretext.

They’re using the conflict to “damage and affect the process of change, democracy, and the government,” he said.

Morales went further and said the protests were a precursor to a coup d’état.

Was it just fear mongering?

I thought Morales’ days were numbered last August when the MAS governor in Potosí went on a hunger strike with his fellow Potosians over a lack of investment in the department. But that ignored the context in which the protest was occurring, because with the perspective the CERES study provides, it was nothing more than a blip—a minor disruption amongst hundreds of others.

This time it’s on a national scale, though. And when your people can’t afford to eat, the stakes are a little higher.

The other Kuczynski

2011-03-30T22:44:00.002-04:00

30/03/2011

Ok, so Kaczynski and Kuczynski aren’t exactly the same—kind of like Smith and Smyth—but you can’t deny that a headline reading 'Kuczynski could be the next President of Peru' wouldn’t get your attention. Because when you say it quickly, it sounds like the Unabomber got out of prison and somehow finagled his way into the Peruvian Presidential election…right?

Or maybe that’s just because I couldn’t figure out how to spell my last name till I was ten…

Regardless, up until recently I thought the only candidates who stood a chance of winning the Peruvian presidency were former President Alejandro Toledo, sometimes Chávez pal—Ollanta Humala, and Keiko Fujimori—the daughter of the imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

Granted Kuczynski is sitting fourth, but he’s been quickly rising in the polls.

The most recent ones have Humala leading at 22%, but the Lima stock exchange crashed with that news, which has to mean he and Hugo are a little too chummy for most.

Toledo and Fujimori are both hovering around 20 and 21%, with Kucz (my nickname) or PPK (everyone else’s) coming in at 16%.

Two months ago Kucz was sitting at 5%, and as The Economist recently reminded—Alberto Fujimori polled at 5% a few weeks before the 1990 election.

So, if Americans can elect a man whose name is precariously close to Osama, why can’t Peruvians elect a man whose name is precariously close to that of an American Thoreau-reading serial killer?

Well, for one thing—maybe he and Ted might have a little too much in common for the Peruvian electorate?

No, I’m not implying Pedro Pablo is a closet serial killer; but he does hold an advanced degree from an American university—and he is… American.

Peruvians have already seen what a President with dual nationalities can do, so he’s been forced to do something about the latter: he’s announced he’s renouncing his American citizenship. And even though Toledo—for whom he formerly served as finance minister— hasn’t stopped pressing him (“he’s said he started the process, so show us the documents.”)—I don’t think it hurts his chances.

And even the former—his European/American education, which was followed by work for the World Bank, the IMF, mining corporations and investment banks...well, Toledo has a PhD from Stanford and he—by his own public admission—has lived outside of the country for more than forty years.

True, Toledo looks more like the average Peruvian than Kuczynski, and has that irresistible rags-o-riches background that helped get him elected last time—but Kucz has his flute—and his Mexican!

Ok, maybe it isn’t the Andean pan flute—maybe it is of the well-bred Julliard variety—but at least he plays traditional Andean tunes that make you forget he’s Jean-Luc Godard’s cousin.

And then there’s Miguel Ángel Cornejo—his Mexican leadership guru who mitigates Kucz’s pedantry with these pearls of wisdom:

“When you get up—smile, it doesn’t cost you anything.”

“We’re all champions.”

To some—cheesy clichés, to others—positive electioneering—we’ll see come April 10.

Kaczynski-Kuczynski…tomato-tomato

From hero to opportunist: Mexico’s would-be police chief

2011-03-06T17:14:00.006-05:00

06/03/2011

It was a lofty moniker to bestow on a twenty-year-old. And as I fell hook, line and sinker for a narrative that had to be cooked up in Tinseltown, every rational bone in my body knew there couldn’t be a Hollywood ending.

Last October, the international media took to calling a young criminology student named Marisol Valles García, “the bravest woman in Mexico.” She took on the position of police chief in a little town called Práxedis G. Guerrero, about an hour away from Ciudad Juárez—one of the more violent places on the planet (there were 229 murders in February alone).

No hombre wanted anything to do with the traditionally male position.

It took a year for it to be filled after her predecessor’s head was left outside the police station—a warning to future intrepid applicants...

But now, according to the Chief Prosecutor in the state of Chihuahua—Jorge González Nicolás, García has crossed the border and is seeking asylum in the U.S.—the death threats from organized crime having apparently become intolerable.

Or at least one particular death threat…

On Friday the Prosecutor said García “received a threat and that justified her leaving for the United States.” Later an immigration lawyer in El Paso, Texas said she was looking into the asylum process for “personal reasons.”

No one with an ounce of sincerity could question the legitimacy of those threats; Hermila García, the thirty-eight-year-old female police chief of Meoqui—another small town in the Chihuahua province, was ambushed by hit men at the end of November. Then there was the kidnapping of Érika Gándara in late December. Gándara was literally the last police officer in the border town of Guadalupe; everyone else either resigned or went on extended sick leave.

Either of those two women might more deservedly be called “Mexico’s bravest woman”.

I say that because the cynic in me can’t help but ask: What could García have possibly thought she was getting into?

“Everybody is scared here; we’re all scared, but we’re going to trade that fear for security,” she declared after taking the job in October. The requisite photo-op showed her at her desk, working away, openly—though she did have two bodyguards.

She told the media she had no intention of going after the worst of the worst; she’d leave that to the Federal Police. She saw her role as preventative— organizing the town so its citizens wouldn’t succumb to the temptation of crime, drugs, and easy money.

At her swearing-in ceremony, the young mother also said she wanted her son to grow up in “a different community than the one we have today.”

Most—of course, thought she meant in Práxedis…

Her predecessor was decapitated...In all seriousness—what was she expecting? A few rotten eggs and a burning bag of dog….?

So now what happens?

There were supposedly 19 officers on the force when she took the job—nine of whom were women. Maybe one them will be the next step up?

Of course they’d have to accept a healthy dose of public skepticism and the end of magnanimous nicknames.

They’d have to accept there’d be a theory that—like their predecessor, they were just using the job to facilitate their passage north.

Reason for Honduras’ LGBT community to be gay

2011-02-25T12:23:00.003-05:00

25/02/2011

The Obama administration’s decision on Wednesday to end its constitutional defence of a federal law banning same-sex marriage may have caught some people off guard; for one thing, it never seemed to carve itself a niche in the public discourse in the way its chic policy cousin “Don’t ask don’t tell” did. And though I’m sure those who follow these things closely saw Congress’ repeal of the latter as natural segue, for a Canadian without a close ear on the pulse of Barack’s gay rights agenda—this was foreshadowed by a comment he made almost a month ago.

With the leader of the free world’s attention presumably focused on the revolutions besieging North Africa and the Middle East (there wasn’t even been time to address the unrest in Bolivia)—Honduras’ LGBT community?

From the President’s Press release on January 27, 2011:

“At home and around the world, LGBT persons continue to be subjected to unconscionable bullying, discrimination, and hate. In the weeks preceding David Kato’s murder in Uganda, five members of the LGBT community in Honduras were also murdered. It is essential that the Governments of Uganda and Honduras investigate these killings and hold the perpetrators accountable.”

I acknowledge he led with the David Kato murder, but any statement by the President about LGBT rights in a Central American country had to presage a large domestic policy announcement...

So what exactly has been going on in Honduras? What got the President’s attention?

He mentioned five murders in the weeks preceding Kato’s murder. That’d be 5 out of 34 murders in the last 18 months—more than double the number recorded in the five years previous.

The most horrific of these five murders was that of “Lady Oscar”.

Óscar Martínez, a 45-year-old gay transvestite was stabbed, tied to a chair, and burned alive three days before Christmas.

Three weeks before his murder, he reported an assault and actually indentified three of his attackers.

That proved to be a costly decision. The day of the crime, witnesses saw two men chasing him.

No one did anything to help.

In a country where only one in twenty murders is solved, the murder of an LGBT Honduran is rarely ever investigated.

Indyra Mendoza, a coordinator with a gay rights group based in Tegucigalpa, described the situation as follows:

“On the street—people insult you, the police hit you. I have trans friends who are shot right in the street and they won’t even remove the body because they say they have aids.”

The government of Porfirio Lobo is taking symbolic steps forward. In November they established a Ministry of Justice and Human Rights that’s been assigned the task of investigating these unsolved murders.

But I doubt they’ll come up with much.

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in a poor region, and the Lobo government is still primarily concerned with both gaining recognition of the post-Zelaya government from those countries still holding out, and re-admittance into the Organization of American States.

Nonetheless, there’s certainly some solace for Honduras’ LGBT community in knowing Uncle Sam is keeping an eye on the situation.

