Latin American Thought

Within 48 hours of the coup in Honduras, much has been written about what this means for Latin America, with the best analysis acknowledging that the coup breaks with the democratic constitutional order, but also that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya threatened democracy in his campaign to perpetuate himself in power. Chris Sabatini from the Council of the Americas points out the passivity of multilateral institutions and regional governments in the past few weeks as the situation was brewing, and explains that now the international community is in a situation in which the only right thing to do is to condemn a coup against “a President who had been bent on steamrolling the checks and balances of power.” Kevin Casas-Zamora form the Brookings Institution has a similar take, stating that “While bearing by far the greater responsibility for this crisis, Mr. Zelaya is still the legitimate president of Honduras and must be reinstated in his position.”

Whether Zelaya will be reinstated as president, though, depends mostly on whether Hondurans are prepared to take him back, and while it seems that every foreign government, international organization, and Latin America expert is calling for the democratically elected government to be restored, the will of Hondurans may not match the international community’s intentions. Zelaya left Honduras in conflict with the Supreme Court, the National Congress, and the Armed Forces, and with approval ratings below 30%. The demonstrations that followed the coup in support of Zelaya seem to have been relatively small. If Zelaya does return to Honduras later on this week with OAS Secretary General Insulza, his current plan, it is unclear who would welcome him.

Following the latest developments today I ran into a Twitter feed that summed it all up: “Parece que todo el mundo está ansioso porque regrese Manuel Zelaya al poder…todos, menos los hondureños.” (It seems that the whole world is anxious for Manuel Zelaya to return to power… everyone, but Hondurans.)

I have yet to see a good report on where Hondurans stand on all of this, but what I perceive from my limited personal contacts in the region and a few interviews in the press is that many Hondurans have accepted the coup, reflecting what Latinobarometro and other pollsters have warned us about for a while: that Latin Americans are disillusioned with democracy. The wave of democracy that hit Latin America beginning in the late 1970s has not fulfilled expectations, and as a result many of the region’s citizens are now willing to sacrifice it without much thought. This helps explain the popularity of questionable re-election movements in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, as well as the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002 and what we are seeing now in Honduras.

Yes, recognizing Roberto Micheletti as the President of Honduras would set a bad precedent in the region, but perhaps more importantly, this coup should open our eyes to the vulnerability of democracy in the Americas. Just as dangerous as having a world in which coups are accepted by the international community is a world in which populations are so disgruntled with democracy that they accept a coup and an undemocratic government as the best of two evils. While initially it may be important to focus on the international response, my hope is that soon analysts as well as international organizations and governments will begin to think of why this coup took place, about the deficiencies in Latin America’s democracies, and about what should be done about it. 

Mounting political tensions in Honduras finally spilled over on 28 June 2009, the day the nation was set to vote on the “cuarta urna“, a proposal from back in March that, if successfully passed, would have allowed for Hondurans to vote to change the constitution to allow incumbent President Manuel Zelaya to run for re-election in November.

Earlier in the week, Zelaya deposed ofRomeo Vasquez Velasquez, the head of the Armed Forces. In response, the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force all resigned in solidarity, prompting even greater tension between the president and the military A nasty legal battle ensued, with each side accusing the other of acting illegally, and Zelaya declaring on 26 June 2009 that a coup was afoot. Two days later, he was forcibly removed from Honduras by the army, and will speak on 30 June at the UN in New York.

It is unfortunate that it took a military uprising to draw international attention to the deteriorating political situation that has been plaguing Honduras for years, making it one of the least safe nations in the Americas. The left-leaning Zelaya has never seen eye to eye with the traditional ruling elite in Honduras. As the two have competed in a polarizing power struggle, state institutions have suffered. Violent crime is on the rise, and international drug trafficking organizations regularly use Honduras’ porous borders, loosely controlled Bay Islands, and vast, sparsely populated eastern territory as a gateway for illegal narcotics destined for Mexico and beyond. Some in Honduras believe that the state lost control a long time ago, and that the week of 23 June was the result of a situation that had been close to boiling over for some time.

Back in March I wrote a commentary for International Relations and Security Network arguing that Honduras was left particularly vulnerable to the economic crisis due in large part to the lack of state control throughout much of the country. Weak state institutions have been a magnet for illegality, and the events of this past Sunday and the preceding week will only exacerbate this vulnerability in the coming weeks and months as both sides jockey for control of the presidency.

