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Latin America: Is There a Constructive Side to U.S. Policy?

By Fulton Armstrong

President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and NSC Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere Juan Gonzalez gathered at the President's desk in the Oval Office.
President Joe Biden, joined by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and NSC Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere Juan Gonzalez, talks on the phone with Jeff Zients on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, in the Oval Office of the White House / Adam Schultz / The White House / Flickr / Creative Commons License.

While many of the Biden Administration’s policies in Latin America – particularly toward Cuba, Venezuela, and China’s activities – remain largely the same as during the Trump era, some of its actions and statements suggest more nuanced approaches on other regional issues. 

  • National Security Council senior director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan Gonzalez, has been the point person for maintaining the hard line on Venezuela and Cuba. In early March, he met in Caracas with President Nicolás Maduro, who later said, “we’ve agreed to work on an agenda going forward,” but the Administration vehemently denied this and has continued to maintain that opposition leader Juan Guaidó is President of Venezuela. In Cuba, according to various sources, Gonzalez last year vetoed a promised plan for reversing a Trump halt to the flow of remittances to the island. He recently stated that new U.S. sanctions against Russia were also intended “by design” to put pressure on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

At Congressional hearings in February and March, other senior officials have laid out various Administration priorities.

  • Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, testified that the hemisphere is “under assault from a host of cross-cutting, transboundary challenges that directly threaten our own homeland.” In addition to helping the region with COVID-19 and the “climate crisis,” she said U.S. policy is to counter China’s “relentless march” to expand its influence in the region and its “challenges [to] U.S. influence.” She also pledged to combat transnational criminal organizations, which “operate nearly uncontested and blaze a trail of corruption and violence that create conditions that allow the PRC and Russia to exploit, threaten citizen security, and undermine public confidence in government institutions.” She said her command is “putting integrated deterrence into action.” 
  • In testimony in February, Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Brian Nichols, praised President Biden’s recent “Summit for Democracy” and acknowledged that “too many ordinary citizens have seen their governments fail to meet their aspirations for a better future.” He also said the Administration’s “Build Back Better World” initiative, including investments that respond to partners’ infrastructure needs, will counter China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” and “will help demonstrate that democracies can deliver for their people.” His counterpart in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Todd Robinson, stressed rule of law programs under the “Root Causes Strategy,” although he noted that “in some cases,” governments lack the political will to tackle the corruption that is a root cause of their nation’s problems.
  • USAID Assistant Administrator responsible for Latin America, Marcela Escobari, testified that her priority is mitigating the harm caused by COVID-19 and climate change. While criticizing the state of democracy and human rights in “extreme cases” like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, she expressed concern about “democratic backsliding” elsewhere, noting that “even in more established democracies, authoritarian tendencies have emerged.” 

The Administration has not articulated how some of its steps diverge from the aggressive and transactional approaches that characterized the Trump Administration’s engagement with the region. The White House pressed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hard to reach an accommodation with Argentina, whose government Trump kept at arm’s length, and helped it avoid default on its 2018 stand-by loan. Vice President Harris has given strong support to Honduran President Xiomara Castro since her inauguration in January – and probably contributed to Washington’s decision to request the extradition on drug charges of her predecessor, Trump ally Juan Orlando Hernández. In their Congressional testimony, current officials have repeatedly made nuanced remarks about the perceptions and reality of homegrown challenges in Latin America. Their emphasis on corruption and lack of will to address those scourges suggests awareness that not all is well, even in those countries that Washington embraces as democracies. After a slow initial response, the Administration has been generous in providing support for vaccine availability and for the capacity of public health systems to effectively respond to the COVID‑19 pandemic.

  • These factors suggest that while tired regime-change policies on Cuba and Venezuela and “integrated deterrence” against China and drug cartels may remain central to Washington’s approach to hemispheric affairs, there is awareness as well of how deeper cooperation with the region could simultaneously promote both U.S. and Latin American interests. The upcoming Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles may be the Administration’s best chance to seek meaningful common ground around the imperative of strengthening democratic governance, a challenge which Washington’s leadership now perceives as one that it shares with virtually all of its Latin American counterparts. 

March 31, 2022

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Venezuela: Lessons Learned from Failed Negotiations

By Nancy Haugh*

Protest in Venezuela/ MARQUINAM/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

As both sides to the Venezuela crisis express willingness to return to the negotiating table, a review of the shortcomings in previous talks – particularly their overly ambitious agenda and excessively narrow participation – should improve the odds of success in future rounds. Four dialogues between Chavistas and the opposition preceded the collapsed 2019 talks. In each case, both sides were willing to negotiate with the presence of a neutral, trusted third-party mediator and met several times, but other requisite conditions outlined in negotiation literature, such as including potential spoilers at the table, were missing.

