Laborers work on the renovation of the Mineirao Stadium, one of the venues of the 2014 World Cup, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, April 18. (Washington Alves/REUTERS)
Lost in translation: English in Brazil
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, Riogringa.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
One of the main challenges leading up to Brazil's mega-events – including the Rio+20, the World Cup, and the Olympics – is a shortage of English speakers in key sectors, including tourism, transportation, and hospitality. For those who spend lots of time in Brazil and speak Portuguese or hope to become fluent, this is actually an advantage, which can allow for more immersion. But for one-time visitors or those dependent on English as their only language or the only other way to communicate outside of their native language (such as Chinese, Russian, etc), it can prove to be a problem.
On global English rankings, Brazil does not fare well. EF, a global English education company, released its international English proficiency index for 2011, showing that Brazil ranked as a country with "low English proficiency." Though it was among the lowest ranking countries, Brazil scored above the "very low proficiency" countries such as Panama and Vietnam. Released in April, the GlobalEnglish Corporation Business English Index ranked Brazil among the lowest in the world among countries with the least amount of English fluency in the workplace, which puts the country "at a disadvantage." An Economist Intelligence Unit report released this month indicated that Brazil is one of the countries that struggles the most with the language barrier in international business; nearly three-quarters of Brazilians surveyed said their company had experienced “financial losses as a result of failed cross-border transactions.”
Brazilian surveys reflect this issue, showing low levels of English knowledge at all levels of the socioeconomic spectrum. A Catho survey from late last year found that only 11 percent of Brazilian job candidates could communicate well in English, and only 3.4 percent of all candidates could speak fluent English. A 2009 Catho study found that 24 percent of Brazilian professionals speak fluent English, and that only 8 percent of Brazilian executives speak fluent English. A lack of English speakers even in high-tech fields has hurt Brazil's competitiveness in IT and outsourcing like call centers. According to a Data Popular survey released this month, the "new middle class" in Brazil will spend R$28.1 billion (US $13.8 billion) on education in 2012, but only 1 in 5 members of the so-called C class knows how to speak a foreign language.
Travel writer and fellow Brazilophile Seth Kugel has written about this issue, finding a mixed bag. In March, he wrote about the puzzingly poor translation of Embratur (Brazil's tourism bureau)'s English site, particularly the interactive World Cup section. Some errors were particularly egregious since they simply required a Google or Wikipedia search rather than a translated phrase. At the end of the post, Kugel wrote:
"Obviously, no one is going to decide not to visit Trancoso because of a vocabulary error. But give up visiting a country that doesn't have legible information on its official website? With so many other countries with their eye on the billions of dollars from international tourists? It's not only possible, it's probable."
In response, Embratur said it had hired a third-party company, Agencia Click, to do the site and translation, and that it would release the site with a new translation later this year. The whole thing was quite strange, considering that the agency in question, which is one of the largest and well-respected digital communications companies in the country, should have no problem finding real translators. But it's a symptomatic case in a country where things are often and sometimes unnecessarily lost in translation.
On the other hand, the upcoming mega-events have added pressure to the tourism sector to hire more English speakers. In a recent "review" of São Paulo's Guarulhos Airport, Kugel found that three different information booth workers were able to communicate in English, providing helpful information about hotels and sightseeing. (However, special groups run by judges aimed to solve issues like lost baggage and overbookings at Brazil's biggest airports have only a single English-speaking employee, a recent report said.) Language schools estimate that foreign language courses will grow by 30 to 40 percent over the next four years in preparations for the World Cup and Olympics. Last year, around 120 taxi drivers in Rio received English training in a special course for taxistas – the first of its kind in the country – which inspired similar taxi driver courses from Piauí to Rio Grande do Sul.
My experience is that there are plenty of English speakers in Brazil, but these speakers are sometimes concentrated in specialized fields like finance and web companies. But for me, Brazil's real challenge isn't just going to be finding and training English speakers in key jobs before the mega-events, but rather improving foreign language education at the elementary and secondary school levels so that the next generation has better opportunities in the global economy.
– Rachel Glickhouse is the author of the blog Riogringa.com.
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In this 2008 photo, Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuba's acting President Raul Castro, visits the Child Protection Center in Havana. (Javier Galeano/AP/File)
Look who got a US visa: Raúl Castro's daughter
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, cuba.foreignpolicyblogs.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, will be in California this week. Traveling on a US visa to attend a conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), she appears to have made it through the same State Department review that denied visas to eleven seemingly less contentious scholars hoping to join the same conference. Some of those turned down are prominent Cubans who have been allowed US visas in the past, including Rafael Hernández, the editor of the Cuban intellectual journal Temas, who has taught at both Harvard and Columbia universities.
