Lat/Am Daily » Politics

Wild-eyed theory of the week

Peter Krupa — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:07:13 +0000

This just had to be transcripted. From North Carolina Representative Sue Myrick:

Here we are with a pourous border, not really paying attention to who’s coming over, what’s happening with Iran and Hugo Chávez and Venezuela. We know that there are people going to Venezuela, learning Spanish, and then coming up through Mexico with fake documents, trying to cross the border. If they’re stopped they say, I’m Mexican. You know. Or Spanish. The point is, a border agent who really knows the difference in their language can tell that they aren’t Mexican, and so it’s very difficult if those agents aren’t really trained in linguistics to know that. And they get across.

Ah yes, the ol’ learn-Spanish-in-Venezuela-then-pretend-you’re-Mexican-or-Spanish trick. Really a shame the US public education system can’t get the next generation of border guards past the Me gusta el pollo stage.

How long, O Lord, until North Carolina sloughs off into the Atlantic?

Astroturf image of the week

Peter Krupa — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:28:27 +0000

In his latest bid to sow conflict in order to direct attention away from the country’s real problems while eroding other non-Chávez power bases, Chávez is going after the Catholic Church. Allegedly, El Pueblo is behind him:

Far be it from me to stick up for the Catholic Church for any reason, but if those signs were really drawn by the people holding them, then I’m a child-diddling archbishop.

Check out the script on that “es.” Elegant!

Of course, civil society organizations staging demonstrations hand out pre-drawn placards all the time. I believe such a practice is less common among sitting governments, with the possible historical exception of the PRI, which is maybe not the first thing an aspiring democrat would want to be compared to.

The most disappointing part is that, were those signs actually drawn up by El Pueblo, they would be way more entertaining.

Betancourt’s tin ear

Peter Krupa — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:56:38 +0000

What is wrong with Ingrid Betancourt? The most charitable explanation is that she is absolutely terrible at public relations. Her first act upon being rescued from six years in FARC captivity last year was to leave her faithful, long-suffering husband. Then she moved to France – her other nationality – and now she’s asking the Colombian government – the government that mounted a hugely complicated, daring operation to rescue her – for US$6.8mn in damages for the kidnapping ordeal.

There are plenty of people who would be within their rights to demand monetary compensation from the Colombian military, but Betancourt? And really, is this the best she’s got?

A smart person and a good politician would have been able to leverage her kidnapping experience into a few speaking engagements, a visiting professorship, several seats on the boards of NGOs, and a profitable book about a humbling journey that made one spiritually stronger, etc.

And then, who knows? Public office? A UN Rapporteurship? A lobbying position?

But when Betancourt stepped off that helicopter and onto the public stage, she spontaneously combusted, and she’s been burning ever since. La Silla Vacia tries to argue that this latest tone-deaf move is part of her history of chasing after money. But as I just noted, there are all sorts of ways Betancourt could have turned her ordeal into money had she been so inclined. Sell the movie rights, for Christ’s sake.

Only someone who feels both completely indifferent to the opinions of average people and totally entitled to special treatment from authority could do something this boneheaded. This isn’t Betancourt the almost-martyr presidential candidate, Colombia’s angel of suffering before FARC brutality and the gaze of all the world.

This is Betancourt the aristocrat, and it makes one think that maybe the gringos were right.

(Original image courtesy Fabio Gismondi, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Farinas ends hunger strike

Peter Krupa — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:32:19 +0000

Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas ended his hunger strike yesterday after 134 days. Farinas decided to end his strike after the Cuban government said it would release political prisoners rounded up in the “Black Spring” crackdown of 2003. Get well soon. [link]

US warships headed to Costa Rica

Peter Krupa — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:29:41 +0000

Southward bound.

Militaryless, democratic, non-conflict-having Costa Rica is the new front in the United States’ War on Inanimate Objects. The country’s national assembly has given the OK for a veritable US invasion force to enter Costa Rican territory: 7,000 marines on 46 warships, including the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship the USS Makin Island, pictured.

La Nación quotes a document from the US Embassy that states that, “The US personnel in Costa Rica will be able to enjoy freedom of movement and the right to carry out the activities that they consider necessary to complete their mission.”

Well isn’t that just permissively vague.

The legislation says the mission has to do with fighting drug traffickers, as well as a few humanitarian goals, though the humanitarian use of a Harrier jet is still somewhat unclear.

On a casual note, I would point out again that for all the Costa Rican smugness about not having an army, they do a pretty good job of borrowing one when they need it. On a more serious note, because this is bound to be extremely politically unpopular domestically, the government must have a damn good reason for inviting all this firepower in from up north.

My guess is that the government is secretly terrified it is losing control of the security situation. They probably should be.

