All posts by clalsstaff

The Danger of Dependence: Cuba’s Foreign Policy After Chávez

By William M. LeoGrande, World Politics Review

Photo credit: ¡Que comunismo! / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Photo credit: ¡Que comunismo! / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

On March 8 in Caracas, Raúl Castro, looking somber, stood in a place of honor beside Hugo Chávez’s casket during the late Venezuelan president’s state funeral. Castro was no doubt pondering what Chávez’s death means for Cuba’s ambitious economic reform program — or “updating” of the economic model, as Cubans prefer to call it. Not long after Chávez’s first election victory in 1998, he and Fidel Castro signed the first of what would become more than 100 bilateral cooperation agreements. By the time Chávez died, Venezuela was providing Cuba with some 110,000 barrels of oil daily at subsidized prices, worth $4 billion annually and representing two-thirds of Cuba’s domestic oil consumption. In exchange, Cuba provided some 40,000 skilled professionals, working mostly in health, enabling Chávez to extend health care into the poor barrios of Venezuela, thereby solidifying his political base.

With the Venezuelan economy foundering under a huge fiscal deficit, will Chávez’s successor continue this barter arrangement on the same preferential terms? If not, will the resulting oil shock derail Raúl Castro’s plan to move Cuba from a hyper-centralized planned economy, which even its architect Fidel Castro admitted no longer works, to a socialist market economy modeled on Vietnam and China?

Full article available on the World Politics Review site.

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by clalsstaff on April 15, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Cuba, Venezuela
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 15, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/04/15/the-danger-of-dependence-cubas-foreign-policy-after-chavez/

Obama’s Second Trip to Central America

SICA logo | Wikimedia Commons | GNU Free Documentation License

SICA logo | Wikimedia Commons | GNU Free Documentation License

The White House has cast President Obama’s trip to Mexico and Central America on May 2-4 as “an opportunity for the President to demonstrate his leadership in the international community in a really important way.”  The spokesman emphasized the “important people-to-people ties” between the United States and Central America because “there are a lot of immigrants” from the region.  The Administration’s press releases stress that the summit in San José, with the presidents of the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic under the rubric of the Central American Integration System (SICA), will focus on collective efforts to promote economic growth and development in the region and on “our ongoing collaboration on citizen security.”

Regional reaction to the visit and summit has been positive – Obama’s interest is clearly welcome – but leaders are already managing expectations.  Costa Rican Foreign Minister Castillo last weekend cautioned that the United States is not able to provide significant new assistance for either economic or security programs.  Commentators note that the visit has not been preceded by the sort of diplomatic activity that would indicate the rollout of significant new policies or programs.

At a summit in Guatemala with Vice President Biden one year ago, Costa Rican President Chinchilla crystalized regional criticism of the U.S. counternarcotics strategy when she said that Central America “is sacrificing the lives, making its enormous sacrifice” and, in a clear reference to Washington, called on the “international community [to] take greater co-responsibility in this struggle.”  Hosting the SICA summit with Obama suggests she is prepared to put such criticism aside, perhaps in hopes that talks focus on the economic and immigration issues.  The White House spokesman’s reference to immigrants – at a time that Obama is pushing ahead with related legislation – may indicate that immigration will be a primary concern for him also.  The last time Obama went to Latin America, for the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena in April 2012, he seemed ill-prepared for criticism of U.S. policies, including its counternarcotics strategy, even from Washington’s closest friends.  With perhaps the exception of Nicaraguan President Ortega, the participants in this Central American get-together seem less likely to deliver a similar grilling, making what diplomats call a “successful meeting” very likely.

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by clalsstaff on April 11, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Central America, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 11, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/04/11/obamas-second-trip-to-central-america/

Mexico-Brazil: Competing Economic Models?