The convoluted issue of travel in the US-Cuba relationship remains a most consuming question for citizens and media alike, and the complications arise on all sides. US. citizens, of course, enjoy expanded rights to visit Cuba for “people-to-people” exchanges under Obama administration regulations, but the rules are specific and the agendas pre-approved, which means that opportunities are still quite narrow. Meanwhile, Cuban citizens hoping to travel anywhere abroad are subject to government controls, including application for an expensive exit visa that is out of reach for many – not only because of price, but because of various unspoken rules that result in denial of permission or years of wait. And, as in the case of the eighty Cuban scholars hoping to attend the LASA conference this week, a number of Cubans that proceed through the visa process with the US government find that the ultimate decision seems to be arbitrary, contradicting, and nontransparent.
On the face of it, this latest twist in the travel narrative is as confusing as any other, and media, scholars, and Congressional representatives have wrestled with it over the past few days. Why would the administration allow the daughter of the Cuban President to travel to the United States? Does Castro’s visa allowance represent a change in US policy?
But the issue must be viewed through a different lens. The US line of rhetoric has long been in favor of respecting dissenting opinions, freedom of speech, and open exchange of ideas: it is a constant trope in Washington’s advocacy for change in Cuba. The basis for changed regulations for Americans traveling to Cuba was the value of people-to-people exchanges, and a flow of ideas and culture between the United States and Cuba. Allowing Castro to attend the LASA conference makes sense in that context, particularly because her role in Cuba is more nuanced than her family connections: she may be the daughter of a Castro and a member of the Communist Party (the only political party in Cuba), but as the Director for the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), she is the most prominent and outspoken gay rights activist on the island. Her work has been pivotal in the many reforms that have been enacted on the island in favor of recognition and acceptance of LGBT human rights, and has resulted in pioneering legislation, including allowance for transgendered individuals to receive sex reassignment surgery without charge (as a health care provision), and to change their legal gender. Human rights are Mariela Castro’s passion, and politics is not: she recently openly congratulated US President Barack Obama on his expression of personal support for marriage equality, encouraging the world to take note of his words.
During her visit to Northern California, Castro will speak at San Francisco General Hospital on Cuba’s policies toward transgender people. She will meet with various members of San Francisco’s LGBT community at a meeting Wednesday evening. On Thursday morning, she will lead a panel at the LASA conference.
Mariela Castro’s visa, then, seems to be the part of this story that is consistent with existing policy and rhetoric around human rights, people-to-people exchanges, and largely non-political engagement with Cuba. But consistent application of that policy and rhetoric would have meant granting visas to the other Cuban scholars that had hoped to attend the LASA conference. Castro’s visa has been the focus, but it is not the troubling part of the sequence of events. Why deny visas to scholars that have enjoyed the right to travel to the United States in the past, on the claimed grounds that their presence would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States”? That is the question that remains to be answered.
– Melissa Lockhart Fortner is Senior External Affairs Officer at the Pacific Council on International Policy and Cuba blogger at the Foreign Policy Association. Read her blog, and follow her on Twitter @LockhartFortner.
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El Salvador sees drop in murders but rise in disappearances
• A version of this post ran on the author's site, Insightcrime.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Reports of disappearances are up 8 percent so far this year in El Salvador compared to 2011, calling into question the achievements of a gang truce which has slashed murders by some 60 percent in the last two months.
In the first four months of 2012, 692 people were reported missing to the government forensic office, Medicina Legal, compared to 636 during the same period last year, reports La Prensa Grafica – an 8 percent rise. This year's statistics only apply to San Salvador, but according to the newspaper, disappearances outside the capital are not usually registered.
InSight Crime Analysis
The number of disappeared could undermine the achievements of a gang truce in the country, which has seen murders drop by around 60 percent since the country's two main gangs made a ceasefire in early March. Leaders of Barrio 18 and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) agreed to stop killing each other's members and suspend attacks on members of the security forces for an undefined period, which appears to still be ongoing.
RELATED: Think you know Latin America? Take our geography quiz!
There were 255 murders registered in March, some 147 in April, and 76 in the first 15 days of May. This averages at about six killings a day, down some 60 percent from the first two months of the year.
If we assume, however, that the vast majority of the disappeared are now dead, March and April would have seen 391 and 294 murders, respectively, using the number of disappeared cited by La Prensa Grafica. This would effectively wipe out the security gains of the gang truce.