A proportionally very large amount of cocaine is busted in Costa Rica every year, and the country has become something of a bodega for Mexican and Colombian drug smugglers, what with its good infrastructure, weak judicial system, ill-equipped police force, long coastlines, remote beaches, terrible immigration enforcement, and ample opportunities for laundering money through real estate transactions and layers of shell corporations.

I’m not sure how well-armed helicopters will change any of those factors, unless you could make the National Registry more transparent by slipping a few Hellfire missiles through the front door . Probably wouldn’t hurt.

Anyway, keep ironing around that wrinkle fellas. You’ll win the war on drugs any day now.

Know your nominees

Peter Krupa — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:16:23 +0000

Obama’s nomination to head USAID’s programs in Latin America is Mark Feierstein, who, according to the Andean Information Network, is a pollster who works for right-wing political candidates in Latin America, including ones who’ve presided over massacres:

Feierstein, of the firm Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner, served as a political adviser to former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada during his 2002 Presidential campaign. Sánchez de Lozada resigned and fled to Chevy Chase, Maryland in 2003 to escape prosecution for the massacre of 60 protesters by troops operating under his orders. Last year Feierstein and his colleagues again conducted polling in Bolivia to assist the campaign of right wing candidate Manfred Reyes Villa, who lost by a landslide to President Evo Morales.[1] The appointment of the political pollster has increased apprehension in the region that aid programs will continue to be used to support U.S.-favored political actors within the region’s democracies.

The AIN takes the eminently reasonable position that if Obama wants Latin Americans to see USAID as something more than a shady political operation, he should not appoint shady political operatives to run it.

(Disclaimer: I don’t know much about the AIN, only that I heard an excellent interview with head Kathryn Ledebur on the Just the Facts podcast, and she impressed me very much as a thoughtful person who knows what’s up.)

Gubernatorial candidate assassinated

Peter Krupa — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:52:08 +0000

Hitmen have assassinated the PRI candidate for governor of Tamaulipas State, Rodolfo Torre Cantú. Torre was gunned down along with six others at about 10:30 this morning on a highway on the way to a campaign event. Drug mafias are assumed to be responsible. [link]

Kick some ass

Peter Krupa — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:35:48 +0000

Peru’s El Comercio is reporting that a reservoir holding chemical left-overs from a mining operation collapsed, contaminating the Opamayo River, killing a bunch of fish, and polluting god knows what else.

According to MineralMundi, the Caudalosa Chica mine is used for extracting silver, copper, lead, and Zinc. Government sources are estimating that 21,400 cubic meters of toxic material escaped the reservoir, though the article doesn’t specify what kind of toxic material is involved.

When an open-pit goldmine in Costa Rica was shut down in 2007 on fears that something similar was about to happen, the chemical causing concern was cyanide. Not sure if that’s the case here.

Supposedly the Caudalosa Chica mine has polluted things before.

It would be easy to jump all over whatever mining company is at fault, but let’s be honest, mining companies and any other profit-motivated corporations will go as far as you let them. We know this for a fact. It’s what they’re designed to do: pursue profit where they can get it.

At the heart of the matter, therefore, these environmental catastrophes are the government’s fault, for not requiring strict enough safety procedures, for not funding the institutions charged with enforcing those safety procedures, and for not having strong enough punitive measures in place to punish companies who dodge the rules and to make damn sure any clean-ups are well funded.

Post-disaster, the government usually attempts a neat responsibility dodge, a la Barack Obama’s declared desire to kick BP executive ass. But really, the asses that deserve kicking are seated in nice leather chairs located in a statehouse somewhere.

‘ta barrato, dame 600k toneladas

Peter Krupa — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:03:14 +0000

An article in El Nacional puts a nice little bow on Venezuela’s ongoing rotting food scandal, in which a government importer left about 122,000 tons of foodstuffs to spoil in containers at Puerto Cabello. From the article:

The Productora y Distribuidora Venezolana de Alimentos, Pdval, imported 597,000 tons of foodstuffs in 2008. The amount is triple its distribution capacity (191,000) and almost quadruple the sales made that year (122,000 tons) according to a management report from the company dated June 2010.

Importing three times as much perishable inventory as you have the capacity to distribute does indeed have a predictable, stinky outcome.

I’m not sure why the report examines numbers from the end of 2008, but it’s probably still a decent illustration of how the government was doing business, which is not unlike the legendary way Venezuelans have always done business when possessed of a huge pile of oil cash: ‘ta barrato. Dame dos.

I suppose I don’t need to mention that you won’t have any food rotting in any ports if you produce it locally, but there, I just did.

Ballerina’s role in Panama coup attempt

Peter Krupa — Mon, 31 May 2010 02:52:31 +0000

From the days when coups were something of a regional sport, new documents detail a famous British ballerina’s role in a plot to topple the government of Panama. The plan was to use her yacht to gather men and arms, then “land somewhere and collect in the hills.” It didn’t work. [link]

Porteños mount up