Checking in on Guatemala's Rios Montt trial
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, centralamericanpolitics.blogspot.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
The Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) is providing daily updates on the genocide and crimes against humanity trial against Efrain Rios Montt and Jose Roriguez Sanchez. From day three:
Hours of intense first-person accounts of violence and endurance left impressions of profound grief: "They killed our fathers, our mothers, and everything we loved," said one witness; as well as resolute purpose: "I am one of the few survivors. Perhaps I was sent to be the messenger of the story here."
In all 12 witnesses were called to the stand to be questioned by lawyers for the prosecution and the accused. Most spoke with the aid of court-appointed Ixil Maya translators; one witness, Alberto López, was unable to deliver his testimony due to the lack of a K'iche' Maya translator and will be given another opportunity to take the stand in a future hearing. Among the witnesses were leaders of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, the survivors' organization which first opened the genocide case more than a decade ago, including current AJR board member Domingo Raymundo Cobo and former board members Francisco Raymundo Chavez and Gaspár Velasco.
The Open Society Justice Initiative is also providing regular updates here.
The Latin Americanist has Guatemala: Witnesses Recall Horror and Heartache at Rios Montt Trial.
Phil Neff has a post on the black humor surrounding the trial in Chapín black humor meets the Guatemala genocide trial.
James Rodriguez has photos of the trial at MiMundo.
Victoria Sanford has an opinion piece in Plaza Publica that originally appeared in El Faro on El genocidio no es un enfrentamiento armado. In it, she criticizes President Otto Perez Molina and other who deny that genocide occurred. But while Boz, Victoria, and I believe that genocide did occur in Guatemala, it's more difficult to prove than crimes against humanity. See Boz from a few weeks ago.
It's a legal question that the judges will have to decide.
Honestly, I hope that should the generals be found not guilty of genocide and/or crimes against humanity, people don't run to the hilltops shouting that this is another example of impunity in Guatemala. The lead judge, Jazmin Barrios, appears to be a judge of integrity who is committed to the law. She has already worked on cases in which human rights violators were found guilty and punished. She stuck to the court's timetable to have the case moved up five months. She and her fellow judges also played hardball with Efrain Rios Montt and his defense counsel as they tried to have her removed from the case.
– Mike Allison is an associate professor in the Political Science Department and a member of the Latin American and Women's Studies Department at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. You can follow his Central American Politics blog here.
Cans of Coca-Cola and Diet Coke are shown in March 2011. Mexicans drink more soda than people in just about any other country, according to new research. (AP)
Study: Mexico pays price for being soda king
Mexicans drink more refrescos, or soda, than people in just about any other country, according to new research.
Stacks of glass-bottled sodas – orange pop, purple non-alcoholic sangria, Coca-Cola – are omnipresent at food stands across Mexico City, where busy workers stop for quesadillas or tamales and are as likely to down a soda at breakfast as at lunch and dinner.
But too much soda is morbidly dangerous, the American Heart Association says, based on a new analysis of data collected during the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases Study. It linked consumption of sugary drinks to diabetes and obesity-related deaths, and Mexico ranks No. 1 in the world.
Researchers looked at the relationship between the quantities of sugary sodas, sports drinks, and fruit drinks consumed and the prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Latin America and the Caribbean topped nine world regions studied, with 38,000 fatalities annually.
The study linked sugary drinks with about 180,000 deaths worldwide each year.
Mexicans chug 43 gallons of soft drinks per person, per year, versus 31 gallons per person in the United States, the world’s No. 2 consumer, according to Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
More than 9 million Mexicans suffer from diabetes, according to the latest health ministry data. And nearly a third of the population is overweight or obese. A separate study earlier this month by Stanford University and the Universities of California at Berkley and San Francisco resulted in similar findings: that consuming just one bubbly drink per day could increase the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
The trend is not unique to Mexico. Across Latin America, both the low cost of sugared drinks and lack of public health education have been an issue. Parents will fill their babies’ bottles with “fruit” refreshments that may cost less than the real thing – fresh-squeezed orange or grapefruit juice, for example – and have few natural ingredients and far more sugar than meets the eye.
Mexico’s health ministry has been campaigning to educate Mexicans about the dangers of obesity and diabetes and is encouraging prevention through healthy eating habits and regular exercise. Although Mexican law prohibits the sale of sodas and junk food inside schools, vendors of fried snacks and sodas frequently roll their colorful carts up to the door before the end of the school day. In other countries, like the Dominican Republic, an emphasis has been put on getting citizens to exercise though free exercise classes in public parks.
