All posts tagged Politics

Peru’s 205th Independence Day: A Bleeding State, a Divided Society, and a Country Still Unpaved

By Diana Garay, Research Fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies

Source: “Presidential inauguration of Keiko Fujimori”

On July 28, 2026, Keiko Fujimori was sworn in as the country’s ninth president in a decade. Inside Congress, the ceremony displayed the full apparatus of a functioning democracy: a presidential sash, with a king and half a dozen visiting heads of state in attendance. Outside, a different reality was on display. In front of the Palacio de Justicia, demonstrators performed a symbolic lavado de banderas (“washing of the flags”), scrubbing the national colors clean, rejecting the incoming government and demanding justice for victims of state violence. Inside, a nation performing normalcy. Outside, a nation still counting its dead. This contradiction captures Peru’s central political dilemma. The institutions responsible for governing the country are also institutions that many citizens associate with years of instability, corruption, and unaddressed grievances. The question facing Peru is therefore not simply whether democracy can continue to hold elections, but whether it can produce legitimate and effective governance.

A Crisis of Governability

Peru’s crisis is not a failure of democratic procedure but of what those procedures have been used to do. Since 2016, the country has cycled through presidents at a pace virtually unmatched among democracies. Fuerza Popular, the right-wing populist party of the new president, became the most visible actor in this period of institutional instability, particularly after securing congressional dominance after the 2016 elections. Under its leadership, Congress transformed oversight mechanisms into instruments of political pressure against the government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, whose resignation in 2018 came amid repeated attempts to remove him through the vacancy process, a mechanism that allows Congress to declare the presidency vacant under specific constitutional grounds, including “permanent moral incapacity.” The confrontation continued under Martín Vizcarra, whose presidency ended in 2020 when Congress declared the presidency vacant on grounds of “permanent moral incapacity.”

Yet the political crisis that followed revealed that Peru’s instability extended beyond any single party or president. Manuel Merino’s brief government collapsed after widespread protests against Vizcarra’s removal, during which two young demonstrators, Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado, were killed by police forces, further intensifying public outrage and demands for accountability. Francisco Sagasti’s transitional administration provided only a temporary pause in a deeper institutional conflict. Pedro Castillo’s presidency exposed the opposite side of the same dysfunction: a president elected without a stable governing coalition who ultimately attempted to dissolve Congress and rule by decree before being removed in December 2022. Dina Boluarte’s subsequent administration deepened the legitimacy crisis, particularly after the deaths of protesters during the 2022-2023 demonstrations. Together, these episodes demonstrate that Peru’s problem is not simply presidential turnover; it is a political system in which neither presidents nor Congress have consistently possessed the legitimacy, institutional capacity, and public trust required to govern.

Institutions Designed for Conflict

Peru’s institutional landscape, however, has now entered a new phase. Fujimori’s inauguration marked the return of a bicameral Congress, but the reform itself was not the result of a new public mandate. In the 2018 referendum, more than 90 percent of voters rejected the proposal to restore a bicameral legislature, while also approving restrictions on congressional reelection. Despite those outcomes, in 2024 Congress reserved both through constitutional reforms, approving the restoration of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies and congressional reelection. This has fueled skepticism toward bicameralism, not necessarily because of opposition to a two-chamber legislature, but because it reinforces the perception that political actors can reshape institutional rules despite previous expressions of popular will.

Under the new system, at least theoretically no political force possesses enough power to govern without negotiation. The president’s supporters do not automatically control the legislative agenda, while opposition parties lack the votes to independently impose their own program or fundamentally alter the balance of power. This distribution of power means that governing will require agreements across political lines.

The difficulty, however, is that Peru’s recent crisis has not emerged because political actors lacked opportunities to negotiate. It has emerged because political competition has increasingly rewarded confrontation. Since 2016, Congress and the executive have repeatedly used constitutional mechanisms as instruments of political struggle, transforming checks and balances into tools for weakening opponents. The result has been a political system in which institutional rules exist, but the incentives surrounding those rules have encouraged obstruction rather than cooperation.

Bicameralism may make abrupt institutional breakdowns more difficult, but it does not guarantee governability. Without a change in political behavior, the country risks replacing one form of instability with another: not the rapid removal of presidents, but prolonged paralysis in which competing factions possess enough power to block each other but insufficient willingness to govern together.

Peru’s challenge, therefore, is not simply a question of institutional design. It is whether a political class has repeatedly contributed to the erosion of public trust can operate within institutions that depend on trust to function. The new Congress may prevent some of the excesses of the previous decade, but it cannot resolve the deeper question at the heart of Peru’s crisis: How can any type of sustained governance take place, either from the right or the left, given the bad faith of political actors that appears to undermine democratic institutional mechanisms of checks and balances?

A Society Mistreated

Peru’s governability crisis cannot be separated from the society it seeks to govern. The country is often described as politically polarized, but polarization alone does not explain the depth of Peru’s instability. The deeper fracture is historical: millions of Peruvians do not share the same experience of the state. For some, the state represents economic opportunity, security, and national progress. For others, particularly communities that have experienced decades of exclusion, violence, and limited public investment, the state has often appeared distant, ineffective, and harmful.

This distinction was recently captured by Cardinal Carlos Castillo during the Mass and Te Deum commemorating Peru’s independence, when he emphasized that Peru is not only a divided country, but also one marked by citizens who have been mistreated and forgotten by its institutions. His message reflected a broader reality: Peru’s crisis is not simply that citizens disagree about political solutions; it is that many citizens question whether the political system has recognized their suffering at all. In such a context, governability becomes inseparable from legitimacy. A government can win an election and possess constitutional authority yet still struggle to govern if large segments of society believe that the state has repeatedly failed them.

The country’s electoral geography reflects these unresolved tensions. Fujimori’s strongest support came from Lima and much of the coastal regions, while the losing leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez received stronger backing from the Andean highlands and areas where poverty, inequality, and distrust toward central institutions remain especially pronounced. These differences are not merely electoral preferences. They reflect contrasting relationships with the state itself: between a coastal economy that has benefited more visibly from Peru’s market-oriented growth model and regions that continue to experience the consequences of unequal development.

However, Peru’s divisions are not only geographic. They are also historical. Keiko Fujimori’s return to the presidency reopened unresolved questions about the legacy of Fujimorismo and its role in the country’s current crisis of trust. Alberto Fujimori’s government remains one of Peru’s most contested periods: remembered by supporters for defeating the Shining Path insurgency, but remembered by critics for authoritarianism, corruption, the weakening of democratic institutions, and serious human rights violations.

For Keiko Fujimori, the challenge is therefore larger than inheriting a controversial family name. She inherits the unresolved wounds associated with that political project while also representing a movement that has played a central role in furthering Peru’s protracted institutional conflicts after 2016.

What Lies Ahead

Peru’s future will not be determined by whether Keiko Fujimori completes her presidential term. That would represent progress compared to the instability of the past decade, but it would not, by itself, resolve the country’s governability crisis. The more difficult question is whether Peru’s institutions can once again become arenas for democratic representation rather than instruments of political conflict.

For Keiko Fujimori, the challenge extends beyond managing Congress or implementing policy. She must govern a society where many citizens associate the political movement she leads with the institutional deterioration she now promises to reverse. That credibility gap cannot be closed through rhetoric alone. It will depend on concrete choices: strengthening judicial independence rather than weakening it, addressing the demands for accountability that continue to resonate after the 2022-2023 protests, and demonstrating that public institutions serve citizens rather than political interests.

