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Executive Action, Central American Presidents and the Fate of the Unaccompanied Minors

By Eric Hershberg

Image courtesy of Center for Latin American and Latino Studies

Image courtesy of Center for Latin American and Latino Studies

Speculation abounds in Washington as to the content of the long-awaited Executive Actions that the Obama administration has promised to decree amidst the failure of Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform.  Having resisted pressure from Latino constituents and immigrant rights advocates to act before the mid-term election, in a vain effort to protect vulnerable Democratic incumbent Senators who lost their bids for re-election anyway, the administration now seems poised to announce new measures as early as the end of this week.  Press accounts based on leaks from within the Executive Branch speculate that as many as five or six million undocumented migrants may see their vulnerability to deportation diminish as a result of the impending policy changes.  Barack Obama’s Republican antagonists are fulminating about the consequences if he makes good on his promise, with some pondering ways to shut down the government or impeach the President, and others, fearful that a particularly intemperate response could damage the Republican brand, particularly given the need to attract at least a third of the Latino vote to the candidacy of whomever is chosen as the 2016 GOP presidential candidate, allude to the likelihood of court challenges to what they deem an extreme instance of Executive overreach.

One unanticipated but welcome measure that has been announced publically is that children deemed vulnerable to the violence in the three Northern Triangle countries of Central America will be able to apply to be reunited with parents residing legally in the U.S.  This policy shift, announced during the visit to Washington last week by Presidents Otto Pérez Molina, Salvador Sánchez Ceren and Juan Orlando Hernández, is among the administration’s responses to the surge of unaccompanied minors and families across the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year or so: 68,000 unaccompanied children were detained at the border during Fiscal Year 2014.  For their part, together with Vice President Joseph Biden at the Inter-American Development Bank, on November 14 the three Central American Presidents pledged to launch an Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle, with the objective of overcoming the conditions of economic misery, social vulnerability and institutional deficiencies that propelled the wave of migration of recent years and that have the potential to motivate a renewed flow of arrivals.  Biden offered an enthusiastic endorsement, but aside from reminding those in attendance that the administration had requested $3.7 billion from the Congress in response to last summer’s “crisis,” he did not offer specific commitments of resources, which of course are unlikely to be forthcoming from the strong Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.  Nor did the Presidents make tangible commitments to build states capable of protecting the basic rights to life chances and security that are so remarkably absent for many of their countries’ inhabitants.

Assessing the likelihood of continued surges in migration requires understanding the factors that propelled the flow of people across the border in recent years.  A newly released study* by the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, funded by the Ford Foundation, provides essential data and analysis on the drivers of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and on the fate of children and families who have arrived in the U.S. from those countries over the past year.  A core message of the report is that the absence of fundamental pre-conditions for living their lives with dignity – education, jobs, and most of all protection from violence – compels people to migrate rather than seek to better their lot in their communities of origin.  In the long run, only dramatic reforms undertaken by Central American states will build the institutions needed to address the basic needs of their populations and to provide the minimal levels of security needed for them to live their lives in dignity at home.  Perhaps little that was agreed upon during the Presidents’ visit to Washington gives cause for great optimism, but it is our hope that the CLALS study points the way toward solutions to the region’s crisis and toward ensuring the protection of those who endured the perilous journey to the U.S. border and now find themselves in limbo in the U.S.

 *To download a free copy of the full report, click here.

November 19, 2014

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by clalsstaff on November 19, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Central America, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 19, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/11/19/executive-action-central-american-presidents-and-the-fate-of-the-unaccompanied-minors/

U.S. Elections: Latino Vote Not Decisive

By Eric Hershberg and Fulton Armstrong

Rob Boudon / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

Rob Boudon / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

Preliminary estimates indicate that Latino voter participation and support for Democratic Party candidates on Tuesday were similar to the 2010 mid-terms – but not enough to overcome the Republicans’ gains across the broader population.  Before Tuesday, Latino observers were excited that 1.2 million Latinos had registered to vote since the last mid-term elections (2010) and, with an estimated 66,000 American Latinos turning 18 each day, they would have some new clout.  Latino Decisions, the leading polling organization focused on Latinos, found that two-thirds of Latino voters in Texas supported Democrats in House races on Tuesday, and 74 percent in Georgia supported Democrats.  Their broader impact as a bloc, moreover, is hard to assess because most of the competitive races for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives were not in states with concentrated Hispanic populations.  Gerrymandering also blunted their impact on House races, and new voter identification laws appear to have discouraged participation as well.  The Dallas Morning News reported last weekend that Texas state officials estimated that the laws would render more than 600,000 registered black and Latino voters unable to cast ballots (without breaking out the size of each group).

