The government of Alvaro Uribe has brought improved security and economic growth during his eight years as Colombian president, but on the issue of poverty alleviation – what the Washington Post calls part of the “fuel “ for a 46-year-old conflict with guerrilla activity and the “drug trafficking behind it – Uribe’s government has achieved next to nothing. Colombia’s poverty rate stands at 43% today, and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) sees that as only the beginning of problem. “There is not only significant poverty, but some of the poverty is stunning in its extreme,” said McGovern, a frequent visitor to Colombia since 2001. “It really is at the root of so much of the unrest that occurs.”
The issue of inequality, the Post writes, became particularly salient, at least politically, after it was revealed by the Colombian investigative magazine Cambio last fall that wealthy farmers had received tens of millions of dollars through a special Agriculture Ministry program. [Recent ECLAC reports show the gap between rich and poor rising in Colombia, as opposed to opposite trends in places like Brazil and Peru. The percentage of Colombians who are indigent is also rising, from 20.2 percent in 2007 to nearly 23 percent in 2008]. Some claim a lack of attention to inequality stems from Uribe’s personal belief that small farmers are incapable producers. “The government thinks that the peasantry are not good producers, that they don't know how to save, how to assimilate technologies,” says Alejandro Reyes, author of the recent “Warriors and Peasants: The Plundering of Land in Colombia.” In Juan Forero’s words, “That philosophy was crystallized through the Insured Agro Income program, which provided most of a $250 million annual fund to sugar, palm oil and other large agricultural sectors.”
On the United States side of things, Colombia has been provided with some $7.3 billion in military aid through Plan Colombia since 2000, the Post reports. And Sec. of Defense Robert Gates reiterated US support for the Uribe government’s security policies last week in Bogotá, calling them a “great success” and a model for others fighting “drug traffickers and terrorism.” Uribe’s response to the secretary’s words: thanks to joint Colombia-US military actions, Colombia will soon “be able to say to the world that Colombia has completely overcome the long, dark era of narcoterrorism.” No mention of the inequality issue by either man – an issue which looms heavy on voter’s minds ahead of May’s presidential poll.
In other major stories from this weekend:
· A lead story in the New York Times looks at drug violence-induced migration from Mexico to the US. “Americans are taking in their Mexican relatives, and the local schools have swelled with traumatized children, many of whom have witnessed gangland violence,” officials in various US border towns tell the paper. In El Paso, Texas, “the police estimate that at least 30,000 Mexicans have moved across the border in the past two years because of the violence in Juárez and the river towns to the southeast.” But very few Mexicans are actually being granted official asylum in the United States. According to the Times, “over the last three federal fiscal years, immigration judges heard 9,317 requests across the country, and granted only 183.” Meanwhile, a draconian immigration law passed by the Arizona House last week has many talking this weekend, including the Times editorial page. Here’s the New York Times on the Arizona bill:
[The legislation] would make not having immigration documents a new state misdemeanor, and allow officers to arrest anyone who could not immediately prove they were here legally. That means if you are brown-skinned and leave home without a wallet, you are in trouble.
· Also on the drug war and Mexico, a Wall Street Journal report today says drug violence is “spreading uncomfortably close to the capital.” The article’s focus is the city of Cuernavaca, an hour south of D.F., where purported drug traffickers sent out a public message to residents over the weekend: “We recommend you not go out to restaurants, bars, etc. because we might confuse you with our enemies.” According to the paper, “Cuernavaca finds itself caught in a turf war that erupted after the recent killing of drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, who was killed in a Cuernavaca apartment tower in a shootout with Mexican Navy special forces.” Two rival factions have since emerged, both attempting to take control of trafficking routes previously controlled by Beltran Leyva.