The question is no longer whether Peru can hold elections or transfer power peacefully. It is whether those elected can rebuild the legitimacy that makes democratic government possible. Until that question is answered, Peru’s greatest challenge is not simply to preserve democracy, but to make it believable again.

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by clalsstaff on August 11, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Peru, South America
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Posted by clalsstaff on August 11, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/08/11/perus-205th-independence-day-a-bleeding-state-a-divided-society-and-a-country-still-unpaved/

Lethality and Illegality in the U.S. Boat Strikes Campaign: Why Characterization Matters for Regional Accountability Efforts

Marie Miller, Program Associate, Reiss Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law

Source: Wikimedia Commons

On September 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered a kinetic strike against a boat off the coast of Venezuela. U.S. military forces, he said, had identified those onboard as “narcoterrorists” of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a decentralized criminal organization with Venezuelan origins and a transnational reach. Thirteen days later, another strike, and a glimpse into the administration’s purported rationale: to disrupt narcotics networks affecting Americans—notwithstanding that Venezuela plays essentially no role in fentanyl production and smuggling. And then came another. Now, nearly a year later, more than 200 have been killed in 66 strikes by the U.S. Without evidence, without interdiction and trial, nor the administration’s stated legal authority made public, there’s still no telling when Operation Southern Spear, as the U.S. calls the campaign, will truly end.

With each strike, the administration has failed to make public any evidence that these boats are transporting drugs, much less that the passengers on board are affiliated with cartels or are participants in an “armed attack.” Most of the victims have not been identified, yet reports suggest victims include farmworkers and fishermen, compelled to participate in the trafficking network as independent laborers without ownership over the illicit product. With regard to cases where boats have been unusually crowded, one military official suggested that human trafficking victims could have been amongst those killed.

The Trump administration has claimed that the laws of war permit the killing of passengers smuggling narcotics in support of cartels designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). In 2025, TdA was designated as such by Trump’s State Department, under a statutory authority delegated by Congress. Typically, the military can stop instances of trafficking with far less lethal force. If a vessel is suspected of ferrying drugs, it can be intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and its passengers arrested. Instead, it appears that boats merely suspected of drug trafficking have been blown to bits from above, taking the lives of those on board and occasionally leaving survivors who, eventually, are also presumed dead or missing at sea. Even if evidence had been provided that these individuals were indeed associated with TdA—and it has not—the administration’s justification for these strikes relies on a flawed legal basis.

An FTO designation made by the U.S. government can include financial, criminal, and immigration consequences for its material supporters. Importantly, despite having led to military operations in the past, the designation by itself does not create a state of war or armed conflict, nor does it authorize “wartime” authorities like targeting or detention. Nonetheless, in a classified memo notifying Congress of the administration’s legal basis for the operation, the “President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations.” The president can surely repel threats of terrorism when a sudden attack is imminent. Yet there is no evidence that this high threshold was met at the onset of Operation Southern Spear. The initial strikes were framed as “self-defense” against a critical threat to American life and security. A state’s self-defense is justified under the U.N. Charter’s Article 51 only in the case of preventing an armed attack or subduing an ongoing one.

In an undisclosed notice to Congress, the Trump administration apparently shifted its basis, indicating that the strikes go beyond discrete acts of self-defense, labeling the targeted cartels as “nonstate armed groups” whose actions amount to “an armed attack” against the U.S. Many legal experts, on the other hand, contend that drug trafficking and its effects cannot constitute an “armed attack” triggering the right of self-defense. In its description of non-international armed conflict, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia refers to it as “protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups within a State.” While the Trump administration has indicated that TdA is engaged in “irregular warfare” in the U.S., it has yet to define what this entails. Whether this amounts to “protracted armed violence” is uncertain and unsupported by available evidence.

In the absence of such an organized group engaged in protracted armed violence with the U.S., the law of armed conflict does not apply. Thus, the passengers on the boats—alleged associates of TdA, though not identified as such in the formal report from President Trump informing Congress of the initial strike—would not be combatants, nor civilians within an armed conflict. (If there was an armed conflict, the boaters’ civilian status would render them prohibited targets). Subsequently, the strikes would not be classified as war crimes. Outside of armed conflict, premeditated killing of suspected criminals is called murder. And under U.S. domestic law, it is prohibited. Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the U.S. is a party, further prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life. Those responsible for authorizing the strikes may also be guilty of murder under Article 118 of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice.

According to former U.S. State Department attorney Charlie Trumbull, with each of the 66 strikes constituting discrete acts of murder across a ten month window, the attacks can arguably be described as “widespread.” Crimes against humanity (CAH), one of three atrocity crimes alongside genocide and war crimes, are understood as part of a “widespread or systemic attack directed against a civilian population” in “furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such an attack.” A named policy—Operation Southern Spear—implemented by U.S. Southern Command in an organized manner, therefore, may meet the “state or organizational policy” requirement for CAH.

Operation Southern Spear appears to be one of many prongs of the Trump administration’s aggressive aims to reassert the U.S. preeminence in the western hemisphere, as part of the National Security Strategy’s “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” In spite of condemnation from civil society, a largely tepid response from Caribbean states met the U.S. militarization of the Caribbean and the capture of Maduro in January. While Cuba’s representative to the U.N. decried the “military aggression” of the United States against Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago—whose military has partnered with the U.S. for joint exercises in Caribbean waters—verbally committed to the “cooperative efforts led by the United States to disrupt and dismantle networks that enable transnational crime,” remaining “steadfast” in support of U.S. “initiatives that strengthen regional security.” When Colombian President Gustavo Petro called one of the strikes “murder,” President Trump sanctioned members of his family, threatening to reduce aid and raise tariffs on the country. Since ending intelligence sharing with the U.S. (to, in his words, refrain from “collaborating with a crime against humanity”) Petro has reportedly toned down his criticism of U.S. Southern Command. Colombian authorities, moreover, have been slow to identify bodies that have washed ashore.

In the wake of Operation Absolute Resolve, which removed Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro from power, and the reported preparation of indictments against Cuba’s “political and military leadership,” Caribbean and Latin American states may be hesitant to further push back on the campaign, lest they risk falling into disfavor with a highly unpredictable Trump administration. In March, Ecuador began joint military exercises with U.S. Southern Command, with the intention of combatting drug trafficking. These led to various land and sea strikes, property destructions, and detentions. Since Operation Southern Spear appears to rely on a presumption that the U.S. is in an armed conflict with TdA, would the U.S. further target perceived associates—potentially including civilians—on land in Latin America? It is not outside the bounds of possibility.

If the relevant crime is indeed murder under U.S. law, the U.S. would hold prosecutorial jurisdiction. An ACLU case brought on behalf of the boat strikes victims’ families for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing is currently pending in Massachusetts, for instance. But if the killings are recognized as a crime against humanity, states outside of the U.S. may have universal jurisdiction status, in which international or foreign courts could step in when the U.S. fails to hold perpetrators accountable. This is why the distinction between war crimes and crimes against humanity matters. Despite President Trump’s ability to pardon those who have executed his orders in his chain of command, a determination that Operation Southern Spear is a crime against humanity would open new routes of accountability on the international level.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), for instance, can assert jurisdiction over crimes committed within the territory and maritime space of states that have ratified the Rome Statute. A point of comparative interest lies with the case of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who is now jailed after the ICC confirmed charges of crimes against humanity against him. In light of the murders of persons involved in drug-related criminal activity under the supervision of Philippines law enforcement, the ICC found reasonable grounds for the elements of crimes against humanity to be met. States can also prosecute crimes committed against their citizens abroad, such as the victims of the boat strikes, if they embrace passive personality jurisdiction and are able to either acquire prosecutorial custody or allow in absentia prosecution.

