Emerson (l.) of Corinthians challenges Leonardo Silva of Atletico Mineiro during their Brazilian Serie A championship in Sao Paulo September 2, 2012. (Paulo Whitaker/REUTERS)
Bad boys: Brazil slaps misbehaving soccer players with service, not just suspensions
Fines and suspensions for athletes behaving badly? Well, yes. But in Brazil, they get community service too.
Officials here recently ordered three high-profile soccer players to visit sick kids or pay fines to charitable institutions rather than serve sideline bans for misconduct on the field of play.
The plan is part of a scheme to make errant role models take more responsibility.
“This type of visit is educational as well as being punitive,” says Flavio Zveiter, head of the Superior Court of Sports Justice (STJD), the body that hands out suspensions.
“These guys are heroes to lots of people and this helps them reflect about their position and responsibility to society. They sometimes live in their own little world and they don’t realize that what they do has repercussions in society as a whole.”
Soccer is by far Brazil’s most popular sport. As well as being home to players such as Pelé and Ronaldo, Brazil is the only team to win the World Cup five times. It will host the next tournament in 2014.
It also has one of the most competitive leagues in the world, and when players are kicked out of a game they are automatically banned from the next match. But additional suspensions are tacked on if the player is a repeat offender or if the offense is particularly grave.
When hot-headed Corinthians striker Emerson was kicked off the field for insulting the referee earlier this season, he was banned for six games. He appealed the ban and the STJD reduced it to five games provided he spend some time with sick kids at a São Paulo hospice. He was also ordered to pay a 10,000 real (around $5,000) fine to the institution.
Always trouble, Emerson turned up two hours late for Monday's visit. But he left declaring his time there well spent.
“You can’t call this a punishment from the STJD, it’s more like a life lesson for us all,” Emerson said. “We can bring a little bit of joy to people who are going through a very tough time.”
Jorge Valdívia, a Chilean midfielder for Palmeiras, and Luís Fabiano, the former Brazil and Sevilla striker who now plays for São Paulo, had similar experiences.
Mr. Valdívia was ordered to spend his 10,000 real fine for insulting a referee on food and other aid to a Rio orphanage, while Luís Fabiano was told to visit a rehabilitation center for handicapped children.
Luís Fabiano thoroughly enjoyed his time with the kids, even playfully teasing a six-year-old who supported a rival team.
That attitude served as partial vindication for Mr. Zveiter of the STJD.
“It think the repercussions were positive, the player himself said he was touched by it and that was the main thing,” Zveiter says. “I intend to use this policy more.”
IN PICTURES: Brazil: Sights to see
Mexico: How far do drug gangs reach?
• InSight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Hannah Stone's research here.
According to a study which used Google searches to map the activity of drug cartels in Mexico, these criminal organizations are far from overrunning the whole country, being active in less than a third of the country's municipalities.
El Universal highlighted a study by a team at Harvard University which developed a method that aims to track the activities of Mexican drug traffickers using information available on the Internet. The algorithm processes data produced by Google searches to extract information on where criminal groups operate.
The authors say that one of the main benefits of their method is that it could be a way to overcome the “inherent difficulty posed by the study of illegal actors: lack of data,” especially for countries with more limited resources. They noted that the information they found on gang operations would, if it was gathered by more conventional means, require large-scale intelligence exercises.
InSight Crime Analysis
One of the main findings of the study is that, in the period between 1991 and 2010, drug cartels were present in only 29 percent of the country’s 2,441 municipalities. The authors say that this allowed them to “challenge the widespread assumption that drug traffickers control vast regions of Mexico's territory dividing the country in oligopolistic markets.” They note that the Sinaloa Cartel, for example, only appeared to be active in 14 of Sinaloa’s 18 municipalities in the period of study, while the Familia Michoacana was active in only 69 of Michoacan’s 115 municipalities.
This is an interesting way to quantify what is known about the Mexican drug trade. Unlike illegal armed groups in countries like Colombia, where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have controlled vast tracts of territory, setting up permanent camps and holding many prisoners, Mexico’s criminal groups are focused on controlling drug markets and transit routes. As the report notes, criminal activity is concentrated near Mexico’s large cities, the entry points to the United States, and highways connecting illicit crops or ports to the US border.
