Brazilian prosecutor threatens Chevron managers with prison

Reuters:

A Brazilian prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against Chevron Corp and some of its local managers within weeks, adding the threat of prison sentences to an $11 billion civil lawsuit as punishment for a November offshore oil spill.

As I wrote last November:

Brazil is going to do everything it can to blame Chevron for the offshore oil spill this month.

I don't have all the facts and can't judge whether Chevron deserves this sort of prosecution. We'll learn more in the coming months as the case goes to trial. However, if Brazilian law determines that the Chevron team was taking an unacceptable risk, then how are they ever going to permit the drilling for pre-salt oil, which is going to be far riskier?

One other question: What if this was Sinopec rather than Chevron? Chinese oil companies are making big inroads across Latin America including Brazil. At some point down the road, Chinese oil companies are going to make these same sorts of mistakes. Holding them accountable is going to be a different political game than going after US oil companies.

Funes turns towards the military

Salvadoran President Funes named recently retired Army General Francisco Salinas as the head of the national police. This follows his decision in November to name David Mungia Payes, another former general, as his minister of defense justice and security.

Both posts are supposed to be led by civilian officials. Other members of Funes's own FMLN party are criticizing the president for violating the spirit if not the letter of the law. The president says that both men are retired from the military and qualified for their positions.

Related links: BBC, EFE, El Faro, Tim, CISPES Also see Mike Allison's column from last November about the Mungia appointment.

While the FMLN and the pundits have been very critical of Funes's decisions to name more retired military officers into civilian posts, most citizens will ultimately base their opinion on whether security improves.

Threat: Mackerel overfishing

The most important article you'll read today about Latin America should be the one by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on the overfishing of mackerel off the coasts of Chile and Peru and into the Antarctic.

Every expert quoted in the article says that the rate of fishing is unsustainable, leading to a potential collapse of fish stocks. Just between 2006 and 2011, mackerel stocks declined 63%. Continued decline would have direct consequences on the economies along the Pacific coast of South America as well as food security for the hemisphere and for Africa.

It's a major collective action problem in that no country wants to unilaterally stop fishing, knowing that other countries would simply pick up the slack. Fixing this requires regional (great issue for UNASUR or the OAS) as well as global multilateral coordination. Even if they coordinated, protecting the fish stocks would require enforcement of those regulations.

It's an issue that pits the environment against economic development and basic politics. Though the recommendation is for a five year ban on mackerel fishing, neither Chile nor Peru want to face the economic blow that would come from that. Pressure by individual fishers and large fishing corporations makes it much harder to politicians to act. Corporations in Chile have manipulated the scientific evidence to get the quotas increased. European and Asian governments subsidize their fishing industries, causing them to be overly large, even for the market.

It's a corruption problem. The reporters investigating this issue found that many ships under-report their catch in Peru. Ships don't adhere to quality standards, bringing in their catch in a way that wastes a significant amount of potential food. European ships flag their vessels from smaller and unregulated countries (Vanuatu for one) to dodge EU regulations on overfishing.

The potential collapse of fish stocks is a threat to Latin America in the coming decades. It's an issue that touches on stability, economics, politics, corruption and multilateralism. Go read this entire article.

2012 SOTU mentions

Congrats to those of you who chose 'under' in yesterday's post. Only two countries in the hemisphere made the cut in a speech that was largely focused on domestic issues.

Trade:

We’re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world.  Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years.  With the bipartisan trade agreements we signed into law, we’re on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule. And soon, there will be millions of new customers for American goods in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.

Though he didn't mention any specific Latin American countries, his comments on immigration were welcome:

Let’s also remember that hundreds of thousands of talented, hardworking students in this country face another challenge:  the fact that they aren’t yet American citizens.  Many were brought here as small children, are American through and through, yet they live every day with the threat of deportation.  Others came more recently, to study business and science and engineering, but as soon as they get their degree, we send them home to invent new products and create new jobs somewhere else.

That doesn’t make sense.  

I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration.  That’s why my administration has put more boots on the border than ever before.  That’s why there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.  The opponents of action are out of excuses.  We should be working on comprehensive immigration reform right now.