The geopolitical risks of accountability-seeking by victims’ states—Colombia or Trinidad, for instance—are evident. But the Trump administration won’t last forever. Right now, if they are able to muster the political will, Caribbean and Latin American states can quietly gather evidence of the strikes and secure witnesses. Once President Trump is out of office, indictments of perpetrators responsible for driving Operation Southern Spear on the state’s behalf can still come about.

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by clalsstaff on August 11, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized, Caribbean, United States
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Posted by clalsstaff on August 11, 2026

https://aulablog.net/2026/08/11/lethality-and-illegality-in-the-u-s-boat-strikes-campaign-why-characterization-matters-for-regional-accountability-efforts/

Guatemala’s President Arévalo: When Honesty is Not Enough

By Ricardo Barrientos*

Source: Guatemala’s Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES)

Around the world, increasing numbers of voters are electing rulers with authoritarian, anti-democratic, or even, openly dictatorial profiles. Disenchantment with democracy is on the rise, while respect for basic freedoms, inclusion, equality, and progressive thinking – or, just thinking – is on the decline. When Bernardo Arévalo took office in January of 2024, after a legal battle to defend the previous year’s electoral results, Guatemala appeared a notable exception in the global slide towards authoritarianism. Recognized as a politician highly committed to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, Arévalo emerged as a beacon for democracy and freedom in Central America and beyond.

Arévalo’s campaign was simple: be honest and fight corruption. This proved to be a highly effective electoral offer, as voters were tired after several administrations plagued with corruption scandals, and the ominous capture of important public institutions, most notably the General Attorney’s Office. After more than half of his four-year presidential term, Arévalo has carried through on that promise. He and most of this cabinet are perceived as honest, and corruption is not understood to be a problem within the Executive branch. Arévalo is also highly praised internationally, in contrast to his predecessors and some of his current regional neighbors. His administration has proved highly sagacious in managing international and diplomatic relations, achieving the best possible results with such challenging topics as dealing with the Trump administration in the US.

    Arévalo’s time in office would appear to be an outstanding success, deserving of applause by the Guatemalan people. Well, not quite.

    A survey conducted in May of 2026 shows that citizen support for Arévalo has plummeted. Only around 37 percent of Guatemalans approve of his government, putting him among the six worst rated presidents in Latin America. His popularity is well below several of the least democratic presidents, like Nayib Bukele of El Salvador or Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who enjoy high levels of citizen support. The reason is simple: since the beginning of his tenure, the Arévalo administration has suffered severe difficulties managing the budget, most notably, public investment in infrastructure.

    With four ministerial changes in just two years and the lowest rate of budgetary execution among all ministries, the Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure, and Housing is surely a particular nightmare for the president. It continues to suffer from deeply rooted structures of corruption, contractors linked to organized crime and campaign financing for rival parties, compounded by a lack of technical experts within Arévalo’s own party, Movimiento Semilla, capable of assuming high-profile ministerial positions. This chaotic situation is reflected in roads that are in very bad condition and no construction of new ones. Understandably, Guatemalans become angry when poorly maintained roads aren’t improved, and not even a kilometer of new road has been built.

    Arévalo’s administration has also proven extremely weak when dealing with Congress. Since 2024, the only way the Executive branch has managed to get the legislation it needed approved is by increasing the money for what congressional members and mayors most want: fully flexible budget allocations to local governments, especially through so-called “extraordinary” transfers to local development councils. In 2024 this tactic seemed to work, as the Arevalo administration finally got its budget expansion approved, followed by extensions and modifications of the 2025 and 2026 budgets. But this “solution” for Congress to pass legislation worked only for those bills that Congress members, mayors, and the Executive all wanted. It did not work for other measures to protect children and youth, or to regulate the use of water, among many others.

    Of course, the tactic of “buying” the will of Congress is never sustainable over the long term. Arévalo’s team discovered that the appetite of congressional members and mayors for extraordinary transfers to local development councils proved insatiable: in 2026 extraordinary transfers rose to around US $1,420 million, or more than 18 times what they were in 2022. However, the actual execution of this huge increase through transfers is very low. In 2025, execution was only 59 percent of what was allocated. And as of July 2026, it stands at 16 percent, while the rest of the budget’s execution averages around 42 percent. Among the reasons is technical incompetence. But the most worrisome is that Congress has been passing exceptions to the Organic Budget Law, allowing non-executed allocations to be carried over to the next year. This effectively allows mayors and congressmembers to accumulate and finally execute them all in 2027, when general elections will be held. It will also likely be too tempting for mayors and congressional representatives not to divert these funds to their own re-election campaigns.

    Thus, due to the Arévalo administration’s weakness when dealing with Congress and its inability to deliver public investment works through Central Government ministries, it has not only transferred huge amounts of money, but a large share of political power to mayors and Congress. And, if the general perception is that Arévalo and his ministers are honest, that perception is surely not the same with regard to mayors and members of Congress: they belong to the “old politics”; many have been accused of corruption and of having links to organized crime, which is why such colloquial terms as “narco-mayor” or “narco-deputy” continue to be widely used.

    President Arévalo is highly praised for his honesty and recognized internationally as a true democrat. But most Guatemalans reject him for not being an effective ruler in delivering the needed public investment in goods and services. The worst possible outcome of this mess is that Guatemalans approve of honesty and democracy, while also believing that they are not enough to achieve the necessary results. As is happening around the world, many Guatemalans have become convinced that not only are democracy and honesty not enough, but that they prefer less democratic and less honest rulers in exchange for more effectiveness in delivering real products and results. This is perhaps the most probable outcome in Guatemala for the upcoming 2027 election: if mayors and members of Congress manage to execute the accumulated budget through their local development councils, this will show that, they, local narco-politicians and practitioners of the “old politics,” are in fact more reliable for delivering the public goods and services, such as roads, that people desperately need. In the wake of a new electoral cycle, Guatemalans could be applying to President Arévalo the old saying, “Street lamp, darkness at home.”

    * Ricardo Barrientos is the executive director of the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI).

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    by clalsstaff on July 7, 2026  •  Permalink
    Posted in Guatemala
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    Posted by clalsstaff on July 7, 2026

    https://aulablog.net/2026/07/07/guatemalas-president-arevalo-when-honesty-is-not-enough/

    Changing Birthright Citizenship Would Weaken American Democracy

    By Ernesto Castañeda

    American University

    The U.S. Supreme Court will soon announce its ruling on Birthright Citizenship. If it sides with the Trump administration, it will revoke the practice of automatically obtaining citizenship by birth in U.S. territories. The outcome of this case has the potential not only to change how immigration law functions but also how citizenship is defined for everyone in the United States. Doing away with it would permanently damage the Supreme Court’s reputation.

    Birthright Citizenship is part of the 14th Amendment and has been a right guaranteed to anyone born within the country since 1868. The amendment was originally implemented to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people and means that anyone born on American soil is an American citizen, regardless of their parents’ citizenship at birth. Slaves were not considered citizens nor had the same political rights, and their status was inherited through maternal lines and thus also affected the children slave-owners had with enslaved mothers.

    Revoking Birthright Citizenship would immediately bring into question the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of children born each year, both to citizens and to undocumented or temporary residents with permission to work and study in the United States, and not officially representing a foreign country.  It would reinstate the inheritance of status that existed during slavery, where a mother’s status, in this case, documentation, would be passed down to her children, possibly for generations. It would create a group of people in the U.S. with no rights, greatly deepening inequality and democratic erosion.