In reality the effect would not be as dramatic as this, because those who went missing before the gang truce were not counted in the murder figures for that period either. There has not been a dramatic jump in disappearances reported since the truce – the number stood at 197 in January, 212 in February, 136 in March and 147 in April. This would leave 2012 on course for the same level of reported disappearances as last year, which saw 2,076. The decrease in killings, then, would still stand.
However, it is worth bearing in mind that the phenomenon of disappearing murder victims, so that their bodies are never found, could make a substantial difference to the rate of killings and could undermine the gains of the truce. The true number of the disappeared is likely far higher than those reported, however, as some families do not report their relatives missing, for fear of reprisals.
The government has been careful to lower expectations over the truce, pointing out that it will not be able to bring gang violence to an end. The fact that disappearances, which are often attributed to gangs, have continued at a steady rate attests to this.
– Hannah Stone is a writer for Insight – Organized Crime in the Americas, which provides research, analysis, and investigation of the criminal world throughout the region. Find all of her research here.
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In this photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gives a speech upon his arrival to Simon Bolivar international airport in Maiquetia near Caracas, Venezuela, May 11. (Efrain Gonzalez/Miraflores Press Office/AP)
Chavez re-election: Many Venezuelan voters are undecided
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
I have been getting mixed messages from people the last two times I have been in Caracas about the outlook for the upcoming presidential election in October, pitting Hugo Chavez against opposition leader Henrique Capriles. And polls seem to be sending the same confusing and inconsistent signals.There is a mixture of results, the key being a high number of undecided in those polls that give Chavez a large lead. Talk to pro-Capriles people and they tell you their candidate is down only 4 to 5 points, and it can be made up by the race. Talk to pro-Chavez people and they tell you the enthusiasm is just not there among the Chavista rank and file any more, and they are worried.
Toss in Chavezs’ illness, and things become uncertain.
First the polls.The main difference between the poll that gives Chavez a huge lead and the one that does not, is that the first poll sees a huge number of undecided (around 30-plus percent), which the second poll does not see. Neither pollster can explain the difference. This worries pro-Capriles people, precisely because they can’t understand it.
Then you go and talk to pro-Chavez people and they do have a possible interpretation, and it worries them. Their feeling is that the motivation is no longer there, and it will be difficult to get the non-hard core Chavista to go out and vote. Chavez being sick worries them, not only because he may not be able to run, but more importantly, because if he can run, he may not be able to campaign and may not generate the excitement required to out vote Capriles. Simply put, the revolution is failing in too many fronts, clearly identified in this aporrea article (in Spanish). But note the additional concern: This pro-Chavez analyst does not see the 4 million new voters going the Chavista way. In fact, the opposite seems to be true: according to the writer the new generation seems to care little for the revolution and is more concerned with malls and iPads, he notes.
Or as another pro-Chavez friend told me more or less: “I know a few states where 60-65 percent of the people are Chavista, but of those, many will not go and vote for this failed Government. They will not vote for Capriles either, but just their absence on election day will give Capriles a victory in two or three states where the opposition has never done well since Chavez showed up. Add the populous metropolitan states where the opposition wins, toss in the new voters and Capriles could beat Chavez."
And El Nacional [...] recently [published] statements made privately by William Izarra, father of the Minister of Information, where he says that Capriles is resonating in parts of the electorate with as many as 8 million voters (which he now says is not exactly what he said (in Spanish), likely he did not know his words were being recorded). And given his scenario that Chavez may get 8.4 million, this also makes it too close for comfort.
Opposition analysts are similarly concerned.They understand that Capriles at 30 percent seems to make little sense, given the number of votes he got in the primary, but they can’t understand the undecided. Why has the number of undecided gone up so much since the primary and Chavez’s recurrence? Why is 30 percent-plus of the electorate suddenly shunning both Chavez and Capriles, with both candidates losing support? Can it be Zulia [state] nationalism in the case of Capriles? These last votes will not go to Chavez either.
The answer, I contend, has more to do with apathy and voter intention, than with being undecided. And I think it goes straight to my friend’s argument: Many uncertain Chavista voters will not vote for Chavez, but they certainly don’t plan to go and vote for Capriles, they plan to stay home.
And a similar apathy applies to the 4 million new voters. They registered to vote, but they are not sure they will go and vote for Capriles, they will wait to decide.
Which simply says that Chavez’s physical appearance will be crucial in the determination of these voters, and it is hard to predict which way it will go. A weak Chavez may turn off the apathetic Chavistas, while a recovered Chavez may turn on the apathetic new voters, who have yet to be convinced about Capriles.
For now, only time will begin clearing up these questions, and it will be a while before it happens. It has been nearly three weeks since there was a live appearance by Chavez, while Capriles continues to campaign door to door and accompanied by some of the primary candidates. The next important date is June 10th, the last date on which candidates may register for the October 7th election. Chavez is unlikely to announce way ahead of time when he will register. This will reduce the impact of the event. Capriles on the other hand can plan ahead.
