All posts tagged Civil Society

Mexico: Is Peña Nieto Missing the Point?

By Fulton Armstrong

Rodrigo Barquera / Flickr / CC BY

Rodrigo Barquera / Flickr / CC BY

The disappearance and apparent massacre of 43 students from a city in Mexico’s Guerrero state is a rude reminder to President Peña Nieto that economic reform and increased foreign investment aren’t enough to help the country overcome the scourge of narcotics-fueled violence.  Federal and State prosecutors agree that the police in Iguala – who, along with the city’s mayor, have strong ties to the Guerreros Unidos cartel – handed the students over to the narcos after a confrontation during a student protest turned violent, already leaving six students dead.  Residents on a nearby ridge noted an increase in police and truck traffic soon after the showdown, but the dozens of bodies uncovered by searchers at mass graves in the area so far have not been the students’.  The mayor and police chief are in hiding, but Federal authorities say three dozen police and accomplices have been arrested and many have confessed.  None apparently has identified where the bodies were dumped.

As the scope of the crime, which occurred three weeks ago, has become clearer, the President’s rhetoric has been increasingly forceful, committing to investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice.  The Federal police have been directed to take control of security in the area and nearby municipalities.  The government announced last Friday, that the “supreme leader” of the Guerreros Unidos has been arrested, while another committed suicide after a standoff with police.  But critics point out the federal authorities’ own problems with corruption, and criticism of Peña Nieto’s efforts to stem the violence has been growing, especially in the wake of his administration’s many self-congratulatory statements about progress in the security area.  A new 5,000-strong national civilian gendarmerie he rolled out in August was ridiculed as too little, too late.  His continuation of his predecessor’s emphasis on arresting drug kingpins – resulting this year in the spectacular arrests of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera (of the Sinaloa cartel), Héctor Beltrán-Leyva (of the Beltrán-Leyva Organization), Fernando Sánchez Arellano (of the Arellano Félix cartel), and others – has failed to eliminate the underlying systems of the drug trade.

During the presidential campaign in 2012, Peña Nieto promised to reduce violence, and his decision not to obsess over the problem – as his predecessor, President Calderón, had – may have given him a respite.  But his administration apparently ignored clear signals of trouble – such as indications that in Guerrero state and elsewhere the cartels’ were expanding and consolidating their influence over government – and the problem seems to be roaring back with a vengeance.  The President’s focus on reforming the economy and attracting foreign investment makes strategic sense, but its long timeline doesn’t help him fight the fires of violence that envelop parts of the country.  There’s also merit in creating something like the gendarmerie and other institutional tools, but that approach seems to ignore that the rot of corruption has deep roots at all levels – federal, state, and local – that must be dealt with and that an elite unit tied to a federal capital hundreds of kilometers away can do little in places like Guerrero.  Calderón had shown the challenge wouldn’t be easy, but Peña Nieto has not yet shown that he – and Mexican society – are up to it either.

October 21, 2014

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by clalsstaff on October 21, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Mexico
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 21, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/10/21/mexico-is-pena-nieto-missing-the-point/

Venezuela: More of the Same Tragedy

By Michael McCarthy*

Embed from Getty Images

The gruesome murder of a pro-government Socialist Party deputy and the decision by the opposition coalition’s Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD) to suspend a rally in light of the tragedy foretold an opportunity to restart a national dialogue.  But unlike in January 2014, when the murder of beauty queen Monica Spears and her family created momentum for talks on security between the government and opposition, an unfortunate and familiar downward spiral has begun.  High-level government officials’ provocative accusations that the murder of Robert Serra, one of the Venezuelan Parliament’s youngest members, was the work of right-wing actors have deepened yet again the political polarization in Venezuela.  UNASUR’s new Secretary General, former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, surprisingly weighed in, strongly implying that Colombian paramilitaries were involved in Serra’s murder.  The government has long attempted to link members of Venezuela’s opposition with paramilitary groups, and Samper’s impartiality will forever be questioned by the opposition if the allegation is not proven. At Serra’s funeral, President Maduro described the MUD’s new Executive Secretary, Jesús “Chuo” Torrealba, as a piece of “garbage.”  Maduro’s name-calling is another example of the government using polarization as a tool to encourage supporters to close ranks.