    Previous court decisions have upheld Birthright Citizenship regardless of the parents’ immigration status. There is a strong precedent for birthright citizenship. Even during previous periods of immigration restriction in the US, like during the years following the Chinese Exclusion Act, the U.S.-born children of undocumented Chinese parents were American citizens. Changes to birthright citizenship would directly impact newborns from undocumented parents as well as the children of foreign workers with permission to reside in the country. Systems like this have existed before in countries like Germany, but were abandoned due to their impracticality and the enduring inequalities they created.

    A small group is fighting to end birthright citizenship. Most Americans do not have a problem with birthright citizenship; 64% of Americans support it. The widespread impact of ending birthright citizenship would be felt not just by everyday people but also by foreign-born CEOs, scientists, healthcare professionals, and, yes, agricultural and service workers. It would impact U.S. innovation for decades to come. It would deter people from immigrating and bringing new ideas and approaches to common problems. The U.S. would no longer be the main global hub of intellectual exchange and creativity that it has been for decades.

    Ernesto Castañeda is a political, social, and cultural analyst.

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    by clalsstaff on July 1, 2026  •  Permalink
    Posted in U.S. Supreme Court, United States
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    Posted by clalsstaff on July 1, 2026

    https://aulablog.net/2026/07/01/changing-birthright-citizenship-would-weaken-american-democracy/

    Why El Salvador is Turning to Soft Power

    Sonja Wolf, Research Professor at the Panamerican University in Mexico City*

    El Salvador’s elected autocrat claims to have ended gang violence. Soft power is central to Bukele’s efforts to legitimize his rule through these results. Yet the tactic invites greater scrutiny, revealing the state’s inability to tackle violence effectively.

    Source: Wikimedia Commons

    El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, a former advertising executive, first rose to power in 2019 promising to root out corruption and eradicate gang violence. In 2024 he won a second term in office, despite a constitutional ban on immediate presidential re-election. During his time in power, Bukele has systematically dismantled the country’s democratic institutions. The ongoing state of emergency has made headlines around the world for both its spectacle of cruelty and its controversial nature as a security policy. Police have detained over 91,500 citizens, including more than 33,000 people without gang involvement, and prison abuses have led to at least 523 deaths in state custody. Nonetheless, the measure remains widely popular with Salvadorans who, for decades, were terrorized by gangs.

    Bukele’s electoral autocracy hides behind a democratic façade to maintain legitimacy. To demonstrate effectiveness and maintain support, both domestically and abroad, the regime is building its soft power. According to the official narrative, the president is leading El Salvador’s transformation from the world’s murder capital into a safe and modern nation that is open to tourists and investors. To lend credence to this rhetoric, and to raise the brand visibility of Bukele and El Salvador, the country has been hosting major sports and cultural events. In recent years, it has held international surfing competitions, a Miss Universe pageant, and a five-show residency by Shakira. At the 2026 Venice Biennale, El Salvador debuts with its first-ever national pavilion. Adding to this soft power projection is the growing number of self-published hagiographies that extol Bukele’s leadership and the performance of his administration.

    A recent example is The Bukele Method by Andrés Guzmán. Until recently, the Colombian lawyer and cybersecurity consultant served as El Salvador’s Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights and Press Freedom. In this role, Guzmán was tasked with countering external criticism of the country’s backsliding on democracy and the rule of law. His text is a compilation of half-truths that appear designed to whitewash the Bukele regime’s human rights record and bolster its legitimacy by touting its alleged security gains.

    To take on the gangs, Guzmán asserts, the administration had to begin by stamping out the corruption that had permitted these groups to build their criminal empires. The author takes particular aim at the pacts that the traditional parties, ARENA and the FMLN, had brokered with the gangs to mobilize electoral support and reduce visible homicides. Rather than driving an institutional clean-up, Bukele’s lawmakers passed, in 2021, reforms that placed the justice system under the president’s control. Appointments of regime loyalists, mass firings of non-aligned state workers, and the dismantling of public sector unions concentrated power in the president’s hands. Investigations into government corruption and Bukele’s own gang pacts folded, while tighter transparency restrictions eroded independent oversight.

    Guzmán justifies the state of emergency by pointing to its alleged results. In typical populist rhetoric, he paints the autocrat as a hero who made tough decisions, defied his enemies (the opposition, the gangs, international watchdogs), and attained his goals: the dismantling of the gangs and a historic decline in homicides. Or, as the author puts it, mothers can finally sleep without the fear of a gang member knocking on the door at night. This story hides the fact that the “security miracle” relied on Bukele’s gang deals, whose breakdown triggered the state of emergency, as well as statistical manipulation — the homicide count excludes killings by police, murders in prisons, and bodies found in unmarked graves.

    Guzmán claims to have rigorously reviewed all human rights complaints and found them to have been exaggerated. But this contradicts independent reports showing that the state has hidden thousands of allegations and rejected thousands of habeas corpus petitions. A recent report by an international group of experts concluded that the human rights violations may in fact amount to crimes against humanity. Guzmán admits that mistakes were made, referring to arbitrary detentions. However, only some 8,000 citizens have been liberated, under conditions, and it was their testimonies that shed light on the prison abuses. The remains of dead detainees speak for themselves.

    In defending the state of emergency, the author poses a false dilemma: the government could pursue this measure, or do nothing in the face of an existential threat. But this either-or fallacy ignores that police intelligence about gang members had long existed. Bukele chose to act on this information only once he had institutional control and no longer needed the gangs.

    Following Bukele, who defines democracy as simply the will of the people, Guzmán contends that the president’s resounding re-election victory in 2024 validated his security strategy. In this deceptively simple logic, international watchdogs have no right to interfere in the domestic affairs of a sovereign nation. What matters is that Salvadorans endorsed the state of emergency by granting their leader a democratic mandate. But depicting “the people” as a homogenous group, unified in their support for Bukele, erases the voices of those who try to stand up to his abuse of power.

    Ultimately, the state of emergency is a simulation of legality that tries to hide the state’s incapacity to deal with violence. Laws passed by Bukele’s Legislative Assembly have reshaped a justice system that lacked the capacity to successfully prosecute offenders. In mass trials involving hundreds of defendants in a single proceeding, citizens with no prior gang involvement sit alongside real gang members. In the absence of any meaningful defense, prosecutors present flimsy evidence and unreliable witnesses to achieve convictions of entire criminal structures. Soft power efforts such as Guzmán’s publication promise the kind of performance-based legitimacy that the Salvadoran regime craves. The “Bukele method” should indeed be examined — not because it constitutes a blueprint for security, but because closer scrutiny reveals it to be, like Bukele himself, a marketing product.

    *Sonja Wolf is the author of Mano Dura: The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador (University of Texas Press, 2017).

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    by clalsstaff on June 3, 2026  •  Permalink
    Posted in El Salvador
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    Posted by clalsstaff on June 3, 2026

    https://aulablog.net/2026/06/03/why-el-salvador-is-turning-to-soft-power/

    China, Taiwan and Paraguay

    By Esteban Caballero

    Political Scientist, Independent Investigator for FLACSO-Paraguay, and Columnist for Ultima Hora

    Secretary Marco Rubio meets with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., January 21, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett) Source: Wikimedia Commons

    Xi Jinping’s warning that “the Taiwan issue is the most important matter in relations between China and the United States” will go down in history. However, for the government of Paraguay, Donald Trump’s subsequent statements on the subject could prove even more unsettling. Speaking in a measured tone, the U.S. President acknowledged that Xi “holds a very firm opinion and does not want to see an independence movement,” adding that he, too, “does not intend for anyone to declare independence.” Furthermore, he left it unclear whether or not he would authorize a new arms sale to Taiwan.