The divergent economic performances of Mexico and Brazil over the past few years have again thrust upon analysts the difficult task of estimating which factors – public policies, market trends, geographic location, financial market managers’ perceptions, or something else – are responsible for the different results.  Brazil was everyone’s favorite two years ago, but Mexico is now being hailed as the hot performer – and praise is being heaped on Mexico City for making things happen.

Former Chilean Finance Minister Andrés Velasco, writing for Project Syndicate (click here for text), explores why the Brazilian economy today is “stagnating” while Mexico, written off as a “lost cause” just two years ago, is “expanding at a steady clip.”   Among Velasco’s key points:

  • Financial markets’ behavior says more about investor perceptions than about the countries in question.  Analysts focus on short-term figures rather than on structural trends.
  • Mexico’s economy is much more open than Brazil’s because of NAFTA and other agreements with Europe and Asia, while Brazil’s is limited by the “strictures of Mercosur.”  (Velasco was a strong advocate of free-trade policies while serving on President Bachelet’s cabinet.)  Mexico’s “export basket” has expanded dramatically – to include car parts, electronics, telecommunications equipment – while Brazil’s exports are increasingly commodity-based.
  • After both implemented anti-crisis fiscal packages in 2009, Velasco praises Mexico for having reduced its stimulus sooner – enabling it to keep interest rates much lower, controlling inflation better, and thereby contributing to a more robust private-sector role.

At the same time, Velasco urges wariness “about jumping to definitive conclusions” and notes that Mexican exports have been slowing in recent months, while domestic consumption is picking up as a source of demand.  He also cautions that Brazil’s potential to sell its products around the world “should not be underestimated.”

However thoughtful, analyses like Velasco’s may neglect the impact of another long-term factor:  the steady rise in wages in Brazil and their stagnation in Mexico.  At a seminar in Washington hosted by CLALS last week, Mexican economist Luis Felipe López Calva (click here for news article) noted that the strength of the middle class continues to be a vulnerability in Latin America, and he said that the ability of the middle class to be a “lever of growth” argued for policies that emphasized economic mobility.  A thriving middle class and increased domestic consumption can be a more reliable engine for growth (and for the consolidation of democratic institutions necessary for growth) than short-term market trends.  The increasing wellbeing of the bottom two thirds of the income distribution pyramid in Brazil argues for tempering optimism that Mexico alone has found the holy grail of economic policies. 

What do you think?  Click on “leave a comment” below to contribute.

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by clalsstaff on April 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Brazil, Mexico
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 8, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/04/08/mexico-brazil-competing-economic-models/

Is the Truth Finally Arriving in El Salvador?

By Héctor Silva Ávalos

Memorial of massacre site at El Mozote, Morazan, El Salvador | By Efrojas | Wikimedia Commons | public domain

Memorial of massacre site at El Mozote, Morazan, El Salvador | By Efrojas | Wikimedia Commons | public domain

A U.S. court is on the verge of making a major contribution to El Salvador’s struggle to end impunity.  A former Salvadoran military commander six weeks ago admitted in a Miami immigration court that his troops had engaged in human rights violations and extrajudicial killings in the 1980s.  More significantly, he confirmed that the U.S.-trained and -funded Atlacatl Battalion was responsible for the horrendous massacre at El Mozote, a hamlet in which the elite Marine-style battalion killed an estimated one thousand peasants, mostly women and children, over three days in December 1981.  Until recently, current and former military commanders claimed that reports of the bloodbath were communist propaganda.  In his defense, General José Guillermo García, who was defense minister, said he was unaware of the soldiers’ actions at the time.  The judge responded skeptically, saying García “didn’t do what a military officer respectful of the law should have done in order to fully serve his country and his people.”