The report also produces evidence showing the fracturing of criminal groups in Mexico. It found that the proportion of the municipalities affected by more than one criminal group was 62 percent in 2010, up from 11 percent a decade earlier.
– 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.
Brazil laying down the law
• Joe Bateman is WOLA's Program Officer for Brazil and a contributor to WOLA blogs. The views expressed are the author's own.
There have recently been a number of high-profile criminal cases in Brazil that have caused some to proclaim that a culture of impunity is finally giving way to a culture of accountability where criminals face justice. These cases include the current trials coming to a close associated with the Mensalão scandal, in which around 40 elected and appointed officials are being tried for their involvement in an elaborate Congressional vote-buying scheme that funneled public funds for political gain during the first Lula administration, and the recent conviction of two police officers for the 1996 massacre of 19 landless activists. Historically, few people have faced serious prison time for involvement in political corruption scandals in Brazil, but the Mensalão trials have shown that this trend may be coming to an end. Similarly, killings by the police in Brazil are much higher than in other countries; it is rare that officers who kill civilians while on duty are charged or convicted of wrong-doing, so the conviction against the two police officers for the 1996 massacre is a welcome change.
Yet while these are welcome challenges to Brazil’s culture of impunity, a decisive change has not yet been fully realized. To date, not a single person has been convicted for the hundreds of cases of forced disappearance, torture, and political murder committed during the military dictatorship in Brazil, largely due to the 1978 Amnesty Law that continues to prevent anyone from being tried for these crimes. Nevertheless, there are signs that Brazil may be approaching a tipping point toward accountability and, for the first time, seriously confront its history of human rights violations. In the past few months, federal prosecutors have opened five criminal cases against former members of the Brazilian military and police for their role in forced disappearances during the 1970s military dictatorship. These cases are still in the initial stages, but if they move forward to conviction, it would indeed signal a definitive shift away from impunity toward justice and accountability in Brazil.
RELATED: How much do you know about Brazil? Take our quiz and find out!
In November 2010, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled that Brazil was responsible for the disappearance of 62 members of the Araguaia guerrilla group during the 1970s, and ruled that Brazil had to investigate these cases and criminally prosecute those responsible. Since then, federal prosecutors have attempted to open several cases against those accused of participating in these and other forced disappearances committed during the military dictatorship in Brazil, but until recently, all of these cases were thrown out for violating the Amnesty Law. This changed in August when a federal judge in the state of Para accepted a case against two former members of the military for their role in the forced disappearance of several members of the Araguaia guerrilla group during the 1970s. The judge based her decision on the argument that these were ongoing cases of kidnapping because the bodies have never been found, thus they do not fall within the time frame covered by the Amnesty Law, nor are they bound by the 20-year statute of limitations for murder. As this case has advanced, prosecutors in other states have been encouraged to pursue similar cases.
In September, the Brazilian Supreme Court approved the extradition of a former member of the Argentine Navy School of Mechanics (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada Argentina, ESMA) accused of participating in torture and forced disappearance carried out during the Argentine Dirty War. The conditions of the extradition to Argentina stipulate that he only be tried for kidnapping because the statute of limitations for the other crimes has already passed in Brazil. As this ruling was issued by the highest court in Brazil, it further opened the door for other similar cases to move forward. Following this precedent, on October 23, a federal judge in Sao Paulo accepted a case against a former member of the military, a former member of the police, and a current member of the police for their roles in the 1971 forced disappearance of a man who defected from the military after it assumed control of the government. Using the “on-going” crime argument, a series of forced disappearance cases dating back to the military dictatorship may finally make their way to Brazilian courts in the coming months.