· The Economist has more on the BRICs after last week’s summit Brazil. Specifically, the magazine asks how useful it is to think of the four countries as a “bloc.” New America’s Steve Clemons at the Washington Note offers his take on the matter as well. Meanwhile, Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, insisted Friday that there was an “affinity” between his country, China, and India regarding opposition to new sanctions against Iran. (Ditto for South Africa who also was present in Brazil last week for talks with Brazil and India). Lula met with Chinese and Indian leaders on the sidelines of the summit to discuss the Iran issue, the Washington Post reports. [For more on the matter, a piece by Seth Kugel at Global Post says Brazil’s minister of development was in Tehran last week, while Lula participated in the nuclear summit in DC. The minister apparently came bearing gifts: a Brazilian soccer jersey for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.]
· Also this weekend, another BRIC summit participant, Chinese President Hu Jintao, traveled on to Venezuela for his first ever visit to that country. The New York Times reports that China extended the government of Hugo Chavez $20 billion in loans as the Chinese aim to bring new Venezuelan oil reserves on line. Details of the loans have not emerged in full as of yet, although, the Times reports, “Xinhua, the Chinese government’s news agency, said it involved ‘soft loans’ channeled through the China Development Bank.” The Wall Street Journal calls the loans total price tag “among China's biggest foreign loans ever.” The money is expected to boost Venezuelan oil production which has declined in recent months.
· Rory Carroll at the Guardian has more on how the Chinese are becoming a “major economic player in the USA’s backyard.” Of China’s presence in Latin America, Carroll writes: “Unlike the Russians, who grab attention by sending warships to visit anti-US leaders, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, but struggle to deliver economic deals, the Chinese are all business.” And via Greg Weeks, a great quote from the Carroll piece: “Venezuela's leader has declared himself a Maoist, but that scarcely matters to the Chinese. They just want the oil.”
· US Sec. of Defense Robert Gates finished his Latin America and Caribbean tour over weekend with a final stop in Bridgetown, Barbados. Reuters has a report saying Caribbean leaders told Mr. Gates that “Mexico's U.S.-backed crackdown on drugs was pushing cartels to step up smuggling through [the Caribbean’s] island nations.” Gates responded by arguing drug trafficking now represents a “hemispheric problem.” He also noted that under the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the US plans to increase Caribbean anti-drug assistance to $70 million in fiscal year 2011, up from $45 million in 2010.
· The Miami Herald has a piece from Tim Rogers on the growing dispute between the government of Daniel Ortega and the Nicaraguan opposition. According to the report the conflict is over two pro-Sandinista judges who are refusing to step down from their posts after their terms expired last week. Earlier in the year, Ortega decreed that some 25 judges and magistrates could retain their positions until replaced or reelected by the National Assembly which “has been paralyzed by political gridlock and largely inoperative for months.”
· In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa was in the news this weekend for saying he would move to take over foreign oil concessions in his country if companies continued to resist increased state control of the oil sector. According to Reuters, “the government wants foreign oil operators to give up profit-sharing deals and sign new contracts under which they would become service providers.”
· I hope to have more in the coming days on the alternative climate summit which begins later this week in Cochabamba, Bolivia. But already there have been a number of reports on the event, including in the Guardian and from Jim Shultz at the Democracy Center.
· Finally some opinions. Peter Hakim, outgoing president of the Inter-American Dialogue, writes on Mexico-Brazil bilateral relations. According to Hakim, a “strategic accord on economic integration” agreed to by Brazil and Mexico at last month’s regional meetings in Cancun “has the potential of becoming the [new] political and economic panorama of the Americas.” “For the first time,” Hakim argues, such an agreement would “establish a solid base for a serious relationship between the two largest and most important countries in Latin America.” An excerpt of Gloria Estefan’s opening remarks at an Obama fundraiser in Miami are re-printed in the Miami Herald. And in the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes on Honduras and what she calls Ambassador Hugo Llorens’s attempt to “advance the political strategy of some of Washington's most hard-left Democrats.” Specifically, O’Grady’s complaints are over a dinner party Llorens had with a half-dozen Lobo cabinet members and two Capitol Hill staffers, Fulton Armstrong and Peter Quilter. The piece ends up being more a personal attack on Fulton Armstong than anything else.
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