Before the stabbing deaths of Serra and his female companion by unidentified assailants, the government was attempting to build momentum to resume the UNASUR-sponsored talks that had been frozen since May 3.  Samper had informed the MUD and opposition members of his intention to restart talks, and had described Maduro as “a man of dialogue, a man of peace,” adding that there were good prospects for “working a lot of things for the good of the region.”  But at this point any good will among the parties seems to have evaporated.  Moreover, for MUD secretary Torrealba, who originally said his goal was to change the MUD’s profile to mobilize a wider base of support, the primary task remains building MUD unity at a moment when different factions of the opposition are promoting widely varying initiatives.  Torrealba has little negotiating experience and does not enjoy the same access to elite sectors as his predecessor did.  His precarious position calls into question whether the MUD could negotiate as a coalition even if talks restarted.

Once again, centrifugal forces seem to be prevailing in Venezuela.  This trend raises the question of whether Venezuelan society is not only “wounded and resentful,” as Jesuit Political Scientist Arturo Sosa says, but on the verge of an estallido social – social explosion.  Mechanisms for mediating conflict through political discussion remain in place and appear unlikely to disappear completely, but confrontations are likely to continue flaring up regularly.

*Michael McCarthy is a CLALS Research Fellow.

October 7, 2014

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by clalsstaff on October 7, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Venezuela
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 7, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/10/07/venezuela-more-of-the-same-tragedy/

Latin America United Against Violence in Gaza

By Aaron T. Bell

Sergio / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Sergio / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Israel’s assault on Gaza this summer provoked sharp criticism from Latin American governments.  Condemnation came not only from Cuba, a long-time critic of Israel, and from Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, which have been without diplomatic ties to Israel since cutting them after previous conflicts in Gaza in 2009 and 2010.  This summer’s UN-estimated 1,500 civilian deaths also provoked outrage from center-left governments, as Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Peru all withdrew their ambassadors.  At the Mercosur summit at the end of July, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Argentina issued a joint statement in which they criticized Israel’s “disproportionate use of force…which has almost exclusively affected civilians.”  And one of the largest popular demonstrations worldwide against the Israeli action took place in Chile, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian descendants.

Latin American interest in Israeli-Palestinian affairs is deeply rooted in the past.  Waves of immigration beginning a century ago have made the region home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Arab world.  Latin American governments provided crucial support for the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine that led to the creation of the state of Israel, but they roundly condemned the occupation of the Gaza Strip 20 years later.  In the Cold War era, Israel provided military hardware to rightwing military regimes in the region while the Palestine Liberation Organization, more leftist than Islamic in its revolutionary views, lent political and economic support to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.  Contemporary Latin American governments have taken a balanced approach in their relations with Israel and the Palestinians.  All but Colombia, Mexico, and Panama have recognized a Palestinian state based on national borders prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and trade with Israel has flourished.  Brazil is the top destination for Israeli exports, totaling over $1 billion per year.  In addition, Israel signed free trade agreements with Mercosur in 2007 and 2010; became an official observer to the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) in 2013; and in May 2014 approved a four-year, $14 million plan to boost trade with the PA nations and Costa Rica.  Israel’s recent efforts to further trade in Latin America ironically developed out of a desire to shrug off some of its dependency on Europe, where criticism of Israeli policy has become widespread and boycotts of Israeli goods are being organized by advocates of the Palestinian cause.