The man who tried to bring the internet to Cuba’s Jews

2011-02-15T23:20:00.002-05:00

15/02/2011

While not necessarily timely, there are some stories that—even tardy—deserve a belated comment or two.

I think Alan Gross is one.

Gross—depending on your point of view and your access to the case details, was either unjustly detained in 2009 for “providing satellite communications equipment and Internet access for Jewish groups in Cuba”, or logically arrested for espionage.

How many Jewish people are there in Cuba?

No. That’s not a rhetorical question. I actually don’t know. But I digress…

After spending—let me figure this out (December 2009 till now =?)…over a year in prison awaiting charges, last Friday he was formally charged with "acts against the independence and integrity" of the state—for which a conviction could lead to twenty years in prison.

But let’s let P.J. Crowley from the U.S. State Department explain:

"We deplore the Cuban government’s announcement that Cuban prosecutors intend to seek a 20 year sentence against Mr. Gross. As we have said many times before Mr. Gross is a dedicated international development worker who was in Cuba providing support to members of the Cuban Jewish community. He has been held without charges for more than a year, contrary to all international human rights obligations and commitments regarding justice and due process. He should be home with his family now."

Gross was denied habeas corpus in Cuba? Really?

And I thought that only happened in Guantanamo…

Who do the Cubans think this guy is? Omar Khadr?

I can assure you he looks nothing like him. See here: (http://www.daylife.com/topic/Alan_Gross)

Nor, to my imagination’s disappointment, can I picture him sipping après-subversion martinis in posh Havana lounges.

Gross was working for a USAID subcontractor called Development Alternatives, whose mission it is ”to make a lasting difference in the world by helping developing nations become more prosperous, fairer and more just, cleaner, safer, healthier, more stable, more efficient, and better governed.”

Got that? I know, a lot of commas, aren’t, there?

As reiterated by his family, that meant “working with Jewish groups to help them connect to the internet.”

And so my laziness won’t allow me to avoid my earlier question…

What is the Jewish population of Cuba?

Jewishcuba.org, a website “listed by the US Interests Section of the Department of State as a resource for information on Cuba”, has a link to an article by CNN’s Steve Kastenbaum.

In an article written in 2008, Steve stated the population was 1,500—down from an estimated 15,000 in the 40s and 50s; that’s 1,500 out of a total of 11,423,952—also as of 2008.

Not what you might call a HUGE segment of the population. But then again—even taking into account increased tolerance by the Cuban state, religion still isn’t kosher on the island. So that probably is an underestimate. Nonetheless, although I do in principle support what I think Gross was trying to accomplish, I’m both bothered and amazed.

I’m bothered that USAID would have such a parochial focus on a right of such fundamental importance. Nowhere in the First Amendment does it say Congress shall make no law abridging the Freedom of Speech of the Christian people. Why should it be any different aboard? Is a Jewish Cuban more deserving of that right than any other Cuban?

I’m amazed, even though I know probably shouldn’t be, by the audacity of the American government. They sent an employee to a country (and yes, even if he was a subcontractor, he was still representing the American government) whose government they’ve tried to both overthrow and repeatedly undermine; they then broke that country’s laws, as oppressive as they may be, and expected there not to be consequences?

Maybe Alan Gross is a patsy. But I don’t think so. He knew exactly what he was getting into. And as unacceptable as his treatment has been after one year, he’s now been assured consular representatives, his family, and American legal counsel will be permitted to participate in his trial.

I’m fairly certain there’s a Canadian who would quite willingly trade places.

The Argentine Monica Lewinsky?

2011-02-08T22:58:00.002-05:00

08/02/2011

The House can be White or the House can be Pink; the President can be American or the President can be Argentine. Because when it comes to a Presidential sex scandal, nobody’s picky.

Two days ago, the Argentine magazine Noticias published a confession from one Elizabeth Miriam Quiroga, stating that, while she did have sex with that man (former President Néstor Kirchner), the kid is not his daughter.

But to that she cheekily added: “I wish it were his! I wouldn’t have money problems today.”

That I’d never heard of Quiroga before this isn’t surprising, because until recently, apparently most Argentines hadn’t heard of her either.

Generally speaking, I’d think all but a select few would know the name of most world leaders’ secretaries, or interns for that matter.

That is until they become the focus of a certain investigation or investigations—posthumous or not— into what might be called behavior unbefitting a President.

Quiroga started working for President Kirchner back in the nineties, when he was Governor Kirchner of the southern province of Santa Cruz, so the length of their professional relationship probably threw off most of those who might have suspected hanky-panky.

But as Quiroga said, the secrecy didn’t prevent them from having “a strong relationship.” So strong and secret, in fact, that she ended up with a cushy job inside the Casa Rosada.

She was the Director of the Centre for Presidential Documentation.

As to what the hell that meant…I had no idea.

A little cursory research revealed the job description involved responding to letters and requests from all around the country. As such, she fancied herself some sort of reincarnation of Evita. At least she did until she was fired a month ago.

The order undoubtedly came from the widow-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Who could blame her?

Months after her husband’s death, the Noticias headline had Quiroga being called “the other widow”…

And so it would appear Néstor Kirchner wasn’t a saint; he was a politician in the mold of myriad philander-statesmen who have preceded him. For the Argentine cuckquean, some solace might be found in acknowledging things could be worse—she could be married to Fernando Lugo; her Paraguayan counterpart not only had multiple lovers, but had them while he was a Bishop.

Many wonder how the Argentine public will react.

As it stands, even if she was, as she says, “thrown out like a dog”—no one seems to be crying for ‘Evita’ Quiroga. Though maybe they’re just saving their pity for when her first line of handbags comes out…

As for the widow-President, who first loses her husband, finds out courtesy of Wikileaks that the American government thinks she’s crazy, then is forced to deal with the world knowing her dead husband had a lengthy affair—well, let’s just say her opponents are wondering when the moratorium on nasty politicking can resume.

Because, of course, there’s still a Presidential election next October; she's still expected to run; and there’s no fun to be had with clean campaigns.

Searching for Brandon Fisher

2011-02-01T22:47:00.002-05:00

01/02/2011

It was a week ago tonight that President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address and introduced most of the world to a man named Brandon Fisher. It was a charming story—just a small town boy...who started a little company in Berlin, Pennsylvania...that saved the thirty-three Chilean miners buried last summer in Copiapó, Chile.

As the President put it, “Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile.”

“Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000 foot hole into the ground, working three or four days at a time with no sleep. Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued. But because he didn’t want all of the attention, Brandon wasn’t there when the miners emerged. He had already gone home, back to work on his next project.”

Aw shucks, little old humble Brandon saved the day and just left. No need for a pat on the back.

Except it didn’t really happen like that.

Brandon was the latest example of the American obsession with turning regular Joes into symbols of whatever fits the prevailing narrative of the times. But while almost everyone saw Joe the Plumber for what he was, no one wanted to question the veracity of the Fisher story.

Not now.

Not at the expense of a President trying to unite a divided America.

But as André Sougarret, the leader of the rescue said: “What they did was put a technology at our disposal…. It wasn’t exclusive. That’s why it was called “Plan B”. Plan A and Plan C kept working. So what they did wasn’t an exclusive operation. Without a doubt the participation of his entire team allowed for our success. But to believe they were the only participants in the success is too much. It doesn’t seem right to me.”

Another thing that didn’t seem right to me was the implication that Fisher’s company—Center Rock, did this all pro bono.

Of course they didn’t. They were paid handsomely. It was a business transaction that benefitted everyone involved—not a humanitarian mission.

It was a technical team led by the state-owned copper mining company Codelco, Escondida and Collahuasi—two other big Chilean mining companies—that determined how the Plan B drilling would be carried out.

It’s not that the Chileans weren’t and aren’t grateful, but at a certain point there’s only so far the truth can be bent.

Like that homeless guy with the magic voice from a few weeks ago, I imagine Mr. Fisher’s fifteen minutes are over. But with the miners at Disney World last week and a movie being discussed, I can’t help but wonder how Brandon Fisher will ultimately be portrayed—as an astute business man who saw a great opportunity for his company and jumped on it, or the altruistic American hero President Obama made him out to be.

It’s clearly open to interpretation.

Who is blowing these people up? And don’t tell me it’s methane.

2011-01-27T10:40:00.004-05:00

27/01/2011

“This tragedy hurts us,” said President Álvaro Uribe back in February 2007.

The tragedy to which he was referring was an explosion in the La Preciosa mine that left thirty-one miners dead. There would be an investigation, he assured, to make sure the company had all the right permits and licenses as far security was concerned.

That, I imagine, would’ve been carried out by Ingeominas (the Colombian geology and mining institute—attached to the Ministry of Mines and Energy).