Unfortunately, the argument that forced disappearance is an ongoing crime and thus not bound by the Amnesty Law or any statute of limitations is inapplicable in the hundreds of cases of torture and extrajudicial executions committed during the military dictatorship in Brazil. Although torturers are not explicitly protected by the Amnesty Law, the Brazilian Supreme Court and other legal bodies in Brazil have at various times stated that these acts are covered under the political crimes umbrella of the law, in defiance of international human rights conventions. Thus, cases of torture and political murder (where the body was found) committed during the military dictatorship have continued to go unpunished. Convictions for torture and murder would carry a much longer sentence than the two-to-eight years for kidnapping, but would be much less feasible while the Amnesty Law remains intact, so federal prosecutors seem to be opting to go for what is achievable.
In May 2012, the Brazilian Truth Commission began the two-year process of compiling information on human rights violations committed by the State during the military dictatorship, and many hoped that this body would be another tool for those seeking justice for human rights violations committed during the dirty war. So far, the Commission has held several hearings and received testimony from a number of witnesses, victims, and those accused of human rights violations, and has been aided by the landmark Freedom of Information Law passed in late 2011. While the law creating the Commission expressly denies it prosecutorial power, some have suggested that the information revealed by the Commission could create the necessary momentum to overturn the Amnesty Law, much like the public outrage that fed into the trials surrounding the Mensalão scandal.
Unlike the examples of the Mensalão scandal and the 1997 police massacre, which seem to signal that impunity is giving way to justice in Brazil, there have still been no cases of human rights violations committed during the military dictatorship that have reached conviction, and the current cases are still in the initial stages and could be thrown out in an appeals court even if they do reach a conviction. Until now, no one has gone to jail for the hundreds of cases of torture committed by Brazil’s security forces from 1964-1985. Because of this complete lack of justice, it is probably still too early to say that Brazil has completely left a culture of impunity behind and has transitioned fully to a just, accountable society. In order to fully claim an end to a legacy of impunity, Brazil needs to not just punish those responsible for current crimes and corruption, although this is an important and positive step forward. It also must prosecute those responsible for torture and forced disappearance in past decades as well, as these crimes helped create the legacy of impunity that is felt today. Thankfully, there are signs that this process is underway.
– Joe Bateman is WOLA's Program Officer for Brazil
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez takes an oath with new cabinet ministers at Miraflores Palace in Caracas October 13, 2012. (Miraflores Palace/Handout/REUTERS)
Venezuela prioritizes 'happiness' in its national budget
Happiness is serious business in Venezuela.
At 38 percent of the current budget, spending on what the government refers to as "supreme happiness" has taken precedence over everything including military and energy spending for Hugo Chávez's fourth term as president.
It seems that Venezuela is just as wrapped up in attaining this elusive emotional state as the rest of the Western world, which dedicates billions of dollars to everything from self-help books to vitamin supplements to serious research on happiness. There have been a number of recent studies ranking countries by happiness level – with one called the Happy Planet Index placing Venezuela 9th in terms of happiness out of 151 countries. (Nearby Central America was ranked one of the happiest regions on earth.)
But Chavez’s focus on national bliss hasn’t necessarily made a lot of people “happy.”
The new $92 billion budget, announced by Finance Minister Jorge Giordani last week, has drawn widespread criticism for its vague language and alarmingly low estimates of inflation and oil prices. Meanwhile, expenditure on "happiness" has increased since last year and continues to be the budgetary centerpiece.
But what brings about happiness in Venezuela?
"I understand [happiness] to be associated with social spending," says Francisco Ibarra, a director of the Venezuelan think tank Econométrica, on his interpretation of the government’s definition.
This spending includes some of President Chávez's signature social programs like the Bolivarian Missions, which provide Venezuelans with everything from free housing and medical services to government-subsidized food stores. After his victory in the early October presidential election, Chávez announced such programs would be increased in his upcoming term.
Overshadowing the budget’s central pursuit of happiness, however, is the fact that the budget itself remains opaque.
"Since 2006, the government has stopped announcing the budget like it had done historically, which showed the total cost of programs in [the] public sector,” says Mr. Ibarra. “[N]ow we see much of [the] budget in parallel funds, like Fonden."
Fonden, or the National Development Fund Inc., is the largest of various such funds over which the president has discretion.