    Even if these amounted to only a few of the many assertions made by the heads of state of China and the United States at their recent summit, Santiago Peña and his Foreign Minister, Rubén Ramírez Lezcano, likely paused for a moment to reconsider Paraguay’s stance regarding Taiwan. Should they, perhaps, review their close relationship with Taipei in light of a potential shift in global geopolitics? Paraguay belongs to the small group of 12 countries that still recognize Taiwan; alongside Guatemala, it is one of only two Spanish-speaking nations to do so.

    The doubts to which we allude do not concern the progress of cooperative agreements and trade relations with Taiwan. Both are advancing favorably. These are matters involving technical cooperation, market access, and infrastructure financing. During Santiago Peña’s administration, this kind of cooperation with Taiwan has been significantly bolstered—a progression that culminated during the President’s recent visit to the island in May 2026. Returning from that visit, he announced an agreement for a massive AI data center project, although its feasibility remains to be assessed.

    What may well have generated uncertainty within the Paraguayan government is Trump’s apparent complacency in the face of warnings from Xi Jinping. Such an attitude on the part of the U.S. President would signal a departure from the tougher stance of American foreign policy hawks and would compel the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry to rethink its strategy—particularly the approach of presenting ties with Taiwan as proof of its firm rejection of Chinese influence in Latin America in order to ingratiate itself with the Trump administration. Nothing is set in stone, but this possibility is increasingly making its way into their deliberations.

    Management of relations with Taiwan forms part of the Santiago Peña administration’s—in our view, excessive—effort to draw closer to the Trump administration and align itself with the State Department, headed by Marco Rubio. In this vein, Paraguay has backed U.S. military intervention in Venezuela and Iran, declared itself an unwavering ally of Israel, and supported the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Furthermore, alongside Argentina, it is the only other Latin American country to serve on Trump’s Board of Peace. Added to this is its enthusiastic participation in the Shield of the Americas summit, held in Miami in March of this year.

    Demonstrations of alignment have also been made through measures of cooperation and collaboration regarding migration, security, and the fight against drug trafficking. The Peña administration has cooperated with the United States in the realm of migration, including a willingness to function as a “third country”[1] to process asylum applications for the U.S. It also endorsed a memorandum to facilitate the return of migrants denied admission to U.S. territory back to their countries of origin “with the assistance”[2] of Paraguay.

    In the realm of security, Peña announced the designation of the Cartel de los Soles, the Comando Vermelho, and the Primeiro Comando da Capital as terrorist organizations, in line with the U.S. narrative regarding transnational organized crime and its links to state networks in the region. Concurrently, Paraguay signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S.—a legal instrument that governs the status of foreign troops, including their entry, criminal jurisdiction, taxation, immunities, and operational protocols. In practice, such agreements typically facilitate troop deployments, military exercises, and defense cooperation; however, they can also spark domestic debate concerning the scope of immunity of foreign personnel, the extent of the host state’s oversight, and the tensions they may trigger with neighboring nations, such as Brazil.

    This alignment has led to Paraguay being regarded as a reliable ally of the United States, and the measures adopted are presented as a reaffirmation of the historic alliance between the two countries. Today, that relationship is expressed within a new framework of cooperation, in which “security” and “counterterrorism” occupy a central place.

    Nevertheless, the concrete benefits for Paraguay have not been particularly visible. It appears that Paraguay is conceding far more than the United States is yielding. Consequently, the prevailing opinion in various circles is that this has been too high a price to pay for the lifting of sanctions—imposed by the Treasury Department during the Biden administration—against the companies owned by Horacio Cartes, the former president and current chairman of the ruling party.

    This is also the reason why concerns are arising regarding the scope of current foreign policy. If one observes the steps that have been taken, a pattern seems to emerge: a short-term outlook and the absence of a cohesive state policy. Santiago Peña has committed himself to a U.S. administration that may not endure in its current form following the November 2026 midterm elections. President Trump’s popularity is on the decline; the Democrats are gaining ground. The decision to align with the U.S., even in violation of international law, overlooks the fact that small states must uphold the protections afforded by such law regarding the defense of their sovereignty. Forging such a close alliance with Israel, and the most radical elements of the Netanyahu government, has isolated Paraguay from the international community. Finally, coupling all of this with an adoption of far-right rhetoric may yield short-term gains; however, once that political cycle concludes—as was the case in Hungary—the ensuing disappointment could be profound.

    [1] See Signing of a Safe Third Country Agreement with Paraguay – United States Department of State

    [2] See: https://www.mre.gov.py/paraguay-y-ee-uu-amplian-cooperacion-migratoria/

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    by clalsstaff on June 2, 2026  •  Permalink
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    https://aulablog.net/2026/06/02/china-taiwan-and-paraguay/

    Muddling Through: Assessing Prospects for Brazil-U.S. Relations in an Election Year

    By Felipe Rezende, Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar in Residence at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (AU-CLALS), from the University of Brasília (UnB), Brazil. 

    Meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil’s President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva in Kuala Lumpur October 26, 2025. Source: Wikimedia Commons

    Notwithstanding the “excellent chemistry” cited by Donald Trump in reference to a brief September 2025 meeting with Lula da Silva on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly, in recent times the bilateral Brazil–U.S. relationship has yet to produce the quantity and quality of results one might have expected. Whether a result of different national and international commitments, or differing approaches to foreign policy, at least for the short term the interplay of a variety of factors has cooled the potential for advances in the relationship between the two countries. Reviewing recent developments in the bilateral relationship between Brazil and the U.S., here I consider how the current pattern of this relationship, together with upcoming electoral considerations, are likely to determine its limits and possibilities for the near future.

    Sources of Direct and Indirect Friction between the White House and the Palácio do Planalto

    Trump’s preferred trade policy in his second term, based on the unilateral imposition of tariffs upon numerous countries, with the declared objective of establishing an alleged fair balance (“Leveling the Playing Field”) in U.S. trade relations with the world, has lately been a primary factor of direct friction in the bilateral relationship with Brazil.

    The historical U.S. surplus in trade with Brazil did not prevent the application in June 2025 of a 50 percent tariff on imports of Brazilian products. This imposition greatly hindered the flow of Brazilian agricultural production to North America, generating an oversupply in the South American country and inflation in the U.S. for such consumer products as beef, coffee, soybeans, orange juice, and other fruits.

    In November 2025, pressured by domestic demand in the U.S., and interested in advancing strategic talks with Brasília, Washington withdrew the tariff weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court declared such practices illegal. At that time, the Palácio do Planalto appeared to have avoided the domestic political consequences of the tariff standoff by successful mobilization a narrative appealing to Brazil’s sovereignty and to the impropriety of such practices.

    Since the inauguration of Trump’s second term, the influence campaign by groups linked to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – sentenced to 27 years in Brazil for an attempted coup d’état and violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law – has also been decisive in dampening official bilateral activity between Brazil and the U.S.

    This included months of lobbying with the MAGA movement and gatekeepers of the Trump administration by his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, who endorsed the decision to impose additional tariffs, and suggested that justices of Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) be sanctioned, which was understood as an attempt to constrain the Court’s role in judging the case concerning the attempted coup d’état on January 8th, 2023.

    In response the U.S. revoked valid visas for entry into the U.S. for almost all ministers of the Court, including Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was rapporteur in the trial of the January 2023 rioters. The U.S. also applied financial sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, effective between July and December 2025, when they were withdrawn.

    Under Lula Brazil’s foreign policy, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has continued to follow certain traditional patterns of Brazilian diplomacy, grounded in multilateralism, pacifism, and the reform – rather than rejection – of already existing institutions, organizations, and regimes of global governance, beginning with the United Nations — something that does not necessarily converge with U.S. foreign policy practices under Trump.

