Honduran police cleanup law may be unconstitutional
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
The constitutional branch of the Honduran Supreme Court ruled 4 to 1 that the law defining procedures for cleaning up corruption in the police is unconstitutional; this on the same day that the Lobo Sosa government [sought] to extend the bill enabling the cleanup for another six months. Only justice Oscar Chinchilla voted to uphold the law.
The law which regulates the police cleanup calls for an examination of each and every police officer, requiring them to pass a confidence check that involves a psychological exam, a lie detector test, an examination of their finances, and a drug test. The law modified the police code so that there was no due process right of appeal of any findings under this confidence check. It stipulated that any failure to pass any of the steps of the confidence exam was automatically ground for immediate dismissal.
Questions have been raised about the validity of the tests, and especially the evaluation of the results of the lie detector tests. A fairly high level officer who had passed the lie detector test was recently arrested during an organized crime operation with over $200,000 in cash on him. While his evaluation had not been finalized, he had, according to the Dirección de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial, passed all but the financial checks. This case is being seen by Hondurans as evidence that the confidence tests are not sufficiently rigorous to remove all police corruption, casting doubt on the entire process.
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Of the 233 officers that failed the tests, so far, only 33 have been dismissed. The rest remain part of the active police force, though some without any assigned duties, all collecting their salaries.
Back in August the public prosecutor's office submitted, at the court's request, an opinion that the law, decreto 89-2012, was unconstitutional because it removed the police officer's right to due process and their presumption of innocence. The constitutional branch agreed with the public prosecutor's office by its 4-1 vote, but this decision carries no legal force because it was not unanimous. It is now up the the entire Supreme Court to convene and consider the law and issue an opinion.
– Russell Sheptak, the co-author of the blog Honduras Culture and Politics, specializes in the study of colonial history and economic anthropology in this little-reported corner of Central America.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Mexico's President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto prior to their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 27. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
A US-Mexico policy duet?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
According to El Universal, President Obama started his meeting with President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto by saying, "Let's go beyond the security agenda. We want to prioritize the topics of infrastructure, trade, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, energy and immigration." That nicely lines up with the areas of focus that EPN and his team had set out.
Obama praised EPN's "ambitious reform agenda" and made it clear that his administration wants to see some of the proposed reforms passed because, "what happens in Mexico has an impact on our society."
Mexico's president-elect also echoed some White House talking points by emphasizing the importance both leaders have in creating jobs. He also fully supported Obama's position on comprehensive immigration reform and said Mexico would do its part to create a safe and modern border.
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Yesterday's meeting showed the two leaders starting the relationship off on the right foot, practically tripping over each other's talking points to agree on their agenda. That's a great sign, but this was an easy and fairly scripted meeting. Passing their common agenda through their respective political systems and implementing the policies successfully are going to be harder.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
Argentine Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino speaks during a news conference in Buenos Aires, November 22, 2012. (Marcos Brindicci/REUTERS)
Argentina's last stand in battle against bondholders
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
US District Court Judge Thomas Griesa announced a big ruling on Argentina's debt [Nov. 21], one that could place the country in technical default by mid-December. (FT, Reuters, Clarin)
The judge ruled that Argentina must make payments to all bond holders, including those "vulture funds" that refused to accept previous restructuring deals. Previously, Argentina had only paid those funds that restructured their debt. Two interesting points out of the ruling:
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1) The judge said he would not grant a stay because Argentine President Kirchner has made public statements (different from Argentina's official legal position) that the country would never comply with a US judicial order to pay the holdout bondholders. Making the judge angry by announcing the country's defiance ahead of time may backfire on Kirchner.
2) The judge said US third parties working with Argentina must comply with the ruling, placing BNY Mellon and several other institutions in a very tough spot. If Argentina tries to make its 15 December payments on just the restructured debt, it will amount to a technical default and/or the US third parties will find themselves legally liable for not complying with the judicial ruling.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
US President Barack Obama waves as he is introduced before speaking at Yangon University’s Convocation Hall in Yangon, Myanmar, Monday, Nov. 19, 2012. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Four messages Obama is sending Latin America from his trip through Asia
President Obama's first post-reelection trip passes through Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Cambodia for the ASEAN summit. The messages that Latin America hears from this trip may or may not be the ones the United States intends to send.