Latino Decisions had warned before the elections that enthusiasm for Democratic candidates was 11 percent lower than it was during the general elections two years ago.  Many Latinos were angry that President Obama backed off his plan to use executive authority to begin immigration reform, while at the same time, ironically, they were frustrated that the Democrats saw them as a one-issue constituency and did not include them on other issues.  Indeed, Voto Latino, a voting rights organization, and others have been warning that Latinos care as much or more about the economy, health care, and women’s rights but feel ignored.  (The polls show that Latinos feel even more shut out by the Republicans.)  The great pool of young voting-age Latinos has been “hardest to reach,” according to Voto Latino, because they are busy and turned off by the stereotyping.  The Democrats also seem to have communicated priorities poorly.  Colorado Senator Mark Udall played up his support for comprehensive immigration reform, but Latino Decisions says only 46 percent of Latino voters there knew it.  On the other hand, Nevada Governor-elect Brian Sandoval – a Republican – attracted Latino voters with a platform emphasizing Medicaid expansion, English-learning education initiatives, while downplaying his party’s rhetoric on immigration.

The margin of Republican victory was wide enough that even high Latino turnout wouldn’t have flipped the outcome in places like Colorado, North Carolina, and Georgia.  Tuesday’s results notwithstanding, however, polls by Latino Decisions and other research indicate that the Latino voice at the polls will grow and, when mobilized, be potentially decisive.  Despite strains with the Democrats, it’s hard to see Latinos jumping to the Republican Party unless it significantly shifts policies on immigration, social programs, voter-ID laws, and the economy.  It would be unfair to blame President Obama alone for the lack of a Latino surge this year, but his decision to back off on immigration clearly hurt his party badly.  He wanted to take heat off vulnerable Democratic senators but helped neither the candidates nor his party’s ability to mobilize Latinos.  Latino Decision’s data on low enthusiasm and dismay about the delay of executive action mean that if the administration doesn’t take real action soon – and work to build Latinos’ enthusiasm over the course of the next two years – it will diminish prospects for the Democrats to have a big Latino edge in the presidential race in 2016.  With a Republican-controlled Senate, Obama faces the same dilemma as before – to risk the Senate’s wrath by taking executive action on immigration or continue to alienate a key constituency – but the answer should be clearer in view of Tuesday’s results. 

November 7, 2014

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by clalsstaff on November 7, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 7, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/11/07/u-s-elections-latino-vote-not-decisive/

Post-Snowden Challenges for U.S. Information and Communication Technology Firms

By Robert Albro

infocux Technologies / Flickr / CC BY

infocux Technologies / Flickr / CC BY

A year after Edward Snowden’s dramatic disclosures about NSA surveillance in Latin America, U.S. companies hoping to make inroads into the region’s fast-growing information and communication technology market are running into increasing obstacles.  If the political costs were immediately forthcoming, especially in Brazil, the fallout for Silicon Valley’s tech giants has taken longer to assess. The biggest problem is the lingering lack of trust resulting from the revelation that the U.S. companies enabled the NSA’s eavesdropping by giving it direct access to their servers.  A 2014 NTT Communications survey found that, in response to the Snowden affair, 88 percent of information and communication technology decision-makers around the world, including Latin America, have changed their buying behavior around large-scale data storage.  In Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile, “data sovereignty” has become a major issue, in the form of new data privacy and disclosure laws now shaping the direction of the region’s developing market.