But if election-year politics keeps Congress from acting on a comprehensive plan, let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses, defend this country.  Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship.  I will sign it right away.

Also some references to the Americas in the section on general foreign policy:

The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe.  Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever.  Our ties to the Americas are deeper.  Our ironclad commitment -- and I mean ironclad -- to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.

We’ve made it clear that America is a Pacific power, and a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope.  From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we’ve dealt to our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world who are eager to work with us.  That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin, from Cape Town to Rio, where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.  Yes, the world is changing.  No, we can’t control every event.  But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs –- and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.

Those hoping for more Latin America mentions will just have to wait for the speech at the Summit of the Americas in a few months.

2012 SOTU over/under for hemispheric mentions: 3.5

As I have for several years now, the question is how many countries in this hemisphere (other than the United States) will the president mention in tonight's State of the Union.

This year's over/under: 3.5

You get bonus points for naming the specific countries that will be mentioned.

Last year those readers who took the over (2.5) won big as the president named five other countries (Brazil, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Panama).

Here's the number of countries mentioned for the last few years:
2011: 5
2010: 3
2009: n/a
2008: 6
2007: 1
2006: 0
2005: 0

Let me know your guess for this year in the comments or on Twitter.

New regional organizations

Michael Shifter has an excellent article [PDF] in Current History about Latin America's new integration efforts. A few comments.

1) Whether or not you think these newer institutions like UNASUR and CELAC are relevant (my take), the discussion about these new institutions is a hot topic across the hemisphere. There is certainly an interest and a desire across the ideological spectrum to see something newer and better than what currently exists.

2) I think the Pacific Alliance among Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile has potential, though like all the other institutions, could stumble as it hits the hard questions about sovereignty. If those countries can achieve additional economic integration, they would be a real force in the hemisphere.

3) Brazil is boosting UNASUR and they see it as their best effort to influence hemispheric affairs in a multilateral way. However, the same way that the OAS eventually ended up being far less dominated by the US, if UNASUR is successful, Brazil's influence in it will eventually be balanced out by the other countries.

4) None of these new organizations is a threat to the OAS as they can all coexist without competing. It's the OAS's own dysfunction that is a threat to the OAS. The organization needs to reform and needs several governments in the hemisphere, including the US, to push for those reforms. Creating a modernized OAS would be a great topic for the Summit of the Americas.

Correa vs the media

In a Miami Herald op-ed, Ecuador's new ambassador to the United State, Nathalie Cely, tries hard to defend her government from accusations that it restricts press freedom. She says the media commit libel, abuse power and then try to hide behind the shield of media freedom.

The defense comes as criticisms of President Correa's actions continue to rise.

Domestically, the president has taken a number of steps to restrict media freedom in the country. Correa, as an individual citizen, sued the newspaper El Universo over an opinion column and won a multi-million dollar libel case. It now appears that Correa's lawyer colluded with the judge to write the opinion. Separately, the government has ordered the editor of Hoy arrested over his reporting on corruption linked to relatives of the president. The president has also pushed new restrictive laws through the national assembly that will limit the media's ability to cover the next political campaign.

Internationally, Correa is leading the attack against the OAS Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Both organizations have been critical of Correa's attacks on the media. So Correa and some of his allies in the hemisphere are attempting to reduce the power of the organizations and their ability to individually criticize governments in the hemisphere that censor media and repress journalists. (LA Times, RSF, CPJ, Al Jazeera). UPDATE: (NYT, CPJ via Miami Herald)

The fight over media freedom at the OAS spills well beyond Ecuador's borders and could be a big test for the organization's influence and relevance moving forward.

Police corruption in Honduras

As if to disprove some of my recent criticism that the media frame Honduran violence only as a "drug war" issue without considering the other problems there, both McClatchy and Miami Herald (aren't they the same company?) do an excellent job reporting on the issue of police corruption in Honduras.

From McClatchy:

Unlike other parts of Central America, where organized crime has relied on enforcers recruited from street gangs and unemployed youth, in Honduras entire units of the national police appear to work for drug and crime groups, preying on the public and gunning down foes.