  • The Norwegian Center for Conflict Resolution worked hard to create a negotiating structure that did not aggravate the fears of both sides by, for example, not inviting the United States or the Venezuelan military to participate. It also declined a request from the International Contact Group (ICG), a coalition of Latin American and European countries, to a merge its negotiation process with one the ICG had already launched over concerns that the ICG’s goal was regime change through electoral reform, not a negotiated agreement.
  • Talks stumbled, however, because of a tactic used by self-declared President Juan Guaidó that negotiation specialists call “Type C coercive diplomacy” – his penchant for making maximalist demands and threats while borrowing power from the U.S. and other external sources – and because of problems with his “boundary role.” He was trying to represent constituencies that were not at the table, particularly his U.S. benefactors and Venezuela’s moderate opposition, to gain leverage over the government. But he could not credibly offer relief from Washington’s sanctions, which combined with the threat of military intervention were intended to effect the immediate removal of President Nicolás Maduro and hold new Presidential elections. Talks broke down in August 2019 when the U.S. imposed new sanctions, including freezing all Venezuelan government assets under U.S. jurisdiction, without consulting with Guaidó.

The government took advantage of the opposition’s “boundary roles” problem. Maduro’s team had no incentive to negotiate with a person who could not alter the U.S. sanctions. Government negotiators had previously said they were open to modifying the electoral calendar and engaging in legislative and electoral power-sharing if U.S. sanctions were lifted at least one year before the polling day. That offer fell off the table, but another – “inviting the opposition to seek a recall referendum against Maduro in two to three years’ time” – apparently still stands.

  • September 16, 2019, the day after a weakened opposition declared that negotiations had been “exhausted,” Maduro reached an agreement with an offshoot of the opposition movement, the moderate National Dialogue, and the opposition split was formalized. Under this deal, Maduro would neither need to resign nor be barred from running in future elections. Ultimately, the agreement was only partially implemented, with 29 of 58 promised political prisoners actually released from prison. Additionally, instead of fulfilling its commitment to “dialogue and reconciliation,” the government formed a commission to investigate alleged corruption on the part of Guaidó and his team.

Despite the efforts of the Norwegian team, the 2019 talks neither fully addressed the needs and fears of both sides nor defused the influence of external stakeholders. In March, Norwegian mediators began to quietly explore re-initiating talks between representatives of Guaidó and Maduro. Though previous rounds failed to meet their main objective, they demonstrated that progress is indeed possible with a modified strategy.

  • The literature on international negotiations suggests that increasing the number of parties at the table makes cooperation more difficult, increases information costs, and makes defection more likely, but the previous talks suffered from having too few at the table. By not including a wide array of opposition voices, a secondary channel opened for the government to reach an agreement and walk away from the process when the United States announced sanctions.
  • Negotiating partial agreements, instead of a comprehensive one, appears more promising as a means of solving problems and creating momentum. The country’s historic economic and humanitarian crises offer the best chance of finding agreement and building trust between the parties and, even if not resolving the parties’ biggest needs, will benefit the people they claim to care about.
  • Involving a balanced mix of regional actors as guarantors would comfort each side while pressuring them to be accountable. The members of the anti-Maduro “Lima Group” could help, as could Cuba, which has supported Maduro and has a strong record of supporting successful negotiations.

Four months into the Biden Administration, the position of the most important external actor has yet to go beyond broad statements about continuing “to work with international partners to increase pressure in a multilateral fashion toward [the] goal of free and fair elections.” In mid-May, Guaidó proposed a progressive lifting of U.S. sanctions in return for steps by Maduro toward free and fair elections overseen by a third party – suggesting a shift away from his maximalist stance – but Washington has remained publicly silent.

June 4, 2021

* Nancy Haugh completed their Master’s in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University, with a focus on dialogue, human rights, and foreign policy in Latin America.

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by clalsstaff on June 4, 2021  •  Permalink
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Venezuela: Is “Responsibility to Protect” a Way to Go?

By Andrei Serbin Pont*

Juan Guaidó in Washington, DC, February 2020./ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s recent call on the United Nations to invoke its “responsibility to protect” (R2P) norm to remove Nicolás Maduro and protect the Venezuelan people was a bold, even sophisticated, diplomatic gambit but has little chance of bearing fruit. Guaidó – recognized as Venezuela’s President by some 50 countries – did not speak officially to the UN but used the virtual format, in place because of the pandemic, to create the appearance among his constituents and international allies that he was addressing the UNGA.

Guaidó’s call for R2P was different from his previous appeals for restoring democratic institutions and advancing peaceful means to displace Maduro. He argued that the international community had a responsibility to invoke the R2P norm, endorsed by all UN member states in 2005, to safeguard the millions of Venezuelans living under Maduro’s rule. He said the international community must contemplate it as a strategy for what happens once all diplomatic measures are exhausted, a reference to preparations for taking “collective action, in a timely and decisive manner,” as outlined in paragraph 139 of the UN’s 2005 World Summit Outcome Document. Appealing to the so-called “grey states,” those skeptical but not opposed to the R2P doctrine, Guaidó argued that the diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means of effecting regime change in Venezuela taken so far have had no effect.