President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Luis Alberto Moreno addresses the audience during a seminar for young people from Latin America and the Caribbean on the first day of IDB's meeting in Panama City last week. (Carlos Jasso/Reuters)
Can Latin America ride out the global economic storm?
While most developed nations struggle to weather financial storms, Latin America has been riding out the choppy economic waters thanks in large part to a wave of high commodity prices and active monetary policies.
But in a report released Sunday, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) is warning that the region faces weaker economic growth in the next five years as commodity process drop and governments face higher fiscal deficits.
The IADB’s top economists forecast annual growth for Latin America and the Caribbean over the next five years to be 3.9 percent, almost a full percentage point lower than the 4.8 percent growth seen in the five years before the 2007 global recession.
“Bonanzas are not eternal,” said IADB President Luis Alberto Moreno at the bank’s annual meeting in Panama.
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“Lower commodity prices imply a drop in the terms of trade for most countries in the region and, therefore, a negative shock to income,” the report said.
The rate of growth for investment is also projected to fall from 10 percent to just 5 percent annually, according to the report. Lower investment will make it harder for countries to tackle one of the main obstacles to economic growth – poor infrastructure – which could mean there's an additional risk that "growth would be lower than indicated in these projections.”
Many of the countries in the region relied on expansionary monetary policies, such as increasing the money supply or targeting interest rates, to spur growth during the worldwide economic downturn. But the IADB suggests that governments tighten fiscal policy in order to give themselves more wiggle room in a downturn.
“It is not a question of using fiscal and monetary policies today to counter a negative shock and bring growth in the region up to its potential,” José Juan Ruiz, the IADB’s chief economist said.
“We need to find measures to increase our potential rate of growth.”
Such measures to foster economic growth should include structural reforms, which the report says will vary from country to country according to particular needs. However, in general, the report suggests a focus on reforming labor markets to formalize the work of 56 percent of the Latin American workforce that functions outside the formal economy. Another suggested focus is on the region's “deficient infrastructure,” which is a “constraint on economic growth,” the report said.
In this file photo, an employee at Globovision, a 24-hour television news channel, works behind a glass reading "News" with Globovision's logo "G" at the channel's headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela. (Leslie Mazoch/AP/File)
Propaganda and self-censorship in Venezuelan media
• Carolina Acosta-Alzuru is a contributor to WOLA’s blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights. The views expressed are the author's own.
Venezuela will hold a presidential election in [less than] one month. Though the media are key actors in any political campaign, they are even more so in short campaigns such as the one leading up to April 14th. Analysis of Venezuela’s media landscape usually hovers around two poles:
Communication and information rights “have been under fire during the Chávez Era” (Cañizález, 2009).
“The vast majority of Venezuela’s media […] are constitutionally protected, uncensored, and dominated by the opposition” (Weisbrot & McChesney, 2007).
My comments here focus on television, a mass medium of tremendous importance in Venezuelan culture and everyday life. This is the television landscape in terms of average daily shares, i.e. the percentage of television sets in use tuned to each network or group of networks:
Venevision+Televen: 40-45 percent.
Cable: 30-35 percent.
State channels: 8-10 percent.
Globovisión: 4.5-6 percent.
Others (as defined by A.G.B.): 8-10 percent.
Oppositional network Gobovision’s mere existence serves as the perfect example to counter those who criticize compromised speech and press freedoms in Venezuela. But given its small share, Globovisión is not nearly as damaging to the government as many would like to think, or as the government conveniently contends. Moreover, while Globovisión provides conversation pieces for antichavistas it does not reach many of those Venezuelans that the opposition would like to convince of an alternative to chavismo or now, “madurismo.”
Ten years ago, analyses of Venezuelan television based on ownership patterns were telling of polarized content. Today, such assessments are limited and misleading. That the sum of state television outlets has a share of only 8-10 percent is not the whole story. Why? Because assuming that the private media are oppositional or that they give voice to dissidence is simply wrong.
It is necessary to ask: How much of the content presented by the two privately owned networks, that together have a share of 40-45 percent, is oppositional to the government? After the enactment of the 2005 media content law (Ley Resorte) and 2007 non-renewal of RCTV’s license, what content do Televen and Venevision broadcast out of fear? What do they not broadcast also out of fear?