Thanks to legislation passed in recent years, oil revenue exceeding the finance minister's new estimate of $55 per barrel can be funneled into the president's development funds.
Currently, oil prices are averaging more than $100 dollars per barrel, but because the budget estimates oil to cost a low $55 per barrel, most of the surplus – in this case $45 per barrel – in oil revenue could be used for programs as the government sees fit. Use of the funds does not require congress's approval.
Despite the disparity in oil prices, other discrepancies exist within the budget as well.
"The minister is assigning a budget that is less than what the government has spent this year," says Mercedes de Freitas, director of the anticorruption NGO Transparencia Venezuela. This could be attributed to a lack of planning for things like public-sector wage increases and infrastructure improvements, according to Transparencia Venezuela’s website.
While the government's budget on paper was $92 billion, it has already spent more than $97 billion this year.
In Venezuela, a country that boasts one of the world's highest inflation rates, this has led some to joke that, when the Chávez administration says it seeks a nation of “happiness,” it really means a nation of “blissful ignorance.”
IN PICTURES: Hugo Chavez, the showman
Colombia: How peace could impact the FARC's role in illegal mining
• InSight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Geoffrey Ramsey's research here.
With the FARC seemingly deepening their involvement in illegal mining, InSight Crime takes a look at what could happen to the Colombian guerrilla group’s stake in the industry should the peace talks see success.
The first round of negotiations between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government in more than a decade officially began on Oct. 18. While many were taken aback by the FARC’s use of fiery rhetoric in a subsequent press conference, there is reason to believe that Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict can come to an end. As analyst Adam Isacson has pointed out, the guerrillas have so far participated in the talks “with seriousness and discipline,” demonstrating an encouraging commitment to the peace process.
But if the talks do go well, potentially resulting in the FARC’s demobilization, what will remain of the illicit finance networks is unclear. The group’s involvement in the drug trade is one of the five pillars up for discussion with the government, with Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon estimating earlier this week that the rebel group earns from $2.4 – $3.5 billion annually from the drug trade. But this is only one of many sources of funding for the rebels. As InSight Crime has reported, illegal mining – and gold mining in particular – is fast becoming a central resource for the FARC. Indeed, a study released in September by the Toledo International Center for Peace (CITpax) found that illegal gold mining had overtaken coca production as the main source of income for the FARC and other armed groups in eight of Colombia’s 32 provinces.
A recent investigation by El Colombiano supports this claim, finding that in the province of Antioquia, rebels charge the equivalent of between $1,600 and $2,750 for each piece of heavy equipment that illegal mining ventures bring in to their areas of control. On top of this, they also charge for the entrance of gasoline, and demand a 10 percent cut of all profits. As El Colombiano notes, this is somewhat ironic given that the head of the FARC’s negotiating team, Luciano Marin, alias “Ivan Marquez,” devoted much of his public remarks in the post-talk press conference to denouncing the “exploitative” practices of large scale mining companies in the country.
InSight Crime Analysis
In many ways the issue of what will become of the FARC’s mining activities is linked to the broader question of the government’s approach to regulating the entire mining sector. Since 2002 the government has encouraged the mining sector, drastically increasing the distribution of mining permits in the country. Despite this, some estimate that nearly half of all mining in Colombia is illegal, or conducted by small scale mines without formal permits.
The government has promised to make it easier for mining ventures to acquire legal permits, but there are still at least 6,000 mines in the country that are currently considered illegal. This measure could be vital to weakening the FARC’s hold on mining. If these reforms were more strongly embraced by the state, it would grant miners the means to report extortion without fearing legal consequences.
Still, the rising price of minerals like gold gives guerrillas an incentive to hang on to their investments. Even if the FARC were to demobilize at the conclusion of peace talks, many cells currently profiting from mining would likely continue their activities despite the wishes of their commanders. Some analysts fear that a FARC demobilization would mirror the failed 2003-2006 demobilization of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), in which a number of mid-level commanders and those under them turned in their arms only to return to their criminal past.