Move in the right direction
Burma is a military dictatorship that is less democratic and more repressive than any country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba. Yet, they're doing better than they were a decade ago. They've released some political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi and have begun reforms to give democratically elected civilians increased power. The US has eased sanctions and the president is visiting. For a country like Cuba, it should be seen as a sign that real reforms can be met with better relations by the US and that gradual progress is possible.
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Play well with the US military
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has been in power since the 1980's, has a long string of human rights abuses, and uses the government's institutions to take down any potential competition. However, he's willing and eager to work with the US on a common agenda and the US military rarely turns down the opportunity to engage and train potential allies. The US military is expanding counter-terrorism assistance and provided his son a full scholarship to West Point. The government of Cambodia is receiving visits from President Obama as well as Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta.
Be in Asia
Obviously Latin American countries can't follow this advice physically, but it is a message they're hearing. The US pivot to Asia is real, giving more attention to them at the expense of other areas of the world. The US holds countries in that region like Burma and Cambodia (and even China) to a lower standard on democracy and human rights than their Western Hemisphere counterparts. It may not be fair, but that's the way it's going to be.
Hold productive meetings
Doesn't it feel like the US president spends more time attending multilateral meetings with Asian officials than Latin American? It's not just the pivot to Asia. The summits for ASEAN are seen as more productive and worth the president's time than the Summit of the Americas or the annual Organization of American States General Assembly.
What's the role of Afro-Colombian and Colombian women in the FARC peace talks?
• Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli is a contributor to WOLA’s blog. The views expressed are the author's own.
As the Colombian Government prepares to meet with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Havana, Cuba, later this month for the second phase of the peace talks, the role of women – and in particular Afrodescendant women – in guaranteeing a successful peace effort requires support from the international community.
Olga Amparo of Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paz noted that while it is unsurprising that [Colombian] women are not on the negotiating teams—women are neither part of the FARC nor in the armed forces’ top command structures – “it does expose Colombia’s democratic deficit” of female political participation. Though Colombia has adopted norms favoring women’s rights, in practice, the political voice of Colombian women has remained muffled, and exclusion of Afro-Colombian women is particularly problematic. Incorporating the perspective of Afro-Colombian women into the issues debated at the peace talks will do more than just dramatically increase the odds that the process will succeed. It will strengthen Colombia’s democracy by bridging the political gap that exists for Colombian women and ethnic minorities and stabilize this post-conflict country.
According to Ms. Amparo, a WOLA partner, the peace talks are not going to resolve all of Colombia’s chronic, systemic problems. The most likely outcome is that they result in an agreement to end the internal armed conflict and establish a series of mechanisms for how to address the underlying issues that contribute to conflict. For the latter to happen effectively, certain major challenges must be addressed.
First, Colombia is a place where violence has been used for decades to resolve differences. To change that dynamic, confidence must be built among Colombians of all walks of life. Stakeholders must promote the idea that political change is possible through a participatory democratic system in which the different perspectives within Colombian society are guaranteed a voice.
Second, bold efforts must be undertaken to dismantle the remnants of paramilitary and organized criminal structures.
Third, civil society input – particularly by women – is necessary to help reconcile Colombian society and to contribute to constructive avenues by which to deal with difficult issues.
A final challenge lies with the demilitarization of Colombian society. All sides of the conflict, and the society itself, must begin to think of order and security without arms as the way forward. Women are essential in ensuring that all of these challenges are addressed.
Both as activists and as victims, women have played an important role in raising awareness of how the internal armed conflict and violence has impacted them. With the support of the Open Society Foundations, WOLA had the privilege of conducting advocacy workshops with Afro-Colombian women in four conflict-ridden areas along the country’s Pacific Coast earlier this year. We were able to view firsthand the tenacity, resilience, strength, and political sophistication of women in the Chocó, Valle del Cauca, and Cauca.
