CIAO DATE: 04/2014
Winter 2013
Natural Resource Extraction: Boon or Curse? (PDF)
AQ Online
Latin America's mineral resources have been the continent's blessing-and curse-since well before the arrival of the first Spanish adventurers. Modern mining technology has helped propel the region's resource-based growth, but as this special section explores, it has created a new set of pitfalls and possibilities for political leaders, businesses and communities. - See more at: http://americasquarterly.org/charticles/natural-resource-extraction-chile-peru-colombia/#sthash.Y3d0RYYi.dpuf
What's in Your Smartphone? (PDF)
Wilda Escarfiller, Leani Garcia
Think that your mobile phone is a modern device? Hardly. While the components and circuitry may be highly technical, the materials that go into it are as old as the earth. And the conditions under which they are extracted—often in remote areas high in the mountains or the desert—are the roots of an industry that has driven the global economy for millennia, and will continue to do so. When you’re standing at the edge of an open-pit copper mine, you couldn’t feel more removed from the digital world, yet you’re just at the beginning of it. What you’re holding in your hand is simply the most modern creation from some of the oldest materials in the world, and a lot of history in getting them there. Here are some of the more basic elements that go into our mobile phones. - See more at: http://americasquarterly.org/charticles/whats-in-your-smartphone/#sthash.HD5DvtqV.dpuf
The Geopolitics of the Modern Resource Boom (PDF)
Bernice Lee
The specter of resource insecurity is back. Intensified resource stress, driven in part by the booming demand from emerging economies and a decade of tight commodity markets, is reshaping the global economy. Whether the resources are actually diminishing is a matter of debate, but one thing is clear: the resources sector is increasingly characterized by supply disruptions, volatile prices and rising political tensions over access. In many places, myopic government policies have exacerbated the challenges.
Resource Nationalism: Beyond Ideology (PDF)
Hal Weitzman
Latin America’s political Left has displayed symptoms of bipolarity for much of the past decade. An early purveyor of this diagnosis was Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican foreign secretary (2001–2003), who in 2004 identified what he called “two Lefts” in a piece for Project Syndicate. One Left had “truly socialist and progressive roots” that was “following pragmatic, sensible and realistic paths.” The other stemmed from “a populist, purely nationalist past” that had “proven much less responsive to modernizing influences.”1
Prisons: In Jail, But Not Sentenced (PDF)
Richard M. Abord, Ashley D. Cannon
Each year, millions of people across the world find themselves in jail without being convicted of anything—often for months at a time—as they await trial. Alarmingly, although the rights to liberty, security and equal justice under the law are cornerstones of justice systems throughout the Americas, pretrial detention is being employed at rates two to five times greater than the international average, and its use continues to grow unabated. The impact of this unfair, harmful and inhumane practice spreads beyond the detainee to families, communities and government itself. Pretrial detention serves an important purpose in the judicial process, but in practice its excessive and arbitrary use traps innocent people in a legal limbo, stretching the capacity of already-overcrowded prisons and undermining respect for the criminal justice system.
Crossing Boundaries (PDF)
Anthony Bebbington
The extraction of oil, natural gas and minerals is transforming Latin America. The conflicts that accompany this extraction have become part of the social and political landscape in much of the region. Some of this conflict has been violent. In June 2009, a confrontation between protestors and police in Bagua, Peru left at least 43 people dead, including 33 policemen. In September 2011, the Bolivian government cracked down on protestors who marched from Trinidad to La Paz in opposition to a highway designed to pass through the Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park—TIPNIS) that, among other things, would have facilitated hydrocarbon extraction. Mining Watch reports that since 2008, four activists have been murdered in Cabañas, El Salvador, where Canada’s Pacific Rim Mining Corporation hopes to open a new gold mine; local organizations believe these deaths are linked to the mining project. In the Cajamarca region of Peru, site of the Yanacocha gold mine, many activists and protestors have been harassed and some killed for over a decade.
Repression, Resistance, and Indigenous Rights in Guatemala (PDF)
Anita Isaacs, Rachel Schwartz
The imposing statue of Anastasio Tzul, the nineteenth-century Guatemalan Indigenous intellectual and resistance leader, has presided over the tree-lined square in the town of Totonicapán in western Guatemala for as long as anyone can remember. But on a recent visit, it stood in mourning. Tzul, gripping the wooden cane carried by traditional Mayan authorities, was shrouded in a cape of black cloth, and the Guatemalan flag behind him was replaced with a sheet of black plastic, flying at half-staff. Scraps of paper carrying words of remembrance, of sorrow and fury, were haphazardly taped to the statue’s base, and passersby—men and women, young and old—circled the figure reading each of the hand-scrawled messages. Although they said little, their faces made their feelings clear: pain, stoicism and defiance.
Illegal Mining (PDF)
Mari Hayman
Propelled by the skyrocketing global price of minerals, illegal mining has recently come into focus as a major environmental and social concern. Images of pristine rainforest scarred by clear-cuts, toxic mercury released into rivers and the air, and accounts of human trafficking, child labor and prostitution in remote mining encampments all point to the need for Latin American governments to rein in the practice. Since illegal mining operations are carried out without state permission, they do not comply with labor or environmental regulations or pay taxes. But the term is also misleading.