There is also evidence that guerrillas in some areas of the country are deepening their involvement in the mining process itself. The CITpax report found that in the central province of Tolima, the FARC’s Central Joint Command had reportedly purchased mining machinery, presumably to rent it out at a profit to miners in the area.
Since the “end” of the conflict would likely fuel further investment in Colombia’s already booming mining sector, it could put elements of the FARC hanging on to their mining operations at odds with large-scale, permitted mining companies in the country. Extortion and the kidnapping of mining employees, which guerrillas have committed in the past, may increase and become more targeted as remnants of the group find themselves competing for resources and land. As such, any expansion of mining will likely require the Colombian military to prioritize security for multinational and domestic mining projects.
– Geoffrey Ramsey 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.
IN PICTURES: Colombia: Living with the FARC
Rio: An island of relative safety in a sea of vulnerability?
“Brazil has 16,000 kilometers of dry borders, a totally vulnerable area, plus 9,000 kilometers of territorial ocean, and a river 4,000 kilometers long,” State Public Safety Secretary José Mariano Beltrame told a panel audience last week at the annual Global Economy Symposium, held this year in Rio de Janeiro by the German Bertelsmann Foundation and the Kiehl Institute for the World Economy.
“It’s very difficult,” he went on. “Arms, drugs, and mass munition aren’t produced in Brazil, much less in Rio… The country must have a very clear national policy to protect its borders… this problem isn’t being dealt with in a visible manner and with results that citizens can evaluate. It ends up in the hands of the states.”
Mr. Beltrame then shifted his sights from the Brazilian federal government, to other countries.
“Our number one enemy is the automatic rifle, but we don’t have Brazilian automatic rifles; this equipment comes from abroad, mostly from the United States. The producer country should keep track of these transactions. Worse than the weapon is the munition, because munition you buy over and over. There are mechanisms for finding these weapons. Countries have the capability to do this,” Beltrame said.
One plus one equals…
It’s impossible to hear this and not imagine a member of some angry splinter group, sect, or ethnic minority popping over to Rio for the Olympics, easily picking up a weapon, getting him or herself to the top of a building and doing a Lee Harvey Oswald at a delegation en route to some competition.
Which would not exactly be a boon for tourism in Rio de Janeiro.
The state and city governments of Rio de Janeiro are politically allied with [the capital city of] Brasília, but Beltrame’s plaint indicates cracks. And these, plus longtime neglect, have led to a situation, RioRealblog has heard, where the country has a spotty national crime database, crime prevention based more on static police presence than patrols, intelligence based on wiretaps and cellphone monitoring, border patrols that use cellphones (antennae-permitting) for long range communications and position mapping, and almost zero vessel monitoring in Guanabara Bay. Fuel is also short, for waterway monitoring in much of the country.
Just last year, Brazil experienced its worst natural disaster ever, with 800 deaths from flooding in the mountains of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Six months later, a state attorney general who volunteered to help there told an OsteRio debate audience of her experience. “There were several secretaries, lots of people, federal, state, and city officials, each with his own set of priorities, everyone defending his territory,” said Denise Muniz de Tarin. “Things got better only when a general showed up. He put a map on the table.”
The map, Muniz de Tarin added, dated from 1975.
Equipment: How to use it? Who uses it? In conjunction with whom? Communicating how?
In August, Beltrame said he was “all ears” to hear how much the state of Rio could expect budget-wise from the federal government for public safety during the Roman Catholic World Youth Day and papal visit in 2013, the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, the 2014 World Cup, and the 2016 Olympics.
At the time, O Globo newspaper reported on this during a meeting in Brasília to discuss mega-event security and policy.
The paper said that according to the justice ministry’s special secretariat for large events, the 2012-14 national budget for equipment and training is equivalent to $585 million. Special Secretary Valdinho Caetano was quoted as saying that the federal government would buy equipment for state public safety providers. One assumes the lion’s share will go to Rio, but it’s not clear just how it will be spent.