From the Herald:

Another ranking police investigator told The Herald he discovered that his supervisor allowed members of the special forces squad to double as bodyguards for drug traffickers. That supervisor is now a commissioner, the highest rank in the police department.

“Maybe the ratio of honest to corrupt in the police is 10 to 1. But it doesn’t help that nine are clean if the one who is dirty is in charge,” the investigator said. “In this country, bosses are named to specific posts with the purpose of facilitating the entry and exit of drugs.”

This is a level of corruption that is very difficult to root out. After all, if top police commanders are corrupt, who is going to investigate, prosecute and arrest them? Lower level police officials who attempt to do so take a huge risk in terms of their careers and lives. Judges and other civilian authorities can attempt to investigate, but a judge can't arrest someone. That takes a police officer. When former Security Minister Alvarez attempted to fire corrupt police commanders, the police threatened to revolt and go on strike, not something that would help a country plagued with crime. Then there is the military, back in a domestic security role largely due to police corruption, but I've written before about the challenges on that front.

So what options remain, the Herald hints at them:

Many Honduran activists have called for the United States to “intervene” and help run the police. American technical security experts will head to Honduras soon. Colombia and Chile have sent teams to help investigate high-profile cases, and the Organization of American States sent a mission to figure out what role that diplomatic organization can play.

I'm not sure you could get too many activists inside Honduras on the record saying they want the US to "intervene", but I do think this paragraph gets at the point the potential solution may have to come from outside Honduras. Ideally, an organization similar to Guatemala's CICIG could be set up in the country and granted authority to investigate and prosecute. The UN, OAS or SICA would be the multilateral organizations to operate and monitor the group. Of course, as seen in Guatemala, that sort of solution is far from perfect and can only be a stop-gap measure.

Based on my research for the Wilson Center back in late 2010, I know there are officials inside President Lobo's government who want that sort of outside solution. At the time I wrote that report, at least one official said it was close to a certain deal. Obviously that hasn't happened. Political forces, some related to organized crime and others related to the 2009 coup, have so far blocked the potential for an outside investigative unit to be set up in Honduras.

Without any institution inside or outside the country that can clean up the police force, what's left is one of the most violent countries in the world with a police force that is too ineffective to stop the crime and too corrupt to reform and improve itself.

Nearly every analyst who looks at organized crime in the hemisphere will tell you that "police reform" is a key part to improving the security situation. But what's the answer when the police refuse to reform and the political system can't or won't force them to do so? That's one of the key challenges that Honduras poses today.

UPDATE: A sad postscript to the Miami Herald story: One of the sources who went on the record about police corruption was murdered.

More about the non-drug war

Last week I criticized one article on violence in Mexico and Central America for placing it in the framework of the "war on drugs" while ignoring the many other aspects of organized crime that occur in the region. In a similar critique about media coverage of violence in Honduras, RAJ takes it one step further:

Impunity; the availability of guns; targeting of certain groups for political and structural reasons; and the ineffectuality and corruption of the police, who no one expects to actually investigate crimes professionally: all these factors should be the start of press coverage of crime in Honduras, not the end.

I disagree with some of RAJ's specifics, but agree on that general point. Violence in Honduras is complicated and there are key aspects related to weak state institutions, impunity and longstanding social divides that aren't directly caused by the current epidemic of organized crime. Violence and criminality were worsening during President Zelaya's term, then exploded following the coup due to an increase in political violence and a failure by the de facto regime to handle the organized crime problem. Even post-Micheletti, significant violence related to political issues remains including the targeting of journalists and vulnerable populations. There is both political violence and criminal violence today. They sometimes overlap, but they shouldn't all be lumped together by the media or by President Lobo and his administration as "drug war" issues.

Specific to the Bajo Aguan, the presence of drug trafficking and criminal organizations certainly exacerbates the conflict. In fact, the criminals have embedded themselves and armed certain actors on both sides of that conflict, making it even more difficult to sort out. However, that conflict has some deep roots in land issues and poverty and would likely be a serious social clash even without the presence of criminal groups and drug money.

