Bloggings by boz

"I'll be doing some interesting work that will take me around Latin America" is what I wrote a few weeks ago to explain my upcoming break from blogging. What I didn't say at the time is that I meant "around Latin America" literally.

I will be starting a temporary assignment on the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier that just spent several weeks providing aid off the coast of Haiti. I will be working on the ship for a few months as it goes the long way around South America to its new homeport in San Diego.

I'm excited about the opportunity. However, the long hours working and reduced internet access otherwise mean my ability to update this blog, Twitter and even email is likely to be limited for the next three months. I'll write when I can, but readers shouldn't expect daily updates.

For anything I do happen to write on my blog or Twitter during or after the trip, the usual disclaimers apply. Everything I write here is my own opinion written at my own initiative. Nothing I write here is meant to represent the US government or anyone else. This blog is just me and my observations, analysis and opinions as it always has been.

Thanks to all my readers for the months and years of support. As I said, I will write when I can over the next few months. I plan to be back to blogging daily sometime in May and hopefully it will be better than ever.

Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch:

"Whatever you call these groups - whether paramilitaries, gangs, or some other name - their impact on human rights in Colombia today should not be minimized,"

I agree with that entire quote, though I disagree with Vivanco's statements elsewhere about the issue, and recommend reading the report. However, I wanted to stop for a moment on the comment about what to call them. Nobody is really sure.

The Just the Facts analysis of the 2011 budget numbers is very useful (see this slide presentation for more). Today's editorial in El Tiempo takes a good view of the issue.

The big story is the cut in military and police aid to Colombia and Mexico. Plan Colombia was scheduled to be 5, then 10 years. The Merida Initiative was scheduled to go for 3. We're seeing both plans wind down as their times expire.

There may be arguments for maintaining or increasing aid to Mexico and Colombia, but they should be debated publicly. Simply maintaining high levels of aid due to inertia is terrible policy and should be avoided, which is why I'm glad the administration proposed some real cuts and in some ways wish they had gone further in rethinking these two programs. This budget request will force those who want to continue or increase aid (including the Colombian and Mexican governments) to make their arguments again and gives everyone a chance to rethink priorities and perhaps shift the details based on what we've learned since those programs were originally passed.

The other big story that isn't getting enough attention is the increase in aid to many other countries. The Caribbean Basin Security Initiative and other programs are greatly increasing security and economic aid to Central America and the Caribbean. This is an area where crime and illicit trafficking is a major threat to stability and it's good that the US is working with the countries in the region to provide assistance. Let's hope in the debate over Colombia and Mexico, the changes in aid to other countries aren't lost.

Continuing my series of posts of Latin America and Caribbean mentions in larger US strategy documents, copied below is the regional portion from today's testimony of Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The document is intended to provide a "threat assessment" from the intelligence community's perspective. I have some disagreements with the document, but am posting without comment for now.

The policy wonks of the world rejoiced as a draft of the QDR was leaked online earlier this week. The QDR is an overarching review of US DOD strategy done every four years that shapes budgets and policies. So you don't have to go through the 87 page document yourself, copied below are the only mentions of Latin America. This is a draft and still may be revised, but it's probably close to what will be published eventually.

Good speech. The parts from last night's State of the Union speech relevant for Latin America and the Caribbean:

A surprise shout-out to FTA's:

We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are.  If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores.  But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that's why we'll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia. 

A brief needed mention on immigration reform:

And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system -– to secure our borders and enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. In the end, it's our ideals, our values that built America  -- values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every corner of the globe; values that drive our citizens still.

A foreign policy statement that mentions Haiti and is important to the region as a whole:

That's the leadership that we are providing –- engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We're working through the G20 to sustain a lasting global recovery.  We're working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science and education and innovation.  We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We're helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS.  And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease -– a plan that will counter threats at home and strengthen public health abroad.

As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores.  But we also do it because it is right.  That's why, as we meet here tonight, over 10,000 Americans are working with many nations to help the people of Haiti recover and rebuild.  That's why we stand with the girl who yearns to go to school in Afghanistan; why we support the human rights of the women marching through the streets of Iran; why we advocate for the young man denied a job by corruption in Guinea.  For America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity. Always.