During our conversations with Afro-Colombian women, we learned of the complexities of internal displacement, militarization, sexual violence, and mothers’ horrors of experiencing forced recruitment of their children into the conflict. More striking than the terrible stories of violence and abuses, though, was the leadership exerted by many of these women and the belief that their circumstances could change and justice could be achieved if their recommendations and efforts were supported.
It is women who are leading the rebuilding efforts after displacement occurs. The internally displaced (IDP) women of Clamores, for example, survived the mass displacement in the late 1990’s and subsequent paramilitary attacks. Having lost their men to the war, these women were forced to care for large families on their own without help from the authorities or the skills required to thrive in an urban environment. Often stigmatized due to their displaced status, the women formed the organization Clamores to seek solutions to their difficulties. Through Clamores they have pooled resources to buy a bread machine allowing them to generate the income to survive. With perseverance, the women were able to give most of their kids a high school education.
As activists, Afro-Colombian women are increasingly becoming a political force to be reckoned with. Perhaps the most internationally recognized Afro-Colombian woman is Piedad Cordoba, a former Senator and the current face of Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paz who has gained international recognition for her tireless pursuit of peace efforts, the release of hostages, victim’s rights, and the dismantling of paramilitary structures. Yet Ms. Cordoba is just one of several exceptional Afro-Colombian women working hard to transform Colombian society.
Quibdó’s Mayor Zulia Mena is leading efforts in her government to make politics and governance more transparent and inclusive of the communities they represent. Parallel to this, the women who make up the grassroots group “Network of Chocoan Women” (Red Departamental de Mujeres Chocoanas) regularly organize good governance workshops on accountability and transparency in an effort to create a generation of public servants who break from this region’s history of collusion with paramilitaries, corruption, clientelism, and nepotism. In the same region, women survivors of the 2002 Bojayá massacre, where a FARC bomb incinerated over 114 Afro-Colombians in a church, led public protests urging armed groups to lay down their arms, respect the autonomy of their communities, and demanding truth, justice, and reparations for the victims of this gruesome massacre.
In the Curvaradó region, many communities are forced to coexist with paramilitaries. Some have fought back, establishing “humanitarian zones,” areas free of the armed groups’ presence. When armed groups blockaded the region, Afro-Colombian and mestizo women formed a communal store to supply food to their communities. Despite death threats and character assassination, Maria Ligia Chavera, a mother of eight and grandmother of 44, remains the backbone of these communities’ struggle for land rights and preservation of their ancestral culture. In the Cacarica River Basin, Rosalba Cordoba and her organization called CAVIDA is organizing to stop illegal logging and armed groups from encroaching on their territories.
The women of northern Cauca have gained prominence after being featured in the PBS Women, War and Peace episode “The War We are Living.” It shows the efforts of several groups, including the Association of Women of Northern Cauca (ASOM) and the Black Communities Process (PCN), in which women are defending the territorial rights of their communities from illegal gold mining to keep their families from being displaced and building economic self-sufficiency for their children. In the Catholic Dioceses along the Pacific Coast (Chocó, Nariño, Cauca, and Valle del Cauca), nuns and lay women work together with priests to assist the victims of violence and aerial fumigation. In Cali, Afro-Colombian trade unionists like Agripina Hurtado are working to improve the labor rights and working conditions of Afro-Colombian sugarcane cutters and other laborers. In Colombia’s cities and shantytowns, the women leaders of AFRODES are organizing to find effective solutions for displaced families’ security and economic needs.
A report released on Nov. 13, 2012, by the PCN documents how crimes committed against Afro-Colombian women are rampant. Despite Colombia’s de jure adherence to international commitments and progressive domestic laws, in practice the human rights situation for Afro-Colombians, and women in particular, remains dire. The militarization of Afro-Colombian areas has led to increased incidents of sexual violence, exploitation, and abuse against women. While the number of homicides decreased in Buenaventura from 2003 until 2010, the killing of women increased. Death threats and murders of Afro-Colombian women advocates are becoming more prevalent as women are upping their public profiles in defense of Afro-Colombian rights. Emblematic of this disturbing trend are the murders of Buenaventura’s Doña Chila in 2008 and Medellin’s Ana Fabricia Cordoba in 2011.