“We want a new more integrated way of providing public safety, with interfaces between federal agencies such as [the intelligence agency] Abin and state agencies, with an exchange of information,” he told O Globo. “Those who come to Rio for the events will find tranquility, as we saw in London. And Rio’s citizenry can be sure that public safety is here to stay, that there’ll be a legacy.”
Since that August meeting of state public safety secretaries and federal officials, the only news (with a couple of exceptions) is that in early September the federal government increased Rio state’s borrowing capacity by US$ 3.5 billion equivalent, partly to pay for public safety equipment. No further public mention has been made of interfaces – or joint agency training, planning, or coordination.
“The negotiation with the [federal government] was important, because now we have guarantees that the military police will be modernized, from vehicles to uniforms and the revision of the police academy curriculum,” a police spokesperson told RioRealblog. Mega-event security per se, the spokesperson noted, is constitutionally Brasília’s responsibility, with local public safety forces taking on the rest of the city.
Whatever the money is spent on, there’s clearly much to be done within and across agencies. Brazil’s Federal Police, responsible under Justice Ministry jurisdiction for the country’s borders, struck for over two months this year for pay raises and other demands; O Globo called it the largest strike in the agency’s union history. Rio’s military police and firemen struck earlier this year.
Federal Police say they’re overworked and that a new institution ought to be created to relieve them of immigration duties, which have mushroomed in the last few years above all because of the petroleum industry’s need for foreign staff – mostly in Rio.
Rio de Janeiro has made enormous strides to improve public safety, leading the way for the country’s other 26 states. This is partly why the city is now viewed as a suitable location for mega-events.
Proud of their warm friendships, both personal and diplomatic, Brazilians are loathe to imagine the kind of attack that took place during the 1972 Olympics, when Palestinians killed Israelis on German soil. And people here rarely worry about shoe bombs. This is obvious when you zip fully shod through security in any airport, as inspectors chat, smile, and wish you a wonderful journey.
Worry is low on the cultural totem pole. Brazilians dallied about fifteen years before adopting seat belts, ultimately strapped in by high fines. Backseat use is still iffy.
But about national security, Mr. Beltrame is one worried man. Which can only be a good thing for Rio de Janeiro.
People queue for Spanish visas outside the embassy in Havana October 16. In addition to easing most Cubans' exit and return, the Cuban government said they will allow Cubans who have left the island return for visits. The changes are the communist island's first major immigration reform in half a century. (Desmond Boylan/Reuters)
More migration reform: Cuba opens door to many illegal emigres and defectors
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, thehavananote.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
After issuing reforms to its migration law last week which will give most Cubans the right to freely travel abroad without getting permission first, the Cuban government has just announced it will allow tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Cubans who left Cuba illegally in the last two decades to return to the island for visits. This will include not only many defectors but also rafters who headed to the United States during the economic crisis that peaked in 1994 and 1995.
There are several key implications of this new policy. First, and most importantly, it is another significant step in the normalization of relations with the Cuban diaspora. Certainly, any visits made by these Cubans abroad will bring economic benefits to the island. But allowing more Cubans to return to the island of their birth will help accelerate the warming trend between the island and its diaspora. More Cuban Americans, for instance, will now have a stake in U.S. policies that increase their access to the island - and their relatives' access to the US. They will also be less inclined to press for or support sanctions that could harm their loved ones or that could jeopardize this new, more open relationship with the island.
RELATED: Think you know Latin America? take our geography quiz!
But will the strongest opponents of the Cuban government welcome these reforms? Not necessarily. These reforms and their impact on Cuban Americans' attitudes only spell trouble for the US embargo. More and more, it's unclear who really wants the policy to stay in place, and a day will come when the momentum will shift to the reformers, rather than remaining with a dwindling number of supporters of the isolationist status quo.
In particular, Cuba's new migration policies could put pressure on key elements of the embargo, such as the wet-foot, dry-foot policy, and even the Cuba Adjustment Act. Each of these policies was created for Cubans fleeing the island. Together they make it easier for Cubans to arrive illegally and to apply for a green card in just one year's time. With so many Cubans able to come and go without persecution by the Cuban government, what remains the basis for these policies?