It’s their mandate to monitor “geological hazards.”

Was there a report?

I couldn’t find it.

But even I did, I couldn’t see it being of much use. Even if they had found fault or made recommendations, nothing has been done.

Hell, I couldn’t even find the name of the mining company.

This would become a trend…

So yesterday morning, when an explosion killed at least 20 in the very same mine in Sardinata, Colombia—I wasn’t surprised I had the same problem.

I asked people I thought would know—NGOs that monitor this kind of thing, for example; they couldn’t give me an answer either.

As El Tiempo revealed, it wasn’t “BHP Billiton, Anglo American, Xstrata, Drummond, or Glencore.”

No. It was “far” away from their operations.

It was “a mine producing coal for local consumption.”

Good. I was worried.

When two other recent mining accidents occurred in Colombia last November and June, Reuters was also clear there were no multinationals involved:

AMAGA, Colombia (Reuters) Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:13pm EDT

“The blast at the small underground San Fernando mine occurred far from the major operations run by companies such as Drummond and Glencore near the Caribbean coast of the world's No. 5 coal exporter, which has output of about 70 million tonnes a year and is enjoying a boom in investment.”

BOGOTA (Reuters)| Wed Nov 24, 2010 9:29am EST

“The accidents were far from key coal operations of Drummond, Cerrejon and Glencore's Prodeco...”

I, for one, slept a lot better last night knowing there were no multinationals involved. Not our corporations, not our problem. Besides, there is absolutely nothing heartwarming about this story. It’s not Copiapó, and no rescued miners will play soccer with President Santos and his cabinet. No book deal. No movie.

Just the same explanation: methane gas—like last time, and the time before that.

So this time around, whose fault is it? Anyone’s?

As a local municipal official explained yesterday, “All their papers are in order.”

To that, William Villamizar, the Governor of the North of Santander department added: “This type of mine is subject to rigorous control and extreme supervision by Ingeominas.”

Well, Mr. Villamizar, if that’s the case—someone isn’t doing a good job. Because all they seem to be supervising are miners being blown up…

I don’t mean to make light of this. There’s absolutely nothing funny about this tragedy. And nothing short of a tragedy it is. But June, November, January—when will methane stop being an acceptable answer?

Someone should take responsibility for this.

Even if it is a small company producing for domestic use…

Personally, I’d be satisfied with a name.

The Freedom to laugh

2011-01-19T22:25:00.003-05:00

19/01/2011

Though almost universally recognized as a paragon of courage for having suffered through years of torment in a Siberian gulag, and equally respected for the role he played in bringing to an end the Soviet Union, Natan Sharansky is a much more polarizing figure when it comes to the influence his philosophy had on a receptive George W. Bush. Some even go as far as to argue that if it weren't for "The Case for Democracy", the Bush administration would never have got the United States entangled in foreign wars the likes of which make even the casual isolationist cringe.

I only got around to actually reading it a few months ago, so I was late getting to the party. Even so, the points he makes--whether you agree with him or not, will never lose their relevance. I thought about Sharansky again a few days ago when an announcement was made that the Colombian soap opera Chepe Fortuna would no longer be broadcast in Venezuela. According to President Chávez, the show's writers were guilty of disrespecting Venezuelans. I immediately thought of Sharansky's method of measuring freedom: "The Town Square Test".

"The Town Square Test" is simple: Anyone, anywhere, who can't go to a public place and express their views openly, isn't living in a free society. Graceful as it is in its clarity, his dialectic leaves no room to maneuver; and he's the first to admit it's Manichean, or black and white. But how do you apply that to humor--and especially to that which might be disrespectful if not excessively offensive?

Political satire, in the North American context, is a developed medium; in the U.S., millions tune in to watch Saturday Night Live during the election season (though that's often the only time they'll watch it), just as many Canadians watch Ron Mercer every Tuesday night. These audiences have been and generally are the politically-aware--those well-informed and up-to-date with the national and international blunders of their politicians. As such, they've come to expect nuanced, clever, and subtler material.

Chepe Fortuna has the subtlety of a slap in the face.

In one episode, a main character by the name of Venezuela loses her little dog named Hugo, which causes her great distress.

The obese, unattractive Venezuela laments:

"What will I do without him?"

The man with whom she's talking replies:

"You'll be free, Venezuela, because lately little Hugo has been doing his business in everyone's houses and making you look bad."

Oh, and then there's the contrast with her virtuous sister, Colombia.

The authors were, as you might expect, dismayed by the National Telecommunications Commission's decision to ban their show. One of the censored authors responded:

"The only intention we ever had in writing this soap opera was to amuse people, to show that not only Colombians, but Venezuelans can reduce our conflicts through humor. At no moment did we want to offend them or harm them."

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Here we're raised to believe in the unalienable right to be as puerile and simplistic as you want to be. But what about a hypothetical American TV show with two characters named, I don't know--America and Canada. They're brothers, although the relationship is more paternal than fraternal. And Canada is the repulsively obsequious one who does everything he's told to do.

Would my patriotic sensibilities be insulted?

I doubt it.

But even if they were, that'd probably still be a good thing.

Because regardless of whether or not it's funny, there's no freedom of speech without the freedom to laugh.

The change game. Or whatever you want to call it.

2011-01-12T12:51:00.008-05:00

12/01/2011

In almost any small business transaction— and for the sake of simplicity we can use a restaurant as an example, the expectation that the paying party won’t have the exact amount owed is usually fairly reasonable. That’s not to say it’s unreasonable for a juice vendor to balk at breaking a big bill for a glass of freshly squeezed OJ, but only that any restaurant doing a substantial amount of sales should probably only find themselves short of change under the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Apparently not everyone is of that opinion.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were given a tongue-lashing in Colombia by an Israeli traveler for suggesting that a server who takes more than half an hour to get you change doesn’t deserve a tip. But she wasn’t accusing us of being cheap; she was accusing us of being ignorant—a you’re-not- in-Kansas-anymore-Toto kind of thing. She said something along the lines of: ‘you’re imposing Western standards of service on the developing world.’

Our problem was that the place had all the trappings of an establishment trying to meet those so-called ‘Western’ standards: ambient lighting, an overpriced fusion menu, aesthetically-pleasing if not ergonomic furniture. So forgive us, we said, if the fact they were located in the ‘developing world’ didn’t give them carte blanche to suck when it came to providing the most basic and fundamental of services.

In the end it was simple.

It all boiled down to this Israeli not being bothered by the change game. She’d either played before and had the patience of Job, or hadn’t yet experienced the Coleridgian dilemma of yes—having money money everywhere but not a person who’d accept it.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

I’d refused to play the change game in Colombia, in Peru, in Bolivia; and on occasion I’d actually eat for heavily discounted prices—anything for them to avoid giving me change.

Did I feel like a prick?

Yeah, sometimes. Because in trying to buy something, I was made made to feel like a thief—but sometimes the customer is actually right.

The Argentine version of the change game, at least in my experience, was less ubiquitous. There was change aplenty. They just made up for it in scale. In truth, it was more of a reimbursement game, but that requires some explanation.

Buenos Aires, 2008—it went something like this: our landlord was a neurotic psychiatrist who looked like Billy Crystal after a month long crack binge, and who insisted we turn our living room into a third bedroom he could rent out. That this made absolutely no sense to anyone else, didn’t stop him from coming in unannounced with prospective tenants who always left quickly, embarrassed at having any association with the man I’ll call Fabian.

As you’d imagine, it quickly became intolerable.

We told him to give us the next month’s rent back and we’d leave as soon as possible.

The problem was he couldn’t.

He didn’t have the money. He supposedly owned three apartments and yet didn’t have enough cash in hand to reimburse us one month’s rent.

Our unintentional bluff won us some peace and quiet, but the absurdity of it all stuck with me.

I revisited it again this week after reading about the current cash shortage disrupting the country. As El País reported two days ago, “hordes of angry customers at ATMs, and multiple protests across the country, these are the situations being lived in Argentina these last two weeks because of a cash shortage, especially of 100 Peso bills, some 20 Euros, which have made cashing paychecks difficult and forced a Buenos Aires railway line to allow passengers to travel for free as a result of being unable to give them change.”

I guess it’s kind of ironic in a country notorious for inflation, which the simplest of definitions reveal to be nothing more than the complete opposite—an excess of money. But as it’s been there in the past, everyone’s playing the game—it’s just that few know the rules.

When I wrote a few weeks ago about the IMF coming back to Argentina, my point was that it didn’t take an economist to smell a rat. The doubt was palpable. The National Statistics and Census Institute had been complicit in the government’s cover-up of the true inflation rate. And the truth, which would be unearthed at a snail’s place by an army of IMF experts, wouldn’t be pretty.