Yet, amidst the chaos, there is a silver lining that will not be immediately apparent until after the dust settles, which could take months.

The first is in the US response. The United States has a sad history of directly and indirectly supporting military coups in Latin America, ignoring democracy and human rights in favor of short-term political gain. Yet Hugo Llorens, the US ambassador to Honduras and President Obama both condemned the ousting, calling it a “coup” and demanding that democratic norms be respected. Not convinced, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and staunch ally of Zelaya claims that the CIA had a hand in the ousting.

Regardless of who is right, it is a bold step for the United States to support a left-leaning president in Latin America and condemn the “coup” - at the very least because it hinders empty political fodder that hinders the US from developing better relations with Latin America, and at the very most because it marks a true commitment to upholding democracy and democratic values worldwide. Granted, condemning the act is the general global consensus, and the US is hardly alone in their stance, which may be more out of political convenience than an ideological shift. But the outlying possibility is there.

The second potential positive outcome that may be the impact it has on other regional leaders thinking about constitutional referendums to increase executive powers. This has been a worrying trend in Latin America, and has been successfully pulled off on various occasions in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Yet as a result of the political unrest in Honduras, leaders may think twice before attempting such a drastic change to increase their own power.

Fueled by the successes of his allies, Zelaya no doubt felt he could turn up the heat without any reprecussions. He ended up getting burned. It is unfortunate that the Honduran people will have to suffer as a result.

I very much enjoyed Eliot’s last blog entry on news sources and how they’re suffering from, or at least needing to adapt to, the massive flow of news and analysis that now occurs online. As I read it I could not help but think of the role that blogs like this one and others are having on how we learn about and understand world events, where we go to when we search for news and analysis, and what this means for traditional news sources that up to now dominated this type of exchanges, and for our knowledge of world events in general.

At LASA last week I attended a panel on blogging on Latin America organized by Gregory Weeks from University of North Carolina, who blogs at Two Weeks Notice. Discussants included Patricio Navia from the Universidad Diego Portales, who blogs at Referente and Maxwell Cameron from the University of British Columbia, who blogged at Peru Election 2006. Having these three bloggers in the same room made me realize how divergent our conceptions of blogging can be. It reminded me that a blog (unlike a newspaper or journal) is just an open space that offers little guidance. Therefore, a discussion among bloggers is very different than a discussion among journalists, as they may all see themselves as having little in common. I had read all the blogs mentioned above before, but I had never stopped to think about their differences. In Two Weeks Notice, Gregory Weeks writes in an informal tone about Latin American issues in general using small entries that usually are inspired from a recent linked news story. At the panel I knew Weeks had had a Brahma beer the night before, as he had written about the Brazilian beer industry inspired by a beer he drank in Rio. Patricio Navia, on the other hand, focuses almost solely on Chile, writes longer and more formal op-ed style pieces, and includes few links. Maxwell Cameron presents a different approach, as he blogged on the ground from Peru during the 2006 elections providing analysis but also news coverage that was steps ahead of the traditional press. His blog was in Spanish and English and had a significant following in Peru and abroad. What all three blogs have in common is that they all compete with, or compliment, traditional news and analysis sources.

The bloggers disagreed on the benefits they derive from their blogging efforts, with Weeks believing that the benefit is mostly personal as blogging helps him stay up-to-date with the region, but is not necessarily an activity that is praised in academia or that has benefited him much professionally.  He mentioned that some in academia may even look down on blogging as would-be-journalism. Patricio Navia had a different perspective, believing that blogging has professional value in that it challenges him to write in a way that is readable by a wider population than academia, and also makes his analysis more influential. His blog also allows Latin Americans to read his analysis–many of whom do not have access to the journals in which Latin Americanists write. He mentioned that even universities in the region often lack this access, and that therefore blogging is also an important effort in reducing information inequality. Navia mentioned that he has been invited to talks and has been given access to certain officials thanks to the popularity of his blog. Weeks also mentioned that he is often sent books because he reviews books in his blog and recently blogged that he is re-thinking the benefits derived from blogging thanks to Navia’s strong arguments presented at this session.

The bloggers expressed some concern about the permanence and easy accessibility of anything written on the web.  Cameron mentioned that he has received e-mails from people asking him to delete comments they have made on his blog, something he feels ambivalent about. Gregory Weeks added that this should be a concern for bloggers in general and suggested that for those in academia it may make sense not to blog until they have achieved tenure lest they write something they later regret. If you someday may want to be nominated to public office, he quipped, you shouldn’t blog.  Patricio Navia replied, though, that if you’d like to influence who does get nominated for office, you should blog.