POLL NUMBERS!!! Two presidents in rare positive territory

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala is back at 54% approval according to an Ipsos-Apoyo poll. The president dropped below the 50% mark last month amid scandals and mining strikes. With his second vice president removed from office and the mining strike calmed down (though the conditions there could lead it to flare back up), Humala is back in positive territory and still capable of moving forward with his agenda.

Meanwhile, Ecuadoran President Correa is at 55% approval after five years in office according to a Cedatos-Gallup poll. In spite of his controversial style, most of the public still thinks he is doing a good job, particularly on the economy.

What's impressive is to see the Peru and Ecuador polls in the contexts of their predecessors. In Peru, the Garcia and Toledo administrations spent most of their terms in the 30s, 20s and even lower approval ratings. In Ecuador, well, Correa is the first president since 1996 to start and finish a full term, an accomplishment by itself. Maintaining a majority support at the same time is a big win for him.

If you care about US policy in Latin America, oppose SOPA/PIPA

As a freelance writer, my intellectual property is my livelihood. I take protection of it seriously. I also live and work online in Latin America. I've seen the potential for the Internet to be a disruptive technology for good, creating conditions that promote democracy and cut down poverty.

It's unfortunate that a number of industries are lobbying for legislation and regulations in the name of intellectual property that would serve to undermine some of the basic architecture of the internet. Legislation like SOPA/PIPA directly and indirectly impacts US policy in Latin America in a negative way. That's why, like many other websites, I'm using my blog today to oppose this legislation. While that seems outside the usual sphere of US-Latin America policy, it is relevant to how this hemisphere is able to connect and communicate online.

How does it impact the hemisphere? If legislation like this were to pass, it would hold back economic innovation in the US and Latin America, shut down small businesses in the technology sector, impact our free trade agreements with Central America, Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile, strengthen organized criminal groups that already traffic in stolen intellectual property, and limit cultural exchanges between the US and the rest of the hemisphere.

If the US passes legislation like this, it will be utilized by oppressive governments to go after democracy activists who use the internet to organize and communicate. The US will also lose significant moral high ground on censorship as the enforcement of this law would create a firewall limiting US internet users' access to numerous foreign websites, in some ways similar to how the Chinese government or the Cuban government block sites outside of their countries. The SOPA/PIPA legislation would set a bad international precedent for a region still struggling to figure out how to have smart regulations and security measures online.

At a very personal level, internet regulation poorly defined such as SOPA/PIPA could force me to shut down this blog. I'm an individual blogger who doesn't have the resources to monitor and verify the tens of thousands of links I've posted over the past seven years, placing me at risk to legal action under this legislation. I also depend on hosting sites like Google, Blogger, Tumblr and Twitter, all of which say that enforcement of this legislation would be too heavy of a burden on their businesses and could force them to change how they operate. It's not an exaggeration to say that if restrictive legislation passes and is enforced, this blog and every blog you read about Latin America policy could either be shut down or censored across borders. That's bad for you, the reader. It's worse for the nascent online community, which has grown over the past decade and given citizens the power to publish that that was once restricted to governments and big media companies.

If you care about US policy in Latin America, you should oppose SOPA, PIPA and other legislation that does far more harm than good when it comes to intellectual property online.

What you can do:

1) Learn. Most people who study Latin America aren't experts in technology policy, but you should understand where these issues overlap. Google, Wikipedia, EFF, Global Voices, Wired and MIT Media Lab are among the many with intelligent explanations as to why you should oppose these bills.

2) Contact Congress. Let them know that opposition to SOPA/PIPA is a policy issue that the Latin America policy community cares about. From human rights to free trade, this bill has the potential to impact a number of Latin America related issues.

3) Monitor: This SOPA/PIPA fight is just one of many over technology policy that directly and indirectly affects Latin America. You should continue to keep track of these technology issues in the US and around the hemisphere.

Thank you for your time and your readership.