Violence continues to take place throughout Afro-Colombian territories and areas of refuge at an alarming rate. In the Agua Blanca District of Cali, a receptor site for Afro-Colombians displaced from the Pacific Coast, six Afro-Colombian women and their children, who are beneficiaries of provisional protective measures from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, were declared “military objectives” by illegal armed groups. On Oct. 28, 2012, men grabbed three-year-old Joiner Estiven Banguera and used him for target practice until community members begged them to stop. They let him go after screaming at her “old frog (Colombian slang for informant) we’ll kill you and your family.” In the past two weeks, this illegal armed group engaged in shoot outs with rivals in this neighborhood and threatened to kill several other women, including pregnant Ana Gloria Cabeza, and their children. On Nov. 12, this illegal group forcibly recruited a female minor and is forcing her to participate in degrading acts. In Buenaventura, Tumaco, Quibdó, and the outskirts of Cartagena, Bogota and Medellin, we find similar situations where women have to defend themselves and their children from illegal armed groups and criminal gangs.
For a successful peace process in Colombia, women’s participation must be guaranteed. Their input is required not just at the negotiating table where plans are made, but also in the post-conflict implementation of the agreement. While an agreement is in the works, now is the time for the international community to support the voices and actions of brave Afro-Colombian women activists in Colombia. They will be the ones to ensure that what comes out of the peace process is reality based and has the best chance for success. WOLA continues to support their efforts to strengthen the role of women in Colombian society as their country moves toward a peace agreement.
– Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli is Senior Associate for the Andes Program at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Ivan Velasquez Caballero (c.), a suspected drug leader of the Zetas drug cartel, is presented to the media together with suspected Zetas members Carlos de Santiago (2nd l.) and Manuel Guerrero alias 'Tony' (r.) in Mexico City in Sept. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Could Central American gangs usurp the role of Mexican cartels?
• InSight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Edward Fox's research here.
Costa Rica's attorney general has warned that with the decline of Mexico's powerful cartels, Central American gangs could rise and take control of criminal operations in the region – an extreme but not implausible scenario.
In a recent interview with El Universal, Costa Rican Attorney General Jorge Chavarria warned that Central America’s criminal groups could grow stronger and supplant their Mexican counterparts in the region if the Mexican cartels lose power.
“At the moment, the dominant groups are clearly Mexican. But if we look 10 years ahead, what will happen if in Mexico, the fight [against crime] has a positive effect from the point of view of the Mexican state?" Chavarria said. "That is how we have to look at it in order to see how we can avoid the consolidation of Central American organizations that could replace the Mexicans.”
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The main candidates to step into the role of Mexican cartels are gangs in the “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. El Universal highlighted the Salvadoran Texis Cartel and Guatemalan groups the Mendozas and the Charros as among the most powerful.
Chavarria said that no Costa Rican cartels have been detected so far, but that authorities must work to pre-empt their emergence, adding, “What is very risky for us is that someone starts to develop a leadership and establish a Central American organization in the face of a vacuum [in criminal structures] as [could happen] in Mexico and Colombia.”
InSight Crime Analysis
The decline of Mexican cartels may already be underway. Last month, US Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield announced that Mexico’s larger drug trafficking organizations were “on the verge of collapse,” thanks to sustained pressure on their operations in the region. The majority of Mexico’s large gangs, from the Beltran Leyva Organization and Gulf Cartel to the Juarez and Tijuana Cartels are now shadows of their former selves, as analyst Alejandro Hope has set out.
Brownfield acknowledged that the crackdown on Mexico’s groups means a greater risk for Central America and the Caribbean.
As El Universal points out, Mexican groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Zetas currently use Central American gangs as operatives to launder money, infiltrate local police and traffic drugs. If these roles reversed, Central American cartels would have to increase their presence in Mexico. This would be more difficult than it was for Mexicans to move south, as the Mexican state has far stronger institutions that the Northern Triangle. Mexican groups were able to take advantage of largely ungoverned spaces in the isthmus -- such as the north Guatemalan province of Peten -- to conduct their operations.