    This was reflected, for example, in the Lula administration’s reluctance to accept an invitation to join the so-called “Board of Peace” in January 2026, created by Trump as a better alternative – in his view – to managing international conflicts. Lula publicly commented that Trump’s initiative appears to overlap with the competences ascribed to the UN, an important institution for the pursuit of Brazil’s interests as a middle power.

    Lula’s skepticism toward Trump’s Board of Peace, with Trump as its self-appointed permanent Chairman and its likely promotion of U.S. foreign-policy interests, was compounded by the White House’s proposed Gaza peace plan even while the U.S. actively initiated global conflicts, especially its most recent incursion into Iran — a fact that delayed the meeting between Lula and Trump.

    The May 7th Meeting and What Comes Next: Between Appearances and Substance 

    The approximately three hour meeting between Lula and Trump revolved around three principal issues. First was the question of bilateral trade, where disagreement remained as to the use of tariffs and U.S. allegations of unfair trade, refuted by the Brazilian side. Brazil, instead, sought unsuccessfully to convince the Trump administration of a U.S. trade surplus of USD 400 billion over the last 15 years.

    With the possibility looming of the reapplication of a 30 percent tariff on Brazilian products, considered within the scope of ongoing investigations undertaken by the U.S. Trade Representative, Brazil achieved at least temporary relief, with the institution of a 30-day delay for the counterparts to reach a common understanding regarding the terms-of-trade scenario.

    Second was a potential partnership for the exploitation of critical rare earth minerals in the South American country, which holds the world’s second-largest reserve. The condition set by Brazil is U.S. investment in local processing of the minerals and integration into the production chain. The legal framework to regulate this is on the verge of approval in the Brazilian Congress, thus enabling the U.S. and other countries to invest in this sector in Brazil.

    What seems not to have been mentioned at this meeting is Brazil’s government-backed payment method, called PIX, often criticized by U.S. Vice President JD Vance. The White House is bothered that this payment method, in force since 2020, departs from the traditional payment models embraced by U.S. credit-card networks. Above all, the U.S. is concerned about the possibility of extending this model, currently being studied by the New Development Bank, to other BRICS countries.

    Third, the meeting addressed questions of public security and cooperation against organized crime. Brasília emphasized that at present there is no significant volume of narcotics produced in the country entering the U.S., while the number of synthetic drugs and American weapons—especially originating from the state of Delaware—entering Brazilian territory is increasing. Brazil’s interest lies in deepening cooperation around preventive measures to stem these illicit flows.

    On this topic, the principal unspoken point concerns the U.S. intention of characterizing Brazilian criminal factions, such as the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), as terrorist cells, which could provide a pretext for U.S. interference in domestic issues related to the repression of crime in Brazilian territory. The view of the Palácio do Planalto is that cooperation in public security and in combating organized crime should involve other approaches than mere classification of these groups as terrorists.

    The May 7th meeting between Trump and Lula at the White House highlighted the sensitivity of these and other topics, which have been sources of frictions in the official relationship between the countries. It became clear that during the meeting an effort was made by both parties to minimize potential disagreement or embarrassment.

    This does not mean, contrary to what the niceties of diplomacy might suggest, that the meeting was in fact productive. Despite appearances and exchanges of compliments between the two leaders – both of whom are facing declining popularity with decisive elections on the horizon – in objective terms this meeting does not seem to have gone much beyond a meeting to schedule other meetings, marking the triumph of aesthetics over politics.

    Final Considerations

    Despite a certain optimism generated by the May 7th meeting, the recent past demonstrates that a show of courtesies in the Brazil–U.S. relationship does not necessarily mean an absence of conflicts or, still less, indicate the likelihood of productive results in the short term. It is to be expected that evident foreign policy disagreements between Lula and Trump will not overturn a pattern of high-level pragmatism governing the relationship between the two great American powers, with more than two centuries of strong ties.

    However, when each pursues their own objectives, including those conflicting with the specific interests of maintaining the bilateral relationship, these meetings become little more than an empty performance. Meanwhile, international far right networks continue to show that they are capable of interfering in the official relationship between Brazil and the U.S., undermining or complicating opportunities to deepen mutual gains while threatening democratic process in both countries.

    The prevalence of ties among far-right movements continues to threaten the productivity of the official Brazil–U.S. relationship. Flávio Bolsonaro, another son of Brazil’s former president and a pre-candidate for the Brazilian presidency in the 2026 elections, visited the White House in late May to restore his reputation among voters, with his candidacy facing a setback after his name surfaced in the Banco Master scandal, the worst bank fraud in Brazil’s history. The next day, Marco Rubio declared both the PCC and CV terrorist groups.

    Amid distinct tones of populism, it is regrettable that the Brazil–U.S. relationship remains hostage to personalistic interests that often end in transactional bargaining without producing durable results. Overall, it seems unlikely that the Lula-Trump relationship will deliver anything substantive beyond cordial meetings used primarily to restore the domestic reputations of each, particularly given a polarized electoral landscape in Brazil that continues to treat the Bolsonaro-Trump relationship as a relevant factor.

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    https://aulablog.net/2026/06/02/muddling-through-assessing-prospects-for-brazil-u-s-relations-in-an-election-year/

    Morena and Its “Fourth Transformation”: Reducing Inequality in Mexico

    Image of Claudia Sheinbaum, President of Mexico. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

    By Gerardo Otero

    Professor Emeritus of International Studies

    Simon Fraser University

    Since its electoral victory in 2018, MORENA (Movement for National Regeneration) has reduced poverty and inequality in Mexico despite considerable international and domestic constraints (World Bank 2024). This triumph, after its presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took power, fulfilled at least in part the huge expectations created by his promised Fourth Transformation (4T) of Mexico’s public life. AMLO compares such a transformation with the three prior great historical transformations in Mexico, each of which necessitated violent means for power ascension: the 1821 revolution of independence from Spain, the liberal reform codified in the 1857 Constitution, which separated Church and state, and, finally, the Mexican Revolution that yielded the 1917 Constitution. The latter contained Article 123, the most comprehensive labor reforms in the world to that date, and Article 27, the basis for the agrarian reform. Unlike all previous transformations in Mexico, the 4T was achieved through democratic elections. This is a considerable achievement.

    The most important driver in reducing poverty and inequality has been MORENA’s labor policy. Specifically, it has sustained increases in the minimum wage, complemented by expanded social programs such as universal pensions for adults over 65 (and, as of 2024, for women over 60), youth training fellowships, and disability grants. Together, these policies reflect Morena’s guiding principle and main campaign slogan: por el bien de todos, primero los pobres (“for everyone’s good, the poor come first”).

    MORENA’s redistributive efforts took place in a difficult structural context. Rather than converging upward toward U.S. income levels after NAFTA, Mexico’s per capita income stagnated and, by 2014, fell below the world average, as shown in Figure 1. By contrast, China’s per capita income and labor share of GDP have moved closer to North American levels than Mexico’s. Mexico’s workers thus remain structurally disadvantaged within the global economy.

    Source: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/MK (28 January 2026).

    Figure 2 summarizes Mexico’s constraints by comparing labor’s share of GDP across countries. Between 1994 and 2023, labor captured roughly 65-72 percent of GDP in Canada and 56-63 percent in the United States. China followed closely with 55-60 percent. Mexico’s labor share, in contrast, remained dramatically lower at about 35-40 percent, underscoring the limited structural leverage available to its working classes.