Self-censorship, the Ley Resorte’s ultimate effect in the post-RCTV era has had chilling results and is an undeniable element in many Venezuelan media outlets. Unlike censorship, which is usually evident, self-censorship is difficult to trace. In my research on Venezuelan telenovelas, I have been able to witness and document the increasing presence of self-censorship (Acosta-Alzuru, C. in press. “Melodrama, reality and crisis: The government-media relationship in Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution.” International Journal of Cultural Studies). In many cases, self-censorship was more restrictive than the Ley Resorte itself. Self-censorship has become one of the two main survival strategies for the remaining television networks in Venezuela. The other one is strict obedience. In my research I have not seen a shred of resistance when these outlets receive an “exhortation” from the government to pull a show or ban a voice from being aired.
These networks argue that as entertainment producers they should stay away from the political fray. Government opponents call their behavior opportunistic and underscore television’s responsibility to inform. In Venevisión’s case, the contrast between 2003-2004, when it broadcast Cosita Rica (a telenovela that mirrored the rocky path to the presidential recall referendum and whose antagonist was a metaphor of President Chávez) and the network’s current strict self-censorship says volumes about the evolution of the media situation in Venezuela in the last decade.
In sum, to understand television’s landscape and how it contributes to the uneven political terrain in Venezuela, it is necessary to analyze more than ownership patterns. Content (presences and absences), shares, the use of mandatory cadenas by the government, and the presence of voluntary cadenas in major outlets are essential to understand the inextricable links between Venezuela’s political and media situations.
With state television in propaganda mode and the most important private television outlets in survival mode, what will be the future of Venezuela’s access to a plurality of voices in the media?
- Carolina Acosta-Alzuru @caa2410 is Associate Professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. She is the author of Venezuela es una Telenovela (Alfa 2007).
Sandinistas block Internet in Nicaragua's National Assembly
• A version of this story ran on the author's site, nicaraguadispatch.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Opposition lawmakers in Nicaragua are lambasting an unannounced and unilateral decision by the ruling Sandinista Front to cut Internet service to all congressmen inside the legislative chamber of the National Assembly.
On Tuesday, lawmakers showed up to work to find that their computers in the legislative chamber no longer have Internet access. The restrictive measure, according to veteran Sandinista congressman José Figueroa, was implemented to prevent lawmakers from wasting time on Facebook or Cartoonnetwork.com.
“This is a measure to get all the lawmakers to focus only on their legislative work. All the social networks, personal emails and personal information can be looked at in their offices, because each lawmaker has his or her office,” Mr. Figueroa told El Nuevo Diario.
Figueroa said lawmakers in the legislative chamber will be limited to accessing the National Assembly’s webpage and their daily work agenda, which will be facilitated by a closed-circuit intranet system. Predictably, other Sandinista lawmakers have closed ranks and applauded the administrative decision.
But opposition lawmakers argue the move is an “absurd” and “authoritarian” attempt by Sandinistas to control access to information, limit lawmakers from interacting with constituents and deterring informed debate in the National Assembly.
“This is a form of censorship, similar to what you see from the governments of Cuba, Iran, and China,” says Liberal Party lawmaker Carlos Langrand. “Information is power; it helps inform debates in the National Assembly and allows lawmakers to connect with voters through social media, as well as remain up-to-date on what is happening in the world.”
Mr. Langrand thinks the Sandinistas’ decision to take the legislative chamber offline demonstrates the ruling party’s “fear of information flow” and is an attempt by Nicaragua’s establishment to “suppress the freedom of expression by cutting off communication with the outside world.”
In a country with less than 10 percent Internet connectivity, restricting Internet use in the National Assembly doesn’t seem to be consistent with national efforts to close the digital divide or modernize government, says Sandinista dissident lawmaker Victor Hugo Tinoco, of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).
“This is an absurd decision. The Internet is an important tool that we use to inform debate. When we are discussing economic matters, we often use Internet to refer to statistics published on the Central Bank’s webpage,” Mr. Tinoco says.
Tinoco noted that the international community has gone to great efforts to help Nicaragua’s National Assembly modernize with technology, computers, and Internet access. To now limit those advances makes no sense, he says.
“What’s next?” Tinoco demanded. “Removing Internet from schools and universities because it’s a distraction from learning?”
Langrand admits that there are some uninterested and disengaged lawmakers who waste their time fooling around online. But he claims those are mostly low-ranking Sandinista lawmakers whose job it is to vote piously and unquestioningly for their party’s position, which is handed down from the presidency and not subject for debate.