Almost a month later, with the presidential election still slowly approaching, the public hasn’t needed to wait for the diagnosis. The proof has been in the pudding.

The opposition has seized the moment; it’s time for a new denomination, they’re arguing. 100 pesos isn’t enough anymore.

As opportunistic as that suggestion might be, it’s hard to contest.

Ignorant or not, I’ve always refused to play the change game because my experience led me to believe the root of the problem was laziness or idle indifference. The last-second resourcefulness that would somehow consistently save the day would also consistently reaffirm that belief. Because if I’d thought someone was seriously losing out, I obviously would’ve played.

Because whatever it's called and wherever it's played, a game is only fun when all the participants know the rules.

Nothing lasts forever, except for maybe November rain in Venezuela

2011-01-06T00:41:00.004-05:00

05/01/2011

Over the past few months I’ve seen firsthand the damage uncharacteristically torrential rains have inflicted on Colombia: mudslides that killed hundreds and displaced millions, massive road closures, declared states of emergency in 28 of the 32 departments, and a President who sought every tool at his disposal to help his people, democratically; in neighboring Venezuela, where flooding has also taken its toll, the emergency measures President Chávez has used to 'help' victims have been unmistakably…dictatorial.

You were right, Axl, even November (and let me add December) rain don’t last forever, but if you manipulate the weather enough, you truly don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows, or the rain falls.

The United States swore in its 112th Congress today, as did Venezuela. The difference is that Jim Boehner and the Republicans are proof of what happens in a democracy with a functioning opposition. In Venezuela on the other hand, where newly elected opposition members also took their seats on this 5th day of January, they’ve found themselves redundant. And all thanks to the rain...

Since Chavez’s gerrymandering led to the Venezuelan opposition winning only 67 seats in the September legislative elections (ok, technically 69 if you count the two won by the PPT) —much less than what they should’ve come away with, but enough to disrupt his ‘Bolivarian’ plan, the race has been on for him to secure as much dictatorial power in those final three months as possible.

Back in September I wrote, “The PSUV maintains its majority till January, which means they’ll be eager to make as much use of it as they can.”

It wasn’t a prescient observation; the writing was on the wall.

So yeah—God bless the rain.

A little review of what’s happened since—well, the most egregious developments, anyway:

Everything begins with the Enabling Law—a little tool Chávez has used before when he felt the need to rule by decree, though I’d argue never with such exuberance, such panache.

For one thing, those newly elected opposition members, and let’s just limit them to the MUD (la Mesa de la Unidad Democrática)—well, it doesn’t seem they’ll be working too much.

No more than 4 days a month, to be exact.

And I thought Canadian MPs had it easy.

They also won’t be able to switch parties thanks to changes to the Political Party Law, which now prevents it.

Some see this as an obvious attempt to corral discontent in the PSUV...

Ya think?

The appointment of Supreme Court Judges, which as you would expect is supposed to require a modicum of agreement with the opposition, well, that was expedited in order to avoid any pesky disagreements.

The changes to the Law for the Defense of National Sovereignty and Self-Determination have made it so that all NGOs will be barred from receiving any foreign financing. I presume aid in-kind, like say, Cuban doctors, won’t be subject. So at least Mission Barrio Adentro continues.

The amendments to the University Education Law end the autonomy of the main universities by obliging them to be at the service of the “construction of the new socialist model”. What? Yeah, ok, I don’t really know what that means either. I imagine this semester’s term paper topics will be a bit more limited, though.

The Social Responsibility in Radio and Television Law is intended to limit criticism of the government, loosely modeled I presume, on the incredibly effective Chinese paradigm.

Finally, the Banking Institutions Law grants the President the authority to intervene in the financial system as he sees fit. Venezuela officially ended their two-tiered exchange rate yesterday, so it appears the games at the Central Bank have already begun.

As one MUD representative, María Corina Machado, observed: “In Venezuela there’s a coup d’état coming from the state itself.”

The heavy rain has stopped, but the Enabling Law will allow Chávez to rule by decree till June 2012.

Is it reasonable to believe the 2012 Presidential elections will even be close to as fair as this September’s legislative elections?

At the risk of sounding cynical, maybe November rain does last forever.

Sweet saccharine inflation

2010-12-20T12:35:00.002-05:00

20/12/2010

I couldn’t have been more than 9, and like any 9-year-old on a hot summer day, I was waiting in the coldest part of my house for a phone call from the only friend I had with a pool. It was a reluctant friendship; at six he’d ordered me off his property and I’d never quite trusted him after that banishment. Ours was a relationship of convenience. We both knew it. And I never fooled myself into thinking I was anything more than a temporary cure for his boredom. And that was fine with me, because as I said, along with having more toys than he knew what to do with…the pool.

Despite being in the basement, I must’ve got to the phone by the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Meet me at the park in 10 minutes.”

Always dictatorial, he’d already hung up. It wasn’t the invitation I’d expected or wanted, but I was curious. I told my mom I was meeting him at the park and immediately ran out the front door.

He was sitting under a giant oak tree with a backpack in front of him and a smug look on his face.

He passed me the backpack.

“Look inside.”

There were more twenty dollar bills than I’d ever seen in my life, and since I was in the habit then of converting everything monetary into its equivalent value in penny candy, my underdeveloped accounting skills told me we had enough money to fill his pool with Swedish berries. And when he told me our next stop was 7-11, I started to think that was a distinct possibility.

As the spending spree came to an end that day—both of us sick from all the candy we’d eaten, I finally admitted to myself how unlikely it was that his grandfather had given him $700 in cash for his birthday. It all got cleared up later that day when his mom called to explain what had happened. The short-lived façade was over; he was grounded for a long time, and I didn’t get to swim there for the rest of the summer.

I guess we all delude ourselves from time to time, but the longer we do, the harder we fall. The stories my Argentine friends have told me about life before and after the 2001-2002 financial crisis often made me think of that indulgent day from my childhood. Former Minister of the Economy Domingo Cavallo had pegged the peso to the dollar at one-to-one, and though it was ostensibly implemented to fight hyperinflation, no one could deny they enjoyed the benefits that came with the façade.

One Argentine friend of mine told me he spent a significant amount of time in England as a teenager, learning the Queen’s and drinking like a proper Londoner; it was the time of his life, and he looked back on it fondly; but he’d always known something wasn’t right. He as a teenager, and I as a 9-year-old, could both smell rats; they just smelled too good to do anything about it.

So when the proverbial shit hit the fan in Buenos Aires and everyone woke up from the nightmare with their savings worth a third of what they had been, the first to feel the wrath of the Argentine populace was the government; the De la Rúa administration had to go. As did the three Peronists who took his place and left as quickly as they came. And when there was finally no one left to blame in government, the hunt for a scapegoat quickly led them to the IMF.

IFM loans and the requirements of neoliberalization were the roots of the problem; they’d been duped, tricked. If the IMF thought an Argentine default was a strong possibility, they shouldn’t have given them the money in the first place.

It was a variation of my friend’s 7-11 defense; his grandpa surely shouldn’t have left all the cash out if he didn’t want it spent on candy and comic books.

It was the drift towards that way of thinking that made the 2005 decision of Néstor Kirchner’s government to pay the IMF debt back in its entirety, a hugely popular ‘up yours’ to the Fund that had abandoned them when they needed them most. No longer would Argentines be beholden to IMF “recommendations”. Given the choice, they chose the highway.

That is up until last week.

After a five year absence, the IMF is back in Buenos Aires—invited by none other than the wife of the man who distanced his government from the Fund. This time, though, they’re there to evaluate what appears to be a flawed Consumer Price Index. It’s believed that for the last 5 years the National Statistics and Census Institute has been underestimating the CPI in Buenos Aires, which is used to represent the nation as a whole. And since the IMF does annual revisions of all its members’ statistics, regardless of whether they’re a debtor nation or not, and the likelihood of a glaring difference in metrics appears to be strong—the Fund has threatened sanctions for non-compliance.

So off to Washington Minister of the Economy Amado Boudou flew, coming back with an announcement that a team of IMF academics and consultants were en route to Buenos Aires to find out what the real inflation rate is.

That answer will come in six months. And though no one is seriously thinking about 2001-2002, it’d be disingenuous to say there isn’t a slight suspicion they’ve again been caught with their hands in the candy (cookie) jar.

The endorsement of a rapist

2010-12-10T22:22:00.002-05:00

10/12/2010

In July of ’91, Mike Tyson was still one of the best boxers in the world; aside from a slipup the year before against Buster Douglas, he remained a feared and respected opponent. While that fear wasn’t limited to the ring, however—respect most certainly was. By that point he’d already crashed several sports cars, beaten up a parking attendant, and been accused of domestic violence by his then wife, actress Robin Givens.