This summer’s fighting in Gaza chilled diplomatic relations between Latin American governments and Israel.  The Israeli Foreign Ministry described the withdrawal of Latin America ambassadors as a “hasty” decision that would only encourage Hamas radicalism, and it struck a nerve in Brazil when dismissing its “moral relativism” as an example of “why Brazil, an economic and cultural giant, remains a diplomatic dwarf.”  But both Israel and Latin America stand to gain from stronger economic ties, and with the exception of Chile’s suspension of trade talks, there are no pending signs that economic relations will suffer further now that this round of fighting in Gaza has come to an end.  The significance of this summer’s events lies instead in the autonomous decision by Latin American governments of all political stripes to act in favor of peaceful conflict resolution and the protection of civilians enveloped by the violence of war.  The Assad regime’s massacre of its own citizens in Syria in recent years provoked a more reticent condemnation from Latin America’s center-left governments and regional blocs, which backed a negotiated solution to the conflict while strongly opposing the possibility of foreign military intervention.  Without the specter of a wider conflict looming over this summer’s Gaza crisis, Latin American governments seized the opportunity to stake out a firmer position.  The region’s reaction to future atrocities – which may come sooner rather than later as the US prepares to battle the “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq – will show how durable this new approach will be.

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by clalsstaff on September 11, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Middle East, Regional Snapshot
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 11, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/09/11/latin-america-united-against-violence-in-gaza/

Bolivia: Lessons from the MAS

By Santiago Anria*

Joaquín Eguren / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Joaquín Eguren / Flickr / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

As Bolivian President Evo Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) prepares for the October 12 general election – which opinion polls indicate it will win by wide margins – the MAS appears to be a remarkably diverse organization capable of adapting operations to different regions of the country.  It fits neither the typical journalistic portrayal of Latin American social and political movements as clashing with political parties and elected governments, nor political scientists’ characterization of parties as unitary actors under the control of a unified leadership.  Founded by coca growers in the mid-1990s as their “political instrument” to contest power, the MAS has become the collective political expression of grassroots organizations now in power – to this day having diffuse boundaries and multiple faces, combining features of a grassroots movement and a party, and being a remarkably successful instrument for exercising rule.

The MAS’s regional diversity is one of its greatest strengths.  As an organizational actor, it looks and operates differently in different contexts depending on how the political space is structured.  In the Bolivian central region of the Chapare, where strong peasant unions are aligned with the MAS and control the territory, civil society and party are fused.  Grassroots organizations monopolize the political space, and local decision-making structures are embedded in the union structure.  Their success is rooted in “agrarian union democracy,” which emphasizes that “bases” exert control on the leadership – that the rank and file should lead and leaders should follow.  In the eastern city of Santa Cruz, on the other hand, the MAS has made inroads in traditionally hostile territory by developing an unusually strong local party organization with remarkable mobilization capacity, and that capacity gives it a central role in local governance.  As in other cities with large informal economies, the local structure draws support from two powerful urban sectors – transportation workers and street venders – and is organized territorially in districts that operate both during and between elections.  Rather than having the features of a movement, in Santa Cruz the MAS looks and works more like a conventional political party.  In the Chapare, Santa Cruz and elsewhere, the MAS organization has considerable latitude to operate locally within alliances and policies usually defined at the national level.  As a result, the MAS and its governmental counterparts are not often, or by necessity, in tension.

Latin American history offers many examples of political movements becoming personalistic vehicles for charismatic leaders.  More than 10 years since it became a credible electoral vehicle, the MAS may offer a more promising organizational alternative.  Morales is certainly a charismatic leader, with significant popular legitimacy and authority within the MAS.  His leadership cannot be overstated, and he is the dominant figure binding a wide array of grassroots movements and organizations.  Yet, the MAS has remained permeable to popular input in areas where civil society is strong and has mechanisms to arrive at collective decisions.  In the last general elections in 2009, grassroots influence was consequential: it led to the massive entrance of individuals and members of allied grassroots organizations into the highest level of political representation.  Their participation in Congress (the Plurinational Legislative Assembly) has pushed to diversify the legislative agenda still largely subordinated to the executive.  New MAS leaders willing or able to challenge Morales’s leadership have not emerged but, as the candidacies for the upcoming elections are defined, the strong regional dynamics could alter the composition of the new parliamentary group.  Whether the MAS will remain open, and whether it will manage to outgrow its dominant leader figure, will depend on the continuing strength of allied groups in civil society.