    Source: Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED): https://fred.stlouisfed.org, LABSHPCAA156NRUG (Canada), LABSHPUSA156NRUG (USA), LABSHPMXA156NRUG (China), LABSHPCNA156NRUG (Mexico).

    Given these constraints, the key question is whether MORENA’s domestic policies have nevertheless reduced inequality within Mexico. Evidence from household income surveys suggests that they have.

    One widely used measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient. Using Mexico’s national household survey (ENIGH), adjusted for household size and economies of scale, Figure 3 shows that the Gini coefficient declined steadily after 2018, falling from approximately 0.42 to 0.38 by 2024. This represents one of the most sustained reductions in inequality observed in recent decades.

    Source: Constructed with data from INEGI. Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares 2024. SNIEG. Información de Interés Nacional.

    While useful, the Gini coefficient does not directly capture the distance between economic elites and the broader population. A widely used alternative to the Gini coefficient is the Palma Index, which measures inequality as the ratio between the income share of the richest 10 percent and that of the poorest 40 percent. Its premise is that the middle sectors (roughly deciles V to IX) tend to capture about half of national income and therefore remain relatively stable across countries (Palma 2013).

    In Mexico, however, households in the first seven deciles do not even reach the national average income. This suggests that the country’s middle sector is considerably smaller than the Palma Index assumes and that inequality is better understood as a widening gap between economic elites and the social majority. To address this limitation, I propose the Otero Index, which measures inequality as the ratio between the income of the richest 10 percent and that of the bottom 70 percent of households. This approach reflects the empirical reality that households in the first seven deciles do not reach the national average income and therefore cannot reasonably be described as part of a broad middle class.

    Figure 4 presents the evolution of the Otero Index since 1984. Inequality increased sharply during the early decades of neoliberal restructuring, peaked in the 1990s, and remained persistently high afterward. Only after 2018 did the gap between the top decile and the bottom 70 percent begin to decline substantially. By 2024, the index had fallen below its level in 1984, at the dawn of Mexico’s neoliberal turn. In historical terms, this marks the first sustained reversal of the elite-mass income gap since the onset of Mexico’s neoliberal restructuring.

    Source: Constructed with data from INEGI. Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares 1984-2024. SNIEG. Información de Interés Nacional.

    This improvement is not limited to national averages. Between 2018 and 2024, elite-mass income gaps narrowed in nearly every Mexican state. The largest reductions occurred in Mexico City, Tamaulipas, Campeche, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa, suggesting that gains among lower-income households outpaced those at the top. Only Nuevo León stands out as an exception: there, inequality increased slightly, likely reflecting export-oriented industrial growth and nearshoring dynamics that disproportionately benefited high-income groups.

    Overall, the decline in the Otero Index across most states points to a broad compression of income gaps. Importantly, this compression reflects improvements among the bottom 70 percent rather than temporary declines at the top. In other words, recent changes represent genuine redistribution rather than cyclical volatility.

    Mexico’s recent experience, therefore, challenges the assumption that inequality is structurally irreversible. Even as the country’s position in the global income hierarchy deteriorated after 2014, domestic redistribution policies narrowed the distance between economic elites and the social majority.

    The decline in inequality since 2018 does not amount to a full reversal of Mexico’s long-term trajectory. Income gaps remain large, and the legacy of four decades of neoliberal restructuring persists, yet the evidence shows that inequality can be reduced through sustained policy intervention. For the first time since the early 1980s, the distance between elites and the majority has begun to narrow in measurable and territorially widespread ways. Mexico’s inequality story is no longer one of uninterrupted divergence, but of gradual – and increasingly visible – convergence.

    References:

    Otero, Gerardo. 2024a. “After Thirty Years of NAFTA, the Working Classes are Still Losing.” The Nation. February 29.

    Otero, Gerardo. 2024b. “Blaming the Victim or Structural Conditioning? COVID-19, Obesity and the Neoliberal Diet.” Journal of Agrarian Change. e12564. DOI: 10.1111/joac.12564: 1-19.

    Palma, José Gabriel. 2011. Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it’s all about. Cambridge Working Papers in Economics, 1111, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    World Bank. 2024. Mexico: Poverty and Equity Assessment. World Bank Group. Washington, DC.

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    by clalsstaff on April 21, 2026  •  Permalink
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    Posted by clalsstaff on April 21, 2026

    https://aulablog.net/2026/04/21/morena-and-its-fourth-transformation-reducing-inequality-in-mexico/

    Kast’s First Month: Right Policy, Wrong Politics

    By Robert Funk

    Associate Professor of Political Science

    Universidad de Chile

    Image of José Antonio Kast. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

    José Antonio Kast always knew that his honeymoon would be short. He did not expect it to last less than a month. As a result, President Kast’s first few weeks in office have turned out to be something of an experiment. Straight out of the starting gate, Chile’s new president has chosen to confront some of the country’s structural problems, even at the expense of burning through some serious political capital.

    The most visible example is the sharp rise in fuel prices. Triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, global crude prices have surged, with Chile feeling the impact almost instantly. As a country that imports nearly all of its energy, Chile is highly exposed to such shocks (although fortunately, its liquid natural gas is sourced regionally). Faced with this situation, Kast’s government made a tough choice: it limited the use of the fuel price stabilization mechanism (MEPCO) and allowed prices to adjust more rapidly. Maintaining the full subsidy would have implied costs to the government of up to USD 40 million per week, with projections of up to USD 3 billion if oil prices remain high. The result has been a dramatic increase in domestic fuel prices, with gasoline rising by around 370 pesos (USD 0.40) per liter and diesel by as much as 580 pesos (USD 0.60).

    Why Kast and his Finance Minister, Jorge Quiroz, would choose to implement such a politically costly and potentially explosive policy must be understood in the context of Chile’s fiscal reality. The administration inherited a weak fiscal position from its predecessor. The Boric government left Chile with a structural deficit of around 3.6 percent of GDP – not large in global terms, but unusually high for Chile. In addition, spending commitments expanded significantly under Boric. Pensions, social transfers, and permanent expenditures rose while revenues were consistently overestimated. The result was a narrowing fiscal margin that makes large-scale subsidies increasingly difficult to sustain.

    From this perspective, Kast’s emphasis on spending restraint is not ideological stubbornness, but fiscal necessity. The government’s decision to implement a 3 percent across-the-board spending cut was designed to restore credibility and avoid a deterioration in sovereign risk. Returning to fiscal discipline is a way of signalling that Chile has not entirely abandoned some of the principles it held when it became one of the most solid economies in Latin America.

    The fuel price issue is particularly sensitive because of its universal and immediate effects. Unlike tax reforms or regulatory changes, fuel prices are felt instantly and widely. In Chile’s economy, where close to 90 percent of goods are moved by road, increases in fuel costs will translate quickly into higher prices across the economy. This multiplier effect is likely to affect inflation relatively soon.

    Moreover, this is most likely not a temporary shock that can easily be smoothed over. Finance Minister Quiroz has been explicit in admitting that he expects that energy prices will remain elevated for an extended period. The conflict involving Iran could well turn out to be part of a broader geopolitical realignment rather than a short-lived disruption in energy costs. Betting on a rapid normalization of oil prices would have been fiscally reckless.

    Quiroz’s insistence on spending cuts follows the same logic. Reducing public spending in the midst of an external shock may seem politically tone-deaf. But a Keynesian approach – maintaining or increasing spending to help smooth over the external shock – makes little sense if the current crisis is not really a shock but a long-term trend. Doing nothing might have required increased borrowing at higher interest rates.