  • Guaidó further argued that “crimes against humanity,” as documented last month in a 400-page report by an independent fact-finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, meet the criteria for R2P action. The mission found “patterns of violations … that were highly coordinated” by Venezuelan authorities, including targeted repression, political assassinations, extrajudicial killings, human rights violations in the context of social protests, arbitrary detentions, lack of due process, and torture and inhumane treatment – all actions that are mainstream subjects of debate for the human rights and R2P community at the UN.
  • Even more bold was Guaidó’s reference to national sovereignty as a normative cornerstone of R2P, which embraces the idea of “sovereignty as responsibility” – rather than unrestricted respect for national sovereignty and the uncompromising defense of non-intervention.

Guaidó’s invocation of R2P will not prevail however articulate his arguments. From a purist perspective, R2P can only be invoked if it follows the UN Charter, which would require the international community, specifically the UN Security Council, to approve the use of force – a very remote possibility. Some experts may argue that R2P could be utilized outside the UN framework, especially if debate is systematically blocked by Russia and China, but the reality is that only one country has the capacity to intervene militarily in Venezuela, and that country – despite occasionally bellicose rhetoric – seems unlikely to do so. Even if the United States were to try it, the international community, including those which followed Washington’s lead in recognizing Guaidó 20 months ago, are highly unlikely to embrace the logic for what would probably be an invasion and prolonged occupation.

  • Guaidó’s effort, however, was not a total bust.  He may have advanced a secondary purpose by drawing attention away from questions of his own legitimacy and placing the onus on Maduro to demonstrate his own legitimacy and responsibility for protecting the Venezuelan people.

October 21, 2020

* Andrei Serbin Pont is an international analyst and director of the CRIES regional thinktank.

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U.S.-Latin America Policy According to John Bolton

By Eric Hershberg and Fulton Armstrong

John Bolton

John Bolton/ Gage Skidmore/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License (not modified)

Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton’s memoir highlights his differences with President Trump and several government agencies over tactics for achieving regime change in Venezuela. It confirms, however, that they share an embrace of the Monroe Doctrine that has survived his departure from government. The book, published this week, is Bolton’s version of his 17 months in the Trump Administration. The chapter on Venezuela is 34 pages long and, while confirming much about the Administration’s disdain for the law and longstanding practices in U.S. foreign policy, provides new insights.

  • Bolton’s pledge in November 2018 to rid the hemisphere of the “Troika of Tyranny” – Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – reflected a consensus in the Administration, and he attributes the alliterative trope to a Trump speechwriter. But as the policy gained momentum, the Treasury Department and State Department wanted to go slow on some of the more draconian sanctions against Venezuela that he pushed.
  • Bolton puts the best face possible on Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaidó and his claim to the national presidency in January 2019. He credits the Venezuelan opposition entirely for conceiving and initiating the maneuver, even though circumstantial evidence, including the advanced U.S. efforts to build international support for it, suggests otherwise.
  • Tellingly, he says his initial reaction to the country’s repeated waves of electricity outages was that it was the opposition’s work, although he then posits that they resulted from government incompetence and underinvestment, leaving open the possibility that they resulted from an intelligence operation. (Bolton would be violating his secrecy commitments if he admitted as much.)
  • Bolton reports that President Trump consistently argued that Guaidó – whom he called “this kid” – was a lightweight incapable of wrestling control from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
  • Trump was the strongest proponent of military intervention to remove the Venezuelan from office. But Trump also felt he could deal with Maduro as he did with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un. He flip-flopped again last weekend. On Friday he told Axios that he “would maybe think about [meeting Maduro],” suggesting openness to dialogue, but on Monday he tweeted that he “would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!”

Bolton barely registers the contributions of Latin American and European governments in support of the American position on the Venezuela issue or the advancement of a negotiated solution.

  • The position of the “Lima Group” on Venezuela gets only a passing mention, although the group’s support was arguably a historic signal of Latin American acquiescence in Washington intervention in the region. The OAS got a backhanded compliment: “Even the Organization of American States, one of the most moribund international organizations (and that’s saying something), was roused to help Guaidó.”
  • Although Norway had been arranging negotiations between Maduro and Guaidó representatives for eight months by the time Bolton resigned as National Security Advisor in September 2019, the book makes little mention of the effort. Nor does it mention U.S. actions that – by design or not – obstructed the talks. The work of Elliott Abrams, the Administration’s special envoy for Venezuela, also gets no serious treatment.

Bolton is gone, but his vision for U.S.-Latin America relations, including revival of the Monroe Doctrine as rationale for Washington’s actions, remains robust. The Administration has nominated the senior director that Bolton brought to the NSC to work on the region, a protégé of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, to be President of the Inter-American Development Bank, a perch from which he can exercise influence for five years even if Trump leaves office in January 2021. If the aide is elected, it would break with the tradition of having non-U.S. presidents at the Bank. A half dozen retired Latin American presidents have expressed opposition to that, but Ecuador’s government has labeled the nomination as “very positive,” and Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez, who took office with U.S. approval after the military forced out President Evo Morales last November, has welcomed it enthusiastically.

  • The Pentagon will not be enthusiastic about military action to remove President Maduro. But some officials have referred to the two paramilitary contractors captured seven weeks ago during the ill-fated “invasion” of Venezuela and six dual-national CITGO employees arrested in 2017 for alleged corruption as “hostages” – a possible pretext for some sort of action that, as Bolton so fervently hoped during his tenure, would prompt the Venezuelan military to finally switch sides.