But in the end, it will be the hard core that will show up in both sides those days, masking the apathy of the Venezuelan electorate.
– Miguel Octavio, a Venezuelan, is not a fan of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. You can read his blog here.
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Chile's car boom
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
If there’s one thing that defines the Chilean national character, it’s a love for the countryside. That means that the first thing people do when they can afford it is buy a car. For country-dwellers, a car or truck helps make the rural lifestyle a bit more profitable, as taking crops to market in horse-drawn wagons is more quaint than efficient. For city folks, a car helps people to see the countryside on the weekend. But of course soon enough, a big portion of both country and city folks, once they own cars, become suburban folks. And once they are living in spread-out suburbs, they need another car, and another. It’s a feedback loop we’ve seen all over the world.
I don’t know exactly where Chile is in this process, or whether it’s already too late to halt the sprawl. What’s clear is that the feedback is accelerating. Check out [this graphic] from the national statistics office car report, released yesterday.
Yes, almost a million more cars on the road than six years earlier, an increase of 37 percent.
There is a lot to say about this fast-growing vehicle ownership. First, as I said, this means sprawl, most of which is going to be on some of the world’s best farmland. Lawns and golf courses will suck up water, as subdivisions will usually be able to outbid lettuce and avocado farms for water rights. That could even affect miners.
The growing car population also represents a growing population of people who will demand lower fuel taxes. If that goes through – and by the signature-gatherers I see on my block every day, I suspect it will – Chile fuel prices will drop, creating another incentive for vehicle ownership.
There’s a macroeconomic issue here too. Crude oil is already by far Chile’s biggest import, making up 8.7 percent of the country’s imports. If the 2010-2011 rate of change persists, the vehicle population will double over the next nine years. Chile’s economic success has been based in part on its trade balance, which often reaches $1 billion a month. I realize that not every car gets driven every day, but it’s well known that once you have a car, you tend to use it. So each car that goes into circulation is essentially a commitment to importing at least a few liters of fuel a week for 10 or 20 years. A million more cars is a big change. Here’s how Chile’s crude oil, diesel, and total fossil fuel imports have evolved over the last decade. The figures are in millions of US dollars, so the total fossil energy imports are already well over $1 billion a month [go to original post for graphic].
I estimated the 2012 figures by multiplying the first-quarter figures by a seasonal adjustment factor based on the first quarter’s average weight in annual numbers. I wouldn’t put too much stock in that estimate, but it shows that, at least, we shouldn’t expect the numbers to drop this year.
– Steven Bodzin is the Santiago, Chile correspondent for the Monitor. He also blogs at Setty's Notebook.
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Police and firefighters work at the scene after a bomb exploded in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, May 15. (Ricardo Mazalan/AP)
Who is responsible for the Bogota, Colombia bombing this week?
• A version of this post ran on the author's site, Insightcrime.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
While the Marxist rebels the FARC appear to be the most likely culprits behind the May 15 assassination attempt on Colombia's former Interior and Justice Minister, Colombia's far-right arguably also had good reason to mastermind such an attack.
A security video of the attack, now in possession of the Attorney General's investigative arm, the CTI, details exactly how the incident played out. The video shows a man carrying a supermarket bag walking down Caracas Avenue in northern Bogota. He casually passes a stationary black armored vehicle carrying former Interior Minister Fernando Londoño, and attaches a device to the left side of the vehicle near the fuel tank before fleeing. According to Caracol Radio, the driver of the car was told of the device and opened the door to check. Upon doing so, the device was detonated, killing him and a bodyguard instantly, and injuring at least 50 others, among them Londoño.
Londoño is one of Colombia's more divisive figures. A staunch right-wing ally of former President Alvaro Uribe, he served briefly as Interior and Justice Minister from 2002-2003. Since leaving government he became a radio personality, hosting his own show titled "The Hour of Truth," in which he frequently lambasted President Juan Manuel Santos for his soft security policies and suggestions of peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), whom he labelled "terrorists" and "murderers," reported the AP. These views had resulted in him receiving death threats from the guerrilla group, something the government has confirmed in the wake of the attack.
The head of Bogota's Metropolitan Police, General Luis Eduardo Martinez, was quick to assign blame for the bomb, stating, "What I can confirm with bluntness, with vehemence, and with a lot of sorrow for our fatherland is that behind [the attack] are the FARC terrorists, the mad, the unhinged rebels."