His reply to the domestic violence charge was classic Tyson:

“Anyone with a grain of sense would know that if I punched my wife I would rip her head off.”

Misogynistic quips like that that certainly didn’t help his cause when, in July ’91, he was formally charged with the rape of a beauty pageant contestant named Desiree Washington.

His subsequent conviction surprised few; another spoiled professional athlete who finally pushed the envelope as far as he could.

At the time of his sentencing in March of ’92, the Presidential election in the U.S. was still a ways off, and even if it hadn’t been, no GOP strategist in their right mind would’ve suggested calling in some favors to make sure Mike didn’t see jail time; even if he did contribute, say, all his winnings to the Republican Party; even if he did sport shorts with the Republican elephants on them and dedicate his next primetime fight to the President Bush reelection campaign.

The endorsement of a rapist isn’t usually sought after; that is unless you’re in Nicaragua.

One of the latest WikiLeaks gems to be released tells the story of Ricardo Moyorga. Like Tyson, Moyorga was also a boxer, and like Tyson, Moyorga was also an accused rapist. According to the release, Mayorga was facing charges in 2004 before he came to an agreement with the FSLN.

The deal was fairly simple: In exchange for diverting his winnings to Daniel Ortega and the FSLN, and advertising/campaigning on their behalf, an FSLN judge would make sure Mayorga never did any time.

A quid pro quo everyone could live with…

Mayorga fought in Chicago in 2005—in FSLN colors, dedicated the fight to Ortega, and that was that.

But I guess having a pugilist sex-offender stump for you isn’t really that serious when your former Interior Minister and his minions once helped Pablo Escobar load and unload cargo; when the profits of drug trafficking are regularly financing your party's campaigns in exchange for the dismissal of charges; when in more recent developments, members of your government return from Venezuela with suitcases full of money and no explanations.

In Ortega’s defense, it’s never exactly been a fair fight. Sleazy last minute Presidential pardons of the likes of Caspar Weinberger, Elliot Abrams and the rest of the Iran-Contra gang did nothing but remind Latin America how hypocritical American foreign policy in the region has been; yes, democracy. But only as long as the results are predetermined and the right person wins, be it Violetta Chamorro or really anyone who’s name isn’t Daniel Ortega.

True, if Ortega were an American politician he’d have resigned by now or be facing some sort of impeachment proceedings, but he’d probably also be a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

Mayorga, if he didn’t already have a show of his own, wouldn’t be far behind.

Economic surgery in Cuba

2010-12-03T10:47:00.002-05:00

03/12/2010

To a certain extent, most resorts are indistinguishable from one another.

The quality of the food can vary; some have nicer rooms and facilities—but for the most part, they’re all pretty similar.

That is, till you get to Cuba.

For one thing, the place is full of French Canadians—a veritable petite belle province. Then there’s the almost complete absence of Americans, save for the occasional thrill-seeker and self-proclaimed izquierdista who got lost somewhere in Central America in the eighties and never managed to find their way home; and finally, there’s the brain surgeon who moonlights as crooner, singing covers at night to make up for the pittance he’s paid by the state.

It’s the surgeon who came to mind when I read the front page editorial in Granma on Wednesday. The theme was the debates taking place in the lead up to the ridiculously delayed Communist Party Congress in April—debates which are to focus entirely on economic issues.

At its most melodramatic, it simplifies the complexities of Cuba’s latest capitalist experiment: “…what’s in play is the future of the Cuban nation…”

The Cuban nation. Of course. People like the brain surgeon I met…ten years ago?

Ever since the Bay of Pigs, the world has been waiting for a catalyst—another revolutionary moment in Cuba, though revolutionary in the sense of return. Not to the days of Batista. The majority alive now weren’t alive then. But to the days when remuneration, if not equitable, was at least somewhat logical.

No one imagined a piecemeal process. But hotels and tourism came in the 90s, and lo and behold, surgeons could finally make some money; then a few years ago came cellphones, computers, and permission for Cubans to vacation at Cuban resorts.

Was this really how it would play out, though?

A country run by geriatrics attempting to control the perception of each concession with caveats about the fragility of the Cuban model?

Maybe.

But what happens as the concessions get bigger? Does it really matter that they’re borne by necessity as opposed to ideology?

Crippling debt in Europe has shown the expense of an inflated public service isn’t sustainable. Greeks must shudder at the thought of what that means in Cuban terms: roughly 85% of the workforce. The difference is that most Greeks fear austerity measures, as anyone would who’s told their getting a significant pay cut. Cubans, however, can see opportunity in the 12% of public service jobs to be eliminated in 2011.

The inundation of requests for self-employment licenses, which have come with the government’s announcement of an increase in the number of those granted, has shown how eager most Cubans are to embrace any entrepreneurial leeway they’re given; it’s also focused attention on a black market far more pervasive than the PCC would ever publically admit.

But do either of the Castro brothers really believe these economic changes will sustain or preserve anything? Or is the burden of the judgments and evaluations of Cuban posterity finally starting to weigh heavy?

Again, the changes themselves are more important than the reason for them.

Bank accounts, social security for the self-employed, access to credit—the right to buy and sell houses?

How long will it be till the once aspiring surgeon trades in their textbooks for whatever they can get on the latest financial derivative?

Bolivarian diplomacy: you give us a drug trafficker; we’ll give you a few terrorists and maybe even that money we owe you

2010-11-25T03:38:00.004-05:00

25/11/2010

It isn’t just anyone who can give you the concession to the most important port in the country. That decision comes from up high.

I’d hope so.

It only makes sense that control of something so vitally important to a nation’s economy would be awarded by high-level functionaries through a well-vetted and excruciatingly detailed process.

Except that’s not Walid Makled meant in his post-arrest interview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdv3n18Od24) with the Colombian news channel RCN, because Walid Makled, despite once having legitimate assets such as the Venezuelan Airline Aeropostal and the port I alluded to above (Puerto Cabello), is not a legitimate businessman—he’s a drug dealer; and up until recently, a really successful one.

The Venezuelan of Syrian heritage who for some reason often goes by “The Turk” was said to be moving ten tons of cocaine a month to Europe and the United States.

And the reason he could do this?

I’ll just assume you won’t need a second guess. Those people up high: Governors, Generals, and really anyone with concomitant decision-making power.

“If I’m a drug trafficker,” he told the RCN interviewer, “then they’re all drug traffickers.”

That was back in September. But if you picked up a major Latin American newspaper in the last few days, you most often found the story front and centre again. That’s because Mr. Makled’s extradition has become a diplomatic hot topic.

Hugo Chávez has made it clear that Makled’s extradition from Colombia to Venezuela (as opposed to the United States) is nonnegotiable if again amicable Venezuela-Colombia relations are to remain that way. Luckily for Chávez, at least if you believe Makled has the damning proof he claims he does, President Santos agreed to temporarily turn his back on longtime ally the United States and send Mr. Makled back to Venezuela.

On Sunday, a gleeful Chávez rejoiced: “I believe in President Santos’ word.”

He continued by saying that this decision would prevent Makled from vomiting “up all sorts of accusations against the Bolivarian Republic, against its political and military leadership…”

He offers no explanation of why the accusations of a drug trafficker and accused murderer should matter at all. Nor does he explain, as one Colombian editorialist remarked the other day, why Makled was being protected in Venezuela—why he had no trouble till “he made the mistake of stepping on to Colombian territory…”

The answers to those questions being fairly obvious, the focus has shifted to President Santos. The most hyperbolic column I read compared him to Neville Chamberlain signing the Munich Agreement; I have no doubt that former President Uribe is at least partially responsible for these kinds of editorials. He’s more active on his Twitter account than most celebrities, and is none too subtle in publically second-guessing the dovish policies of his former Defense Minister; he’s also quite clearly peeved his successor’s approval ratings after his first hundred days are higher than those he had at any time throughout his immensely popular presidency.

So, knowing that Santos has some popularity to spare—why Makled? Why now?

Two reasons: first, it’s widely-known and acknowledged by almost everyone except Chávez that there are guerilla camps inside the Venezuelan border. In a gesture intended to show future cooperation in that area, two captured middle ranking ELN and one FARC member were turned over to Colombia. Considering guerilla presence within Venezuela was one of the main reasons relations soured in the first place—it’s a big step.

Second, there’s the issue of outstanding debt to Colombian exporters, said to be close to US$ 800 million. If Chávez is angry, there’s no hope of those exporters seeing any of what they’re owed, and there’s certainly no hope of returning cross-border trade to its pre-dispute levels.