    Still, the political cost is undeniable. Cuts to areas such as transport and security are not just budgetary decisions; they are political signals of where priorities lie. Recall that the widespread social unrest of 2019 in Chile began with a far more modest rise in Metro fares.

    Security presents a different but equally important challenge. Kast was elected largely on a promise of restoring order and public safety. Any perception that resources are being constrained in this area risks undermining the government’s main source of political legitimacy. Unlike fiscal policy, where trade-offs are less visible, security can be felt in real time by citizens’ lived experience.

    What makes these three issues so politically damaging is their combination of scope, immediacy, and symbolic weight. They affect everyone, they are felt instantly, and they resonate with recent historical grievances. Managing any one of them is difficult; confronting all three simultaneously is a high-risk strategy.

    And yet, there is a logic behind the government’s choices. Kast is attempting to reset expectations. Rather than cushioning shocks through fiscal expansion, he is signaling that Chile must adapt to a more constrained and uncertain global environment. This is a sharp departure from the policy framework of the previous decade. And if energy prices remain high, as current geopolitical trends suggest, and if fiscal discipline helps to avoid a deeper macroeconomic crisis, the government may ultimately be vindicated.

    The risk is that it may not survive politically long enough to claim that vindication. Approval ratings have already declined, protests have emerged, and the government appears on the defensive. Politically painful policies are possible, but only when undertaken with broad support and legitimacy. Kast hasn’t had the time to build his case, and many of his ministers appear to go out of their way to alienate voters. While front-loading the shock might seem wise – Kast must be thinking he will have time to recuperate in the polls later – he runs the risk of losing so much legitimacy that recovery becomes impossible.  

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    by clalsstaff on April 15, 2026  •  Permalink
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    Posted by clalsstaff on April 15, 2026

    https://aulablog.net/2026/04/15/kasts-first-month-right-policy-wrong-politics/

    Seeking Stability in Post-Maduro Venezuela: The US, Governance, and the Economy

    By Michael M. McCarthy

    Founder and Executive Director, Caracas Wire

    Adjunct Professor, George Washington University

    Image of Caracas, Venezuela. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

    Roughly three months since US special forces forcibly extracted Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, Venezuela seems to have settled into a tense calm. Though the path to stability is not assured, and the critical issue of new Presidential elections is far from view. With Maduro on trial for narco-terrorism charges in New York, President Trump has publicly backed Delcy Rodríguez’s interim Presidency on multiple occasions, including taking the pivotal step of removing personal sanctions he previously placed on the then-Vice President in 2018. The political support for Rodríguez has gone hand in hand with the issuing of licenses for restored commercial relations and the reestablishment of normal diplomatic relations between the US and Venezuela. 

    Crucially, though, diplomatic normalization has thus far not provided Rodríguez’s government the economic stabilization promised in the first stage of Trump’s three-point plan – stabilization, recovery, and transition – for externally rebuilding Venezuela. 

    With inflation running at an average of 24 percent a month in January and February of 2026 (compared with a monthly average of 16 percent in 2025), and the comprehensive minimum wage of $160 covering roughly 25 percent of the cost of a basic basket of goods for a family of five, social tensions on the streets remain unalleviated. Moreover, amid headlines about new oil and gas deals signed with Rodríguez’s government and the Iran war oil price shock that has sent prices over $100 a barrel, economic expectations are sky high. Unsurprisingly, average Venezuelans are in instant gratification mode. With May Day approaching, the traditional date for governments to make salary increase announcements, household heads expect Delcy Rodriguez’s government to deliver results via a hike to the core minimum wage, anchored at $0.33 since 2022, not just offers of new one-off bonuses that provide transitory support. 

    The problem is that Delcy Rodríguez does not exercise international economic sovereignty over the proceeds from Venezuela’s oil sales, the source of around 90 percent of the economy’s foreign exchange. While President Trump’s January 9, 2026, Executive Order recognized oil sold to the US as Venezuelan, therefore, declaring the proceeds of sales as Venezuelan, too – an important definition at the time because Trump had made false claims that Venezuela “stole oil from US companies” – the US Treasury Department controls the flow of oil export proceeds. This raises questions about whether the US is treating Venezuela as a financial protectorate. 

    Consequently, Rodríguez currently has no new policy levers to pull, leaving her government in the awkward position of theoretically having the financial means to authorize spending increases but lacking the operational ability to execute them. It is an open question whether Washington and Caracas will be able to find a fix – perhaps via an agreed-upon external auditor mechanism – to speed up the transfer of funds to the Central Bank of Venezuela in time for Rodríguez to authorize spending before social tensions boil over. Reportedly, several billion dollars have already accrued in the first quarter of 2025. Either way, the transfer of full economic sovereignty back to Caracas seems unlikely to happen this year.

    While there is more evidence of tangible political changes, the political environment is also tense, especially the fragile equilibrium within Chavismo. A significant portion of political prisoners have been released (around 40 percent of the recent Maduro-era political prisoner population). Meanwhile, a controversial Amnesty Bill passed by the ruling party-controlled Congress – a body that was not born in full democratic legitimacy but has passed important laws both supported by a small opposition congressional faction and recognized by the Trump administration – has opened the door to pardons for politicians and public figures previously jailed on highly politicized grounds. Some harder line elements of the opposition, which have key parts of their political leadership in exile, have expressed openness to working within the framework of the Amnesty Law. 

    Beyond prisoner releases and legislative reforms, the more charged political change has been the shuffling of the cabinet, an overhaul that seems to have the intention of achieving De-Madurification without dismantling Chavismo’s influence over the state. Rodríguez has fired Maduro family members and loyalists, replaced the Defense Minister who had an 11-year tenure and faces an indictment in the US, and orchestrated a slew of cabinet changes that promote economic reformists, a group led by Vice-President for the Economy Calixto Ortega. Delcy’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez, is the President of the National Assembly, where he controls the legislative agenda and operates as a bridge between the economic reformists and old guard elements. Diosdado Cabello, an original Chavista who participated in then-Colonel Hugo Chavez’s failed coup on February 4, 1992, has retained his Interior Minister post and overall influence despite facing an indictment, a decision that probably reflects a cold calculation by Rodríguez and the US that having him on the inside favors governability. The appointment of the new Defense Minister, the architect of repression for six years, as the head of the feared SEBIN intelligence force, is a further illustration of that cold calculation. 

    Operating in an atmosphere of fear from the possibility of a new US military attack, and aware that, economically, the country’s future could soon be brighter, the members of the new ruling coalition seem to be superficially getting along in this highly surreal post-Maduro moment for Chavismo. Indeed, with Trump declaring Venezuela is open for business, the pragmatism of ignoring Chavismo’s socialist roots finally holds real economic potential. Overall, then, the sources of regime cohesion have expanded from purely negative reasons – survival and fear of forcible removal by the US military – to include the positive agenda of rebuilding parts of the economy. 

    Above and beyond the national scene, the underlying question is what President Trump ultimately wants his Venezuela policy to be about. So far, it is all about securing oil supplies and working with the people who “have the guns today to ultimately move the country to a representative government and a better station,” as Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in January, just days after the commando raid against Maduro. That posture leaves opposition standard-bearer Maria Corina Machado, now in exile but still by far the most popular politician in the country, on the outside. Even if Delcy Rodriguez’s ruling coalition crumbles, one gets the sense that Trump would prefer a more cautious political alternative, such as a national unity government, over convening snap elections. 

    3 Comments
    by clalsstaff on April 9, 2026  •  Permalink
    Posted in Venezuela
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    Posted by clalsstaff on April 9, 2026

    https://aulablog.net/2026/04/09/seeking-stability-in-post-maduro-venezuela-the-us-governance-and-the-economy/

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