*Santiago Anria is a Ph.D candidate in political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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by clalsstaff on July 16, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Bolivia
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Posted by clalsstaff on July 16, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/07/16/bolivia-lessons-from-the-mas/

Social Exclusion and Societal Violence: The Household Dimension

By Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz*

A street in Pacuare, Costa Rica—one of the FLACSO project's research sites Photo credit: d.kele | Foter | CC BY-NC-SA

A street in Pacuare, Costa Rica—one of the FLACSO project’s research sites
Photo credit: d.kele | Foter | CC BY-NC-SA

Ongoing research in Central America increasingly points to citizens’ exclusion from basic markets, especially the workforce that receives certain social guarantees, as the cause of societal violence in the region.  Their lack of access to the labor, capital, land and other markets, in which almost all income is generated, leads to an extreme disempowerment – a primary exclusion – that reverberates through citizens’ lives.  Analysts of Latin American societies often focus on poverty and income inequality as important elements in violence, but a study by FLACSO-Costa Rica and FLACSO-El Salvador indicates that social exclusion is the underlying cause of these problems and, therefore, is the more reliable indicator of a country’s vulnerability to societal violence.  The processes of social exclusion may be responsible for the epidemic of violence that plagues urban spaces across the isthmus and elsewhere in Latin America.

In Central America, labor markets are increasingly important drivers of primary exclusion.  These are societies riven by endemic unemployment and generalized job precariousness, and much of the population is relegated to the kinds of self-employment that offer no prospects of ever moving beyond satisfying the survival imperatives of households.  Numerous South American governments in recent years have helped neutralize citizens’ exclusion through carefully designed social programs, but when the state lacks the capacity or will to supply access to such “citizenship,” as has been the case in much of Central America, exclusion only deepens.  A least two basic narratives establish clear linkages between social exclusion and violence, especially among youth.

  • First, when the state abandons marginal urban territories, these fall under the control of youth gangs that establish themselves as new authorities and obtain a monopoly on the instruments of violence.
  • Second, precarious employment – the inability of citizens to generate incomes sufficient to satisfy minimal aspirations of consumption – leads to lifestyles in which the line between legal and illegal becomes murky.

FLACSO’s study of several urban communities in Costa Rica and El Salvador has identified a possible third link between social exclusion and violence – in the household.  The domestic sphere, typically glorified as the sole space of security amidst the external insecurity that these communities find in public spaces, can also become a source of exclusion-driven violence.  Male unemployment, especially that of heads of household, is expressed not only in violence among adults but also violence by adults against children.  That violence in turn is projected outward, toward other members of the community, as victims of violence within households become perpetrators of violence outside them.  The complex chain of different types of violence, beginning with the structural violence that society generates through social exclusion, passing through the household unit, and then rebounds outward toward the community.  If this is in fact what is occurring, it suggests that efforts to overcome primary exclusion are imperative to reduce all levels of violence.

*Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz is a senior researcher for the Latin American Social Science Faculty in San José (FLACSO-Costa Rica) and lead researcher in this project supported by the IDRC.  For a description of the project please click here.

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by clalsstaff on March 6, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Central America
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 6, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/03/06/social-exclusion-and-societal-violence-the-household-dimension/

Venezuela: Racing to the Bottom

By CLALS Staff

VenezuelaThe casualty figures from last Wednesday’s confrontation between government and opposition groups in the streets of Caracas – three dead, several dozen injured and many thousands angry – are clearer than the solutions to Venezuela’s current crisis.  The airwaves immediately flooded with the usual accusations of who provoked whom.  The protest leaders – who have shoved aside the opposition’s more moderate standard-bearer, Henrique Capriles – blamed toughs within the pro-government “colectivos.”  President Maduro blamed “small fascist groups” for the violence.  He has accused protest leader Leopoldo López of trying to orchestrate a coup, and a court is charging him with murder and “terrorism.”  López denies the coup-plotting, but he does state forcefully that, under the campaign slogan of “La Salida,” he wants to put millions in the streets to force Maduro to step down.  Failing that, he’s building a base from which to launch a referendum to remove Maduro when the Constitution allows in 2016.