June 23, 2020

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by clalsstaff on June 23, 2020  •  Permalink
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Colombia: Forced Disappearances Remain High in Norte de Santander

By Jessica Spanswick and Javier Ochoa*

Event in Cúcuta, Colombia, hosted by Fundación Progresar and UNDP – a book release featuring stories of 100 disappeared people.

Event in Cúcuta, Colombia, hosted by Fundación Progresar and UNDP – a book release featuring stories of 100 disappeared people.

The Colombian department of Norte de Santander, along the most heavily traveled part of the national border with Venezuela, has the highest rate of forced disappearances in the entire country – increasing as implementation of the historic peace accord signed in 2016 has faltered. Homicides, kidnappings, and other disappearances have all surpassed national averages. Fundación Progresar, an NGO based in the province’s capital, Cúcuta, estimates that one person in the area was forcibly disappeared every three days in 2018. During fieldwork with the NGO in 2019, we interviewed surviving family members and heard their accounts of suffering. Some of the reasons for these disappearances have deep historic roots, such as the perennial absence of sustained, trusted government presence in the area, but others reflect trends that have grown in importance since 2016.

  • Armed groups filling the void left by the formal demobilization of the FARC have proliferated. In the last two years, the criminal activity of at least a dozen armed groups was registered in Norte de Santander, ranging from enduring guerrilla groups (National Liberation Army, ELN; the Popular Liberation Army, ELP, also known as Los Pelusos; and dissident FARC groups); armed groups resulting from the demobilization of paramilitary groups in 2004 (including Los Rastrojos); and organized criminal groups (including purported affiliates of the Sinaloa Cartel). Most are engaged in highly profitable cocaine production, narco-trafficking, and gas-smuggling activities in the area.
  • Our analysis of data from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that the number of hectares under coca cultivation in Norte de Santander grew from 6,944 in 2014 to 33,958 in 2018, with no sign of abating. The government abandoned voluntary eradication programs and did not honor agreements to help communities within the framework of the peace accord. The province provides a strategic corridor for smugglers to bring in Venezuelan oil products for transportation and to make drugs – more than 100,000 gallons a day when it’s available – and exfiltrate the finished cocaine.

A massive influx of Venezuelans fleeing crisis back home has also led to a spike in disappearances. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that nearly 5 million Venezuelans (many of Colombian heritage) have fled the country, the vast majority passing through or staying in Colombia. Many, distrustful of both countries’ officials at formal ports of entry and without a proper channel to receive refugee status, transit informal trocha crossings controlled by criminal groups, where they are at risk of extortion, human trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, and forced disappearance. Our research shows that even those paying a fee to pass through these areas are subjected to abuses.

  • Many Venezuelans, including children, are forced to work as raspachines (coca leaf pickers), who have told human rights groups that they want to go to school but are working essentially as indentured slaves. Older youths have been recruited as soldiers. According to five military commanders, as many as 30 percent of the insurgents in that region are Venezuelans who take up arms “in return for food and pay.” They receive more than 27 times the monthly minimum wage in Venezuela. Others are pressured by criminal groups to join. Another problem is that an increasing number of Venezuelan women and girls are victims of human and sex-trafficking rings in the province. According to local organizations interviewed by Refugees International, they “are often forced to ‘pay’ for passage by providing sexual services.” UN Humanitarian Affairs officials (OCHA) say that “fear of being deported or arrested keeps [[victims]] from seeking help from local authorities.”

The standard solution for reducing the influence of criminal groups in situations like this – establishing state control – remains elusive. The Colombian government has the resources and institutions to address the problem, but it has been slow to take action. Some 99 percent of complaints remain in the initial phase of the criminal process (indagación) – with little chance of moving toward deeper investigation and prosecution. Of 1,106 cases, only six are on, or approaching being on, trial. Having met face-to-face with the families of victims, we know how difficult – and unsatisfying – it is to tell them that governments, NGOs, and others are “doing all they can” to find justice for them.

June 9, 2020

* Javier Ochoa and Jessica Spanswick are recent Master’s graduates of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. Ochoa interned with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Spanswick interned at Fundación Progresar, the Colombian Truth Commission, and the Guernica Center for International Justice. The full text of their study is here.

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United States: Putting the Hammer to Venezuela

By Fulton Armstrong and Eric Hershberg

Trump press conference

Trump at a briefing on April 4th, 2020/ The White House/ Flickr/ Public Domain

The Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive actions to drive regime change in Venezuela – at a time that the already-desperate country, weakened by its incompetent government and U.S. sanctions, faces a potentially massive COVID-19 crisis – reflect Washington’s favoring of ends over means, with little concern for corollary damage. Regardless of whether President Nicolás Maduro survives the challenge, the country’s massive humanitarian and social disaster is likely to grow worse during the weeks and months ahead. At this point, there is no plausible scenario in which Washington can achieve what it claims is its desired outcome – a stable, democratic government – without a negotiated settlement.