True, that’ll hurt Venezuela, too; it’ll mean increased inflation in an economic environment where everyone but the government ignores the official exchange rate; but for Colombia, where politicians are more likely to be held accountable, it’ll mean additional unemployment in a country where levels are already too high.

At personal level, we tell ourselves we can choose our friends. In the realm of international relations, that’s more than a little misleading. A certain naïveté leads us to believe an active conscience can and should dictate all of leaders’ actions; necessity proves that disingenuous.

Were Makled extradited to the United States, his revelations could—as some have pointed out, turn Chávez into another Noriega.

I doubt it.

I suspect they’d quickly be dismissed as Yanqui propaganda, and that would be that. A more likely scenario would be a slightly more difficult Presidential election for Chávez in 2012—one without the financing he appears to have been receiving from one of Latin America’s more powerful drug traffickers.

President Santos certainly isn’t Neville Chamberlain, but statements of that kind evidence the sympathy Colombians currently have for Venezuelans. They see a country people fear to visit and remember a time not that long ago when their own was perceived to be a place to avoid.

Now major American dailies are encouraging tourists:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111902827.html

If giving away a drug trafficker is the price to pay for stability, it’s easy to understand why most Colombians don’t find the price all that steep.

When Super Mario became the new Ronald McDonald

2010-11-18T00:15:00.004-05:00

18/11/2010

A movie store is a rare sight in Latin America. They do exist, but there’s always an element of surprise when you see them. The explanation is pretty simple: why rent a DVD from Blockbuster when you can pay the guy around the corner less and never have to worry about returning it?

In the “developed world” some combination of guilt and the dissuasive power of intellectual property laws actually being enforced oblige the person selling pirated DVDs and the person purchasing them to operate clandestinely—when they operate at all. That’s not to say we don’t go about it other ways—illegally downloading movies and music; of course we do. We just try not to celebrate it. And furthermore, those who do are somewhat counterbalanced by those who use iTunes and those who are actually influenced in movie theaters by the anti-piracy advertisements we now expect to see before our movies.

So, why such different attitudes when it comes to intellectual property?

When I lived in Peru, I personally adjusted pretty quickly. Within days I was following the hordes who felt no compunction whatsoever when buying a DVD outside a theater where that same movie was playing. I contributed to the underground economy without flinching. But when I returned to Canada, I never sought out pirated DVDs or even downloaded movies illegally. Maybe I was lazy? Maybe there’s just something I’ve always liked about browsing the shelves. But now I’m back—in Colombia this time, and I’ve adjusted again.

That said, just when I started to think my respect for intellectual property was tenuous at best, I saw something that assured me there was only so far it could fall: Mario Bross restaurant in Cali, Colombia.

Yeah, I know. You’re probably thinking I made a mistake and added another “S”.

I didn’t.

That’s actually what the place is called. It’s a chain, I’m told. And in case there’s any ambiguity about the origin of the name, because I guess the owner’s name could’ve been Mario Bross, or something like that—the sign has everyone’s favorite Italian-American plumber carrying a massive burger on a tray that struggles to contain it.

Correct me if I’m wrong—I don’t remember that in the video game.

Shortly after my Mario Bross encounter, I had a beer at a place called Olafo’s, which shamelessly uses Hägar the Horrible to sell its food. Reading the newspaper later that day—ok— the comics, I realized Olafo is how Hägar the Horrible is translated, making the misappropriation even more blatant. Because I can’t find any proof that Dik Browne and his estate or Shigeru Miyamoto and the people at Nintendo approved their creations being used to sell mediocre fast food in South America. Realistically they’re probably not even aware, just as I’m fairly certain Christina Aguilera doesn’t know her face is being used to lure Peruvian women to various peluquerias, or hair stylists.

Who knows? Maybe none of them would care if they did know. It’s not as if these places are raking it in; and everyone’s aware Latin American systems of justice have more pressing concerns than the punishing trademark counterfeiters.

That said, at least in the Colombian context—it is part of their law.

As a member of the WTO, Colombia is required to abide by the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights) Agreement, which “requires members to comply with certain minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property rights covered in it.”

Ok, so we might say it’s something like the Kyoto Protocol—ratifying it and signing it doesn’t mean you actually have to enforce it. Just try your best and everyone’s satisfied.

But I was curious—what exactly are they supposed to be enforcing? From a 2001 WTO Legislation review, in response to a question from the United States, Colombia gave this answer:

“The penalties for infringement of copyright are laid down in Law No. 44 of 1993 as follows:

Article 51. – The following shall be liable to imprisonment for two to five years and a fine of five to 20 times the legal minimum monthly wage…

4. Any person who reproduces phonograms, videograms, software or cinematographic works without the express prior authorization of the owner, or transports, stores, stocks, distributes, imports, sells, offers for sale, acquires for sale or distribution or in any way deals in such reproductions.”

And…

“Law No. 599 of 2000…defines the following offences related to infringement of industrial property rights:

Article 306 states that "Any person who fraudulently uses a trade name, sign, trademark, patent, utility model or industrial design that is legally protected or likely to be confused with one that is legally protected shall be liable to a term of imprisonment of two (2) to four (4) years and a fine of twenty (20) to two thousand (2,000) minimum prevailing legal monthly wages", and the same penalty applies to any person who finances, supplies, distributes, puts on sale, markets, transports or acquires goods produced or distributed in the circumstances described above for commercial or brokerage purposes.”

Two to five years for the guy who sold me a DVD on the corner? Two to four for the owners of Mario Bross and Olafo’s?

Right.

You’re more likely to find the police buying DVDs beside me before they eat average burgers at Olaf’s or Mario Bross than you are to see them applying laws the “developed” world knows aren’t worth the paper on which their written.

As I said before, they've got other things to do.

A rebel with a cause, and a simple question I can’t answer

2010-11-11T23:43:00.005-05:00

11/11/2010

I can’t remember his name right now, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. He was smug—a cheto as the porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) would have called him—young, well-built, though not overly muscular, with Lacoste everything and a cocky stride that stuck out in an otherwise bland IBM office building in Puerto Madero.

I knew when I first met him that every class would be a challenge. In that sense I was lucky his attendance was sporadic.

One particular class, he was especially irritated. He was complaining about the laissez-faire attitude (read lazy) of the Spanish workers with whom he was obliged to communicate on a daily basis for what was at that moment the foreseeable future; then suddenly he came out with this:

“What are you doing here?”

Put on the spot, I came up with an embarrassing, barely coherent answer I won’t repeat. It felt like I was challenged and lost; I promised myself I’d never be unprepared for that question again.

It was a promise I didn’t keep.

Because the other day, on a bus to Cali, Colombia, a man in his forties sat down next to me, started to tell me how he’d lived for fourteen years in New Jersey, lost everything when he was deported for not being able to provide the authorities with papers after a supposedly random inspection...

“I miss it so much. There’s nothing here for me,” he continued. Then: “What are you doing here?”

I mumbled something about “viajando and de vacaciones”. He smiled and told me he was glad I was seeing his city, but the sad envy in his eyes told me something else. I could go back to the cold winters and opportunities. He had to wait six more years in sultry Cali before he could have a chance to get back to his American-born daughter in Newark.

This has been an extremely longwinded way of getting to what I planned on discussing: Lori Berenson—a woman who's answered that question and had the question answered for her repeatedly over the last fifteen years— a martyr to some and a sanctimonious would-be terrorist to others.

What was she doing with the Tupak Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru in 1995?

If you were to believe her parents, she was doing what any young, intellectual social activist would do?

From the Free Lori website:

“Lori Berenson is a firm believer in the need to work for a better world for all, for a world in which everyone's fundamental human rights are respected.”

They go into great detail about the kangaroo court that tried her—much less about the MRTA weapons cache found in the house she was renting in Miraflores, Lima, her grito de dolores-like statement (“There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA; it's a revolutionary movement!") made slightly less credible by their subsequent seizure of the Japanese embassy, and well, the fact she was arrested with the wife of one of the group’s leaders, Néstor Cerpa.

That she was guilty is and was hard to dispute. But despite how vociferously that guilt was contested by those close to her, it was always the judicial process rather than the evidence that was questioned.

When she was initially released this past May, I admit I found the reaction of her new neighbors in Lima surprisingly aggressive; a lot of time had passed; she looked older than her forty years, certainly owing to the fifteen years she’d already spent in prison. And yet that clearly visible naïveté was as strong as ever—like she’d do it all over if she had to.

Again granted parole five days ago, I’ve rethought my disappointment at again not having an answer to such a simple question.

