Tag Archives: south america

Ecuador

As Lasso rises, Ecuador could be next leftist LatAm domino to fall

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Former vice president Lenín Moreno hopes to keep the Latin American left’s hopes alive with a victory in Ecuador on Sunday. (Facebook)

No one has more riding on the outcome of the April 2 presidential runoff in Ecuador than Julian Assange. 

The Wikileaks founder has been shacked up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012. Officially, Assange is evading an extradition to Sweden to stand trial for sexual assault charges. Ecuador’s outgoing president Rafael Correa granted Assange asylum five years ago, a populist move responding to the eccentric Australian native’s fears that he might ultimately be subjected to the grips of US extradition.

If one-time frontrunner Lenín Moreno, Correa’s former vice president, and the heir to Correa’s self-proclaimed ’21st century socialist’ Alianza PAIS movement, wins Sunday’s election, Assange can rest assured that Ecuador’s government will not revisit that arrangement anytime soon.

But if center-right insurgent Guillermo Lasso has his way, he will evict Assange from from Ecuador’s protections within 30 days of taking office.

Though Assange’s fate is drawing global headlines, Ecuador’s election represents a fascinating showdown between two very different policy views for the country’s future outcome — and a referendum on Correa’s decade-long rule. The result will hold deep consequences for the country, its rule of law, its electorate and Latin America generally.  A country of 16 million that, since 2000, has used the US dollar as its currency, Ecuador is today the eighth-largest economy in Latin America.

It’s the latest battleground in a series of contests in the mid-2010s that have generally brought setbacks to the populist left. A Lasso victory on Sunday could add pressure to Venezuela’s increasingly autocratic government, and boost conservative opposition hopes in Chile’s elections later this year and in Bolivia’s in 2019.

Guillermo Lasso narrowly forced his opponent into a runoff in what is now a clear referendum on Rafael Correa’s decade-long presidency. (Facebook)

Former bankers do not typically make great politicians, but Lasso narrowly forced a runoff by holding former vice president Lenín Moreno to just below 40% in first round on February 19.

That gives Lasso a head-on opportunity to face Moreno without dispersing multiple opposition forces within Ecuador. Third-placed candidate Cynthia Viteri, a former legislator and a social conservative, has endorsed Lasso. Fourth-placed Paco Moncayo, a leftist who served as Quito mayor from 2000 to 2009, has refused to endorse either of the two finalists — a snub to Correa and Moreno.

Viteri’s support and Moncayo’s ambivalence have both boosted Lasso’s runoff chances, though it may still not be enough — Lasso finished more than 11% behind Moreno in the first round. Indeed, most polls give Moreno a slight edge over Lasso, a longtime president of the Bank of Guayaquil whose political experience is negligible — he served briefly as ‘superminister for finance’ in 1999 during the scandal-plagued administration of Jamil Mahuad, sentenced to a 12-year prison sentence in 2014 for embezzlement. In 2012, Lasso formed a new opposition party, Creando Oportunidades (CREO, Creating Opportunities) to back his presidential ambitions in 2013. Lasso finished a humiliating second place (with just 22.7% of the vote) to Correa, who won a first-round victory with 57.2% support. But that race put Lasso in position to consolidate support as the chief opposition candidate this year.  Continue reading As Lasso rises, Ecuador could be next leftist LatAm domino to fall →

Guyana

PPP narrowly defeated by Guyana’s opposition coalition

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It’s easy to forget about the northeastern corner of South America, collectively known as ‘The Guianas,’ which includes two countries (Guyana and Suriname), a French overseas holding (French Guiana) and, sometimes, the sparsely populated eastern Guyana region of Venezuela and Amapá state in northeastern Brazil.Guyana Flag

Those two sovereign countries, Guyana and Suriname, formerly British and Dutch colonies, respectively, are home to just over 1.3 million people. French Guiana, an overseas department of France, and one of the Western Hemisphere’s last vestiges of colonialism, is home to just another 250,000 people.

Even by the standards of Latin America, which is arguably underpopulated (especially in contrast to China, India and other parts of southeastern Asia), the Guianas are some of the least population-dense places on earth. Guyana, home to just 750,000 people, has a population density of around 9.5 per square mile. To put that into perspective, it compares to densities of around 37 for Argentina, 62 for Brazil, 85 for the United States and 158 for Mexico.

Earlier this year, however, Exxon Mobil claimed it discovered offshore oil deposits that could boost the country’s economy, though attempts to extract the oil could draw Venezuelan ire. Nevertheless, the region remains relatively underdeveloped and Guyana is one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, despite gold and bauxite deposits and steady rice and sugar production. More than 50% of its native population has emigrated — only Nicaragua and Haiti have lower per-capita GDPs.

That’s part of the reason that former army general David Granger (pictured above) led a multi-ethnic coalition to power in elections on May 11.

It’s the first transition of power since 1992, when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) dominated the country’s post-socialist turn to democratic politics. PPP officials, including former president Donald Ramotar, still refuse to concede their narrow defeat, even as Granger was sworn in over the weekend as Guyana’s new president. Traditionally, the PPP has depended on votes from the ethnic Indian community in Guyana. While Granger’s coalition won the traditional support of the Afro-Guyanese community, the multi-ethnic patina of the coalition bolstered his claim to destroy race-based politics in the oft-forgotten country.  Continue reading PPP narrowly defeated by Guyana’s opposition coalition →

Uruguay

Vázquez charges into second round of Uruguayan vote

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tabarevazquezPhoto credit to República.