  • The March 26 indictment of Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials on charges of narcotics-trafficking and support for terrorism against the United States underscored the administration’s commitment to removing a government it calls a “threat to the hemisphere.” The U.S. Department of Justice asserted that Maduro “expressly intended to flood the United States with cocaine in order to undermine the health and wellbeing of our nation.” The indictment forced an end to preliminary talks between Maduro and his opponents over a partial truce that would allow them to make a joint appeal for international aid to deal with COVID‑19.
  • On March 31, the administration announced a “Democratic Transition Framework” for Venezuela. The plan called for Maduro to step down immediately and yield to a “Council of State” to govern until new elections. National Assembly President Juan Guaidó, whom the United States and more than 50 other countries recognize as Acting President, would surrender his claim as well, but American officials made clear he had their full support in any upcoming campaign. Coming on the heels of the indictments, the framework was quickly rejected by the government.
  • The announcement on April 1 that the United States and 22 allies were launching “enhanced counternarcotics operations” in the Caribbean near Venezuela – with large-scale military assets rarely seen in such missions – was another prong of what U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien called “our maximum pressure policy to counter the Maduro regime’s malign activities.” Maduro cited these threats and indications of mysterious arms movements in Colombia – reported by a former Venezuelan general who some observers say turned collaborator with the U.S. DEA – as reasons for putting the country on military alert last weekend.

The U.S. actions appear to reflect a calculation that the Venezuelan government is so vulnerable that Maduro’s “former regime” will collapse and, somehow, a more sympathetic successor will emerge. U.S. sanctions over the past year-plus have effectively starved the economy, and the recent crash in oil prices has reduced revenues to a trickle. Observers in Caracas report that fear of COVID-19, in a country without medical supplies or even clean water in many parts, is intense.

  • The administration insists it desires a negotiated settlement, but these enhanced pressures, particularly the indictments, greatly complicate any effort to revive talks as Norway had configured them. Similar to last year’s efforts to provoke a coup against Maduro, this year’s “maximum pressure” seems premised on creating a collapse on a scale that forces the military’s hand. But the task of overthrowing Maduro would fall to an exhausted citizenry and field-grade officers not indicted or otherwise targeted by the United States government.

Whether Washington has a comprehensive strategy, is just taking ad hoc steps to force regime change, or is merely looking to wreak havoc at a time that its handling of the COVID‑19 crisis at home is falling under intense criticism, there is precious little historical evidence that its tactics will work in Venezuela. The movement of warships to the Venezuelan coast may only be a publicity stunt, with the support of some countries in the region, but it entails diplomatic and operational risks. It also is not beyond the pale to suppose that the administration, long frustrated in its regime-change efforts, will begin to believe its hyperbole about Maduro as a narco-terrorist poisoning drug-consuming U.S. youth, and be tempted to deploy measures even more drastic than those taken to date.

  • Negotiations, although difficult, are not impossible. When U.S. opposition to diplomatic efforts to resolve the wars in Central America reached a certain point, regional governments met behind Washington’s back and produced a historic plan – the “Esquipulas Accord” – that led to peace processes in each affected country. This situation is, of course, different, but Esquipulas showed that moving the U.S. to the side can work.
  • The indictments are reminiscent of U.S. tactics to overthrow General Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1988-89 – resulting in a massive invasion to arrest that one man. Venezuela is different in many ways, and all parties should heed the adage of former U.S. military commander and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said, “You break it, you own it.”

April 7, 2020

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Brazil: Politicizing Refugee Policy

By João Jarochinski Silva*

Venezuelan refugees in Boa Vista, Brazil

Venezuelan refugees in Boa Vista, Brazil/ Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons License

Brazil’s decision to welcome Venezuelan refugees is based on political calculations — part of President Jair Bolsonaro’s domestic agenda, anti-Maduro policies, and efforts to polish his international image — while asylum-seekers of other nationalities are getting a distinctly colder shoulder. The country’s National Committee for Refugees (CONARE), which includes representatives of the Executive Branch and civil society, granted refugee status to approximately 37,000 Venezuelans between December and January. As permitted by Brazilian law, CONARE granted them prima facie refugee status — by virtue of the serious and widespread human rights violations in their home country — without requiring individual interviews. It was an unprecedented number, with strong support from the government, and responded to appeals from civil society and academic experts.

  • While the number of Venezuelans in other South American countries is greater, Brazil now has the most officially designated refugees. It previously had only a little more than an estimated 5,000 refugees of all nationalities — one-eighth its current total.
  • A generous refugee policy has been a key element of Brazilian foreign policy since the 1990s, often the subject of officials’ speeches in UN contexts. The current Administration’s rhetoric, however, has been different. While visiting India in 2019, Bolsonaro criticized a Brazilian law passed in 2017 (when, he claimed, he was the only deputy to cast a dissenting vote) that liberalized the country’s policies toward migrants — constituting a law in which foreigners would not be seen as threats to Brazilian society and also impacted the reality of refugees.

The recent decision to accept tens of thousands of Venezuelans appears motivated by the Bolsonaro Administration’s opposition to Venezuelan President Maduro — as well as Brazil’s left-leaning parties — more than by the humanitarian ideal of helping people fleeing crisis.