The guerrillas are similarly thought to be responsible for planting another bomb in Colombia's capital, which was disabled in a car outside a police station in southern Bogota just hours before the attack on Londoño. It would be a remarkable coincidence if the two events were unrelated, making it highly likely one group is responsible for both. The FARC are clearly the prime suspects, though analysis of the details surrounding the case suggest more then one hypothesis.
Assessing the FARC's Culpability
Although the frequency of FARC bomb attacks in Colombia's cities has diminished over the last decade, the rebels have long relied on this tactic. The most infamous case came in February 2003 when a car loaded with 200 kilograms of explosives detonated underneath the exclusive El Nogal social club in Bogota, killing 36 and injuring 200 more. Although the FARC officially denied involvement in the bombing, e-mails recovered in 2008 from the computers of slain FARC commander Luis Edgar Devia Silva, alias "Raul Reyes," implicated the rebels, with Reyes apparently praising the success of the attack.
The last notable bomb attack in the capital attributed to the FARC came in 2010 when a car bomb was detonated outside the Caracol Radio offices soon after Santos became president. Nine people were injured.
This is not to say, of course, that the rebels have confined their operations to Bogota. The group has a proclivity for explosives, evidenced most recently by the devastating February bomb attack in the southwest port city of Tumaco that killed seven and injured up to 70 others.
The bomb detonated in the most recent Bogota attack was reportedly the first of its kind used in Colombia, according to director of the National Protection Unit Andres Villamizar, and is more strongly associated with the Basque nationalist group ETA and the Provisional Irish Republican Army, both of whom have been linked to the FARC in the past.
One question is why the FARC would elect to carry out such a high profile attack when the idea of peace talks with the Santos government is being tentatively broached, as this could arguably harm the guerrillas' negotiating position should talks ever be held. However, the attempt on Londoño could actually strengthen the FARC's position. Attacks in the nation's capital instill something like a national hysteria, and this could help increase both domestic and international pressure on the government to start peace talks. A FARC bomb attack like the one registered last week in the northeast Catatumbo region may also kill and injure many people, but it has none of the symbolic importance of an attack in the nation's seat of government. The Londoño attack could have also been intended to bolster the FARC's negotiating position as urban bombings are displays of their ability to significantly disrupt public order in Colombia's cities.
Another possibility is that the attempt to kill Londoño was not ordered by the ruling Secretariat but rather came from further down the FARC's hierarchy, with the intention of striking a symbolic blow against one of the rebels' more outspoken critics. If this is the case, there are two rebel factions most likely to have orchestrated the bombing. The first, and most likely, is the FARC's Bogota militia, the Urban Network Antonio Nariño (Red Urbana Antonio Nariño- RUAN), which is controlled by the group's Eastern Bloc (guerrilla fighting division) and has been operating in the capital for many years. The second is the Teofilo Forero Mobile Column, one of the FARC's most powerful units. The Mobile Column is controlled by the Southern Bloc and was responsible for the El Nogal bombing in 2003.
Considering all of these factors – the FARC's history of using explosives, the urban bombing as a display of strength, and the identity of the target – it is hard to see another criminal group as having a stronger motive than the rebels. However, unlike General Martinez, President Santos has been hesitant to condemn the FARC for the attacks, instead stating that the government is for the moment unable to assign guilt to one group. This opens the possibility that the extreme-right could be suspects.
Why Not The FARC?
On the day of the attack, members of Colombia's Congress passed the sixth of eight scheduled debates on the "Framework for Peace," a heavily criticized constitutional amendment that essentially gives the government room for [manoeuvrings] in any future peace negotiations. This would be achieved by offering legal benefits and lenient sentences to demobilized paramilitaries and guerrillas. If the amendment becomes law it could also allow former guerrillas to become politicians.
This government initiative has angered the political right – among them Londoño – leading Alvaro Uribe to declare that it would do "enormous damage to democracy." The same group has also been extremely vocal in their displeasure with Santos' security policies, perceived as being far weaker than those of his predecessor Uribe.
The right's motive therefore would stem from wanting to harm Santos' security credentials, stall the amendment, and ultimately show that he has no control over security in Colombia. If that is the case, Londoño is, paradoxically, the perfect target. Attempting to assassinate a member of the political right would instantly place the spotlight on leftist rebels while having the desired effect of conveying a deteriorating security situation to the rest of the world. Even Londoño's daughter has stated that she is uncertain if it is the extreme-right or left who are culpable.
Conspiracy theories of the right attacking their own are not uncommon. In 1995, Conservative Party member Alvaro Gomez Hurtado was killed, with many assuming that the FARC were behind it. Years later, however, it became clear that the more likely culprits were in fact Gomez's political allies, who had him killed because he opposed some of their politics.