As always, both sides in the dispute claim to have the support of “el pueblo” and to seek only to promote the people’s interests.  The people did speak, albeit by a small margin, in favor of Maduro in last April’s presidential election, but the opposition – especially the boisterous faction that’s orchestrating the current protests – has never officially acknowledged his legitimacy as president.  Maduro’s ad hoc reactions to Venezuela’s increasingly dire economic situation, including policies that he boasts are going to make the “bourgeoisie squeal,” appear desperate and counterproductive.  Confusing audacity for leadership, Maduro has signaled that if López and his followers want to take to the streets, he’s ready to accept the challenge.

Venezuelan politics has long been characterized by a vicious cycle in which each side strives to provoke the other into making mistakes that injure itself – and each side can’t resist rising to the provocation, fueling a downward spiral.  Maduro and the opposition hotheads have found soul mates in one another – feeding on each other’s extremism – and it’s happening just as Capriles and other opposition moderates were making progress in a decade-long effort to redefine political dynamics in the country.  Maduro’s tough talk and López’s battle calls for massive protests, for salida, and for recall referendums are reminiscent of 2002‑04, when Chávez grew steadily stronger as he survived a coup, a national strike, mysterious bombings and other clandestine operations by foes, a recall referendum and more.  For a young (42 years old) Harvard-educated man from the wealthy end of town to think that he can best Maduro in the streets shows the sort of questionable judgment that gives a little credibility to government allegations that his provocations are part of a bigger, externally directed plan.  The U.S. State Department spokesman insisted on Thursday that it “is absolutely not true” that Washington is interested in “influencing the domestic political situation in Venezuela.”  Whatever the merit of the allegations and denials,  Venezuelan elites on both sides of the deep divide seem ill-prepared to find a better way of doing politics.

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by clalsstaff on February 17, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Venezuela
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Posted by clalsstaff on February 17, 2014

https://aulablog.net/2014/02/17/venezuela-racing-to-the-bottom/

Peru: Will Humala pursue deeper reforms?

By Marcela Torres

President Humala / Photo credit: OEA - OAS / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

President Humala / Photo credit: OEA – OAS / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Facing growing public discontent, President Humala is attempting to navigate through yet another cabinet shuffle while struggling to advance reforms of the police, education, and health care.  The President’s approval rating has dropped from 65 percent soon after his inauguration in 2011 to an all-time low of 27 percent.  He swore in his fourth prime minister, César Villanueva, last week, after telling Prime Minister Juan Jiménez – in office for just 15 months – that it was time to “refresh” the cabinet.  Jiménez said he had been contemplating resigning for months, but recent polls suggest that growing crime and corruption, the two main issues citizens perceive to be afflicting the nation, forced him out.

Protests against Humala’s government have been growing.  In July, 8,000 demonstrators in Lima expressed their rejection not only of Humala’s government, but of the entire ruling political class.  Although still small compared with protests in other parts of Latin American, they were of a magnitude not been seen in the capital city since 2000, when protestors took the streets demanding President Fujimori´s resignation.  Unlike the rural indigenous protests over extractive industries, which have become commonplace under the administration, the participation of the middle class was evident and crucial in the July protests.  Social anger was sparked by a video showing members of the main political parties secretly negotiating highly controversial appointments involving individuals implicated in corruption.  Persons who had allegedly violated human rights were selected as the human rights ombudsman and as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal.  The uproar motivated Congress to immediately annul the secretly negotiated appointments, known as the repartija, which for many Peruvians resembled one of the traditional means by which the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori had avoided institutional checks and balances by placing regime-friendly officers in power.

The recent Peruvian protests are similar to social mobilizations taking place in Brazil, Chile and Colombia – other countries in which economic growth has not translated into broad public satisfaction.  While many protests in these countries have focused on the quality of social services, the recent Peruvian demonstrations have offered a critique of the country’s widespread corruption and backroom politics.  Peruvian demonstrators came from diverse sectors of society, including labor union members, students, artists, TV actors, gay rights activists, without clear leadership or coordinated demands.  This amorphous type of protest appears particular in Peru because civil society largely avoids political activism as a consequence of the stigmatization of collective social action after the defeat of Shining Path in the ‘90s.