According to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, U.S. software firms are expected to lose $35 billion in sales overseas through 2016. Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, puts potential losses as high as $180 billion.  Latin American investors have been questioning the wisdom of using US data storage companies, and established U.S. dominance in the cloud computing sector has already taken a hit. Cisco’s last quarterly earnings, for example, were down 7 percent – 27 percent in Brazil – even as the cloud computing market in Latin America is predicted to grow at a 26 percent clip through 2018.  The emergence of Miami as a major global tech hub and gateway to Latin America’s fast-growing information technology markets is threatened by a proposed EU-Brazil trans-Atlantic cable to circumvent the city as a key node for Latin American access to the global internet.  As investor e-news service 4-Traders has reported, Chinese tech giants like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are establishing and expanding beachheads in Latin America, while China’s government pursues cooperative partnerships with Latin American counterparts to accelerate the development of the region’s information infrastructure.  Meanwhile, US-based data mining and analytics firms like Choicepoint Inc., currently major players in the region’s business intelligence and online security markets, have become the subject of investigation by skeptical governments and privacy advocates in the region.

The U.S.-centric view of the internet as “free and open,” a basic feature of the business model of U.S. tech firms, is being challenged in Latin America, where the regulatory balance between free expression and privacy is increasingly tilting toward the latter.  Despite the fact that the region’s online population is the world’s fastest growing and that it boasts a dynamic tech start-up movement, U.S. internet technology firms should expect more such challenges.  Regional trends in internet governance are largely anti-American, focused on displacing U.S. commercial dominance of the internet, and promoting open-source software as alternatives to U.S. products and services.  As Latin America builds out its cloud computing market, it is doing so in ways poised to compete and not collaborate with U.S. companies.  Privacy controls and requirements to conform to local laws already create new and costly disincentives for U.S. companies, which might opt to pull up stakes.  Meanwhile, business models for Latin American start-ups are not copycatting U.S. models as frequently as in the past.  If Latin American entrepreneurs have maintained close ties with U.S. centers of innovation and investors, they are now more focused on developing their own intellectual property, instead of technology transfer, to meet specific demands of their local and regional markets.  What just yesterday seemed wildly improbable – that U.S. tech giants might lose their edge in Latin America – has become a credible scenario.

October 23, 2014

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by clalsstaff on October 23, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Regional Snapshot, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 23, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/10/23/post-snowden-challenges-for-u-s-information-and-communication-technology-firms/

Who Will Attend the OAS Presidential Summit in Panama?

By Fulton Armstrong and Eric Hershberg

OAE-OAS & tgraham / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

OAE-OAS & tgraham / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Summit of the Americas isn’t until next April, but interest in how Panama as host handles near-unanimous pressure from Latin America to invite Cuban President Raúl Castro, and how the United States and Cuba will respond, is growing fast.  Speaking to reporters at the United Nations last week, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson answered several questions on the U.S. position.  Key excerpts follow:

  • Asked “if the United States is still opposed to Cuba attending.”  On the Summit of the Americas, I think we’ve been pretty clear in our position on the summit, which is that obviously Panama is the host country for the summit, and as the host country they will make the decisions on invitations to that summit.  …  And the fact of the matter is we have said from the start that we look forward to a summit that can include a democratic Cuba at the table.  We also have said that the summit process, ever since Quebec in 2001, has made a commitment to democracy, and we think that’s an important part of the summit process.  But the decision about invitations is not ours to make, and obviously there’s been no invitations formally issued to the United States and other countries. And so there is no acceptance or rejection yet called for or made. …
  • Asked “is there a chance that the U.S. might refuse going.”  Again, I think you won’t be surprised to hear me say that we’re really not going to answer hypotheticals in the future yet.  Obviously, the Summit of the Americas is in April and that’s not a situation that we can answer, although I think we have made clear that we believe the summit process is committed to democratic governance and we think that the governments that are sitting at that table ought to be committed to the summit principles, which include democratic governance. And therefore that’s our position at this point.  Obviously, we have a position on Cuba which does not at this point see them as upholding those principles.

Panama’s likely invitation to Cuba – reflecting the consensus of 32 hemispheric nations at the last Summit – will draw protests from official quarters in Washington.  But it’s far from certain that the Obama Administration would risk blame for torpedoing the 20-year Summit process.  Obama survived a handshake with Raúl Castro at Nelson Mandela’s funeral last December, and being in the same room with him again as a President in the second half of his second term will have little political consequence.  A workshop in Mexico City in June, in which CLALS researchers participated, and another in Ottawa in September, sponsored by the Center and the University of Ottawa, explored likely outcomes.  Mexican international relations specialists speculated that a reasonable outcome was for the United States to show up like a polite guest, and thus avoid having the anachronism of U.S. antagonism toward Cuba overshadow its broader relations with Latin America.  Canadian experts were deeply concerned that Cuba’s inclusion might undermine the centrality to the OAS of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, but they agreed that failure to convene a Summit would constitute a serious blow to the OAS and to the regular summits that provide Canada a seat at the inter-governmental table.