If Central American gangs increase their stake in the trade, they could also bypass Mexico as a transit point and traffic drugs through the Caribbean, a favored route in the 1980s. Both US officials and Caribbean leaders have suggested that the shift back to Caribbean routes may already be happening thanks to sustained pressure on drug trafficking through Central America. If drugs arrived in the United States by sea, Central American traffickers would be able to increasingly cut Mexican cartels out of the supply chain.
As Chavarria noted, these scenarios are not likely to take place in the immediate future. While Mexican monolithic criminal groups may be disintegrating, any shift of power south will take time. However, Central America's gangs, having spent years as subordinates to the Mexicans, could be well positioned to rise and take control of organized crime in the region.
– Edward Fox 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 his research here.
Should the US suspend Guatemalan deportations in light of the recent earthquake?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, centralamericanpolitics.blogspot.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
According to Guatemalan officials, deportations of Guatemalans deported from the United States increased by 14 percent so far this year.
Guatemalan deportations from the USA increased this year by 14 percent, while President Otto Perez Molina has asked his counterpart Barack Obama to stop the repatriations due to the impact of the earthquake. According to reports today from the Department of Immigration, two flights filled with migrants arrived last Friday, the same day that Perez testified that he signed an official letter to send Obama, in which he discussed the critical situation arising from the recent earthquake and asks that returns to Guatemala be curbed.
From the 35,196 repatriated, 32,273 are adult men, 2,387 women, 499 boys and 37 are girls, said the source.
At the headquarters of the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction, the head of state said on November 9 that he was also urging Obama to grant migrants Temporary Protected Status.
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Here's what I wrote in October 2011 and, for the most part, in 2010. It should still hold.
Here's an idea. The President should extend Temporary Protected Status to our Guatemalan neighbors so that the country can better recover from these natural disasters without the additional challenge of dealing with the deportation of thousands of their countrymen.
TPS isn't a magical solution to the migratory challenge that confronts the US and Latin American and its southern neighbors. However, it is one tool that the executive branch has at its disposal right now and can make a real difference in the lives of millions of people in Guatemala and the United States.
Now that the elections are over and President Obama and Republican members of congress ... are talking about comprehensive immigration reform, extending TPS to Guatemalan nationals living in the US seems a bit more likely.
– 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.
A police vehicle is parked outside the home of American businessman Gregory Faull in San Pedro, Belize, Nov. 11. Faull was found shot dead at his beachfront home over the weekend. (San Pedro Sun/Reuters)
McAfee flees from Belize authorities - should he fear the police?
Many things stood out when reading the Gizmodo piece on John McAfee, the eccentric pioneer of anti-virus software who is now wanted for questioning about the murder of a fellow American expatriate in Belize: allegations of paranoia, his obsession with danger sports, his choice in young partners. (Read the whole piece here – it came out just before the murder was discovered)
But, as a correspondent based in Mexico City who has covered police reform across the Americas, one part of the story made me do a literal double-take:
“In the wake of his arrest, McAfee was nervous enough about the police investigation that he sent two employees to solicit an officer for inside information. Both were arrested for attempted bribery. McAfee then sent another Belizean on the same mission. He, too, was arrested.”
Mr. McAfee, who apparently kept company with wanted criminals in Belize, at least according to Gizmodo, and was under investigation, had dispatched associates to the police station to try the get an inside scoop. All three of those attempts were thwarted.
Really?
The success of bribery, anywhere in the world, depends on the situation, and particularly who is on the receiving end. But it struck me as particularly salient that in Central America, a place where paying bribes is a way of life, three individuals would be arrested for it.
Is Belize different? One woman who answered the phone at a development NGO in Belize City explained (she declined to talk on the record because of the nature of the case) Belizeans stand out from their neighbors in their trust of the police.
“We do have our share of corruption in the police department, but they come out in the news as being investigated,” she says. The police are not, in other words, avoided as they are in other parts of the Americas, such as Mexico.
McAfee might disagree. His next-door neighbor, Gregory Faull, was found shot dead at his own beachfront home in Belize over the weekend. McAfee is now on the lam, contacting Wired magazine this week to proclaim his innocence but saying he fears for his life if he is brought in for questioning.