Cameron mentioned that blogs may be changing the way the media functions, but suggested that the consequences of blogging may go much further. As blogs break up monopolies of power in terms of communication, they de-centralize and disrupt the way we receive and interpret knowledge. Could blogging change the way we think?

I agree with Cameron that the effect blogging is having on the media may only be a small facet of a greater impact. Latamthought.org is an interesting example of that. The authors here are all in their mid-20s. We are young professionals or students living in the Americas who would rarely be granted space on an op-ed page, and yet our analysis has been cited throughout the web and our readership continues to grow. Unexpectedly, blogging here not only challenges media’s monopoly on analysis; it also challenges the standards we use (such as educational achievements or trusted names) to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources of analysis. While our goal may be simply to analyze and comment on what we see taking place in Latin America, our actions are part of a greater movement that is changing the way we see the world.

Readers be warned: This is another post that talks about the newspaper industry. Most (if not all) bloggers are inherently news junkies, so this should hardly come as a surprise. Yet I was hesitant to write about this topic given the breadth and depth of quality (and not so quality) arguments happening online and in print about the future of the medium. LatAmThought is and remains a blog dedicated to analysis and further exploration of interesting stories from around Latin America, and this post is not reflective of future analyses. Yet after reading this post, should you be interested in more nuanced reading, in addition to posting comments in the comments section, I recommend taking a look at the work being done over at Harvard’s Nieman Lab, whose editors do a spectacular job analyzing the future of the industry from an insider’s perspective.

Unlike previous posts on LatAmThought, this post aims to show how a particular media conglomerate in Latin America is handling the onslaught, and the importance of leveraging a newspaper’s existing assets to position themselves in the face of fragmentation.

The great irony of the information age is that it is helping to destroy the very gatekeepers of accurate information. Generally speaking, it has historically been newspapers who provide accurate, detailed information about the world around us. Yet the variety of channels on which news is available have eaten into revenue generated by print, the traditional medium of choice for information consumption, causing newspapers to cut staff and thereby decrease their reporting capabilities.

O Globo, one of Brazil’s largest media conglomerates, seems to understand the value of information, and delivers the message beautifully in their communications. The title of this post, “If it exists in the microwave, we’ll cook it” is a translation from a line in this commercial for O Globo, launched in September 2008. The campaign positions O Globo as “much more than just a paper“, and the owner of information across all media, be it online, video, radio, mobile, or even the microwave (after all, advertising often exaggerates a point to drive home its meaning).

An interesting tactic. Instead of running scared from the fragmentation that has led to fewer print subscriptions and declining ad revenue, Brazil’s O Globo is embracing it, acknowledging that today, information exists across a variety of different platforms, and it is the paper’s responsibility to tackle and understand these new forms of communication.

A brief analysis reveals that O Globo’s performance in the new media landscape is not as impressive as their communications might suggest. They have a substantial multimedia section, and offer information on smart phones, RSS feeds, and through e-mail subscription. Yet In spite of more than 3,000 followers, they have not been active on Twitter since 20 February 2009. While they have numerous high quality blogs, they all exist on their home page - a website that people are presumably going to in search of news and information, not necessarily blogs. While I don’t doubt the value of adding blogs to traditional news reporting, I believe the two serve fundamentally different purposes, and newspapers (or, perhaps more appropriately, “Information Agencies”) can have an active voice on blogs around the internet that are already popular.

For example, what if instead of O Globo’s bloggers blogging on their website in the traditional top-down processing model, they had a team of bloggers representing O Globo on Brazil’s most popular blogs? That way, they would have a presence in the new media space without creating more clutter or changing what they do best: reporting. Rather than within the context of a newspaper, their bloggers could be bloggers in the blogosphere, where the intricacies and perceived value of peer-peer communications are not as well-defined. They could serve as guest posters and/or commentators under the O Globo banner, thus proving their fluency with new media and the information available therein.

Yet much of this is a long way off. Today, less than 40% of Brazilians have access to the internet, so any digital strategy O Globo may undertake is still only reaching a minority of Brazilians, for whom the paper still wields significant clout. Print readership has increased substantially within the past few years, suggesting that the medium is not quite yet dead there.