The General’s confession is no small matter.  An Amnesty Law passed in 1993, pushed by allies of the war-era government, put the lid on many investigations.  Its passage kept two mid-ranking officers convicted of involvement in the 1989 Jesuit massacre from serving their prison sentences, and it paved the way for other military and civilian leaders to cover up that atrocity. The air of impunity has endured for 20 years.  General García’s testimony provides the first real open window for Salvadorans to start learning about what happened despite strong efforts to keep the truth under wraps.  The political and economic elites’ defense of the Amnesty Law has focused on the argument that El Salvador should not be confronting its past if it really wants reconciliation and peace.  But two decades after the peace accord brought the end of the war, that kind of thinking is beginning to fade, and will continue to wane as Salvadoran society is confronted with the naked truth, the naked horrors.

The Obama Administration deserves some credit for advancing the legal case against García and a former colonel facing similar immigration charges in Boston, Inocente Orlando Montano.  Both processes have been encouraged by a U.S. policy of locating and ousting foreigners on U.S. soil who have been credibly accused of human rights violations abroad.  However ironic it is that some of the violations were committed by units receiving U.S. assistance, Washington is promoting an important lesson:  generals who once held in their hands power over citizens’ lives and deaths become common defendants – criminals – when the truth is known.  The impunity enjoyed by the colonels and generals – and their civilian sponsors – has grown roots in Salvadoran institutions and still feeds today a culture of obscurity, injustice and inequity that prevents the country’s progress towards development and modernity.  This vicious cycle will not will not end until they are held accountable.

Read the full text of this essay.

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by clalsstaff on April 5, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in El Salvador
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 5, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/04/05/is-the-truth-finally-arriving-in-el-salvador/

Malvinas-Falklands: Just More Demagoguery

Photo credit: blmurch / Foter.com / CC BY

Photo credit: blmurch / Foter.com / CC BY

The UK’s recent referendum in the Malvinas-Falklands suggests that neither side in the dispute is serious about finding a lasting solution.  Few observers were surprised that the overwhelming majority of the islands’ residents – all but three of the 1,517 persons casting ballots – would vote to “retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom.”  Since the war in 1982, London’s decision to station 8,000 troops (more than four times the local population) and decentralization of control over fisheries have enabled islanders to enjoy one of the hemisphere’s highest standards of living.  The UK government has encouraged a blossoming of British identity on the islands.

British and Argentine political leaders couldn’t resist the opportunity to demagogue the results of the referendum.  Prime Minister David Cameron said the islanders are “British through and through and that is how they want to stay,” and he warned that Argentina should take “careful note” because “we will always be there to defend them.”  In a series of 27 tweets in two hours, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ridiculed the referendum.  “An English territory more than 12,000 kilometers away?” she asked.  “The question is not even worthy of a kindergarten of three-year-olds.”  She called the residents of the islands a “transplanted population.”  Foreign Minister Hector Timmerman threatened legal action against firms helping explore for oil around the islands, and both houses of the Argentine Congress voted unanimously to condemn the referendum.  Washington has stayed on the sidelines despite its strategic alliance with London and tensions with Buenos Aires.

Both countries have changed greatly since 1982, and the chance that the rhetoric will escalate into greater tensions seems remote.  But nationalism, symbolism and opportunism continue to dominate the Malvinas-Falklands issue 30 years after a war and in the second decade of a new century.  With their economies in bad shape, the current governments in both London and Buenos Aires may welcome the international distraction.  The prospect of rich offshore oil deposits around the islands has raised the stakes, with both countries accusing the other of wanting the islands merely for their natural resources.  Argentina, moreover, seems intent on pushing its neighbors into supporting its stance on the islands, exposing them to the contradiction between the two important principles at play – a historical claim of sovereignty versus a current referendum of clear popular will rejecting it.  Of the two corners that the UK and Argentina have painted themselves into, Argentina’s is more complex and will require a more patient, long-term approach involving, perhaps, United Nations mediation.  Kirchner has expressed hope that the new Pope could act as a mediator in the Falklands-Malvinas dispute, yet his Argentine nationality and past comments that the islands belong to Argentina make that implausible.  It is clear that putting the issue on the front burner and trying to drag the rest of the continent into the debate has not served Buenos Aires’ interests well.  The UK’s referendum is unhelpful, but President Kirchner still has room to tone down the rhetoric and threats, and avoid letting a tactical setback lead to a strategic blunder.  Chances of that happening are better under her successor, and the next election isn’t until 2015.