“Those are the lawmakers who spend all day on Facebook or playing online solitaire, because there is no room for dissent or debate in the ranks of the Sandinista Front. But the opposition is more interested in debating legislation,” he says.
Both Langrand and Tinoco say their opposition legislative blocs are scheduled to meet this week to file an official appeal or protest of the Internet ban.
– A version of this blog ran on the author's website, www.nicaraguadispatch.com
Jailed gang members play a board game at the maximum security jail of Izalco in Sonsonate last week. Jailed members of the country's two most powerful gangs MS-13 and the 18th Street gang (Mara 18), members of civic organizations and Bishop Fabio Colindres celebrated mass to mark the first anniversary since the two gangs signed a truce in March 2012 in an effort to reduce violent crimes in the country. (Ulises Rodriguez/Reuters)
Trust the gang truce? Even a year later, Salvadorans skeptical.
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
[For background on the El Salvador gang truce, see The Christian Science Monitor's feature package with stories here, here, and here.]
It is one thing to talk about El Salvador's gang truce, which celebrated its one year anniversary last weekend, in blog posts and newspaper articles. It is another thing to live in communities where crime is prevalent. How do the bulk of Salvadorans view the truce?
In polling by the University of Central America during mid-November 2012, there were high levels of skepticism about the truce. 66.4 percent of those polled believed that the truce had reduced the level of crime little or not at all. 89.4 percent of the respondents had little or no trust in the truce.
La Prensa Grafica (LPG) polling in February 2013 showed that 55.2 percent of Salvadorans had a negative opinion of the truce while only 29.7 percent had a positive view. The respondents were about evenly split over whether or not there should be negotiations with the gangs. And 70 percent said that one could not trust the gangs to fulfill their promises.
When LPG asked people for the reasons for the gang problem, 36.2 percent blamed the parents and the educational system of the country, while 30.7 percent focused on economic factors. According to LPG, respondents from the middle and upper classes were more likely to blame the breakdown of families, while persons from the lower classes were more likely to focus on economic forces behind young men joining gangs. Salvadorans are split on whether resolving the gang problem requires more iron fist policies including the death penalty, or whether there should be a focus on job creation, and re-insertion of gang members into society.
In short, the people on El Salvador's streets are uncertain about where this process is headed and whether it is even a good thing...
– Tim Muth covers the news and politics of El Salvador on his blog.
Cops unite in Central America: New deal allows cross-border pursuits
• InSight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Hannah Stone's research here.
The governments of Central America and the Dominican Republic are planning measures to share information on criminal records and allow “hot pursuit” chases across borders, in an effort to fight transnational criminal groups.
Designed to target organized crime groups, the agreement will allow law enforcement agencies from one country to pursue suspects over the border into a neighboring country. The agreement will also see states share criminal records so suspects are prosecuted as repeat offenders for crimes they have committed in other countries.
Representatives of the governments agreed on the wording of the deal at a conference in Panama last week, reported EFE. Once the agreement is signed by justice ministers from each country, it will be taken to the mid-2013 Central American Integration System's (SICA) annual summit for signature by the presidents.
InSight Crime Analysis
Weak law enforcement cooperation between countries and lack of border controls has helped make Central America an attractive venue for organized crime with criminals able to move quickly into the next country in order to escape pursuit by the law. One example is offered by the case of Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, or “Chepe Luna,” a Salvadoran drug trafficker who in recent years has been hiding out in Honduras, where he also holds citizenship, after a series of failed police operations to capture him in El Salvador.
Those that do get caught may get away with relatively light sentences despite a long criminal history if it is their first offense in the country where they are arrested.
Free movement policies, like the Central America-4 (CA-4) Border Control Agreement, have also made it easier for criminals to do business between El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
The Central American Parliament, which oversees SICA, has plans to expand the Central American Court of Justice to further coordinate law enforcement efforts in the region, currently a major corridor for trafficking drugs from South America up to Mexico and the United States.
The case of Facundo Cabral, an Argentine folk singer murdered in Guatemala in 2011, has also drawn attention to the importance of cooperation in the region. Costa Rican Alejandro Jimenez, alias "El Palidejo," allegedly ordered the hit, which was intended to kill Nicaraguan nightclub owner Henry Fariñas. Authorities in all three countries have been cooperating in the case, which has also led to arrests in Colombia.
– 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.