“Under no circumstances am I going to willingly talk to the police in this country," Wired reported him as saying. "You can say I'm paranoid about it but they will kill me, there is no question."
But a 2010 AmericasBarometer poll does not seem to reflect evidence to support that sentiment. In fact, Belizeans have one of the highest levels of trust in their police. Only Chile and Haiti have more faith in their police than Belize. For comparison, Guatemala ranks the worst, with 65 percent of those surveyed saying they believe their cops are often involved in crime. In Mexico the number is 54 percent; in El Salvador, 48 percent; and Honduras, 47 percent.
Another analyst based in Washington who has studied the police in Belize, and who also did not want to go on the record for this story, said the levels of police corruption in Belize, a former British colony, come nowhere close to levels in neighboring countries, such as Honduras.
“The standards of policing and rule of law and application of justice are similar to what you would find in a British commonwealth,” he explains.
Belize does not just stand apart when it comes to their cops. It’s also been the outlier in Central America both culturally and linguistically. It is a parliamentary democracy. English is the official language. It is often overlooked when trends about Central America are analyzed. “Central America Lite” is how one CNN travel piece put it.
But in some unfortunate ways it does share similarities with the rest of the isthmus. A tiny country bordered by Mexico and Guatemala, Belize sits at a crossroads of the illegal drug trade and has dealt with spiraling homicide statistics. In a 2011 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) global homicide report, Honduras and El Salvador had the highest murder rates in Central America. But Belize came in third, slightly above Guatemala. It’s much higher than the rates in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and even Mexico.
In a State Department travel write-up, the the United States characterized the situation in Belize this way:
Belize recorded 125 homicides in 2011, a decrease of five percent from 2010. Prior to 2011, homicide rates in Belize rose at least five percent every year since 2000, with the exception of 2009 when homicide rates again decreased slightly. With a population of only 312,698 according to the 2010 country census, Belize’s per capita homicide rate of 39 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 ranks it as the sixth highest in the world. While the country’s per capita homicide rate is still lower than that of other Central American countries, such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, its year-on-year increase is of concern.
And while Belizeans may have more faith that their cops are clean, they seem to have little faith when it comes to their efficacy. “I think the biggest concern for Belizeans is not necessarily corruption as it is lack of convictions,” said the woman in Belize City when I asked about perceptions of the police.
With a tiny population, and a small police force, the country has little to spend on security, allotting just 2.8 percent of gross domestic product to security measures, according to this report.
That means it may have few resources to deal with the spiraling McAfee drama. Already, police may have missed their best shot of capturing fugitive McAfee. He told Wired magazine that when police came to his mansion to bring him in for questioning but couldn't find him, he was actually right there –buried under sand on his property with a cardobard box over his head.
Ecuador's President Rafael Correa waves from his bicycle as he rides to the National Election Council headquarters to register his candidacy for reelection in next year's presidential election in Quito, Ecuador, Monday, Nov. 12. (Martin Jaramillo/AP)
Four more years? Ecuador's Correa announces run for reelection
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced he is running for reelection. His approval is above 50 percent in nearly every poll. He will face a large group of opposition candidates, none of whom have particularly strong support among voters.
There are three issues that matter in this election:
1) The Economy: Ecuador's economy is not great, but recent growth has been good enough to get President Correa reelected.
2) Citizen Security: The perception of security on the streets of Ecuador's major cities has gotten worse in recent years due to organized crime and youth gangs. The country is far from a security crisis as is experienced in Central America and Venezuela, but security is a top issue on voters' minds.
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3) Personality: Correa retains support because his style remains well liked by many voters. The opposition candidates vary from charismatic but relatively unknown to completely despised by a majority of voters. The candidate who challenges Correa needs to have a likeable personality and some political charm to counter the president's advantage on this issue.
At the moment, Correa has an advantage on the economy and personality [fronts[. The security problems aren't bad enough to push voters away and no opposition candidate is yet making a credible claim to do better. For Correa to lose this election, something about one or more of those three points must change significantly (an economic crash, a security crisis, or a major change in the perception of the president's and/or opposition candidates' personal likeability). If those three points in February look like they do today, Correa is nearly certain to win.