 

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by clalsstaff on April 1, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Argentina, Europe

Posted by clalsstaff on April 1, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/04/01/malvinas-falklands-just-more-demagoguery/

South America and the United States after Chávez

By Tom Long

Banco del Sur | Photo by: Presidencia de la N. Argentina | Foter.com | CC BY

Banco del Sur | Photo by: Presidencia de la N. Argentina | Foter.com | CC BY

In many depictions, South America’s relations with the United States have been structured around Hugo Chávez for much of the last decade.  So it is natural for the region to wonder where U.S. policy will head now that he is gone.  In the Bush Administration’s framework – which the Obama Administration has largely continued – Chávez and his closest allies in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina were an emerging anti-American axis.  Colombia and Chile were considered Washington’s last bastions of support, and Brazil under Presidents Lula and Dilma variously positioned itself as a quiet moderator or, on occasion, private fan of the estrangement between the unruly ALBA countries and the United States.  With Chávez’s passing, the narrative will change.

Although Chávez’s charisma, boundless energy, seductive regional pride, and resumption of Venezuela’s traditional oil subsidies made him larger than life, the depth and endurance of his influence was exaggerated by friends and foes alike.  Elements of his vision of a “Bolivarian” Latin America united in resisting U.S. influence have always been present and always will be, but the dynamic Chávez sought, with himself at its center, seems likely to fade fast.  Bolivia’s President Morales was the closest to being a protégé, but even he has been compelled by domestic politics to give priority to relations with Washington. Ecuador’s President Correa was never as close to Chávez and largely steered his own independent course. Chavez’s detractors had tired of using him as a foil as well.  For years no Latin American leader had found tangling with Caracas – thereby giving Chávez the attention he craved – to be worthwhile.  Since Álvaro Uribe’s departure, even Colombia, apparently taking a cue from the oil-hungry United States, has made trade a bigger priority than criticizing its erratic neighbor.  Many high-profile Venezuelan initiatives for the continent, such as the Banco del Sur, fizzled.  Despite Chávez’s role in their founding, even UNASUR and CELAC had grown away from his personal leadership.

Concerns in Washington that someone will take Chávez’s place as counterweight to U.S. influence seem at least five years out of date.  There is no candidate with both the desire and ability to assume Chávez’s mantle.  Just as the benefits of close cooperation with the United States have declined, most leaders have little to gain from overt conflict.  South American international relations have already grown considerably more complex, as countries developed their own responses to Chávez without taking orders from either Washington or Caracas.  The trend of increasing autonomy is natural and, in ways, inevitable – even though it may be irksome to some in Washington, who are skeptical of Latin Americans’ commitment to what Washington thinks should be a shared interpretation of democracy, trade and counternarcotics policy.

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by clalsstaff on March 28, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in South America, United States, Venezuela
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 28, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/03/28/south-america-and-the-united-states-after-chavez/

The TecnoLatinas: A Start-Up Revolution

Foro de Ahorro de Energía Eléctrica, México | Photo credit: Alejandro Castro | Foter.com | CC BY-NC-SA

Foro de Ahorro de Energía Eléctrica, México | Photo credit: Alejandro Castro | Foter.com | CC BY-NC-SA

Latin America is experiencing a full-fledged start-up movement amid rapid growth of an innovation and information economy.  Over the last several years the region’s online population has grown faster than in any other part of the world – with approximately 255 million internet users as of last year.  Half of the top 10 markets worldwide, ranked by time spent on Facebook and other social media, are in Latin America.  Clusters of innovation start-ups, such as those around Monterrey, Mexico, are springing up with astonishing speed.  In 2012 Mexico was among the largest exporters of information technology services in the world.  Google is currently building a data center in Chile, while Amazon Web Services opened a data center in Sao Paolo last December.  But these are not information-era maquiladoras. Instead, Latin American entrepreneurs are combining the availability of open-source innovation tools and the emergence of cloud computing with effective bridge building in Silicon Valley to bring collaboration, expertise, and capital to their home markets.