At some point today, Pepe Lobo will be inaugurated president of Honduras. From my perspective, that moment signals the end of the coup in which the military stepped in to overthrow a democratically elected president and the end of the constitutional crisis that pitted the Congress and Supreme Court against President Zelaya. The transition back to democracy begins. Some, but not all, countries will take steps to recognize the new government. In the eyes of many in Honduras and around the world, Honduras will begin to return to normal.

But normal is not good enough.

Prior to the constitutional crisis and coup, normal in Honduras meant a country that was among the poorest in the hemisphere, with rising crime and weak government institutions. Honduras' normal was a crisis waiting to happen. It was fuel for a fire waiting for a spark.

We've discussed and debated that spark endlessly for the past seven months. A president who clashed with the other branches of government in what appeared to some to be a quest for additional power, a military who stepped in and took sides, a Congress and Supreme Court who post-hoc justified the military's coup rather than defend democracy, a stubborn interim leader who stifled negotiations and restricted basic human rights. I'm sure those debates will continue.

But the key problem sitting in front of President Lobo is not the spark that caused the previous coup (though issues there still remain), it's the fuel that threatens to ignite again. Honduras' economy is far worse after the coup. Crime and impunity continue to degrade institutions throughout the country. Political and social divides have been intensified. To simply return to normal, to pretend that Honduras before the coup was an ideal situation, cannot be acceptable for the new president.

As the goal in post-earthquake Haiti is to rebuild its infrastructure better than before, the goal in post-coup Honduras is to rebuild its institutions better than before. The hemisphere, including the OAS and the US, should help, but Honduras must take the lead. President Lobo needs to bring the entire society together including those who disapprove of him to debate the big issues. He needs to reform the military so it stays out of politics and reform the judicial system so it can be relevant to the needs to the needs of the average citizen. He must protect basic human rights including freedom of speech and the political rights of minorities, which were destroyed during the coup but weren't doing so well beforehand either. And on top of that, he needs to tackle the problems of economics and security from day one to keep the country stable.

The transition back to democracy is a necessary step, but it's not sufficient. Honduras needs a new normal that breaks from its past or it will face another crisis in the next decade. That's the challenge President Lobo faces in his term.

Adam Isacson wrote a good blog post "It's not about Chavez" in which he takes Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl to task for his absurd focus on Venezuela's president as the center of everything that happens in Latin America.

That point felt familiar, and for good reason. In September 2005, I wrote a blog post titled "It's not always about Hugo" in which I took Diehl to task for his absurd focus on Venezuela as the center of everything that happens in Latin America.

In the four+ years between the time Adam and I wrote those blog posts (great minds...), you would be hard pressed to find a Washington Post editorial or Diehl column that discusses Latin America and doesn't mention Chavez's role. Mentioning Venezuela's president when discussing Venezuela is appropriate and probably necessary (I certainly do it often on this blog). But Post editorials and columns in the past four years on the domestic politics of Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile have all included at least a mention if not a focus on Venezuela's president as a central figure. At one point on Twitter I wrote, "If Hugo Chavez is a narcissist, the Washington Post is his mirror." There are plenty of newspapers that occasionally do something similar, but the Post's obsession with Chavez's role in the region exemplifies the absurd and somewhat insulting manner in which US journalists try to boil down all of Latin America to a single narrative.

Bolivian voters voted for President Morales, not for Hugo Chavez, and did so for a variety of domestic political reasons. Panamanian voters voted for President Martinelli, not against Hugo Chavez, and did so for domestic political reasons. The same holds true for recent elections in Chile and El Salvador and will continue to hold true for Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. Outside of elections, Honduras had its coup, Colombia is debating reelection and Argentina faces an internal power struggle and in spite of the Post's best attempts, all of those are happening for domestic political reasons and not because of Venezuela's president.

I make an effort on this blog and in my professional analytical writing to explain the domestic politics of countries, not try to shove them all into a single framework. The regional right-left debate is a convenient but wrong journalistic narrative and is very limited in terms of what it can explain. To quote another classic blog post from November 2005:

The elections in Latin America will create changes with a regional impact over the next 12-18 months, but each of these elections is local. Each has its own issues and politicians and is almost completely uninfluenced by the regional view. To argue that Mexico's or Peru's election will hinge on the US-Venezuela bickering is the same as believing France rejected the EU constitution because Bush was reelected.

Politics is local and politics is immediate. Local economics, local security and local hope are the issues on each ballot, not some sweeping question of international left vs. international right. Understand that, and you'll understand the upcoming elections.