Humala’s most recent cabinet reshuffle and his earnest but ineffective reform efforts suggest he appreciates the depth of the social discontent – now with middleclass support and the participation of youth.  Peruvians are not willing to tolerate the traditional corruption associated with the country’s politicians.  The lack of coordination among social movements that can connect rural and urban discontent, as well as the absence of political parties within the Peruvian landscape that can effectively mediate between citizens and the government, might limit the scope of social protests to isolated outcomes. If protestors come up with a clear agenda through legitimate leadership, however, President Humala will have to deepen his reforms or risk irrelevance through the remainder of his presidency.  Superficial changes appear unlikely to appease the middle class and civil society.

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by clalsstaff on November 4, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Peru
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 4, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/11/04/peru-will-humala-pursue-deeper-reforms/

Brazilian Evangelicals: Stepping out into the Streets?

By Andrew Johnson

Kneeling in prayer. Photo by: Philip Anema

Kneeling in prayer. Photo by: Philip Anema

There is growing evidence of a potential shift in how Evangelicals engage in social issues in Brazil.  I witnessed their traditional approach recently inside a prison in one of Rio de Janeiro’s gritty peripheral suburbs.  Twelve men stood with their eyes closed and their arms draped around each other’s shoulders while an Evangelical pastor led the group in prayer.  After the final “amèm,” an inmate leader embraced the pastor and thanked him for his visit, to which the pastor responded, “I know that if I am ever in here in the future, you would come to visit me too.”  The pastor’s presence in the cellblock and his subtle pledge of solidarity with the inmates is typical of how Evangelicals have confronted pressing social problems through direct intervention and meeting the immediate needs of individuals in distress. They have been more likely to try to change the prison system by visiting inmates than by voting for a particular candidate or pushing for prison-specific legislation.  Theirs is a politics of presence.  But recently there have been signs that Brazilian Evangelicals’ intentional proximity to the needy is pushing some towards a different and more public strategy: street protest.

Even without an explicit political agenda, Brazilian Evangelicals have proven their ability to mobilize.  In early July, an estimated 2 million Evangelicals participated in the “March for Jesus” in the streets of São Paulo.  They sang hymns and prayed for the future of their country, but they did not use their collective voice to make demands of the government.  In contrast, just two weeks earlier, 65,000 people captured the global media’s attention by marching through the same avenues in São Paulo to protest increased public transportation fares, government corruption, and the fortune being spent on soccer stadiums for the 2014 World Cup.  The street protests gained momentum over the summer, but many Evangelical pastors and leaders were hesitant to offer public support, preferring to continue a strategy that relies on their direct service to the poor, the oppressed, and the imprisoned in their communities.

Antonio Carlos Costa and volunteers from Rio de Paz protesting in the streets of Rio de Janeiro asking the government for “FIFA Quality” Hospitals and Schools. Photo by: Gabriel Telles

Antonio Carlos Costa and volunteers from Rio de Paz protesting in the streets of Rio de Janeiro asking the government for “FIFA Quality” Hospitals and Schools. Photo by: Gabriel Telles

Evangelical support of the street protests in Brazil has been minimal, but not completely absent. Some Evangelicals appear eager to move beyond a “politics of presence” approach and address the social structures and institutions they blame for many of Brazil’s social problems.  In Rio de Janeiro, the human rights NGO Rio de Paz – one of the most visible and vocal groups in the recent protests – is led by an Evangelical pastor, and the bulk of the volunteers are Evangelicals.  One such volunteer, a son of a Pentecostal pastor, joined the masses demanding governmental reform and, to encourage  others from his church to follow his lead,  posted Proverbs 29:4 to his Facebook page: “By justice a king gives a country stability, but those who are greedy for bribes tear it down.” He closed his appeal by writing that “in 30 years I want to tell my children that they live in a more dignified country because their parents didn’t sit at home waiting for a change.”  If that message resonates widely among Brazil’s 40 million Evangelicals, the Brazilian government will confront ever greater pressure from the streets to carry out long overdue reforms of corrupt institutions and practices.