  • Latin America offers multiple advantages for tech start-ups: a low cost of development, an educated and growing talent pool with the necessary technical and entrepreneurial skills, and increasingly available and affordable broadband and internet access.
  • In particular, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, along with metropolitan areas across the region, are incentivizing the development of a competitive start-up ecosystem – an advantage attracting a growing number of “angel investors.”
  • Start-Up Chile, a national program begun in 2010 with 22 start-ups from 14 countries, offers seed capital, grants, tax protection, space, mentoring, and networking to “accelerate” promising ventures.  Its most recent competition drew 1421 applicants from 60 countries, including from Singapore, London, and San Francisco.

The lack of tech innovation and incentives for start-ups has been an Achilles’ heel of Latin American economies for decades.  If the start-up trend continues, the region could make significant, lasting progress toward narrowing the sizable gap between itself and the most dynamic developing countries, mostly in Asia.  Latin America’s start-up movement is both top-down and bottom-up, with a tech-savvy generation of entrepreneurs not afraid to take risks and to leverage government support, as part of a collaborative business model built on multiple ties to Silicon Valley.  A core challenge will be whether these initiatives are scalable, and whether governments can move away from stale policy debates rooted in antiquated paradigms to move their economies toward the frontiers of innovation of the information age.  Old elites with a lock on traditional industries are poorly positioned to obstruct the phenomenon, but if these emerging innovation hubs are to succeed, at some point they are likely to confront  the entrenched and oligopolistic business practices still prevalent in the region’s energy, telecom, and other sectors.

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by clalsstaff on March 25, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Regional Snapshot
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 25, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/03/25/the-tecnolatinas-a-start-up-revolution/

Changing of the Guard, Cuban-Style

By William M. LeoGrande

Cuba Coat of Arms | Wikipedia Commons

Cuban Coat of Arms | Wikipedia Commons

In his speech to the closing session of Cuba’s National Assembly on February 24, Raúl Castro formally announced that he would retire at the end of his current presidential term in 2018. Even now, only a handful of “los históricios” – the founders of the revolutionary regime – remain in office, though they still dominate the Communist Party’s Political Bureau. Raúl also announced the immediate retirement of several elderly comrades-in-arms, including First Vice-President José Machado Ventura. In his place, the Assembly elected 52-year-old, Miguel Díaz-Canel, putting a leader born after the triumph of the revolution in the direct line of political succession for the first time.

But Díaz-Canel is not the first presumptive heir to appear on the Cuban political scene. He is preceded by several others, all of whom came to a bad end, falling into disgrace and obscurity as quickly as they rose. The first was “Landy” – Luis Orlando Domínguez, a rising star in his forties whose power derived from his leadership of the Grupo de Apoyo, Fidel’s personal staff. He was arrested in 1987 for embezzlement and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The next was Roberto Robaina, the charismatic pony-tailed head of the Young Communist League. In 1993, Fidel appointed “Robertico” foreign minister at the age of 36, then sacked him six years later for disloyalty. Robaina, it turned out, was a little too friendly with foreign businessmen and officials.  Next came Felipe Pérez-Roque and Carlos Lage. Pérez-Roque served as Fidel’s personal assistant for a decade before being appointed, at age 34, to succeed Robaina at the Foreign Ministry. Announcing his appointment, Granma explained that he was qualified for the job despite his age because, “He is familiar, as very few others are, with Fidel’s ideas and thoughts.” Lage served as Fidel’s economic adviser during the Special Period, becoming one of the vice-presidents of the Council of State and executive secretary to the Council of Ministers – the closest thing Cuba had to a prime minister. Pérez-Roque and Lage were both removed by Raúl in 2009 for criticizing los históricos behind their backs and being too eager to push the older generation off stage. They were, as Fidel wrote, “seduced by the honey of power.”