The reality is that Cuba does not conform to the Democratic Charter or to the broader OAS criteria of democratic rule, but equally real is that Latin America sees Cuba as a full member of the hemisphere and has lost all patience with those in Washington who would deny that.  Either Washington — and Ottawa — set aside their objections to Cuba’s inclusion or they bid farewell to such fora and their constructive impact on regional relationships that ought to matter to them.  Moreover, if they acquiesce to Cuban participation but then try to commandeer the agenda and make the Summit a seminar on democracy and human rights, it will only reinforce the widespread sense in the region that Washington cannot move beyond its obsession with the trivial matter of Cuba and get on with a serious conversation among equal partners.  They would thus sacrifice an opportunity to discuss issues on which significant, substantive advances are possible through dialogue among leaders of countries throughout the hemisphere.  The value of the Summit rests with the capacity of all involved to act like grownups.  President Obama did so at Mandela’s funeral, and it will be telling whether he can do it again in Panama this coming April.

October 2, 2014

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by clalsstaff on October 2, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 2, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/10/02/who-will-attend-the-oas-presidential-summit-in-panama/

Sanctions on Venezuela: Why?

By Eric Hershberg and Fulton Armstrong

Photo credit: NCinDC / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Photo credit: NCinDC / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sanctions against Venezuela that the Obama Administration announced last week respond to political pressure to punish alleged human rights violators in Caracas, but they have no immediately apparent policy objective.  The State Department announced that it has suspended the U.S. visas of “a number of Venezuelan government officials who have been responsible for or complicit in … human rights abuses” during protests earlier this year, which resulted in the deaths of at least 40 people, injury of hundreds more, and jailing of dozens of activists.  The Department did not release a list of sanctioned individuals nor divulge the information used to compile the list, but press reports indicate that 24 officials have been targeted and include cabinet members, presidential advisers, police, and military officials.  The sanctions do not affect bilateral trade or Venezuela’s place as the United States’ fourth biggest foreign supplier of oil.

U.S. condemnation of the Venezuelan government and the blacklisted officials has been strident, but there has been no public explanation of what Washington expects the sanctions to achieve.  The statements of U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Feeley, made to a Colombian radio station and reported by El Universal in Caracas, strongly suggest the sanctions are intended to show solidarity with the Venezuelan opposition and U.S. disapproval of the government of President Nicolás Maduro.  “Social protests have been a genuine war cry from people oppressed by the lack of democracy,” Feeley is reported as saying.  “The [sanctions] were intended to note that the U.S. cannot allow, for the sake of its values, that a supposedly democratic government represses the legitimate expression of the people’s voice.”  The State Department has not demanded, however, any particular action by Caracas to lift the sanctions, such as an investigation into the abuses, re-launching a national dialogue, or compensating victims.  Feeley suggested that the governments of Colombia and Brazil – with which he said the U.S. government had “meditated” about the issue – supported the sanctions, but regional support for them has been muted at best.  Indeed, the Administration had responded to last May’s House of Representatives vote in favor of sanctions by indicating that these would be counterproductive and could undermine efforts at mediation by these same countries.  The one dissenting voice in the House, Congressman Greg Meeks (D-NY), explained his vote as opposing unilateralism, adding that its passage was a message to Latin American governments that we don’t care what they think.

The Venezuelan government has repeatedly and credibly asserted that a significant portion of the violence has been perpetrated by protestors rather than the state or government supporters, and a number of officials have been charged.  Nonetheless, no U.S. sanctions have been brought against opposition members who planned or participated in violent actions.