  • The Ministry of Justice has argued that non-Venezuelan arrivals are a security threat and need greater control. It introduced a legal regulation that increased control and facilitated the expulsion and deportation of foreigners, with some provisions that specialists claimed to be contrary to Brazilian laws. The regulation was revoked but made clear that the agency will continue to emphasize the security dynamic created by the entry of foreigners.
  • Minister of Justice Sergio Moro recently sent a message on social media stating that “Brazil will no longer be a refuge for foreigners accused or convicted of common crimes” [emphasis added]. With prior approval of CONARE, he rejected an appeal by three Paraguayans, who received refuge in Brazil in 2003 but were recently facing removal, and maintained the revocation of their refugee status.
  • Critics cite Moro’s use of social media to announce a technical decision as confirmation that his intention was primarily political. They note the ideological affinity between the current Brazilian and Paraguayan governments as being more important than the asylees’ previously determined well-founded fear of persecution — a violation of international law regarding non-refoulement. Critics also point out that the three Paraguayans were politically active with left-leaning groups opposed to Bolsonaro.

The contrast between the government’s and Moro’s attitudes toward asylum-seekers from Venezuela and elsewhere is striking. When confronted with evidence of rising crime by Venezuelan arrivals along the Brazilian border, the Minister said local authorities’ evidence was inconclusive. Bolsonaro’s supporters in the border state of Roraima protested Moro’s statement, but a subsequent decision to close the border for 15 days to foreigners without a permanent residence permit — allegedly in response to the threat of coronavirus — has calmed their concerns.

The CONARE decision on Venezuelans may have been intended in part to remove a glut that had slowed the entire refugee system, but the disparity in the treatment of asylum-seekers primarily reflects Brazil’s deep political polarization. Government discourse portrays its domestic opponents as being irresponsible leftists akin to Venezuelan President Maduro, who is so bad that starving refugees show up on Brazil’s doorstep, while praising rightist governments, to which even 17-year asylees can be repatriated without concern for their treatment. The Brazilian military’s deep involvement in operations regarding Venezuela also incentivizes civilians to help keep the status of refugees from becoming a political embarrassment.

  • Politicization of refugee policies and implementation is not unprecedented in Brazil. CONARE, the Brazilian government, and, indirectly, the UNHCR will determine how long this trend will continue. Altering Brazilian action to meet current political interests weakens the rights of refugees and related protective principles embodied in the Constitution and legislation.

March 23, 2020

* João Jarochinski Silva is a CLALS fellow and professor at the Universidade Federal de Roraima (UFRR).

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Brazil: Relative Success – So Far – Receiving Venezuelan Refugees, Migrants

By João Jarochinski Silva*

Venezuelan migrants walk past UNHCR tents at a camp in Boa Vista, Roraima

Venezuelan migrants walk past UNHCR tents at a camp in Boa Vista, Roraima/ Marcelo Camargo/ Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons License

The influx of Venezuelan refugees and migrants since 2013 into the Brazilian state of Roraima has challenged the state’s ability to settle them, but a continued or increased flow will require a significant expansion of efforts to relocate and integrate the new arrivals. The flow has not been unmanageable or caused significant problems in public services, as some local politicians claim, and has actually generated some benefits. In the past six years, over 260,000 Venezuelans have applied for refugee or residency status in Brazil, with the vast majority entering through Roraima, which is north of Manaus and shares borders with both Venezuela and Guyana. A voluntary relocation program, called Interiorização, has moved more than 20,000 to other Brazilian cities, but most remain in municipalities near the border. Roraima state itself has less than 600,000 inhabitants.

  • The Venezuelans in Roraima are mostly working age (16-64 years old). National authorities, assisted by UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and others, have developed policies related to education, training, and employment to take advantage of their productive capacity and facilitate their integration in Brazil. These initiatives enhance the emergency benefits the migrants receive and help them become autonomous.

International, national, and local experts, including at the Federal University of Roraima, Getulio Vargas Foundation, and OBMigra, have found that the Venezuelan arrivals’ impact on Roraima has been mixed.

  • The state registered positive economic growth and diversification during 2016‑17, the period of most intense Venezuelan flow, when Roraima’s GDP grew 2.3 percent, compared to the 1.4 percent of other Brazilian states. In the two following years, the state registered significant growth in agricultural production, including Brazil nuts and some livestock items, and showed the largest recorded increase in planted area (28.9 percent), while Brazil as a whole saw a decline of 0.6 percent. Roraima surpassed all other regions with an 8 percent increase in its economic diversification index. Expanded retail trade and exports in 2018‑19 fueled a 25 percent increase in tax revenues.
  • Unemployment and poverty, on the other hand, also rose during this period. While many of the Venezuelans found jobs in services such as restaurants, retail, and construction, unemployment in the state rose by 6.1 percentage points between 2017 and 2019, while Brazil’s national rate fell 0.6 percentage points. The incidence of extreme poverty in Roraima also grew from 1.64 percent in 2015 to 5.7 percent in 2018, compared to 4.2 percent nationally in 2018. (The new Venezuelan workers, however, have not significantly reduced the wages of Brazilians living in Roraima.)