One of the most salient facts that’s been repeated over the course of this year’s presidential elections in Latin America — first Colombia, then Bolivia and, of course, Brazil last weekend — is that just two incumbents have lost reelection bids in more than three decades of growing regional democracy.uruguay

That’s true, of course.*

But many countries in Latin America limit presidents to a single lifetime term or, at least, prohibit reelection.

That’s the case in Uruguay, where presidents are not eligible for reelection, though they are eligible to run for a second non-consecutive term. That’s why Tabaré Vázquez, Uruguay’s former president, is the nominee of the leftist Frente Amplio (Broad Front) and why he nearly won the first round of the Uruguayan presidential election outright on Sunday.

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Vázquez is vying to win a third consecutive term for Frente Amplio, following the administration of his former agricultural minister, José Mujica, who has pursued a more socially progressive agenda since 2010 than Vázquez implemented between 2005 and 2010. Vázquez, back in 2009, actually preferred that his finance minister to Mujica. But Mujica’s wide following on the Uruguayan left powered him to the coalition’s presidential nomination.

As president, Mujica (who was elected as a senator on Sunday) signed into law a bill legalizing abortion that Vázquez once vetoed. He has also, famously, introduced the most comprehensive marijuana legalization reforms within Latin America, while espousing an aura of almost extreme humility.

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RELATED: Meet José Mujica, the Uruguayan president who’s on the path to legalizing marijuana

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Though a Vázquez restoration would hew Uruguayan policy slightly more to the center, the fate of Mujica’s efforts to legalize marijuana use and other policy matters, including a pledge to take in prisoners from the US facility on Guantánamo Bay, hinge on Vázquez’s victory in the November 30 runoff.  Continue reading Vázquez charges into second round of Uruguayan vote →

Bolivia

Morales set to cruise to easy reelection in Bolivia

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evobikerPhoto credit to Xinhua / Reynaldo Zaconeta / ABI.

Though the late Hugo Chávez has been dead for over a year, the progeny of his democratic socialist movement elsewhere in Latin America are thriving — in part by playing much smarter regional politics than Chávez ever did.bolivia

Even as Chávez’s heirs in Venezuela struggle to control a growing economic and governance crisis, the other children of chavismo, including Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and Bolivian president Evo Morales, may be showing how to marry socialist ideology to a more sustainable co-existence with global markets.

All three leaders, including Morales, tweaked investors by nationalizing industries and, in the case of Morales, railing against the international patchwork of neoliberal institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

As with Correa and Chávez, Morales came to power with a relatively anti-US disposition, and one of the first things that Morales, a former coca farmer, did upon taking office was to kick US drug enforcement agents out of the country. His steps have de-escalated the militarization and violence involved with US-led efforts to eradicate drug production in Latin America, and have likely emboldened the calls of other regional leaders to call for a new approach to illicit drugs, including legalization.

But if Morales has nationalized industries like a Venezuelan socialist, he’s run them like a Norwegian state manager.

That’s one of the chief reasons that Morales (pictured above), the country’s first indigenous leader, is such a favorite to win reelection to a third term as Bolivia’s president in general elections on October 12. Bolivians will also vote to elect the members of both houses of its Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional (Plurinational Legislative Assembly).

Continue reading Morales set to cruise to easy reelection in Bolivia →

Argentina, Venezuela

Will Venezuela or Argentina be the first to crumble into economic crisis?

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kirchnermaduro

I write tomorrow for The National Interest about the dual economic crises in Venezuela and Argentina.argentinaVenezuela Flag Icon

The similarities between the two economic crises are uncanny — inflation, capital controls, dollar shortages, overvalued currencies, shortages, etc.

But the similarities don’t stop there.  Both countries currently fee political limitations to force policy changes to avert crisis — and that limit the political capital of the leaders of both countries, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, to enact reforms:

Accordingly, normal political channels seem blocked through at least the end of 2015, despite the fact that both countries should be considering massive economic policy u-turns that will require significant amounts of political goodwill neither Maduro nor Fernández de Kirchner possess. But there’s an even greater inertia lurking beyond even the routine political impasse—a kind of political dead-hand control in both countries, on both a short-term and long-term basis.

First, both Venezuela and Argentina remain tethered to the political ideologies of chavismoand kirchnerismo, even though their proponents, Chávez and Néstor Kirchner, are now dead. Those policies may have worked over the last decade to achieve certain goals, including greater social welfare and poverty reduction in Venezuela and a rapid return to economic growth and competitive exports for Argentina. But it should be clear by now that chavismoand kirchnerismo are unable to provide answers to their respective countries’ economic woes today.

Even more broadly, I argue that beyond the shortcomings of chavismo and kirchnerismo, Venezuela faces a long-term resources curse and Argentina faces the long-term legacy of protectionism and statism of peronismo, which in each case underlie the current economic crises.  What’s more, the IMF-sponsored reforms in 1989 that led to the massive Caracazo riots in Venezuela and the IMF-approved lending tied to Argentina’s 1990s ‘convertibility’ crisis that led to the 1999-2001 peso crisis have undermined orthodox economic policymaking:

What’s more, ill-conceived attempts to rupture those dominant paradigms through orthodox ‘Washington consensus’ reform processes led to economic and political disaster. In both countries, leaders experimented with neoliberalism, facilitated by the misguided zeal of the International Monetary Fund, without enacting any corresponding safety nets or shock absorbers. The resulting crises led both countries to double down on their prevailing ideologies, thereby, ironically, making economic reform today even more difficult.

In both cases, the political, historical and economic legacies have prevented the broadly moderate, business-friendly, social democratic middle courses that much of the rest of South America has embraced to wide success, including Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil.

Venezuela

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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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 →