Andrew Johnson is a Research Associate at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California and a contributor to a two-year project on Religious Responses to Violence in Latin America carried out by the AU Center for Latin American & Latino Studies with support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

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by clalsstaff on October 3, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Brazil
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 3, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/10/03/brazilian-evangelicals-stepping-out-into-the-streets/

Mexico: Peña Nieto’s Big Push

By CLALS Staff

President Enrique Peña Nieto / Photo credit: Eneas / Foter / CC BY

President Enrique Peña Nieto / Photo credit: Eneas / Foter / CC BY

President Peña Nieto’s reformist agenda wins kudos from the business and financial class, but both a recalcitrant leftist opposition and mass organizations previously aligned with his party are taking to the streets in protest – raising serious doubts about its prospects.  In his first state of the nation speech, delivered last week, Peña Nieto pledged to plow ahead with “transformational” reforms, giving flesh to the PRI’s slogan that it is Transformando a México. In education, he’s proposed a more rigorous system for hiring, evaluating, promoting and firing teachers who have resisted change despite evidence that the current system is not equipping Mexican youth for employment.  In the energy sector, he wants to open up the oil and gas industry to foreign investment, an idea that was strictly off-limits in the past even though lagging investment has caused production in Mexico’s leading export industry to decline steadily.  He is also pursuing tax reforms that, although watered down when announced on Sunday, entail political risk and, tellingly, raise marginal rates by 2 percent for higher earners and impose a levy on capital gains.  In June, he picked a fight with powerful business leaders over control of the country’s telecommunications industry, an oligopolistic structure that imposes excess costs on consumers and producers alike, diminishing Mexico’s economic competitiveness.

The teachers unions, whose symbiosis with the PRI in the past ensured cooperation, mobilized huge protests in Mexico City, forcing Peña Nieto to delay his speech by a day and then causing monstrous traffic jams during it.  The President cloaked his announcement of the energy reform in nationalistic rhetoric, and PEMEX, the oil company, followed it up with predictions of positive results – huge increases in oil investment and production that purportedly would help to create 500,000 new oil-sector jobs by 2018 and 2.5 million by 2025. But opposition to the reform has been strident, and tens of thousands filled the Zócalo on Sunday to protest it as a “covert privatization.”  Opposition leaders are already pledging demonstrations to oppose taxes, though the likelihood of this may be diminished because the long rumored reform unexpectedly left untouched the value-added tax exemption for food and medicines, which would have been a major rallying point for the Left.

Some Mexican commentators say Peña Nieto’s leadership is already losing its shine and that his Pacto por México, the loose coalition he engineered in Congress, is at risk of falling apart.  He prevailed in his congressional showdown over the long overdue education reforms, but success in transforming the underperforming education sector appears uncertain, as the teachers are threatening more protests.  The arrest of narco bosses from the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas have not given him a bounce on the security front; indeed, Mexican press reports indicate that kidnapping, extortion and other crimes that more directly affect citizens’ lives continue to rise. Further complicating Peña Nieto’s life is news last month that the economy is slowing down.  The first contraction in four years has forced the government to cut its 2013 GDP growth forecast in half, to 1.8 percent.  The administration will undoubtedly point to data showing that PEMEX production has fallen by about a quarter in the past decade because of low investment, and will emphasize that this makes modernization of the oil sector all the more imperative.  But Mexicans have heard promises before, during NAFTA debates and since, that economic reforms and greater openness to trade and investment will massively improve their lives.  Whether there is any fuel left in that rhetorical tank remains to be seen.

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by clalsstaff on September 10, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Mexico
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 10, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/09/10/mexico-pena-nietos-big-push/

Ben Kohl: The Loss of a Scholar-Activist who Taught About Bolivia

By Eric Hershberg

This AULA blog post does not follow our standard format, but it is one that I hope will motivate readers to seek out some singularly insightful analyses of contemporary Bolivia.