All these early heirs owed their ascent to their personal relationships with Fidel.  Before his illness, the elder Castro was, as we social scientists say, a “minimum winning coalition” all by himself. If Fidel decided on a policy, the rest of the leadership dutifully fell into line. Political power, then, was directly correlated with proximity to Fidel. It was no accident that the principal path to power for an aspiring young politician led through Castro’s personal staff. But the meteoric rise of Domínguez et al., denied them the political savvy only experience can provide, and imbued them with the hubris of Icarus.

Díaz-Canel appears to be an heir of a different order. An electrical engineer by training, he has spent his career rising through the ranks of the Communist Party, building a reputation for competent, pragmatic management. He served as Party first secretary in Villa Clara and Holguín provinces before moving to the national stage, becoming Minister of Higher Education and a vice-president of the Council of State. In public, his austere demeanor suggests the archetypical apparatchik, but in person he is said to be warm, personable, and modest – disdaining the prerogatives of office. While serving as first secretary in Villa Clara, he visited far-flung towns and villages by bicycle.

Díaz-Canel seems to be as different from the earlier heirs as Raúl is from Fidel. Fidel was always suspicious of institutions that might constrain his freedom of action, and never hesitated to circumvent them when it suited his purposes. Raúl, on the other hand, has been the quintessential organization man, valuing careful management, sound administrative processes, and institution-building. His proposal for term limits for all senior government and party officials represents the final institutionalization of the revolution, elevating the system over the pretensions of individuals. In 1973, Granma ran a headline, “Men Die, but the Party is Immortal.” Now, as los históricos are dying, the future of the revolution is finally being vested in the institutions they built and the successors those institutions have produced.

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by clalsstaff on March 20, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Cuba
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 20, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/03/20/changing-of-the-guard-cuban-style/

Pope Francis I: The First Latin American Pope

Pope Francis | Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales) | Foter.com | CC BY-NC-SA

Pope Francis | Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales) | Foter.com | CC BY-NC-SA

What will the first Pope from Latin America mean for that region, home to 40 percent of the world’s Catholics?  Leading scholars – several of them participants in a multi-year research project at American University* – offered insights recently in The New York Times.  Among many factors that they point to as conditioning the leadership of the newly elected Pope Francis – Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the former Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires – are how the Church meets the challenge of Evangelical Protestantism and deals with its own past in the region.

With their remarkable rise in recent decades, Evangelicals have broken centuries of Catholic monopoly and made Latin America far more pluralistic religiously than ever before.  Professors Virginia Garrard-Burnett and Daniel Levine underline the limitations of the strategies for renewal employed by the last two Popes – the return to traditional pieties, the adaptation of Pentecostal spiritual practices by “charismatic” Catholics, and the embrace of what Garrard-Burnett calls “neotraditional” organizations such as the elite, secretive Opus Dei.  Levine singles out various Evangelical strengths: churches that “work well with new media, have local leaders close to the community and provide expanded roles for women and minority groups.”  Perhaps the Evangelicals’ most fundamental advantage is their success in making religious faith relevant and real to the millions of Latin Americans that have swelled the region’s violent cities and experienced wrenching social change.

Latin American Catholicism will also be shaped by how it faces its own past in a region where democracies have replaced the dictatorships of old.  The personal story of Pope Francis illustrates different dimensions of that past: an “option for the poor” that took hold after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) together with a long history of ecclesiastical accommodation with repressive regimes.  The Argentine hierarchy as a whole was seen as supportive of the military dictatorship during the massive violation of human rights in 1976‑83.  Bergoglio’s personal role is unclear.  His supporters hold that he combined pastoral concern for his flock with quiet humanitarian diplomacy toward the junta. His critics argue that he failed to protect several left wing priests and his silence constituted complicity with the regime.  Like many other clerics who rose to dominate today’s Latin American hierarchies, he did not publicly defend human rights.

