Tag Archives: honduras

Blogging note: Tegucigalpa

DSC09607

I’m off to Tegucigalpa to do some original reporting in advance of the Honduran general elections that take place on November 24.el salvador

In the meanwhile, there may be fewer posts at Suffragio over the next week or so and the posts that I do write will invariably be about Honduras as I spend some time in the country and meet some of its people.  I’ll be looking to get a sense of what each of the three major candidates and their campaigns are doing, what academics, reporters and everyday Hondurans think about the election campaign, and the past, present and future of bilateral US-Honduran relations.

If any readers out there have any tips for how best to enjoy Honduras — especially Tegucigalpa and southern Honduras and/or Roatán and the Bay Islands, please do let me know in the comments.

Chart of the day: Central American GDP per capita

Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 1.00.45 PM

Central America holds its fair share of elections over the coming months, starting with the November 24 general election in Honduras, where voters will select a new president and all 128 legislators in the Congreso Nacional (National Congress).honduras flag iconPanama Flag Iconcosta_rica_flagel salvador

But that’s just the beginning — El Salvador holds the first round of its presidential election in February 2014, with a potential runoff in March 2014, Costa Rica holds a general election in early February 2014, and Panamá holds its general elections in May 2014.  Guatemala will hold off until autumn 2015 and Nicaragua and Belize will hold off until 2016, when president Daniel Ortega (yes, that one) may well attempt to cling to power.

What’s more, in each of the four Central American elections set to take place in the next seven months, presidential term limits prohibit the incumbent from reelection, so four countries with over 21 million people will make political transitions of some kind.

But what’s most staggering is that the issues in each of the four elections are massively different — GDP per capita varies widely.  Though you can see a slight variance in 1960 setting Panamanian and Costa Rican GDP per capita apart, Guatemala briefly overtook Costa Rica in the early 1980s and Nicaragua was also on essentially the same path as Panamá and Costa Rica before flatlining for a decade starting in the late 1970s (following the Managua earthquake and anticipating the fall of the Somoza regime) and actively falling during the 1980s and early 1990s when the Cold War-inspired civil war devastated the country.  Though El Salvador continued to growth at a slow, steady rate throughout its civil war, which raged from 1979 to 1992, its growth rate exploded in the mid-1990s, and pushed the country to appreciably higher standards of living than its neighbors.

Still, the greatest relatively gains have been made over the past two decades:

Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 1.09.36 PM

Costa Rica, with its tourism (and its position as a regional hub for Intel microprocessors), and Panamá, with its canal revenues, banking and insurance sectors and, increasingly, also tourism, lead the way.  Panamá City long overtook Managua as Central America’s financial hub.

In short, Panamá and Costa Rica are becoming tropical extensions of North America, with GDP per capita approach $10,000, essentially equivalent to that of México, and just a little lower than Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

The remaining four countries major countries (minus Belize) are languishing further behind, with some of the lowest standards of living in all of Latin America.

Especially in Honduras, which features the higher homicide rate in the world — a rate that’s more than doubled since 2005 from around 37 homicides per 100,000 to 91.6 in 2011.  The World Bank estimates that violence and crime levels cost Honduran economy about 10% of GDP annually.  Security dominates the election campaign, but it’s a real drag on the economy as well.

Nonetheless, the economy has grown steadily at around 3.5% for the past four years, in part due to the strength of its export economy, fueled by the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) among the United States, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and several other Central American countries.  That has boosted the maquila (assembly) industry, as well as other service and manufacturing sectors in Honduras — agriculture remains important, but bananas represent just about 3.5% of exports in the original ‘banana republic,’ and coffee amounts to just 10% of exports.  The economy remains incredibly tied to the United States — exports to the United States account for about 30% of Honduran GDP and remittances from the United States and elsewhere contribute about 20% of Honduran GDP.

But whereas economists and observers once joked that Honduras was so poor that it couldn’t even afford an oligarchy, it now has the highest Gini coefficient in Central America (57) and one of the highest in the world as inequality continues to rise.  About 60% of Hondurans live below the poverty line.  Moreover, corruption remains a real impediment to foreign investment — Transparency International ranked the country 133rd in 2012, again the lowest score in Central America (and just barely topping the more lowly ranked Venezuela).

In global terms, however, Honduran GDP per capita (around $4,600 on a PPP basis), is relatively wealthy — that’s still higher than in India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria, Kenya or Ethiopia.

Suffragio is going to Honduras to cover the campaign for the upcoming presidential election

tegucigulpa

I will be in Honduras from October 31 to November 7, hoping to cover as much as possible of the campaign leading up to November 24’s presidential election.honduras flag icon

If you are in Honduras, or if you know anyone in Honduras (especially Tegucigalpa), I am welcoming all sources or leads to understand just a little more about the country — and its history, culture, economics and politics.

 

A diatribe against arepas — and food policy in the Caribbean basin

image

CARACAS, Venezuela — I’ve basically had one meal since I’ve arrived in Venezuela, and in the spirit that the local cuisine is going to be the tastiest cuisine, I made my first meal arepas (pictured above), a ubiquitous cornmeal disk (some are more pancake-esque, others biscuit-esque) filled in this case with beef.Venezuela Flag Icon

It’s not that I want to throw shade on Venezuela in particular, but it’s stunning to me just how unhealthy food is in Central America and in the Caribbean — when you think about the tropical climate that the region features, you’d think it could be one of the world’s most amazing food traditions — think fresh fishes complimented by fruit-based salsas and the kind of salads that put health-conscious Californians to shame.

But the reality is a lot of fried food, heavy fare that seems somehow out-of-place in such a hot and humid climate, and I find that to be true throughout the region.

In Nicaragua, they’ve turned fried pork rinds (chicharrón) into a main dish. El Salvador’s contribution is the pupusa, a kind of cheese-filled corn disk. In Puerto Rico, the most well-known dish is mofongo, fried plantains that are mashed together (see below). Ubiquitous starchy fried plantain chips (patacones or tostones) are never hard to find.

image

Throughout the Caribbean islands, fresh fish is routinely fried up (though sometimes mercifully grilled), and served with any number of heavy, starchy sides — in Barbados, ‘pie’ — what Americans know as macaroni and cheese — and french fries are a standard side dish. It’s not uncommon on the Colombian coast for a typical meal to include fried fish, rice or some other starchy dish, and some sort of fried plantain.

image

Here in Venezuela, I also have to look forward to tequeños, a tight coil of fried white bread filled with white cheese, and I passed a stand earlier for cachapas, a kind of corn pancake.

Moreover, this region in particular has taken a liking to norteamericano-style fast food. Guatemalans are so taken with fried chicken that a flight from Guatemala City to the States isn’t a flight without the smell wafting through the boxes of furtively (and not-so-furtively) obtained chicken from the home-grown chain, Pollo Campero (see below).

image

But why did the food culture of the Caribbean basin develop in this fashion, and what does it mean for the region’s future? Continue reading A diatribe against arepas — and food policy in the Caribbean basin