Londoño's case is very different from Gomez's, but as Gomez's murder demonstrates, Colombia's right could be willing to sacrifice one of their own if it achieved their political goals and increased pressure on the FARC. The Framework for Peace will likely never be accepted by conservatives in Colombia and they will not let it pass without a fight.
Ultimately, all the information released so far implicates the FARC most strongly. The guerrillas also have far more to gain from such an attack than their political opposites. Moreover, if the bomb used in the attack was indeed as advanced as the government claims, the FARC are far more likely to be able to obtain such a device than a group of disgruntled conservatives.
Until more information is released, however, conspiracy theories will likely continue. Despite the government's offer of nearly $300,000 as reward for information leading to the capture of those responsible, it could be some time before the true perpetrators are identified.
– Edward Foxis a writer for Insight – Organized Crime in the Americas, which provides research, analysis, and investigation of the criminal world throughout the region.
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Williams Formula One driver, Pastor Maldonado, from Venezuela, leads the race in front Ferrari's Fernando Alonso from Spain, background, during the Spanish Grand Prix at the Montmelo racetrack near Barcelona, Sunday May 13. Maldonado won the race. (Alvaro Barrientos/AP)
Oil proceeds: Venezuelan driver wins F1 race with $66 million from Chavez
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, Caracas Chronicles. The views expressed are the author's own.
There was a big Twitter-ruckus [this week] after the publication of Yon Goicoechea‘s latest column in El Universal (in Spanish). In it, Goicoechea criticizes Venezuelans for cheering and applauding Pastor Maldonado’s Formula 1 triumph last weekend. He reminds his readers how much Maldonado’s sponsorship has cost Venezuela, how PDVSA has no need to be “promoting” itself on race cars, and how it is issuing debt to, among other things, be able to pay for these exploits.
The backlash was as swift as it was unsurprising. This is a country where absolutely nobody understands the concept of opportunity cost.
Putting aside childish complaints about Goicoechea’s “tone” – I mean, really, after thirteen years of Chavismo you would think we would have developed a thicker skin – the main point of the article is absolutely, 100 percent accurate. Maldonado’s sponsorship is simply another very expensive peg in the Chavista propaganda machine, as the picture in the post attests.
In pictures: Hugo Chavez the showman
The opposition’s mindless cheering, going along just to get along, is incredibly disappointing. Idiotic, some would say.
So yes, Goicoechea’s tone was harsh and provocative. So what? He got his point across.
Do you think a more measured article, in which he politely wondered out loud whether celebrating Maldonado was a good idea, would have gotten this much attention? As all polemicists do, he tried to convey his point by using attention-grabbing language. Good for him.
But it’s no surprise that Venezuelans want none of this “what did $66 million buy me” [stuff]. This is a country where beauty queens are lionized, and nobody stops to think what this says to little girls, what the consequences are for gender equality and for violence against women.
This is a country where people feel entitled to their Cadivi dollars without thinking how completely regressive a policy it is. This is a country where people think they “deserve” cheap gas because we have a lot of oil and, besides, there has to be some benefit from living in this hell-hole, right?
Next time you get mugged in Caracas, think about the teachers your mugger didn’t have, the cops you didn’t see on the street, or the judicial system that simply isn’t there to prevent the scumbag from being out on the streets. Think about how all of those things could have been bought with the $66 million that PDVSA gives Maldonado each year.
Then, only then, should you go back to celebrating Maldonado’s feat.
– Juan Nagel is a writer for Caracas Chronicles, the place for opposition-leaning-but-not-insane analysis of the Venezuelan political scene since 2002.
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Child drug traffickers: What can be done?
• A version of this post ran on the author's site, Insightcrime.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
A report on child recruitment by Colombia's criminal groups draws attention to the prevalence of the tactic across the region, as gangs exploit a low-cost, low-risk, and highly expendable source of manpower.
The report by Watchlist on Children in Armed Conflict, entitled "No One to Trust: Children and Armed Conflict in Colombia," is the result of two field studies conducted in 2011. Its findings paint a grim picture of minors entangled in an endless web of violence, helping to fuel it in some cases as they are forced or manipulated into becoming participants.
According to Watchlist, estimates on the number of child soldiers in Colombia vary from 5,000 to 14,000. Most troubling is the downward trend in the age of recruitment. Guerrillas and drug gangs have steadily lowered the bar, with the average age of those absorbed into these groups falling from 13.8 years in 2002 to 11.8 in 2009, said the report.