Local anxieties about new strains on social services have not been fully borne out. The Venezuelans have enrolled children in schools and used medical services, but available data do not show unusually high demand. There has been, in fact, a downward trend in outpatient care provided by Roraima municipalities, and the increase in hospitalizations in the state coincided with that seen nationally.

  • The research suggests that the state’s increase in tax revenues is on a par with the additional costs of these and other services provided to the Venezuelans. Both figures are about US$22.5 million.

Roraima’s experience – so far – shows that the influx of refugees and migrants into Brazil has not had a profound impact, but the crisis in Venezuela shows no sign of abating and could get worse. Roraima, the state with the smallest population in Brazil, has a limited ability to absorb new arrivals and settle them locally without significant new resources. Expansion of the successful elements of Roraima’s approach, such as the voluntary Interiorização relocation program, would help. Additional work-related training and professional qualification programs would also help new arrivals contribute economically after relocation. Particularly if flows continue to be strong or increase, Roraima state and its municipalities are likely to feel growing urgency to develop systems to manage them and beef up social protection networks to support relocation – with the same goal of taking advantage of the economic potential of the Venezuelans’ full social and economic integration.

February 3, 2020

* João Jarochinski Silva is a CLALS fellow, professor at the Universidade Federal de Roraima (UFRR), and one of the report’s researchers. The research, funded by the Escola Superior do Ministério Público da União (ESMPU) and the UNHCR, is available here in Portuguese.

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by clalsstaff on March 3, 2020  •  Permalink
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U.S.- Latin America: Policy Shifts Ahead?

By Fulton Armstrong

Former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton speaks to reporters on events occurring in Venezuela Tuesday, April 30, 2019, outside the West Wing entrance of the White House.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton speaks to reporters on Venezuela in April 2019/ Tia Dufour/ White House/ Wikimedia Commons

The sudden departure of President Trump’s outspoken national security advisor, John Bolton, is unlikely to result in changes in U.S. policy objectives in Latin America but could lead to the same sort of swings in tactics – harder or softer – that characterize other U.S. policies around the world. The continued weakness of the State Department’s input, aggravated by erratic staffing in its Latin America offices, further suggests that it will not play a balancing role.

Trump and Bolton’s statements over their 17 months together indicated no disagreement on objectives and tactics in Latin America, including immigration, close relations with Brazilian President Bolsonaro, efforts to rescue the Argentine economy, and Venezuela. They had identical positions on the waves of sanctions against Venezuela, U.S. commitment to remove President Nicolás Maduro, and unstinting support for National Assembly President Juan Guaidó’s claim to the Presidency, including backing Guaidó’s flopped coup in April. They both also explicitly linked taking down Maduro with achieving regime change in Cuba.

  • Trump and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, widely seen as his top referent on Latin America and related political matters, are trying to signal that after Bolton’s departure the Administration is going to turn up the heat on Venezuela and Cuba. In apparently coordinated tweets between them, Trump said, “In fact, my views on Venezuela, and especially Cuba, were far stronger than those of John Bolton. He was holding me back!” This complements rumors that Trump has been frustrated that Bolton’s strategy in Venezuela, particularly the fact that Maduro supporters had tricked him into false confidence in Guaidó’s failed coup, has not removed Maduro from office. (It is unclear if one of his concerns is that U.S. sanctions are worsening the refugee flow challenging neighboring countries.)

Most Washington-based observers believe, however, that Latin America is the least important of the five issues that, according to press, caused friction between Trump and Bolton. The President’s personal involvement has been much greater with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in efforts to achieve regime change in Iran, in talks with the Taliban for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and in maintaining good relations with Moscow despite the complex situation in Ukraine.

  • Trump has appeared to lack deep interest in Latin America policy and sees it as primarily a domestic political tool for consolidating his base – among anti-Maduro and anti-Cuba voters in Florida, an important state in his re-election calculus, and among supporters for his wall on the Mexico border and other anti-migration measures. Long ago he essentially handed the Venezuela and Cuba issues over to Senator Rubio, and the National Security Council brought a Rubio ally, lobbyist, and blogger, Mauricio Claver-Carone, to the White House to work the issue. They appointed Elliot Abrams, despite baggage from the Iran-Contra era and the Bush-Cheney Administration, to handle diplomatic operations on Venezuela for them.
  • By all appearances, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has subordinated his own Latin America team to the White House operators, essentially stifling a traditionally important voice at the policy table. When Assistant Secretary Kimberly Breier resigned last month, only nine months after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she said it was to spend more time with her family, but her bureau’s marginalization left questions about her policy impact. Her acting successor, veteran State Department lawyer Michael Kozak, who has spent much of the last 10 years managing “democracy promotion” programs in Latin America and elsewhere, is not likely to challenge Rubio and Claver-Carone unless Pompeo takes the lead, which he shows no sign of doing.