Some observers have attributed the U.S. action to pique that Aruban and Dutch officials several days earlier rejected its request that they extradite to the U.S. Venezuela’s new consul in Aruba, a former chief of intelligence whom Washington suspects of trafficking in drugs with the Colombian FARC – despite Vienna Convention provisions regarding diplomatic immunity.  More likely, the sanctions are a reaction to a realization that the quixotic “salida” campaign, which many in Washington somehow imagined could bring down the Maduro government only months after it had won an election, had all but petered out, leaving the opposition in disarray and the government in a renewed position of strength.  Sanctions also are a bow to congressional pressure on the Obama Administration to act against Caracas, which has continued to grow even after the salida campaign has run out of gas.  Just hours after the sanctions were announced, Senator Marco Rubio issued a press release taking credit for them, and other conservatives – led by the Cuban-American congressional delegation – called for even tougher measures.  Without clear objectives, however, the sanctions seem to be mostly a moral and political statement – pushing relations into yet another dead end from which neither government is disposed to find a way out.  Indeed, Venezuelan officials, calling the sanctions “a desperate cry from a nation that realizes the world is changing,” are turning the diplomatic adversity to domestic political advantage, just as administration officials had wisely predicted in pushing back against the Congressional saber rattling last spring.

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by clalsstaff on August 6, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in United States, Venezuela
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Posted by clalsstaff on August 6, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/08/06/sanctions-on-venezuela-why/

Mexico and NAFTA: Lessons Learned?

By Robert A. Blecker*

Photo credit: Alex Rubystone / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Photo credit: Alex Rubystone / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Twenty years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, it is clear that the promises made by Mexican President Carlos Salinas and U.S. President Bill Clinton – that the accord would make Mexico “a first-world country” and halt the migration of Mexican workers to the United States – have not been fulfilled.  In Salinas’s famous words, Mexico would “export goods, not people.”  But the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States rose by a conservatively estimated 3 to 4 million during the first two decades of NAFTA, and millions more were apprehended at the border and deported.  The reasons why immigration flows accelerated post-NAFTA are not hard to discern.

  • NAFTA fostered integration of Mexican industries into global supply chains targeted at the U.S. market, accelerating Mexico’s transformation into a major exporter of manufactured goods.  Nearly one million manufacturing jobs were created there in the first seven years of NAFTA (1994-2000).  But this job growth was offset by similar job losses in agriculture, and manufacturing employment has fallen by about a half million since 2001.  The net increase in manufacturing employment from 1993 to 2013 was only about 400,000, less than half of the annual growth in the Mexican labor force.
  • Real hourly earnings in Mexican manufacturing were no higher in 2013 than in 1994, and Mexico’s per capita income has stagnated relative to that of the United States.  In 2012, typical Mexican manufacturing workers received only 16 percent as much per hour as their U.S. counterparts, down from 18 percent in 1994.  Even adjusted for the lower cost of living, workers without a college degree in Mexico still earn only about one-quarter to one-third of what they can earn by moving to the United States.

The benefits of NAFTA for Mexico have been attenuated by several factors.  First, Mexican export industries still largely follow the maquiladora model of doing assembly work using imported inputs, so their value-added is only a fraction of the gross value of their exports and they have few “backward linkages” to the domestic economy.  Second, the Mexican government has frequently allowed the peso to become overvalued, making Mexico less competitive and driving multinational firms to locate in other countries.  Third, the tremendous penetration of Chinese imports into all of North America (Canada, Mexico and U.S.), especially since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, has displaced significant amounts of actual or potential Mexican exports.  A revaluation of China’s currency, rising Chinese wages and increasing global transportation costs have recently led to some “reshoring” of manufacturing to Mexico, but employment in Mexican export industries has grown only modestly as a result.

The increased integration of North American industries through NAFTA has proved to be a mixed blessing for Mexico.  U.S. booms have helped Mexico grow, but only for temporary periods, and being dependent on the U.S. market has held Mexico back since the U.S. financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the ensuing “Great Recession” and sluggish recovery.  Of course, NAFTA is but one of Mexico’s constraints.  The country’s restrictive monetary and fiscal policies, frequent currency overvaluation, monopolization of key domestic markets and inadequate investments in physical and human capital have also held it back.  The Mexican economy still suffers from a profound dualism, in which only about one-fifth of all non-agricultural, private-sector workers are employed in large, highly productive firms, while the vast majority are employed in small- or medium-sized enterprises with low, stagnant or even falling productivity.  Mexico’s experience under NAFTA certainly argues against portrayals of international trade agreements, such as the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, as panaceas for the economic ills of Mexico or any other country.  Whatever one thinks of the “reform” agenda of President Enrique Peña Nieto – which is focused on areas such as energy, education, and telecommunications – these reforms are unlikely to help Mexico break out of its slow growth trap if the foundations of the country’s trade and macroeconomic policies remain untouched.