One of the main culprits in child recruitment is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which exploits social disenfranchisement in rural Colombia, where many feel abandoned by the state. By offering education and food, the guerrillas convince young people to "sign up," and to recruit their peers, said the report. The average age of a recruits to the FARC is roughly 12 years old, with 85 percent doing so "voluntarily," according to the International Crisis Group.
The other organizations primarily responsible for child recruitment are what the report refers to as "paramilitary successor groups" (aka BACRIM) who use children, sometimes as young as 9, as lookouts, informants, and assassins. These groups employ similar tactic to the rebels, essentially promising children "a livelihood and a shiny uniform," as one human rights worker told Watchlist, before absorbing them into their criminal structures. Young recruits are often supplied with drugs in order to manipulate them, reported Watchlist.
Watchlist uses the case study of a boy named Diego, who joined the Aguilas Negras shortly before he turned 14, to illustrate the gangs' recruitment methods. The neo-paramilitaries offered Diego free meals in return for acting as a lookout. When he wanted to leave, they stopped feeding him and refused to let him see his family. He eventually became a hitman under the threat that if he did not murder, he would be killed himself. The ordeal effectively enslaved Diego to the group, as he told Watchlist.
Watchlist's report came on the back of a March 6 report from the United Nations Secretary General on children and armed conflict in Colombia. This found that children were recruited, or threatened with recruitment, by criminal groups such as the Rastrojos and the Urabeños in 23 of Colombia's 32 provinces. There was a threat of recruitment by the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) in 22 and five provinces, respectively. Particularly troubling are cases where the guerrillas and gangs worked together to recruit minors, with an example cited of the Rastrojos recruiting some 30 minors in Antioquia before selling them to the ELN.
What is clear is that the networks of child recruitment in Colombia are extensive and systematic, making the country one of the worst-hit in Latin America by the phenomenon. However, the recruitment of minors by gangs is a serious problem in other countries in the region.
For example, Mexican cartels use youths aged between 11 and 17 both from their own country and from the US to traffic drugs, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This cross-border recruitment of minors is not confined to trafficking. Texas law enforcement told Reuters last year that there was evidence of six Mexican groups operating in the state, using US youths to carry out surveillance operations. The gangs referred to the children as "expendables," one official stated.
In Mexico, children have frequently been employed as "sicaritos," or child assassins, to carry out hits and torture for drug cartels. One of the more infamous examples of this came in 2010 when 14-year-old Edgar Jimenez, alias "El Ponchis," was arrested and charged with beheading four people. He stated, "I didn't join [the gang], I was pulled in. I got high on weed and didn't know what I was doing."
This problem spreads through the Central American isthmus. As analyst Melissa Beale notes, in countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, "Gangs have infested the very backbone of local communities," with numerous reports from the area pointing to an alarming rate of child involvement in gang activity. Gangs in Brazil also employ children, plying them with drugs to desensitize them to the acts of violence they are ordered to commit, according to De Spiegel.
Child recruitment is hard to stamp out because young people are a valuable asset for criminal groups. A child or young teenager is far less likely to arouse the suspicion of authorities. They also represent a cheaper source of manpower than an adult, given they are less likely to have a concept of what their work is "worth" to the gang.
Children are also far easier to manipulate than adults, especially if they are plied with narcotics. This is a common tactic, as evidenced by the numerous accounts of young recruits reporting that they were acting under the influence of drugs. Even without drugs, gangs can exploit the "sense of fearlessness which normally manifests itself from the inevitable lack of maturity," Beale states.
Young recruits, who often lack a family or guardian, are highly expendable. Should one be killed or arrested, there is always another, equally malleable young person that can be coerced and trained in gang activity.
While the work of child gang members, or soldiers, varies from country to country, gangs across the region employ similar techniques in recruiting them, drawing in those in poverty-stricken areas with the offer of money, food, and prestige. Youths who have grown up in the midst of gang violence – with little or no chance of escape – may be in danger if they refuse. Combating this problem therefore involves addressing not only the gang structures themselves but also issues of education, employment opportunities, and poverty.
– Edward Foxis a writer for Insight – Organized Crime in the Americas, which provides research, analysis, and investigation of the criminal world throughout the region.
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Should Argentina remain a member of the G20?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Argentina nationalized YPF, manipulates inflation statistics, faces capital flight, has systemic problems with state and national budgeting and is in a trade dispute with Brazil. Argentina's history is a continuing series of economic and political crises and they'll probably face another before the decade is out. I certainly don't agree with most of the Kirchner's economic policy.
All that said, they still deserve a seat at the G20. Five reasons why:
1. A constant theme of this blog: Arguments over which countries get to be in which international groups are a huge distraction to getting actual work done. There certainly are more pressing issues on the international economic stage than whether Argentina should face ostracism for their nationalization of an energy company. Yet, if this upcoming meeting in Mexico becomes about whether or not Argentina should be a member of the G20, all other debates will be sidelined while that gets sorted out. We can't afford to get distracted by this.