The new national security advisor will have more urgent problems to deal with than wrestling with Rubio, Claver-Carone, and their allies. Indeed, Trump may even give them a green light to escalate provocations even further. For example, Administration allegations that Colombian guerrillas and narcotics-traffickers receive crucial aid from Caracas – buttressed by invocation of the Rio Treaty last week – are logical ways of laying the political groundwork for some sort of military action, perhaps jointly with Colombia, against alleged camps in hopes that the Venezuelan military finally tells Maduro that it’s time to go. 

  • President Trump’s trademark approach to thorny problems has been unpredictability and experimentation with wide-ranging alternatives, including face-to-face negotiations and deal-making with opponents that pose much tougher challenges to U.S. interests than do Venezuela and Cuba. Such flexibility notwithstanding, with the U.S. elections just 14 months off, Trump’s electoral calculus strongly suggests he’s going to stay the course with policies toward Latin America that he’s told are popular in South Florida.

September 17, 2019

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by clalsstaff on September 17, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 17, 2019

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Venezuela’s Communal Councils: Holding on During Dark Times

By Michael McCarthy and Jared Abbott*

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro walking with community leaders

Maduro in Protected Cultivation Houses of Quibor-Edo / Flicker / Creative Commons /https://www.flickr.com/photos/chavezcandanga/8402610886/in/photostream/

Venezuela’s Communal Councils (Consejos Comunales), created in 2006, endure as an influential grassroots mechanism amid the country’s cataclysmic economic depression and political crisis. Increasingly, their primary function appears to be helping embattled President Nicolás Maduro’s ruling party maintain loyalty among its declining base. Three factors linked to Chavismo’s melding of party and state have enabled the Councils to survive amid radically changed conditions: linking them to state-run food distribution programs, giving them problem-solving functionality, and building block-level group ties in Council-created spaces.

  • Survey data we collected in late 2018 demonstrates that participation in Councils has declined as resources have contracted, but the groups remain alive and well. Our poll of more than 1,078 Communal Council participants revealed that about a third perceive the Councils’ reach as remaining as strong as before the economic slide accelerated four years ago, while another 13 percent believe participation has even grown. Sixty-two percent of respondents who reported ever participating said that they still did in 2018.
  • The Councils have been critical in minimizing major disturbances in popular sectors over the past five years through the role they have played – in coordination with the Comités Locales de Abastecimiento y Producción (CLAP) – in distributing monthly food boxes to a large majority of the population. Not surprisingly, of all the Councils’ thematic committees, food committees are by far the most active. Council participants reporting being active in a food committee increased from zero in 2009 to 20 percent in 2018.
  • Our survey and interviews show that the Councils have been crucial in sustaining the party’s capacity to mobilize its core supporters in key moments such as during widely criticized elections that Maduro held in May 2018. Our research also finds that most Councils are not necessarily ideologically soaked spaces of pro-regime behavior, although many citizens understand them in highly political terms. Participation, while heavily skewed toward Chavismo, reflects the whole Venezuelan political spectrum and often transcends partisan politics. Our survey shows, moreover, that over 60 percent of Venezuelans reported as recently as last December that the Councils benefit the whole community, not just party members. This practical problem-solving dimension helps enable the Councils to retain relatively broad support among Venezuelan society.
  • Our survey results suggest that the Councils are effective in increasing positive attitudes toward the government even in the absence of direct material benefits. For instance, of those who reported that their opinion of the ruling party improved since they began participating in a Council, the vast majority cited their improved social status in the community or increased political efficacy, rather than the receipt of material benefits through the Councils, as the reason for their improved attitude toward the party.

The Councils have operated across three competing models: a “deepening democracy” model focused on expanding avenues of citizen participation within the existing political system; a utopian “dual power” model aimed at replacing the existing political system with a radical direct-democracy; and a “vanguardist” model where the councils serve as a direct instrument of the party to mobilize and grow the electoral base. While all three models played an important role during the early years of the Councils, the vanguard model has recently superseded the others. Although still sometimes used by different party factions to stimulate debate about the government’s policies and performance, the Councils’ role in consolidating a loyal base of supporters to withstand the current period of economic and political crisis has been much more important.

The Councils’ evolving relationship with the ruling Socialist Party raises serious questions about whether, as political and economic conditions grow less stable, participatory institutions like the Councils open political spaces for engagement and incorporation, or devolve into a cynically deployed tool of populist autocrats – with unsettling implications for the future of participatory democracy that some leftist parties in Latin America advocate. Indeed, the Venezuela example suggests that, when political and economic conditions become less favorable for sustaining participatory institutions, most parties will either abandon them or instrumentalize them as part and parcel of an authoritarian power consolidation strategy. The groups’ changing political character becomes a matter not of “if,” but of “when.” Political party leaders can, if they want and if they try, stay true to the participatory vision through imaginative leadership and creative organizational schemes. In Venezuela, however, they have not.

September 9, 2019

* Michael McCarthy is a Research Fellow with the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies, Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at GWU’s Elliott School, and publisher of Caracas Wire, a newsletter on Venezuela and South America. Jared Abbott is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Harvard University. This is adapted from their article, Grassroots Participation in Defense of Dictatorship, in the Summer 2019 Fletcher Forum.

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by clalsstaff on September 9, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 9, 2019

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