Los marchistas del TIPNIS llegan a La Paz (19/10/2011) Photo credit: Szymon Kochanski / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Los marchistas del TIPNIS llegan a La Paz (19/10/2011) Photo credit: Szymon Kochanski / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

I was terribly distressed to learn that Temple University Professor Ben Kohl, a noted expert on Bolivia, passed away suddenly in late July, at the age of 59. I had the privilege of meeting Ben briefly on two occasions, on both of which he struck me as charming and intellectually lively. But I already knew of Kohl through his writings, which had taught me, and many of my students, a great deal about how and why Bolivian politics and society have evolved in such remarkable ways in recent years.  Faculty, students and non-academic audiences in Washington and beyond would be well served by surveying his writings, in part because of how effectively they make sense of a country with which the U.S. government has often related unproductively.

Most of Kohl’s work was co-authored with his journalist wife, Linda Farthing (he also collaborated with my CLALS colleague Rob Albro on a fine collection of articles on Bolivia that was published by Latin American Perspectives). Among their prolific writings on Bolivia, two books stand out as especially significant. Impasse in Bolivia and From the Mines to the Streets: an Activist’s Life in Bolivia established Kohl and Farthing as pivotal voices in shaping understanding of that Andean country’s politics and society.  Their work is unusual in the effectiveness with which it speaks simultaneously to advanced scholarly readers and to students and people in advocacy and policy circles who are engaged sympathetically with that country’s remarkable social movements and transformations.

What stands out for me about Impasse, aside from its deep and nuanced understanding of the fault lines dividing Bolivian society, is that it successfully blends attention to social dynamics and political mobilization at the micro-level with an appreciation for how those phenomena interact and reflect larger scale, deeply embedded social structures.  Written on the eve of Evo Morales’ rise to the Presidency, in the wake of several years of social and political “impasse,” the study combines ethnographic insight with sophisticated interpretation of macro-level historical and sociological processes.  Impasse in particular highlights how and why Bolivia took a decisively “indigenous turn” in its national politics beginning around 2000, and ably portrays the resistance that this elicited from long dominant elites. The book was an especially novel and eloquent contribution to the literature on Bolivia at a crucial juncture in the country’s history, a juncture that ushered in fundamental changes in the political system.

Mines, like Impasse, was written for more than a strictly scholarly audience, but it is a very different sort of monograph.  The autobiographical story told to Kohl and Farthing by labor activist Félix Muruchi Poma, and very intelligently framed for a foreign audience, brings to life aspects of contemporary Bolivia (and other parts of Latin America) that are rarely presented in such a compelling and readable form.  As noted in the brief bibliographic note at the conclusion of the book, several previous books provide historical accounts of issues and events covered in Muruchi’s story, but none of the English language literature does so in this “testimonial” genre.  That genre is difficult to pull off well, as Kohl acknowledged in an insightful article for the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, but this work is up to the task, and points to the activist side of Kohl and Farthing’s scholarship.  One is reminded, inevitably, of the classic I, Rigoberta Menchu, which focused on the life and politicization of an indigenous Guatemalan woman during a period that overlaps in part with that covered by Muruchi’s chronicle.  The many university faculty who assign the Menchu book for introductory Latin American Studies courses would do well to consider assigning this one alongside of it.

A number of Kohl’s recent articles and book chapters were aimed more strictly at scholarly audiences than were either Impasse or Mines. A 2012 essay published in Political Geography is the most insightful analysis I have encountered of the contradictions between what Kohl and Farthing label “resource nationalist imaginaries,” articulated in practice by strong social movements in Bolivia and more disparate actors in neighboring countries, and the circumstances of economies that remain as dependent as ever on revenues derived from natural resources. The study’s use of the theoretical concepts of “imaginaries” and “framing” strikes me as an especially valuable lens through which to understand the roots of social movement resistance to an economic model that has persisted despite the rise to power of Bolivia’s first indigenous President. Re-reading that piece as I was drafting this blog post, I am reminded of how Kohl’s passing is a great loss to those of us for whom innovative scholarship motivated by concerns about fairness and justice in Latin America is to be treasured, not unlike tin or gas or water for many Bolivians, as a precious commodity.

1 Comment
by clalsstaff on August 14, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bolivia
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Posted by clalsstaff on August 14, 2013

https://aulablog.net/2013/08/14/ben-kohl-the-loss-of-a-scholar-activist-who-taught-about-bolivia/

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