LGBT community in Honduras, invisible no more
• A version of this post ran on the Latin America Working Group blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
José “Pepe” Palacios, a leading Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) activist from Honduras, recently visited the United States at the invitation of the Honduras Solidarity Network and the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN). Pepe is a founding member of the Diversity Movement in Resistance (MDR), created in the wake of the June 2009 coup d’état in Honduras that replaced the democratically elected government. He is also a program officer at the Swedish aid agency Diakonia. At events in Washington, DC that the Latin America Working Group helped arrange, Pepe spoke about the violence the LGBT community has faced after the coup and what they are doing to organize for change...
“June 28, 2009 we had a coup d’état. It is a really important date for the LGBT community of Honduras. June 28, 1969 was Stonewall. 40 years later we had the coup d’état and for us, the coup was our Stonewall. Prior to that date, we didn’t have a movement at all. But, on that date, we joined all the social movements in our country. We had a fight in common: we wanted democracy.
“It was really hard working together; there are 13 LGBT organizations. Before the coup, it was almost impossible to have even 2 LGBT organizations seated at the same table. There was a lot of transphobia and lesbophobia; we were just a ‘G’ organization. We called it LGBT but in reality it was not. Now, we have a common agenda. Our biggest allies are the feminists, union workers, indigenous organizations, afro-Hondurans, youth organizations, campesinos and even religious organizations, all of whom were against the coup.
“Honduran society is very conservative; there is a lot of homophobia. Being part of the resistance front doesn’t make you immune to homophobia immediately. But at least in this movement, the people are very supportive. Maybe it is because we have the same goal as them, but every time we accompany the resistance front, the people are very respectful. Others tolerate us, but they respect us. Between tolerance and respect, I prefer being respected.
“One of the things that has changed since the coup is that there is a lot of hate. In only 7 months after the coup, 26 LGBT persons were killed. In 2008, we only had 4 killed. We went from 4 to 26; that’s a big jump. From 1994-2009, we had 20 LGBT murders. After the coup, we have had 90. It went from being 1 per year to 2 per month. Why? We were living in a bubble before and if you’re invisible, you’re harmless. Since that day, the LGBT community became visible because we walked the streets protesting against the coup. Now we’re thechusma.
“The American embassy and State Department sent FBI agents to support the police and prosecutors in their investigations of these murders. Now, 18 of the 90 cases are under investigation with 2 people sentenced. The investigations have progressed because of the involvement of the FBI agents. I don’t see a possibility that the current government improves the legal system. If it wasn’t for the pressure of the American embassy and State Department, they wouldn’t do anything at all to investigate. The government excuse is that there are lots of murders occurring so why should they have to focus on these LGBT murders in particular. The government is investigating now not because they want to but because of international pressure.
“In 2011, the resistance movement decided to create a political arm in order to participate in general elections (LIBRE). We had two pre-candidates for Congress. One, Erick Martinez Avila, was nominated in April and on May 7, 2012 he was murdered. Traditionally, we have had two parties and now we have a third, and for the first time they will have real competition in an election. What I want to do here is to raise awareness because maybe many of you didn’t have any information on what’s happening in Honduras with the LGBT organizations. Also we need to have the support of human rights organizations to observe the electoral process in order to ensure it will be transparent.
“I would never ever leave my country because if I do that, I’m safe but others will still face threats. In every revolution there will be casualties, but we know we can’t stop. The positive thing is that we became visible and now we really are a movement, not a social club, not an NGO. We’re part of a movement that fights for the rights of everyone.”
- Jordan Baber is an LAWG intern.
In this file photo, workers walk in front of the P-51 oil rig of Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras, in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro. (Ricardo Moraes/AP/File)
Brazil's top court to rule on effort to spread oil wealth
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Most of Brazil's oil output benefits the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, and São Paulo. Brazil's Congress voted to spread an increased amount of oil royalties across all the other states, raising the amount from 7 percent to 21 percent, cutting royalties to the three states and the federal government in the process. Presidenet Dilma Rousseff issued a partial veto so that the law would only affect new production, but the Congress overturned her veto last week. The law will now go to the Supreme Court to determine if it is constitutional.
As I wrote last year, this is a different take on the local vs. national debate that is seen throughout the region. Should oil and mineral wealth go to the local communities, the federal governments, or be spread around to the entire country's population?
It's different due to the scale and importance of the regions involved. The three states mentioned above, Rio, Espirito Santo, and São Paulo, have a combined population of 60 million people.
