Juanson World

Just to follow up on my previous post, here is an excellent column by Marcela Sanchez of the Washington Post in which she criticizes the OAS role in Ecuador's ongoing political crisis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/28/AR2005042801216_pf.html

November's presidential election established that no US president could be elected in today's political climate if they in any way pandered to the UN. So to think that the OAS, the hemispheric regional body, would have much if any clout vis-a-vis America and their regional interests would be a naive thought. Yet I have met many elite Latin Americans who believe that the only way to counterbalance American hegemony in this hemisphere would be through the OAS.

I believe that the OAS does have a role within the Americas (or America when viewed from a Latin American lens): for example, through the work of the organization's agencies, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Children's Institute, and the Pan American Health Organization. However, like most bureacracies, the OAS suffers from inefficiency, poor organizational structure, and corruption, not to mention its paltry $75 million annual budget. My Costa Rican friends shudder to recall the national embarrassment last October when former President Miguel Angel Rodriguez resigned just weeks after his election as Secretary General after accusations that he received bribes from a French telecommunications company. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3728388.stm)

Now the OAS has been without a Secretary General since October, and the upcoming May 2nd election has played out as an expression of regional alliances with the US playing its traditional role as the bully on the playground. The initial US-backed candidate, right-wing ex-Salvadorean President Francisco Flores (incidentally, my mother designed his K St. office) backed out of of the election a few weeks ago once the powers that be realized he would not in fact emerge the victor. (His loss would have been viewed as an embarrassment for the US.) Now the race is between Chilean Interior Minister Jose Miguel Insulza and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Debez.

While the US, Canada, and Mexico have backed Debez, much of South America and the Caribbean is publicly leaning towards the center-left Insulza, who has been dubbed the "Karl Rove of Chile" for his political wizardry. What is unique about this election is that the Caribbean nations have the same voting power as NAFTA's powerhouses, so the Chilean press was understandably buoyant about public declaration of support from the bulk of CARICOM (14 of the 34 regional states) for Insulza when I was in Santiago 10 days ago.

Now the prospects for Debez's candidancy appear bleak, as the vote moves towards a consensus for Insulza. According to todays El Mercurio, Debez, who is in Santiago today for a summit of foreign ministers, will be meeting with his opponent in room 404 of the Santiago Hyatt. (http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/detalle/detallenoticias.asp?idnoticia=180631) While he stated today that he has no intention of conceding, should Debez step down, the US's second candidate will have fallen. For pride's sake, this would be great for Latin America, but this will be no more than a blip on the radar screen for the US. One thing is for sure: with the US contributing 60% of the OAS's budget, don't plan on any sort of Latin American block to emerge as a counterweight to Uncle Sam.

I stand corrected in my recent post regarding the US media and their neglecting of Colombia. In fact, Condi's visit did inspire many major US and European media outlets to devote attention to the ongoing conflict. I thought this piece in yesterday's NYTimes was especially on target:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/28/international/americas/28colombia.html?pagewanted=print&position=

I was amused by the Orwellian spin put on the utter failure of the fumigation efforts by different US consituencies:

"The senior State Department official said he suspected traffickers were hoarding vast supplies of cocaine and doling it out slowly. Representative Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee, said he thought the Colombians should be using a more powerful herbicide. And the White House drug policy office hypothesizes that the government's data on drug cultivation may be inaccurate."

The fact that there are no changes being introduced into the aid request for 2006 is disturbing to say the least.

Some of the saddest stories I have read about the soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq are those of Hispanic immigrants who came to the US for greater economic opportunities who now find themselves on the front lines representing their new country. Carlos Lazo is a Cuban immigrant who came to the States in 1992, risking his life on a wooden raft and leaving his children on the island. A typical immigrant success story, Carlos joined the National Guard in order to give something back to his adopted land, and soon found himself being deployed to Iraq. While he has been one of the lucky ones, having escaped injury during the war, he has been victimized in another form: through the Bush Administration's draconian Cuban travel restrictions which prevent him from visiting his children in Cuba.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-lazo26apr26,1,1690569,print.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

It is quite common for Latin American immigrants to leave their families behind when they come to the US. Recently, I met a 56 year old Chilean man who left his wife and two daughters in 1990 to come to New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has not seen his family in the 15 years since then, while working as a dishwasher, waiter, and truck driver as an illegal immigrant. "I've watched my two daughters grow up over the phone," he told me. He is proud to have been able to put his daughters through college in Chile and is grateful to the US for this. However, is it all worth it? He has the satisfaction of knowing that he has given his daughters a better future, but because of tighter restrictions after 9/11, he was no longer able to renew his NJ driver´s license, the only legal form of documentation he has held since arriving. He anticipates that he will soon be out of a job and have to return to South America. "There are no jobs for people like me in Chile," he lamented. I wonder if it is worth it for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who leave loved ones behind.