2. Why punish Argentina for its economic transgressions from orthodoxy and not China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or even the United States? No country in the world runs a perfect macroeconomic policy. Every country tries to bend, break and manipulate rules to their advantage. Is Argentina worse than most? Possibly. Can you define a clear red line that Argentina crossed with their nationalization that China hasn't crossed with their currency manipulation or the US with its farm subsidies? Unless the G20 can come up with a very specific rule about what constitutes a removable transgression and apply it equally across all countries, Argentina's removal doesn't seem to be fair.
3. We've faced a severe global economic crisis over the past few years in part because the "responsible" countries got it wrong. "Group think" and a refusal to stray from conventional wisdom led to disaster. Having different voices at the table, even voices that aren't necessarily correct, opens up the possibility to hear alternate views, see potential threats and imagine new policy alternatives. If the G20 only allows the views certain countries want to hear, it sets itself up for failure.
4. Argentina represents a not insignificant portion of global public opinion about how economics should be run. Recent elections in Europe show parties [...] that reject austerity and want the governments to be a bit more populist [gaining]. In other words, populism is popular. Trying to shut out this viewpoint from the global stage because we don't want to hear it is anti-democratic and leads to even greater resentment by populations against the technocrats who insist that popular opinion is wrong. Argentina's view deserves a seat at the table simply to represent those voices.
5. Related to the two points above, I believe in a marketplace of ideas and I believe in engagement over ostracism. I think the G20 will work best if we have an open and honest debate about the options in the global economy. I think it will fail if we manipulate the group dynamics so that only certain opinions are heard. The G20 is trying to coordinate policies, but nothing at the G20 is mandatory. Countries that want to follow Argentina's or China's or the US's policy recommendations are welcome to do so. If you believe in the market, then you should allow countries to debate, make their own choices and let the results play out.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
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Majority of Mexicans support military leading fight against cartels
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
From El Universal and the Dallas Morning News:
64 percent approve of the Mexican military leading the fight against organized crime.
21 percent say the strategy is working.
The majority of the Mexican population isn't angry that Calderon is using the military to fight organized crime. They're angry that he's done such a lousy job of it. This goes back to a criticism I've had of Mexico's president since he first began sending military forces into combat in early 2007. Calderon has the will to fight but he doesn't have a strategy to win.
For the next president, the goal is to find a successful strategy. That strategy should include some military operations in the short term, but a transition back to full civilian policing over the course of several years.
RELATED: Who are Mexico's Zetas?
That said, I think promises by some of the presidential candidates to remove all troops within the arbitrary time frame of one year are unrealistic, at least from a political and public opinion perspective. Given that a strong majority of the Mexican population supports the military and thinks the police are corrupt or incapable of providing security, there would be a backlash against a president who removed all troops from the fight a year from now. If EPN wins, watch him back off from that promise once his advisors realize the actual political stakes.
...52 percent said they back an expanded U.S. role. More than one-fourth — 28 percent — called for putting U.S. troops and drug agents on Mexican soil...
Anyone who has heard me speak about US policy towards Mexico recently has heard a similar point. The pundits who have spent decades claiming that the US can't work with Mexico on security because of longstanding historic tensions have missed the recent shifts in public opinion [See this Monitor story on warming Mexican support for US Military aid]. The Mexican population is becoming increasingly willing to have cooperation with the US government and military on fighting organized crime.
These public opinion numbers, of course, are not an argument that the US should have large numbers of troops on the ground in Mexico. That would be a disaster. Those numbers would quickly reverse to enormous opposition once the troops were actually there. Nobody should interpret them that way.
My point is that the US and Mexico should embrace the numbers and promote the cooperation that has been going on for the past few years. Hiding from the debate every time a criticism comes up isn't just bad policy, it's bad politics. More transparency about cooperation in an environment where citizens want to see more cooperation should be an obvious policy. As I wrote in 2010, "When dealing with our democratic neighbors in the hemisphere, either defend the policy publicly or don't do it."
In pictures: Life under military protection in Veracruz, Mexico
Policymakers in the US and Mexico need to get over the fear of mentioning security cooperation as if the ghosts of the 19th century will come strike them down. Pundits and grandstanding politicians aside, public opinion in Mexico is increasingly on the side of greater cooperation, far less concerned about 19th century grievances than 21st century violence. Potential and ongoing security programs should be a public discussion in Mexico that the US welcomes, even in a presidential election year.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
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