The Rio state government has suspended all payments other than salaries in protest of the dispute. The government is making a threat, with a bit of hyperbole, that the loss of funds threatens the city's ability to complete the construction it needs to host the World Cup and Olympic games.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro (l.) looks on as Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez reads a document in Havana in this 2011 file handout photo. (Revolution Studios/Cubadebate/REUTERS/File)
Can Cuba survive the loss of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, thehavananote.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
As Venezuelans and foreign observers examine the legacy – both the accomplishments and failures – of the charismatic and bombastic Hugo Chávez, discussion inevitably turns to the implications for allies on which he lavished generous aid and trade benefits. Perhaps none is quite so vulnerable in the wake of Chávez’s death as Cuba, an island nation of some 12 million people whose Socialist Revolution, with Chávez’s mentor Fidel Castro at the helm for more than 45 years, managed to hang on and hang on in spite of US disapproval and interference. Indeed, Socialist Cuba hung on in spite of itself, achieving inspirational heights in public health and education, and enjoying international influence far beyond its means, but never achieving the most crucial change of all: economic sustainability. In the past twenty years, Cuba has experienced one crisis after another.
After one such crisis is where Hugo Chávez came in, following the worst, broadest felt economic crisis Cubans have known, when Cuba’s ally and patron, the Soviet Union, collapsed, and the island’s economy shrank by more than one-third, and imports dropped by 85 percent. In those dark years, the Cuban people suffered crippling food shortages (and many were malnourished), extended blackouts, and all the other indignities that come from a sudden withdrawal of creature comforts and basic necessities they’d become so accustomed to. Reluctantly, Fidel Castro adopted a few limited measures – most importantly, embracing tourism – to stop the free fall, but it was his mentee, Hugo Chávez, whose increasingly generous trade and aid, who helped re-stabilize the Cuban economy at the turn of the 21st century. Cubans were no longer starving, but the vast majority would never recover the living standards they’d enjoyed before. As the cracks in the Cuban economy widened (and the gains of the Cuban Revolution slowly degenerated) Hugo Chávez filled them in with cut rate Venezuelan oil.
At the same time, it became clear to any honest observer inside or outside Cuba that the nation was headed for serious trouble; relying so singularly on the largesse of Hugo Chávez could have perilous consequences. When Raul Castro took the reins from his ailing older brother provisionally in 2006 and then formally in 2008, he focused, for the first time publicly, on the need for deep changes. The economic downturn of 2008, coming as it did with soaring world food prices and a punishing hurricane season (in which Cuba was walloped by four major storms that wiped out food stores and hundreds of thousands of homes), brought the reality starkly home.
The younger Castro’s rhetoric has been consistent and tough on economic mismanagement and corruption, but his apparent desire for consensus building (and avoiding destabilizing shocks that could jeopardize power) coupled with his inability to rein in a reluctant bureaucracy meant that Cuba’s economic restructuring has been slow and largely ineffectual – so far. Key reforms in real estate and migration, which offer many Cubans unprecedented potential economic empowerment and mobility, and also leverage an increasingly reconnected diaspora, offer hope of more and deeper reform, but other reforms, such as in expanding the non-state sector and reforming the tax code, have been too piecemeal or conservative so far.
Not unsurprisingly, many in and out of Cuba now wonder if the loss of Chávez is the death knell of the Castros’ Revolution, or, perhaps could it inject urgent momentum into Raul Castro’s reform agenda, just in the nick of time? In some ways, the loss of Hugo Chávez, on its face so devastating for Cuba, might actually be a good thing for the island. With Nicolas Maduro a favorite to win the special presidential election a month from now, Cuba will likely retain significant influence. But Maduro is no Chávez. He’ll have to focus on building up his own political capital, without the benefit of Chávez’s charisma. While he surely won’t cut Cuba off, to maintain power he will almost certainly need to respond to increasing economic pressures at home with more pragmatic and domestically focused economic policies. And that likelihood, as well as the possibility that the Venezuelan opposition could win back power either now or in the medium term, should drive Cuban leaders to speed up and bravely deepen their tenuous economic reforms on the island. And if there was any hesitancy among Cuba's leaders to open more space between the island and Chávez, they now have the opportunity to do so. Under Raul Castro, Cuba has mended and expanded foreign relations the world over. Particularly if it shows greater pragmatism in its economic policies, countries such as China will no doubt increase economic engagement of the island.
Raul Castro, who has at most five years – this second and final term as president - to save the fruits of the Cuban Revolution and chart a more sustainable course for the island, now has more incentive than ever to take the bull by the horns. Time will tell, perhaps sooner rather than later, whether he can.
– Anya Landau French is the editor of and a frequent contributor to the blog The Havana Note.
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