*Dr. Blecker is a professor of economics at American University.

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by clalsstaff on July 29, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Mexico, North America, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on July 29, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/07/29/mexico-and-nafta-lessons-learned/

Child Migrants: Deepening Challenges

By CLALS Staff

A surge in the number of unaccompanied children fleeing criminality, family problems, and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico underscores the personal tragedy of undocumented immigrants – they escape old threats only to face new ones – but the issue so far has sparked only the usual partisan acrimony in Washington.  According to U.S. government sources, the number of child migrants reaching the United States has increased 92 percent over the past year.  Some 47,000 have arrived since last October, and a draft document by the Department of Homeland Security speculated the figure could reach 90,000 by the end of the fiscal year.  (Only 5,800 children arrived alone each year 10 years ago.)  Mexican children still outnumber others, but the current surge is coming from the northern-tier countries of Central America.  Polls conducted by the UN High Commission for Refugees indicate that about half of these children are driven by criminal insecurity; 21 percent by abuse and other problems in the home; and the rest by other forms of violence.  The influx of these refugee migrants is not a strictly U.S. phenomenon: Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama have seen a 435 percent increase in child arrivals from the northern tier since 2012 as well.  The UNHCR has made an urgent plea for assistance.

President Obama last Monday declared the problem was an “urgent humanitarian crisis,” and he directed the delivery of aid to house and provide care to the children, who remain in government custody while relatives in the United States are located or other solutions are planned.  The White House also announced an initiative to assign legal advisors to those under 16 who are facing deportation but are not in government custody.  Republican critics reacted forcefully.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz said the crisis was a “direct consequence of the President’s illegal actions,” including allegedly lax enforcement of immigration law.  The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives called it an “administration-made disaster.”

Shifts in immigration numbers traditionally have been a function of “push” factors (poverty, violence and other problems) in sending countries and of “pull” factors in the United States – particularly the perception that safely entering the country and finding work is easy.  The Obama Administration’s aggressive deportation policies – physically removing about two million undocumented migrants – arguably have reduced the “pull” over the past six years, and it seems premature to conclude that the Administration’s recent rhetorical shift has shined a bright green light as far as Honduran hamlets.  That the influx is occurring in countries other than the U.S. provides further evidence that local push factors (as the UNHRC posits), and not Obama Administration policies, are the most credible cause of the surge, in spite of the fact that criminality and violence in Central America’s northern triangle have not shown a commensurate increase during this period.  Regardless, predictable demagoguery around this growing crisis probably will further complicate the Administration’s efforts to carry out those few progressive steps it has launched by Presidential order, including programs to normalize the status of “Dreamers” – undocumented migrants’ children eager to overcome the stigma and obstacles to citizenship.  The approach of mid-term elections in the United States promises that this humanitarian crisis will sustain more name-calling and political paralysis in Washington.

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by clalsstaff on June 9, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on June 9, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/06/09/child-migrants-deepening-challenges/

El Salvador’s Former Guerrilla – and New Commander in Chief

By Héctor Silva Ávalos

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Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren with Secretary of State John Kerry during his visit to Washington, D.C. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]

Twenty-two years after participating in the signing ceremony of the UN-brokered peace accord that ended El Salvador’s civil war, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, one of the FMLN’s top guerrilla commanders, was sworn-in as president last Sunday.  The political reforms mandated by the Chapultapec agreement launched the country onto a sometimes tumultuous path toward a new democratic landscape that, at least on paper, included the alternation of power: for 20 years the ARENA party, representing the hard-right, ruled the country; in 2009, moderate Mauricio Funes, a popular TV journalist, and the FMLN established an alliance that took them to the Presidential Palace.  Through the prism of Sánchez Cerén’s recent victory, Funes’s was a transitional government.  El Salvador now begins its first period under the rule of the former guerrilla party that fought an insurrectional war against the allies of Ronald Reagan´s Washington during the last years of the Cold War.