Or as Michael Shifter wrote more recently:

As the Latinobarometro surveys have shown since the mid-1990s, they tend to want governments that can solve problems and deliver results.  They want good performance -- efficiency and honesty -- in their leaders. The surveys also show that ideological orientations have held relatively constant....

...A review of the electoral calendar suggests that, increasingly, essentially national characteristics and developments -- more often than broad, regional, ideological trends -- determine outcomes.  The weight of different factors varies, depending on each particular situation.   Indeed, with the differential impact of globalization on Latin American societies, it is less and less productive to generalize about the region's politics.

Can politicians deliver on their promises, inspire their citizens and improve their country? Presidents like Lula, Uribe and Morales have done exactly that, which is why they retain such high approval ratings. Presidents like Garcia, Kirchner and increasingly whats-his-name in Venezuela have failed and are seeing their public approval drop. It's less about a regional ideological framework than it's about a centuries-old test for any politician going in front of the voters.

As much as it pains Chavez's international supporters and pundits like Diehl, Latin America's politics are not best explained by a regional revolution or a regional counter-revolution, but by basic local politics, played out country-by-country.

I'm late writing about Obama's first year in office. I've drafted pages of notes, but just don't have time to edit it all for a coherent blog post or posts. So instead, I'll throw this short point out there and hope I return to the rest later.

I could point to more than two dozen issues regarding hemispheric relations in Obama's first year, but it's likely it will really be remembered for four points:
1) The shift from Bush to Obama.
2) The introduction to the region at the Summit of the Americas.
3) The response to the Honduras coup.
4) The response to Haiti's earthquake.

I think Obama deserves positive marks on all four. I know some who would disagree on one or more. I'm not going to debate them here.

What's remarkable is that the two events that may have impacted US relations with the region the most (Honduras and Haiti) were not on the top of anyone's list 12 months ago. Nobody guessed in January 2009 that the Obama administration would spend 6 months focused on discussing and debating the restoration of democracy in Honduras and then embark on one of the largest humanitarian aid efforts in history in Haiti.

So, the lesson here for anyone who thinks they know in detail how the next 12 months will go, you're probably wrong. I can say it's fairly likely that, other than rebuilding Haiti, the issues that will define Obama's Latin America agenda over the second year have not emerged yet. At some point in the next 12 months, one of the many small problems in the hemisphere will boil over and take up an excessive amount of time and energy, distracting once again from the important but often forgotten pro-active agenda that the administration hopes to implement.

The question for the Obama administration, and really the hemisphere at large, is how to walk and chew gum at the same time. How can we handle a crisis like Honduras while not losing focus on everything else that must be done? How can we balance security, democracy, development, migration, energy and environmental issues without getting sidetracked by a single issue that eats away all the time, attention and resources we have to spare? Before we can tackle the big questions, it may be worth stepping back to ask how we tackle them comprehensively without falling into the same patterns that have caused the hemisphere to fail before.

From RSF:

Reporters Without Borders today condemned as an act of political revenge the cancellation of a television station’s licence, seven months after the same action was taken against radio La Voz de Bagua Grande, also in the Amazonas region.

Televisión Oriente, based in Yurimaguas in the north-east, lost its broadcast licence on 15 January on the order of the Transport and Communications Ministry (MTC). Like La Voz de Bagua, Televisión Oriente fulfilled all the legal conditions for its licence, granted in 2006. And in both cases the authorities claimed that they had not met deadlines for operational checks. This reason is obviously not valid.

Rather than loudly proclaim his acts of censorship like certain other presidents in the region, Peruvian President Garcia silently has his bureaucracy shut down media outlets. It's censorship all the same. The OAS should be working just as hard on this case as they are on cases of censorship in Venezuela and Honduras.

I haven't covered Honduras much this year, but there have been some significant events prior to the inauguration of President Lobo next week.

Micheletti has stepped aside, but not resigned as the de facto president.

Lobo offered Zelaya safe passage out of the country and it appears Honduras' real president will accept the deal, ending the standoff at the Brazil embassy.

The Economist buries the lead in getting a Brazilian official to say the steps that Lobo must take to gain Brazil's recognition:

That will require an amnesty for Mr Zelaya, a unity government including some of his supporters and a willingness to discuss constitutional reform, says a Brazilian diplomat.