But information fragmentation is a different story, and has caused fear about the future of the industry. Yet in the face of plummeting revenues, there is a giant silver lining: the fragmentation of information presents a terrific opportunity to create a more well-informed population. The more opportunities there are to deliver information, the greater the chances the information will be absorbed. This is why it is so important that newspapers fight to not only claim their stake in these new information spaces by acting appropriately and in the spirit of the medium (i.e. not simply showing up late, but understanding how people are engaging with them), but also leveraging their position as providers of accurate information, so that, in the words of O Globo, “the paper [accurate information] needs to be wherever you want it to be.”

The Latin America Studies Association (LASA) bi-annual conference is taking place in Rio de Janeiro this year. With over 5,000 participants, it is supposed to be one of the largest LASA conferences ever. However, there have been many no-shows, mostly due to the financial crisis, and the book fair was canceled—apparently because publishers found it too expensive to send books here. However, the main reason why Latin Americanists come here is to see old friends and network—and they have been doing just that. In fact, the over 1,200 panels that run back-to-back from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m for four days almost feel like a distraction. For me, it has been hard to choose form the 75 panels that take place at any given time with titles ranging from “Path Dependency and Social Policy” to “Revisiting the Aesthetics of Cannibalism.” Yesterday I attended a panel on police and military force that I found particularly interesting and thought I’d share some tidbits:

—Thomas C. Bruneau from the Naval Postgraduate School discussed a volume he has edited on Central American gangs that will be published later on this year. I look forward to reading the book, and especially his chapter that contains policy prescriptions, but from his short presentation I gathered that he believes success depends greatly on a) a country’s ability to have the military and police work collaboratively and b) the country’s ability to jail gang members (mareros). Bruneau mentioned El Salvador as the country that is doing the best job, in terms of having the military back up, but not attempt to replace, the police forces, and in terms of having the legal mechanisms to keep mareros in prison. He said Salvadoran authorities believe they have 7,000 of 17,000 mareros in prison, while Honduran authorities believe they have 800 out of 24,000 mareros in that country, and Guatemalans 400 of 32,000.

—Fernando Daniel D. Hidalgo and Benjamin Lessing, both from the University of California, Berkley, discussed their ongoing research on how the presence of militias in favelas in Rio affects voting preferences in those favelas. The militias are groups that emerged in the 1980s and expanded rapidly in 2000-2006. They act as enforcement forces policing favelas and making an income from taxing all residents or business activity, or charging tolls to informal transportation vans when they enter and leave the favelas. About a third of militia members are simultaneously members of the Brazilian police forces. The Brazilian government believes there are about 1.2 million Rio residents living under militia rule. Brazilian newspapers have posited that militia presence may be leading to greater voting for candidates with links to the police forces, and Hidalgo and Lessing’s ongoing research suggests this is true.

On a recent trip to Moscow in May 2009, Bolivia’s Viceminister of Foreign Affairs Hugo Fernández Araoz said that Bolivia would be making a multimilliondollar arms and transportation purchase from Russia in efforts to combat drug smuggling and production in Bolivia. El Pais reported on 21 May 2009 that Bolivia used to make these purchases, which include multi-purpose helicopters as well as arms, from the United States.

Bolivian-Russian ties have improved vastly over the past year. Ever since Bolivia expelled the US ambassador back in September 2008 and the Drug Enforcement Administration in November 2008, Bolivia has inched closer to Moscow. In September 2008 Gazprom, the Russian energy company, signed an agreement worth US$4.5 billion to explore for gas in Bolivia. In October 2008, a week before the DEA was kicked out, Russia offereded military assistance to Bolivia in the fight against drugs. In December 2008, Russia invested US$4 million in a study on the Bolivian gas industry, with hopes of opening a joint Russian-Bolivian center on gas exploration sometime in 2009. In March 2009, Russia and Bolivia signed a protocol agreement aimed at strengthening democracy in each nation.

But the most obvious sign of improved Bolivian-Russian relations occurred in February 2009, when Evo Morales visited Moscow. His trip was the first ever by a Bolivian head of state to the Russian capital. During the visit, both leaders signed an agreement strengthening energy and military ties between the two nations.

Both Bolivia and Russia have denied that closer ties are a sign of competition with other nations, mainly the United States. “The development of our relations with Latin America is not circumstanstial”, a Russian official said during a press conferece immediately following the signing on 16 February 2009. “It is not our desire to compete with anyone, but rather a responsible decision our country has made.” Two weeks ago, Fernandez reiterated these sentiments, telling Washington to not interpret closer ties with Russia as going against the United States, but rather an independent decision of a sovereign nation.