Sánchez Cerén and the FMLN’s challenges are many – a stagnant economy; a private sector not used to a political system that doesn’t respond resolutely to its economic interests; a dysfunctional fiscal system; and one of the worst security situations in the world – with 14 homicides a day, growing gangs, and a reign of impunity inherited from the war years and perpetuated by organized crime’s success infiltrating state and political institutions.

The new leadership will also have to deal with the interests of El Salvador’s most powerful neighbor and ally, the United States.  The Obama administration sent a third-level delegation to Sánchez Cerén’s inauguration, and Secretary of State John Kerry did receive him in Washington before that.  Among the first items on the bilateral agenda is El Salvador’s access to funds in a second compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a $400 million program aimed at bringing fresh money to the underdeveloped and poor coastal areas.  The program is on hold because MCC is not satisfied with the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Law and because San Salvador has not yet caved to pressure from the U.S. Trade Representative to buy agricultural products – mainly seeds – within the CAFTA region, which would favor U.S. producers.  Washington’s reluctance to work with FMLN officers in law enforcement and security issues is another obstacle.

So far, Sánchez Cerén and his cabinet have tried to play the U.S. relationship smart.  But managing ties is not going to be a walk in the park.  Despite public winks and carefully worded statements, neither side really trusts the other.  But the bilateral connection is important to both.  Roughly one third of all Salvadorans live in the United States, and, in the last several decades, Washington has appreciated El Salvador’s importance in a region where it is losing influence.  The new government has sent a number of signals to Washington by visiting the State Department, engaging in most of the Treasury’s and USTR’s conditions on the MCC compact and launching an early dialogue with the international financial institutions.  But Sánchez Cerén has made it clear that he will also heed El Salvador’s natural allies, albeit for practical rather than ideological reasons.  Just this week, El Salvador requested formal acceptance to Petrocaribe, the Venezuelan economic and financial aid program.  Dealing with violence, insecurity and financial problems will require fresh resources that the government will welcome wherever their origin.  But it also seems possible that the new commander in chief´s patience with Washington’s style of diplomacy – such as pressure tactics to buy American agricultural goods – could be much shorter than that of his predecessors.  

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by clalsstaff on June 3, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in El Salvador, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on June 3, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/06/03/el-salvadors-former-guerrilla-and-new-commander-in-chief/

Venezuela: Vicious Cycle Continues

By CLALS Staff

Photo Credit: Cancillería Ecuador / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Photo Credit: Cancillería Ecuador / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

UNASUR has shown energy and flexibility as a facilitator during the Venezuela crisis, but neither the government, nor its opponents, nor the opposition’s allies in Washington have matched it – prolonging the vicious cycle that’s been plaguing the country for years.  Speaking as UNASUR, the foreign ministers of Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador reflected the continent’s frustration when they threw up their hands this week and left Caracas after another failed attempt to get a national dialogue on track.  Their statements represented a balance between the UNASUR members that are generally perceived as tolerant of the Venezuelan government’s “Bolivarian” revolution and those perceived as opposing it.  They reiterated calls, issued officially in Suriname on 16 May, for both sides to “achieve a broad dialogue that permits Venezuelans, without interference, to reach an accord that guarantees peaceful coexistence and stability in the country.”

The government, opposition and Washington have not heeded the appeal by UNASUR and the Vatican’s nuncio to be constructive and patient.  The government’s attack on opposition and student camps in early May and subsequent arrest of more than 200 protestors highlighted the authoritarian tendencies that have given momentum to the demonstrations.  The Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD), representing important sectors of the opposition, gave the foreign ministers yet another list of demands – including a Truth Commission investigating rights violations (and not headed by the pro-government president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello) and the selection of an entirely new National Elections Council.  The MUD’s executive secretary declared that he has no interest in participating in a peña or chit-chat session, and said, “The ball is in the government’s court.”  Although U.S. Assistant Secretary Roberta Jacobson said during a hearing that sanctions were premature (a statement that she attributed to “confusion”), the foreign affairs committees in both house of the U.S. Congress – without objection from the Obama Administration – have passed bills authorizing an array of punitive measures against Venezuelan officials.  The legislation also authorizes an additional $15 million dollars in aid to the government’s opponents.