Getting Brazil to recognize the government in some form would be a significant step for Lobo. Guatemala and El Salvador will likely do the same as soon as some conditions are met. That would likely then pave the way for a debate about Honduras being recognized again at the OAS. It could be an intense debate, but once the major hemispheric powers are on board, Honduras will push for it.

No, that's not a repeat of a headline from 2007. From BBC:

The Venezuelan government has taken six cable television channels off the air for breaking a law on transmitting government material. The privately owned RCTV International, openly opposed to President Hugo Chavez, is one of those affected.

Daniel has some interesting statistics to suggest that since RCTV moved to cable and satellite, the number of people watching cable in Venezuela has significantly increased. It now stands officially at 40% and probably higher than 50% once illegal lines are included. At times, RCTV has a 20% marketshare in Venezuela. Also, for those still watching broadcast media in Venezuela, 30% turn off their TV's when Chavez's Cadenas come on. Not surprisingly, most people don't want to watch hours and hours of the president speaking.

I'm amused by Quico's analogy that Chavez would make kids who talked between two cans and a string broadcast his cadenas.

Going back to 2007, it's easy to remember the Chavistas claiming that RCTV was taken off the air because governments regulate the broadcast spectrum, not because of the whim of the president who wanted to censor his opposition. Less than three years later, we can see just how hollow that argument was. For Chavez, it was always about power and control of information, not about regulating the broadcast spectrum or any of the other technical arguments some tried to make.

Clearly, people changed media habits once and they will do so again, with the next likely outlet actually being online video. I wonder if the next step for Chavez is to block YouTube, RCTV online and other sites from Venezuela during cadenas so people can't watch those either. It would seem to be the next "logical" step in the censorship parade.

Good campaign. While much focus went to the problems within the Concertacion and the poor campaign of Frei, Piñera deserves credit for running a solid campaign that led him lead from start to finish, though it was close in the end. His money certainly helped, but it wasn't just the money (otherwise, the right would have won years ago).

A stable domestic policy. Chile has navigated a pragmatic and centrist economic policy over the past few decades and it would be surprising to see Piñera make significant changes. I expect some shifts around the margins, but nothing too concrete. Why take the risk to change policies much from a president who currently has 80% support, even if she's from a different party?

A shift in foreign policy tone. Piñera likes Uribe, hates Chavez. Some will say its ideology, but I think it also just has a lot to do with personality. I expect Piñera to have a largely pragmatic policy that will be largely similar to Bachelet's in content, but will likely take on a different tone.

A new opposition in disarray. The Concertacion hasn't been in opposition since the Pinochet era and has never been the opposition to a democratically elected government. The coalition is breaking apart internally and pointing fingers at each other.

An opportunity for Chile's right. A lot of people will hate this comparison, but Piñera is in a very similar place to El Salvador's president, Mauricio Funes. Chile's right, like the FMLN, have historical baggage that has previously hurt their domestic electoral chances. But this election shows the population is ready to give him a chance to show he can govern. If he makes the right pragmatic and centrist moves early (as in, he doesn't confirm his opponents' worst fears that he's secretly like Pinochet), I expect to see Piñera's popularity jump in the early months much in the way Funes' has. If he can maintain that over time, he may break that historical baggage and build the right's political base in Chile for the first time in half a century.

I keep coming back to two points of analysis:
1) Sebastián Piñera has led every or nearly every poll in the past year.
2) Sebastián Piñera has never had obtained over 50% in an unadjusted poll*.

The fact the leading candidate has never been able to cross the 50% mark shows just how divided this electorate is. Recent polls have shown Frei close the gap and the two candidates are in a virtual tie in most polls at the moment with a significant number of voters undecideds. Piñera may have a small advantage in the polls, but all the momentum seems to be with Frei. Asked for my prediction, I think this one is too close to call.

President Obama:

I have directed my administration to respond with a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort to save lives.  The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, and to deliver the humanitarian relief -- the food, water and medicine  -- that Haitians will need in the coming days.  In that effort, our government, especially USAID and the Departments of State and Defense are working closely together and with our partners in Haiti, the region, and around the world. 

Bill Clinton calls the earthquake in Haiti "one of the great humanitarian emergencies in the history of the Americas."

Editorials in the LA Times and NYT write a common theme that is in much of the reporting: this problem is compounded by the long term problems faced by Haiti and the hemisphere should help with a sustained commitment.