– Anya Landau French blogs for The Havana Note, a project of the "US-Cuba Policy Initiative,” directed by Ms. Landau French, at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program.
The three-masted ARA Libertad, a symbol of Argentina's navy, lies docked at the port in Tema, outside Accra, Ghana, Tuesday, Oct. 23. (Gabriela Barnuevo/AP)
Ahoy Argentina: Crew of boat seized by creditors in Ghana arrives home
One would have expected crew members of the Libertad, an Argentine ship impounded in Ghana for the past three weeks, to be delighted to return home following its government-ordered evacuation.
But after his arrival in Buenos Aires aboard a charter plane with 278 colleagues, Luis Suárez was anything but.
“The worst thing you can ask a sailor to do is abandon ship,” he fumed Thursday, criticizing President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The 320-foot long Libertad was seized in the Ghanaian port of Tema after NML Capital Ltd., a subsidiary of billionaire Paul Singer’s New York-based Elliott Capital Management, filed an injunction.
The standoff underscores the battles that continue a decade after Argentina defaulted on $100 billion of debt and gave bondholders no option but to receive hugely reduced payouts.
The vessel is just one of 28 assets that have been seized from Argentina as “vulture funds” like NML pursue full payment.
Such funds – frequently berated by President Kirchner – buy up sovereign debt when governments are in chaos, and can make a lot of money off of it. In fact, some have done quite well.
But not NML, which has received nothing so far. It wants at least $20 million of the $300 million it says it is owed by Argentina before releasing the frigate.
But Kirchner won’t negotiate. Her administration takes huge pride in its “politics of debt reduction” employed since 2003.
In 2002, total public debt was 160 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Today the figure stands at around 40 percent.
That reduction, though, was achieved on Argentina’s terms. The majority of creditors settled for just 30 cents on the dollar after bond swaps in 2005 and 2010.
'What belongs to Argentina'
By refusing to yield to NML, however, the ever-combative Kirchner has incurred the wrath of Libertad’s crew.
“They can have the frigate, but they’ll never take away our dignity,” she said Monday. And so the ship, aboard which remains a skeleton staff of 45, looks set to stay in Ghana. The sailors have subsequently accused Kirchner of failing to stick up for Argentine sovereignty.
“Just as we were made to come back, I hope she has the guts to do the same with the boat,” Mr. Suárez said. “What she said shows she doesn’t care about what belongs to Argentina,” added another disillusioned crew member.
Such criticism is a kick in the teeth for a president who oozes nationalist rhetoric and follows up with policy, like the nationalization of YPF, an oil firm, in April.
“YPF’s ours; it’s Argentine,” read badges worn by senators in Congress. Similarly, Kirchner insists that the Falkland Islands, a British-controlled archipelago 300 miles off the coast of the South American nation, are also “Argentine.”
With Argentina’s Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman receiving little help from the United Nations, Kirchner is left with a difficult task: Appease the Libertad’s disgruntled crew by bringing the ship home, while refusing to give in to the “pirates of the 21st Century,” as Mr. Timerman refers to the creditors that continue to haunt Argentina.
FARC 'earns $2.4 to $3.5 billion' from drugs, says Colombian government
• InSight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Geoffrey Ramsey's research here.
The Colombian government's estimate that the FARC makes up to $3.5 billion annually in profits from the drug trade is staggering, but may not be entirely accurate.
Speaking at a forum organized by the University of Miami on Oct. 23, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon provided the government’s latest figures on the illicit activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). According to Pinzon, the FARC makes between $2.4 and $3.5 billion annually from the drug trade. He added that of the 350 tons of cocaine produced in Colombia annually, some 200 can be linked back to the guerrillas.
Whereas the FARC were believed to have some 20,000 fighters at their peak in 2000, Pinzon said that they currently number 8,147, a drop of more than 50 percent in the past decade. Still, he noted that the rebels are “a very different organization” than before, having lost several top commanders in recent years.