The less overtly political agenda that first sparked the protests in February – soaring crime rates, rocketing inflation, and shortages of basic goods and services – has been overshadowed by the shouts of opposition leaders eager to force President Maduro from office and by Maduro’s defenses from the plotting against him.  Demands that Maduro negotiate with a foreign-funded opposition that has as its clear goal his removal as constitutionally legitimate president – something no head of state in the hemisphere would accept – naturally keep his bases on edge.  Political leaders on both sides manipulate popular opinion and claim el pueblo as supporting them.  Another of each side’s real strengths is its ability to portray itself as a victim of the unfairness of the other – because their victimhood rationalizes whatever actions they wish to take.  In that regard, the U.S. sanctions against the government and subsidies to the opposition play into Maduro’s hand.  Washington’s extra $15 million is a drop in the bucket for the well-funded opposition, but the U.S. support is as clear a signal as any of its desired outcome.  With both the United States and important segments of the opposition appearing to aim for nothing short of regime change, UNASUR is wise to step aside and see if anyone decides to get serious about ending the crisis.  Should the situation on the ground deteriorate further, however, UNASUR will probably ramp up its engagement and press both sides to make concessions in exchange for regional support.

2 Comments
by clalsstaff on May 27, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in South America, United States, Venezuela
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Posted by clalsstaff on May 27, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/05/27/venezuela-vicious-cycle-continues/

Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Framework for U.S.-Latin America Relations?

By Eric Hershberg
Embed from Getty Images
President Obama’s desire to move forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) appears likely to founder amidst Congressional resistance to granting him “fast-track” authority, but it does signal a noteworthy initiative by an administration eager to grow trade relations with some Latin American countries.  Originally formed by Chile, New Zealand, Brunei and Singapore in 2006, TPP is currently negotiating the accession of five new members, including the United States and Peru.  Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Canada, and Japan are also considering joining.  U.S. Undersecretary for International Trade Francisco Sanchez said last year that agreement on a framework for the United States to join TPP represents “a landmark accomplishment because it contains all of the elements of a modern trade accord.”  It eliminates all tariff and non-tariff trade barriers; takes a regional approach to promote development of production and supply chains; and eases regulatory red tape.  The White House’s senior official responsible for Latin America has also emphasized the importance of the Partnership.

The Administration for the most part has tried to sell the pact as a domestic economic issue – the argument being that more trade and harmonized regulations translate into more jobs – or as integral to a strategic focus on strengthening economic ties to the dynamic economies of Asia, rather than as a policy that has the potential to redefine economic relations with Latin America.  But lobbying on Capitol Hill has so far been ineffective, and Obama’s own Democratic Party has denied him the “fast-track authority” needed for an effective negotiation.  The Administration’s diplomatic strategy has not progressed smoothly either.  During Obama’s recent four-nation swing through Asia, he and Japanese Prime Minister Abe failed to sign an agreement widely seen as crucial for moving ahead with TPP.  Negotiators from all 12 TPP countries met in Vietnam last week, and – despite claims of progress – press reports generally suggest a gloomy prognosis for progress soon.

President Obama has made much of his “pivot” to Asia, and the push for TPP situates Latin America relations in Washington’s wider foreign policy agenda.  The emphasis on the TPP signals that liberalizing trade remains the core principle guiding U.S. thinking about economic relations in the hemisphere, in effect continuing a paradigm that has reigned for decades and that is embodied by proposals such as the now-abandoned Free Trade Area of the Americas.  Unable to secure broad South American buy-in for that U.S.-minted vision for economic cooperation, the administration seems to have settled on trying to work with a “coalition of the willing” comprised of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.  For governments elsewhere in the region, however, the not-so-particularly-new approach has elicited scant enthusiasm.  One could imagine ambitious proposals from Washington for hemispheric cooperation around energy, climate, infrastructure, technological innovation or even, eventually, labor market integration. But that would require visionary leadership, a commodity that is in strikingly short supply nowadays in the U.S. capital.  Rather than leading the articulation of a novel, shared agenda for a 21st century economic transformation of the Americas, Washington has chosen for now to repackage the last century’s prioritization of trade.

1 Comment
by clalsstaff on May 22, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Asia-Pacific, United States
Tagged ,

Posted by clalsstaff on May 22, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/05/22/trans-pacific-partnership-a-framework-for-u-s-latin-america-relations/

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