Uncertainty shouldn’t be a source of embarrassment; there’ll never be a shortage of rebels. There’ll never be a shortage of causes.

A merciless, misguided fight

2010-11-07T10:59:00.002-05:00

07/11/2010

Sipping a coffee in the neighborhood of La Candelaria in Bogota, Colombia, I opened my copy of El Tiempo to see what the national newspaper had to say. On the bottom right corner of the front page of Thursday’s edition, a headline caught my eye: “Lucha sin cuartel”, or merciless fight.

The merciless fight was referring to a government raid on La Dirección Nacional de Estupefacientes (DNE), the agency responsible for managing the seized assets of the narcotraficantes, or drug traffickers.

The raid was undertaken at the behest of the agency’s new leader—Juan Carlos Restrepo, who maintained he had “detected a series of fraudulent operations, the value of which could be measured in billions of pesos.”

Corruption in the Colombian agency that manages the assets seized from the drug trade?

I wasn’t exactly astonished, but then I realized I really didn’t know what their ally in the United States did with theirs.

After several conversations and discussions, I realized no one else seemed to know either. The dilemma was pretty simple: if the assets seized in any way funded police operations, they could easily create a budgetary dependence that—well I think the implications are fairly obvious…

And so the cursory research…

In the U.S. the assets seized by the USDA are held in something called the Assets Forfeiture Fund, created as part of 1984’s Comprehensive Crime Control Act. Essentially it works like this: the proceeds of forfeiture are used “to pay the costs associated with such forfeitures, including the costs of managing and disposing of property, satisfying valid liens, mortgages, and other innocent owner claims, and costs associated with accomplishing the legal forfeiture of the property.”

Pretty reasonable, really. The money seized is used to manage the money seized.

But then there’s a part under general investigative expenses about compensating “state and local law enforcement officers participating in joint law enforcement operations with a federal agency participating in the fund.”

I guess that’s where it gets hazy to me. States and municipalities facing budget cutbacks seem to have a strong incentive to “participate”. One particular U.S. Department of Justice audit I found from 2007 suggested that “while the DEA had established internal control policies for safeguarding seized cash, some of those policies need to be strengthened. For example, the DEA should: (1) better define situations when seized cash should be counted immediately by the seizing agent.”

Better define situations when seized cash should be counted immediately by the seizing agent?

I won’t go there.

In the Colombian context, the editorial in El Tiempo suggested it might be time “to clean the DNE from the inside.” But cleaning or reorganizing the DNE or DEA implies they can both operate transparently—that there is a way or ways to make them less susceptible to what that same editorial called “irregularities.”

I’d agree there is: eliminate the need for the cash seized to be managed at all.

Eliminate the cash.

Because as long as it’s treated as something that can be purified or at least managed, there will continue to be “evidence of a series of shady characters receiving benefits” and “numerous assets seized by the authorities, simply disappearing from the public registry.”

Whether it’s in Colombia or in the United States, whether it’s greed or desperation, the temptation to take a little extra home from work or to rationalize the funding of policing operations with the proceeds from drug trafficking are or at least should be blatantly obvious.

El Tiempo argues the Colombian government should be applauded for showing a willingness to eradicate “corruption, democracy’s most evil cancer.”

They could start by eliminating the DNE.

Wary of a mourning President

2010-11-02T14:07:00.002-04:00

02/11/2010

Anyone who has ever grieved the death of someone close to them will tell you the expedited nature of the process is a confusing one. The most trivial of details demand attention; time, in the short term, passes quickly, till the whirlwind abruptly stops, and life, as it’s often said, goes on.

“Take as long as you need” is what’s most often heard, but it’s clear that kneejerk empathy is insincere, because the death of one individual does not allow for much more than a temporary pause. Former President or plebian, duties await impatiently.

“I shouldn’t speak about politics, it’s not the moment to speak about political issues but rather to show solidarity with the President,” Governor of Córdoba, Juan Schiaretti was quoted imploring yesterday in a Clarín article—this despite their differences in recent years.

Of the article—I couldn’t find the author’s name, but I could picture the smile on their face as they transcribed the quotation. The possibility that Mr. and Mrs. Kircher’s battle with the media conglomerate would take a hiatus didn’t go on for much longer. In fact, it begins with speculation in the paragraph that immediately follows Schiaretti’s quotation.

It describes the “political conversations” the last Governor of Córdoba, José Manuel De La Sota had with the former President before his death—conversations that involved helping Néstor in a province that never took kindly to el kirchnerismo. It then finishes with another high profile Cordovan politician, Eduardo Mondino, describing why he won’t attend a ceremony celebrating a new model of Renault to be built in the Province’s Santa Isabel plant. He still has, he says, the same objections he always had with “the ways and methods of doing Kirchernism politics.”

The Clarín editorial board couldn’t have said it better themselves, though they’re now forced to tread lightly. But even at their most compassionate, immediately following his death, the battle lines were still clearly drawn: “the absence of the leader means a big challenge for the political plan of Kirchnerism: the former President was the principal power builder and maintained a constant relationship with government legislators, governors, government workers and mayors.”

That political plan, of course, included besieging Clarín’s independence.

So now what?

It is clear Chavismo begins and ends with one man; but what of kirchnerismo without Néstor?

Many liked to imagine the pair another Hillary and Bill Clinton—two powerful politicians with enough wind to sail their own ships. While it wove a nice narrative, I never found it all that credible.

As Clarín has acknowledged, there’s no clear course; they’ve been forced to adjust their strategy, attack with slight jabs and wait to see how their antagonist responds.

They’re wary.

The Argentine public won't respond well to those who bully a widow, even if she is the President...especially when it can be argued her husband’s death was at least partially caused by the stress that came from their battles with Clarín…

They’re wary.

Hell hath no fury...

A mayor in the capital leads, but will the rest follow?

2010-10-26T14:03:00.008-04:00

26/10/2010

“Everybody talks about drug trafficking, but it’s an effect, not a cause. The origin of the problem is that there are too many young people and too many families without prospects. If more than half of the young people in Juárez don’t go to school, what do you expect?”

- Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, Mayor of Mexico City

I wanted to write about Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón. The man behind the new Mexico City—a now socially liberal bastion in a sea of social conservatism—the only place in the country where two men or women can get married, a woman can have an abortion, and where school dropout rates have decreased from 23% to 6%, in great part because of educational reforms in the Distrito Federal that have made 230,000 scholarships available.

I wanted to write about him because he reminded me of Antanas Mockus (http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/opinion/story.html?id=b2dc0a93-7c8e-42b5-9156-b096dbd413e1), the former mayor of Bogota whose successful but unconventional tactics there turned him into a legitimate Presidential candidate.

“Fight the drug trafficking? That’s necessary. It has to be done, but that doesn’t excite anyone. That has to be a prosecutor’s agenda not a country’s…”

As Mockus did, Ebrard refuses to be intimidated by both the traditional and contemporary sources of Mexican power. But while I admire and support his philosophy of fighting the “cause” instead of the “effect”, I wish I could believe he’ll be given the opportunity to implement it at the national level.

People are willing to experiment with innovators like Mockus or Ebrard in a city—and metropolises at that; a country, for obvious reasons, is a different animal. And assuming, which I think is fair, that this battle with the cartels will at the very least continue at its current bloody pace, it’s unlikely the majority of the Mexican electorate will be open to the suggestion of fighting them with increased budget allocations to health and education.

I wish I didn’t, but I see Ebrard fading into obscurity like Mockus, politicians with ideas for which their countries aren’t ready.

When FARC reemerged following the Santos election, only to be put down swiftly by the new administration, I admit I wondered if the mathematician-philosopher would have dealt with the terrorist threat as effectively; but when another thirteen minors are gunned down in Tijuana, in of all places, a rehabilitation center—I don’t see how the security situation in Mexico can improve under the current strategy.

I instinctively cringed when I read about the authorities’ massive seizure of marijuana in Tijuana last week; the requisite photo-op and the gloating—as if the victory were free—as if there wouldn’t be retribution.

15 innocent teenagers shot at a party in Juárez, then 13 more at the rehabilitation center in Tijuana last night, followed by a message that took over the airwaves: “this is just getting started.” The police have been warned: these 28 will be followed by 107 more, apparently 1 for each ton of marijuana seized.

The guns used to commit these crimes are American—to the tune of 90%, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Californians are debating the legalization of marijuana with Proposition 19, and the Merída Initiative is looking a lot more like poor man’s Plan Colombia.

It’s almost too frustrating to be tragic—because the only people without any say in what approach should be taken are predictably those suffering the most.

But they will have a say in 2012.