InSight Crime Analysis
Estimating the size of the FARC’s total budget is an inexact science. Pinzon’s estimate of the rebels’ profits from the drug trade differs widely from a recent calculation released by the Attorney General’s Office, which put their total profits at around $1.1 billion. Both of these assessments are far higher than the United Nations Development program’s calculation in 2003, which listed the FARC’s annual income at no more than $342 million, with $204 million coming from the drug trade.
Additionally, Pinzon’s assertion that the FARC are “linked” to nearly two-thirds of cocaine produced in Colombia is a deceptively broad statement. These links can range from involvement in overseeing the early stages of coca cultivation and processing to directly exporting shipments of the drug into neighboring countries like Venezuela or Ecuador. While the guerrillas have been known to participate in the latter, the former arrangement is more common.
Ultimately it may be best to take Pinzon’s figures with a grain of salt. He is likely playing the hardline "bad cop" at the same time as the government enters into peace talks with the guerrillas to try to end the country's five-decade-old conflict. At the negotiating table the FARC are recognized as having political aspirations and their involvement in the drug trade is barely on the agenda for the talks. By focusing on the rebels’ criminal activities in his public comments, Pinzon may be sending a signal to FARC leaders that a failure to follow through on the peace process could see them permanently labelled as nothing more than "narco-terrorists."
– Geoffrey Ramsey 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.
Less is more? Little mention of Cuba in presidential debate could be positive sign.
• Geoff Thale is WOLA's program director and blogs here. The views expressed are the author's own.
[Monday]’s foreign policy debate between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney featured some spirited debate about Libya, Syria, Iran, the size of the US Navy, and teachers.
Yet the debate featured almost nothing about Cuba. Mitt Romney complained, in passing, that President Obama was willing to talk with Fidel Castro (as part of a larger complaint that the President was too accommodating to governments with whom the United States is at odds). But Obama did not respond and, beyond that, the issue did not come up. This absence is surprising, especially because the foreign policy debate took place in Florida.
It was not always this way.
In 1992 candidate Bill Clinton endorsed the Cuban Democracy Act, a measure to further tighten the embargo on Cuba, while campaigning in Florida; President George H.W. Bush announced his support for the Cuban Democracy Act shortly thereafter. In 2000 Al Gore faced considerable opposition from the Cuban-American community in the wake of the Elian Gonzalez crisis; in an effort to woo the Cuban-American vote, his vice presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman, visited the grave of Jorge Mas Canosa, the founder of what was then the leading pro-embargo Cuban American organization.
[Monday], the issue barely came up. Neither candidate sought political advantage by bashing Cuba or trotting out his “anti-Castro” credentials.
What happened?
There are a few obvious answers. The candidates wanted to focus on domestic policy and the US economy, and they repeatedly steered the conversation away from foreign policy. And the foreign policy discussions that the candidates did engage in were all about national headline issues such as Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and China; Latin America did not appear on the agenda.
But the silence on Cuba also suggests some changing political dynamics.
First, President Obama’s modest easing of US-Cuban tensions, and particularly his relaxation of travel restrictions for Cuban Americans, are not particularly controversial, even in South Florida. The Romney campaign does not see much to be gained by highlighting differences on this issue.
Second, the demographics of the Cuban-American community, which have been changing for years, are finally having an impact in the electoral arena (for example, the race between hardline Cuban-American Rep. David Garcia and more moderate Cuban-American challenger Joe Garcia is essentially tied). The older hardline Cuban exiles have been losing ground to younger and newer voters, who are more concerned about domestic politics and want to be able to visit relatives in Cuba. These newer voters are not necessarily friends of the Cuban regime, but Castro-bashing is not high on their agenda and does not win their vote.
The decline in Cuba’s salience as a domestic political issue is an encouraging sign. It suggests that, over time, we might be able to have a more rational discussion about US interests, the changes that are occurring in Cuba itself, and how the United States might play a constructive role in improving the climate for human rights and democracy in Cuba.
– Geoff Thale is WOLA’s Program Director. Mr. Thale has studied Cuba issues since the mid-1990s and traveled to Cuba more than a dozen times, including organizing delegations of academics and members of Congress.
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