As Pope Francis, Bergoglio’s personal style and pastoral simplicity already mark an important signal to his Church that it must be committed to the poor.  In Latin America it has a historic opportunity to stand for their dignity and foster their empowerment.  Public identification with their cause is vital, but so is living and working with them to overcome the poverty and violence of their communities.  John XXIII, Paul VI and notable Latin American bishops after Vatican II saw this as a matter of securing their fundamental human rights.  This is an enduring legacy of their leadership during dictatorships that Francis and his Church should build on in the democracies of today.

* 2012-13, with the support of the Religion and International Affairs Initiative of the Henry R. Luce Foundation

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by clalsstaff on March 18, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 18, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/03/18/pope-francis-i-the-first-latin-american-pope/

Honduras: Simmering Crisis

Porfirio Lobo and Hillary Clinton
US Embassy Guatemala / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Little good and lots of bad has transpired in Honduras since the night in June 2009 that an Army-backed coup d’état, orchestrated by the economic elites, ousted President Mel Zelaya and installed Roberto Micheletti as the de facto ruler.  Almost four years later, Honduras remains one of the places in the Americas where democracy is at permanent risk – where drug trafficking, corruption, impunity, private armies and feudal caudillos thrive in a climate of spiraling violence.  Honduras today is the most violent country in the Americas and last year was among the top three in the numbers of assassinated journalists.  Honduras also remains one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere.

President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo lacked credibility from the moment he donned the presidential sash in January 2010 – the candidate who, by almost all accounts, would have lost the election had not the coup reversed that fate, clamped down on opposition media, and suspended many civil rights.  While Washington worked hard to gain OAS recognition of his government, Lobo offered no guarantees – to either Hondurans or foreigners – that he would reverse the ongoing activities of the Army and rapacious economic elites to undermine democratic institutions.

  • Timid attempts to show independence, such as a projected police reform, languished due to lack of political will and financial support.
  • Honduras’s doors opened ever wider to organized crime and corruption.  According to U.S. agencies, roughly 60 percent of the cocaine passing through Central America on its way to U.S. markets in 2011 went through Honduras.  (The Obama Administration funded a militarized drug interdiction program that sputtered after Honduran civilians were killed.)
  • Politically motivated murders by sicarios – reminiscent of 1980s death squads – skyrocketed.  Investigations were few, and prosecutions were nonexistent.
  • By the end of last year, Lobo was pointing fingers at his old allies in the Army, the elites, and even his own party, accusing them of trying to destabilize his government. He failed to pass constitutional reforms that he claimed would protect democracy.  General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, the military commander during the coup, announced that he was running for president.
  • Honduras is facing one of the worst fiscal crises of its history – a significant landmark for the perennially mismanaged country.

In Washington none of this seems to raise red flags.  On the contrary, the ideological bent of statements from both the executive and legislative branches suggests satisfaction with the state of affairs in Honduras – and willingness to keep the crisis there unsolved.  Hillary Clinton´s State Department was, to say the least, shy when addressing the deteriorating situation of the Central American country.  In January, at Senator John Kerry’s confirmation hearing, Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s assertion that what happened in Honduras in 2009 wasn’t a coup went unchallenged – despite the overwhelming consensus otherwise throughout our hemisphere.  The first sign offered by Kerry as Secretary of State, however, gives room to expect at least a modest change in the narrative: on March 4th, the State Department gave one of eight International Women of Courage Awards to Julieta Castellanos, a respected human rights advocate and critic of corruption and impunity in Honduras.  This hint of a less ideological and a more strategic and humanistic approach to the unsolved Honduran question is welcome.

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by clalsstaff on March 13, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Honduras, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 13, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/03/13/honduras-simmering-crisis/

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