The pessimist in me sees Ebrard as another Mockus; the optimist sees Ebrard replacing a truculent and manipulative Obrador on the PRD ticket in 2012, defeating a tired incumbent in PAN, and a PRI most expect would return the country to the days of even more widespread mordidas (bribes) and— of course—la vista gorda (looking the other way).

Marisol Valles García, a twenty-year old criminology student became new police chief in Práxedis G. Guerrero (a small town of 3400 next to Ciudad Juárez) last week and was almost immediately described as the bravest woman in Mexico; it’s time to have the courage at the national level to at least try something different.

It's hard to imagine a failure worse than the status quo.

A new port, and just in time for coca to become the new rosemary

2010-10-22T18:38:00.004-04:00

22/10/2010

Back in 2007, Oxford economist Paul Collier wrote a book touted by former Presidents and the brightest financial minds as an innovative analysis of and policy prescription for the numerous challenges faced by the developing world.

Of the challenges Collier indentified in “the Bottom Billion”, one to which I would constantly return was the geopolitical misfortune of being landlocked; though hardly a reinvention of the wheel, it’s hard to dispute. Of the 47 landlocked countries in the world, the minority that defy the theory really only consists of European countries with high-quality transportation infrastructures and trade agreements that make up for their maritime deficiencies.

In the Latin American context, up until this past Tuesday anyway, the list was limited to Bolivia and Paraguay—two countries often grouped together as regional laggards. But on Tuesday, Bolivian President Evo Morales and his Peruvian counterpart Alan García signed a deal giving Bolivia a 99 year lease on a 3.6 square kilometer piece of Peruvian shoreline, 15 kilometers from the Peruvian port of Ilo.

Ever since their devastating loss in the War of Pacific (1879-1884), Bolivians have been landlocked and bitter about it—with their long, pencil-shaped neighbor and former enemy’s vast coastline constantly reminding them of what could’ve been. They weren’t a sub-Saharan African country suffering the consequences of arbitrary colonial division; this was a sovereign nation that fought a war and lost badly.

But with an agreement that now allows them to “build a dock, moor naval vessels and operate a free trade zone”, they’ll no longer need to ship their legal commodities through Chile. I say legal, because Evo Morales made another statement this week which surprisingly garnered less attention:

“Friends,” he told a meeting of coca farmers in the Chapare region, “you know that part of our coca is being diverted to the illegal problem.”

The timing is…strange... Morales was reelected in June as union leader of the six coca growing federations in Chapare, and has long emphasized the difference between the shrub and the alkaloid.

“Coca sí, Cocaína no” has been the slogan, but he admits the deal he secured with former President Mesa to allow for additional plantations of coca for legal consumption is only as useful as the cap it established.

Because there is only so much winking and nudging the rest of the world will accept.

Yes, they say, we know chewing the leaf and drinking the tea are part of the Andean cultural and spiritual heritage; yes, we know it cures el soroche (altitude sickness); it improves digestion, acts as an aphrodisiac…

But how much of the stuff do you need?

When even Evo is reluctantly telling the foundation of his support there’s excess supply, it can be assumed the 20,000 hectares the Bolivian government allocated for legal cultivation is being taken as more of a suggestion than a decree. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, for example, suggests it was more like 30,900 hectares—or 1% more than in 2008.

It hasn’t exactly surprised anyone that coca production has increased under the watch of a President who maintains his position as a coca growers union leader, but Morales’ statement shows he’s now trying to reconcile his historical and current allegiance with the obligations of a head of state.

In 2006, a recently elected Alan García compared coca to rosemary and suggested it could even be put in roast dinners.

I’m honestly not sure if he was being facetious.

Back in Bolivia, with a hectare here, and a hectare there, and a brand new port to bring it to the world—I don’t know—I just can see it taking its place anytime soon in between parsley and sage on the spice rack.

The Kirchner-Perón paradigm

2010-10-15T12:58:00.005-04:00

15/10/2010

I guess I slept on the futon last night, I thought to myself. The familiar sugary coating on my teeth and the pounding headache reminded me I’d had a few too many vodka Speeds the night before, and I guess that morning, too. The television was on—El muro infernal—a game show that had contestants trying to jump through a moving wall. Dubbed episodes of The Simpsons had been the usual routine, and I’d finally begun to consider the argument that Homer was funnier in Mexican Spanish—but as my senses started to come back to me, I noticed something else was wrong.

It reeked of smoke. It was like someone was having a campfire in our apartment.

I stumbled around to see if I could identify the source, and only got increasingly more confused when I couldn’t find it. That’s when I opened the doors to our balcony on Tacuarí and realized it was suffocating all of Buenos Aires.

That was April 2008, not April 17, 2007. But it could've been.

In March of 2007, President Cristina Kirchner had tested the resolve of Argentina’s farmers by raising export taxes on certain commodities—soybeans being particularly contentious, apparently to encourage them to switch to growing staple foods like wheat and corn for domestic consumption. Naturally, I figured the farmers were out to prove they wouldn’t be bullied.

Back to 2008.

A few weeks earlier I’d been woken up by a cacerolazo; there isn’t a really a direct translation of cacerolazo—it’s basically a protester banging on a saucepan—or well, more like a lot of protesters banging on a lot of saucepans. The farmers’ response, I’d thought… then I found out these protesters were supporting the government.

“Malditos piqueteros,” a waitress later muttered. (Damn picketers)

“What are they protesting?” We asked curiously.

“They don’t even know,” she replied. “They’re paid to do it.”

It wasn’t just the Argentine cynicism I’d grown to love—I later had this confirmed by several people. Paid protesters who got rides to the capital and a decent day’s pay had become standard practice during the Fernando de la Rúa administration (1999-2001).

So then who was burning what—and why?

“Oh, the smoke? No that’s not a protest. That’s just an annual thing the farmers do in the Paraná River delta. They burn it for grazing—for the cattle.”

There was a line about the French in an Iris Murdoch novel that immediately came to mind: “French logic is very simple. Whatever the French are doing is logical because the French are doing it.” I only needed to replace “the French” with “the Argentines”.

But dismissing these actions as esoteric and moving on was a copout.

A little distance and reflection usually reveal our first impressions to be premature. Because even though we like to think we’re living everything for the first time—that we aren’t bound or predetermined to make the same mistakes again, contemporary events we perceive as original usually have strong parallels in our past. Kind of a trite aphorism, I know; but it sticks with me when I think of the trials and tribulations of Mr. and Mrs. Kirchner—like I’ve seen or read this before.

It’s not really all that farfetched. They are Peronists after all, and that would logically lead you to believe they would uphold the fundamental beliefs of their forefather Juan Domingo, right?

Of course being a Peronist doesn’t mean you have to be facsimile of Perón; the Presidency of Carlos Menem proved that. But Kirchner behavior and decision-making does suggest at least a hint of continuity.

The most obvious example is the Kirchner’s ongoing battle with the media conglomerate Grupo Clarín. Over the last few years, Grupo Clarín has quite clearly shown their support for the farmers I mentioned above, irking the Kirchner clan to the point that they resorted to using every tool at their disposal in an effort to split up the company. To their credit, the newspapers haven’t been taken over as they were by Juan Domingo, and the Kirchner’s inability to eliminate or at least strong-arm their opposition has been some combination of shameful and embarrassing.

The second example is their manipulation of trade unions. Perón, the consummate populist, learned early on how to harness the power of the urban working class. It was their loyalty and numbers that demanded an end to his incarceration in 1945, and the Partido Justicialista counts on that loyalty to this day. However, the recent loss of CTA (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos) support has revealed organized labor might also be shifting their allegiance. The CTA came about in 1992 because of opposition to policies of the Menem administration, but at the moment their key membership or affiliation is with a large number of workers in the informal economy, those same workers who may of woke me up with their pots and pans.

Then there’s the forced resignation of Central Bank President Martin Redrado last January; at the time I remember thinking about Perón’s nationalizing of the Central Bank. He used it to pay off the Bank of England, just as Mr. and Mrs. Kirchner wanted to use $6.6 billion in reserves to pay debt due later in the year. The difference is that Redrado had enough autonomy and respect to draw international attention to the issue. The Central bank’s reserves tripled under his tenure and he restored a sense of stability to a country still remembered by most of the world as the personification of economic mismanagement. When Perón nationalized the bank, he was essentially acting with impunity.

I’m probably going too far, but when Nestór Kirchner had his angioplasty this September, I could only think of an ineffective though prescient Isabel Perón’s final days as President—waiting for the impending change that appeared inevitable. Mr. and Mrs. Kirchner are a resilient pair, though, and I’m not yet convinced Ricardo Alfonsín, Eduardo Duhalde, or Mauricio Macri have what it takes to beat a healthy Nestór in 2011.

But “yet” is the operative world.