I already see international journalists focusing on lots of things that don't matter to voters. Ecuador's voters aren't going to vote for or against the president's reelection based on Correa's media restrictions and war against the media barons, his abuse of the court system, his oil policies, his support for Assange, corruption, the country's debt to China or its alliance with Venezuela. Those other topics may matter to the international audience and are more entertaining to discuss than the basic fundamentals (economy, security, personality), but they aren't moving votes.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
Nurse Brenin Lopez uses her finger to simulate the mouth of Adriana del Rosario, during the "Kangaroo Mothers" program in the maternity ward of the Roosevelt hospital in Guatemala City October 29. Though Latin American women are better educated than ever before, they continue to earn far less than their male counterparts. (Jorge Dan Lopez/Reuters)
Latin American women: better educated, but still underpaid
Latin American women are better educated than ever before. So why do they continue to earn far less than their male counterparts?
A new study from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) highlights the apparent paradox and tries to explain the reasons behind it.
Challenging the notion that parents tend to favor investing in boys’ education, the study found that Latin America has achieved gender parity – and in much of the region, the balance tips in favor of girls – in terms of schooling.
However, even with an educational advantage, women are still mostly employed in lower-paid occupations in Latin America such as teaching, healthcare, or the service sector, like restaurants. Comparing men and women of the same age and educational level, the study found that men earn 17 percent more than women do in Latin America. That number is actually down from 25 percent in 1992, but the pace at which the gap is narrowing remains slow.
Part of the problem is that the majority of the better-paying jobs available for high-school graduates in the region are culturally associated with men, says Isabel Londoño, an education and gender issues specialist in Bogota, Colombia. These include positions such as bus and truck drivers, security personnel, military service, miners, and oil workers, Ms. Londoño says.
“There are sectors of the economy that culturally are reserved for men and those are the ones that generate most jobs,” says Londoño.
Progress, but...
And when it comes to the higher-paying fields such as law, architecture, and engineering – where women hold just a third of the jobs – the gender gap widens to 58 percent.
“There has been progress in recent decades, but the wage gap between men and women still prevails,” notes the study’s author, Hugo Ñopo.
Londoño, who is also a life coach, says one of her clients works as a high-level executive at a multinational food company in Colombia. When she demanded her salary be raised to equal that of her male colleagues, she was initially rebuffed, Londoño recounts. The executive told Londoño that her company’s CEO had asked why she wanted so much money, highlighting the cultural assumptions that can surround gender-based pay in the workplace. In the end, her yearly salary was increased by 55 percent.
Architect Anamaria Velasquez, says she worked for 15 years at a firm where she earned 20 percent less than her male colleagues. “My whole career, I have earned less than men, even when I had more years experience,” Ms. Velasquez says. “I would bring it up from time to time, but nothing ever changed.”
Cultural attitudes
Mr. Ñopo found that the disparity in income is partly due to the fact that women in Latin America tend to work part-time, and are often involved in informal jobs, such as selling homemade food on the street. According to the data collected, one in every ten men works part-time in Latin America, whereas for women it’s one in every four.
While the job flexibility of part-time or self-employed workers allows women to earn wages while at the same time taking care of family obligations, this translates into lower total income. Along those same lines, women generally enter the labor market at a later stage and participate in it irregularly, often taking time off to raise children. So while men continue to accrue experience and professional development, women often start and stop their careers.
The study says that in order to close the gender income gap in Latin America, there is a need for more equitable distribution of household chores between men and women, and wider availability of day care facilities. Equal parental leave for men and women would help level the playing field with respect to decisions of hiring women and men, as well.
But Londoño adds that cultural attitudes toward hiring women must also change. “There continues to be a perception that women generate higher labor costs because of maternity leave and time off for family care, but there are studies that show that alcohol consumption and fighting among men create similar levels of costs and inefficiency because of days taken off,” she says.
Income for women is perceived as being complimentary to a family’s finances, Londoño adds. “So employers still believe it’s better to hire a man who has to support a family, even though in Colombia for example 40 percent of households are headed by women.”
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