Don't expect to read about this on the cover of the NY Times or to listen to any of the talking heads on Fox/MSNBC/CNN bicker about this tommorow night. However, Colombia is the third-largest recipient of US aid after Israel and Egypt, and Plan Colombia has failed to produce any significant progress in the armed conflict or in the "War on Drugs." Despite this, there has been another mammoth funding request by the Bush administration for 2006: $750 million.

Here's a CIP press release summing up the current situation, which hasn't seemed to cause most US taxpayers to lose much sleep.

http://ciponline.org/colombia/050422rice.htm

I'm not holding my breath for any of our major media outlets to hold Condi & Co. accountable for this ineffective approach to a sad situation.

I came across this today which is interesting considering some of the conversations I've been having with Argentines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4482913.stm

I will be in Lima in a week - we'll see if this is still in the news.

As I get set to move on to Santa Cruz tomorrow, it is quite interesting to reflect on how Argentines have reacted to and continue to absorb their sudden economic downfall. Thanks to the devaluation, the power of the dollar gives foreign tourists unparalleled purchasing power. After a week, I am still amazed when I see a a dinner check for a 3 course meal - salad, appetizer, filet mignon, a good red wine, and dessert - all for $10 dollars a head.

This situation, while great for a vacationing gringo, illustrates how thoroughly the economic situation has devastated the middle class. A professor of law at the University of Buenos Aires (the top public university in the country) commented to me today that Argentina used to have 3 or 4 middle classes. Now, she noted, the generation of her parents cannot afford a house, a car, and to travel on vacation. Social mobility, once a trademark of 20th century Argentina, has actually worked in reverse - the middle class sliding miserably into poverty.

I also met with 5 members of a local fair trade cooperative which seeks to market and sell the products of small independent merchants in Buenos Aires. While they were all enthusiastic with the recent trend of local asambleas (neighborhood community gatherings in which citizens voice their concerns in a public forum) which sprung up following the 2001 crisis, their pride has made it very hard to swallow the new urban poverty that was once hidden from the beautiful streets of Bs As. They told of citizens, forced to eat at a local church soup kitchen, who shielded their faces in shame when television cameras came to interview them. As one of the older men commented, his eyes welling up with tears, "we are becoming resigned to seeing the destitute on a daily basis. It doesn't even faze us anymore."

I've been in Buenos Aires for 4 days now and I am enchanted once again by this beautiful city. I have eaten steak dinners at world-class restaurants, sat and people watched among throngs on sidewalk cafes, and partied until 7 am. I must say that the porteño lifestyle is quite enviable. However, I would say that a cabbie summed the Argentine paradox best when he told me, "We think we are a first-world country, yet we are nothing more than a banana republic."

Here's a good summary of Argentina's recent crisis by Dan Krishock, who is the managing editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, the English-language daily in BsAs which has been around since the 1870s.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentaries/commentary_text.php4?id=769〈=1&m=contributor

I met Dan today in the Herald offices, he has a pretty cool life story: he has been in Argentina for 10 years. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone, then worked for the Rockefeller Foundation after getting his MPP at the Kennedy School in 1991. We commiserated on our mutual distaste on the inefficiencies of the international development sector. Dan landed in BA and in journalism almost by accident, having met his wife, an Argentine, in Cambridge when she was in the Graduate School of Education. We'll see what's next for me.

While I think that Krugman has lost a lot of credibility (he really has outworn his welcome on the NYTimes op-ed page), I do admire Herbert's attention to issues like this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/opinion/25herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

I am not sure how you can apply a "liberal bias" to something like this, it is horrifying to say the least. One more death, civilian or otherwise, is a wasted life.