Beyond 2012, the book

Sam Logan and I have written a short ebook, Beyond 2012, that is available over at the Southern Pulse website for $4.99. The book contains six essays analyzing Mexican and Venezuelan politics, security in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America, the potential for a regional influence competition between China and Brazil, and the cybersecurity policy debate in Latin America.

For me, this was an opportunity to experiment in some longer online self-publishing as well as write on some topics at a bit more length than my typical blog post. As always, thanks for reading!

Guatemalan military receives a new mission

Just one day in office, Guatemalan President Perez Molina met with his military commanders and issued a new top priority for the military: "Achieve an interdiction of external threats and neutralize illegal armed groups, through the use of military power, by regaining and maintaining control of the air, maritime and land domains."

None of this is a surprise. Perez had promised to use the military to improve internal security throughout the current and previous campaign. Perez also promised to provide the military with the technology and equipment to meet that objective including surveillance systems, radars, speedboats and combat aircraft.

The use of the military isn't unprecedented. Former President Colom used the military in combating the Zetas and other Latin American militaries are deployed internally to fight crime. However, it appears that Perez went a step further, symbolically and perhaps legally, in making the mission to fight illegal armed groups the primary focus of the Guatemalan military.

Several key questions come from this statement. First, will this have a real impact on how the Guatemalan military trains, equips and deploys or was it just symbolic? Second, where is the money? Is Perez going to pass any new taxes, reform the budget or appeal for new international aid? Third, what is the long term strategy and goal? Is there a defined end state, perhaps including a return to a reformed, more capable and less corrupt civilian police force? How will Perez know when Guatemala has won? Like too many other Latin American presidents, it appears Perez is sending in the military to fight the bad guys before he has a strategy to win or a vision for what he wants to achieve.

I'm disappointed to see that "protect the population" wasn't in the main mission statement, at least as far as I can tell from the reporting.  Protect the population and measure the results is a good general recommendation for Latin American countries trying to fight crime. Going on the offensive and fighting the illegal armed groups can lead to the wrong measures of success. Declaring protection of the population as the mission means the government must judge success based on less violence. Declaring the offensive fight as the mission generally leads to more violence, though I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

By starting with the military offensive, not focusing on protection of the population and not placing the military actions in the framework of a full government strategy, Perez threatens to make the same mistakes as his neighbor to the north. Perez should have a more comprehensive strategy in place before he deploys the military.

State building vs state cleansing

Like many others, I've read Elizabeth Dickinson's recent drug war article in the Washington Monthly. Here's the analysis I thought was most interesting and on-target:

The very natures of the two states are different as well. “Colombia had never been in control of its territory, so the real challenge was to assert state authority for the first time,” explains Shannon O’Neill of the Council on Foreign Relations. “In Mexico, that’s not the problem. The government has a presence in every small municipality; the question is, who do they report to? It’s a very different challenge; Mexico’s challenge is corruption.”

Mexican institutions are hollowed out in a way that Colombia’s never were. Colombia’s police are national, and were never terribly corrupt. The 400,000-strong police force in Mexico is divided between federal, state, and local jurisdictions, and the closer to the ground you get, the more the drug cartels have been able to infiltrate. Often unpaid, underequipped, and terrified by the security situation, the local police take bribes or work as informants....

...Indeed, while Colombia was building institutions from zero in many of its most desperate communities, Mexico urgently needs to cleanse its state—a task that is impossible when it’s that very state that the government is trying to defend.

What I though was wrong with the article was the focus on drugs to the exclusion of everything else the criminals in Mexico and Colombia do. There was hardly any mention of human trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, gold and oil trafficking and the other crimes that make up over half the revenue many of these groups take in.

It's no longer a "war on drugs." This is about reducing violence and criminality. It's about state building and state cleansing. Even if there was a way to instantly eliminate the drug money from the hemisphere, there are still violent criminal groups making money from other areas that need to be stopped and weak governing institutions that need to be strengthened and cleansed of corruption. That's why I thought the paragraphs above were the best from the piece.

Two years after Haiti's earthquake, half a million people remain homeless. Most live in tent cities and temporary shelters. Spend some time thinking about that today.