In spite of these assurances, as La Paz and Moscow have become closer, Washington has started to take notice. On 1 May 2009, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a speech about the future direction of US foreign relations under the Obama administration. When asked a question on dealing with Venezuela, whose relations with the United States deteriorated greatly under the Bush administration, Clinton responded “I don’t think in today’s world, where it’s a multipolar world, where we are competing for attention and relationships with at least the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, that it’s in our interest to turn our backs on countries in our own hemisphere.”

How the United States responds will be telling for the future direction of US-Latin American relations. Russia’s closer ties with Latin America, which among many others include close military and economic ties with Venezuela and Brazil and a recent agreement with Cuba to resume joint nuclear research, mark the most serious inroads that Russia has made in the region in over 45 years. Clinton’s remarks seem to back the notion that the United States respects the sovereignty and freedom to act indepedently from the economic and political demands of the United States that is such a relevant issue in Latin America today. The Bolivia-Russia alliance serves as an example that this may include understanding and accepting agreements with nations with whom the United States has historically struggled for power.

As US policy towards Cuba continues to dominate headlines, it is how the US responds to relations such as that between La Paz and Moscow that will be telling of the new administration’s approach to the region.

While much of the media attention in the following days is sure to focus on Obama’s appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina woman to join the Supreme Court, another suspected Obama appointment in the coming days may prove pivotal to the direction of US-Latin American relations. On 26 May Southern Pulse reported that Thomas Shannon, current Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, is likely to be named the next US Ambassador to Brazil. Shannon, who has served as the highest ranking U.S. member in the state department for Western Hemisphere Affairs since 2005, would replace Clifford Sobel, a Condoleeza Rice nominee who has served as US Ambassador to Brazil since 2006. Georgetown professor and former member of the Clinton administration’s LatAm team Arturo Valenzuela will replace Shannon.

That Obama wants Shannon, a lifelong diplomat who has spent much of his career in Latin America and the majority dealing with US-LatAm relations, to serve as ambassador to Latin America’s largest and most powerful nation speaks to the importance the new US president is placing on the US-Brazil relationship, which Obama confirmed was strong in a March 2009 meeting with the Brazilian President in Washington.

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Recently released Gallup opinion data on Colombia received media attention because it is the first to show that if President Uribe were not to run again for the presidency and the elections were to take place tomorrow, Sergio Fajardo and Juan Manuel Santos would be toe to toe for the presidency. However, the data has much more to say about Colombians’ attitudes toward democracy, human rights, and corruption.

First, the Gallup data shows the tremendous impact that Operation Jaque, the Hollywoodesque Colombian military operation of June 29, 2008 by which 15 hostages were released from the FARC, had on Colombian public opinion. Not only did the president’s approval ratings increase from 80 to 86% (the highest he has ever received–slide 33) in the four days surrounding the operation. Colombians’ perceptions of virtually everything improved, ranging from education (slide 20) to health coverage (slide 19–both up 5 points in the same four days). While on June 27, 51% of Colombians felt that senior citizens were being treated increasingly better, by July 3 another 7% were convinced (slide 18). This captures the jovial mood in the country following an operation in which some of the most famous hostages were released without firing a shot.

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There is no denying that US-Latin American relations have arrived at a crossroads. For years the United States followed an antiquated doctrine that was perceived by many in Latin America as arrogant and stubborn. Unsurprisingly, this has alienated many Latin Americans and created disillusionment with the north. Former President George Bush’s neglect of the region helped create a gap and paved the way for a succession of new left-leaning leaders (with the exception of pro-business Ricardo Martinelli, elected in a landslide in Panama on 3 May) who are unsympathetic towards Washington.

With much of the emphasis being placed on changing relations between the United States and Latin America, many analysts have estimated that other nations, such as China, Iran, and Russia, will look to increase ties with the region once known for its close relations with the United States. All three would benefit to varying degrees from improved diplomatic and economic relations with Latin America and all have security and economic implications for the United States. Yet there is another region whose own security would also benefit from increased cooperation: Europe

The EU is one of Latin America’s largest trading partners and is also an extremely important source of foreign direct investment. Although trade talks stalled last May, the EU remains an important trade partner with many Latin American nations, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil.

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