Avoiding the Resource Curse (PDF)
Rosemary Thorp, Jose Carlos Orihuela, Maritza Paredes
A country’s ownership of rich natural resources is not necessarily a blessing. It presents a set of extraordinary challenges for policy makers. Bonanzas in foreign exchange all too easily create overvaluation and undermine efforts at economic diversification. At the socio-political level, mineral exploitation provokes intractable social conflicts, while the prospect of environmental contamination is ever-present. The problems in institutional development and the associated political economy become magnified when a country possesses resources that are concentrated in a specific point—a mine, for example—often far from more traditional economic centers. We refer to these as point-source extractives; their spatial constraints bring particular challenges. Successful management of the extractive sector requires sophisticated institutions, strong incentives and politicians committed to fruitful development. But in the long term, dependence on extractives tends to undermine precisely the institutions and the political will that are crucial for equitable and sustainable growth.
Chile's Pragmatic Middle-Class Voter (PDF)
Gregory Elacqua, Cristobal Aninat
Chile’s middle class has always played a key role in the country’s politics. In the first four presidential elections after the 1989 democratic transition, middle-class voters were a decisive factor in the victories of center-left Concertación candidates Patricio Aylwin, Eduardo Frei, Ricardo Lagos, and Michelle Bachelet. By 2009, however, Chile’s middle class turned away from the Concertación and voted for Sebastián Piñera, a center-right businessman and former senator who became the country’s first non-Concertación president since the return to democracy. The historic shift was not driven by any change in the Left’s platform and rhetoric, or by the personalities of the candidates. It was the Chilean middle class that had changed.
Ask the Experts: Mining (PDF)
Francisco Panizza, Jon Samuel, Anthony Hodge, Lisa Sachs, Edwin Julio Palomino Cadenas
To secure a positive development outcome from mining, governments first need to create the conditions that will attract investment in new mines. This starts with open and honest means of allocating mineral exploration and development rights, the rule of law, a stable regulatory and fiscal regime, and openness to foreign investment.
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD: CIUDAD JUÁREZ
Joseph J. Kolb
Documenting the return of civic and economic normalcy to a city under siege. Civic and economic life is coming back to a city once synonymous with gangland murders and violence against women. The lunch shift is in full swing at Viva Juárez restaurant. After a morning of shopping, pedestrians trickle into the popular eatery on Avenida Benito Juárez, where cooks chop onions and peppers at a formica counter and the aroma of carnitas wafts onto the sidewalk. The mood inside Viva Juárez and on the nearby streets is relaxed. But the bullet holes in the peeled and faded burnt-orange façade of the nearby Del Pueblo restaurant, closed down after a shooting, are stark reminders of the city’s recent history as the “Murder Capital of the World.”
David C. Brotherton, Carlos E. Ponce
After decades of gang-related violence, resulting in unfathomable bloodshed and a worsening security crisis, change has come to El Salvador. One reason is the truce signed by the notorious street gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18—now nearing its one-year anniversary. In the process, El Salvador has transformed itself from a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world to a regional leader on solutions for combating gang violence. The outcomes of the truce are unequivocal. The homicide rate has dropped 60 percent, from 14 per day before the truce to five per day today. Extortion has declined by 10 percent and kidnappings have fallen by 50 percent, according to the Salvadoran government. And due to less punitive crackdowns on gangs, fewer young people are serving time in the most overcrowded prison system in Central America, where 27,000 inmates languish in institutions built for 7,000. Now residents in poor communities once paralyzed by fear and intimidation are again engaged in rebuilding a society still ravaged by the civil war that ended 21 years ago.
Arts Innovator: Andrea Baranenko, Venezuela Latin America is moving forward, but Venezuela is moving in the opposite direction,” says Andrea Baranenko, a 28-year-old Venezuelan filmmaker whose recent documentary, Yo Indocumentada (I, Undocumented), exposes the struggles of transgender people in her native country. The film, Baranenko’s first feature-length production, tells the story of three Venezuelan women fighting for their right to have an identity. Tamara Adrián, 58, is a lawyer; Desirée Pérez, 46, is a hairdresser; and Victoria González, 27, has been a visual arts student since 2009. These women share more than their nationality: they all carry IDs with masculine names that don’t correspond to their actual identities. They’re transgender women, who long ago assumed their gender and now defend it in a homophobic and transphobic society.
Aurora Garcia Ballesteros, Beatriz Cristina Jiminez Blasco
Latin America has historically played an important role in Spain’s migratory cycles—both as a sender and as a recipient. Spanish political immigration to the hemisphere surged following the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and again after World War II, when Spaniards flocked to Latin America for economic reasons. The flow reversed with the late-1980s economic crises in Latin America. Between 1996 and 2010, Latin Americans in Spain—measured by those who obtained Spanish citizenship—grew nearly tenfold, from 263,190 to 2,459,089. Now Europe’s economic crisis, which has acutely affected Spain, is causing the flows to shift again. According to data from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), for the first time in this century, more people are now leaving Spain than moving to it. Net migration in 2011 was reported at negative 50,090 people, with 507,740 leaving Spain and 457,650 arriving.
Olivia Crellin
In October 1988, a national plebiscite to extend the military rule of then-Chilean President Augusto Pinochet was voted down by 56 percent of the electorate. This transformational event has been re-imagined 24 years later in a film named after the “No” coalition of 16 political parties that led the opposition campaign.No is the third and final work in a cinematic depiction of the period of Pinochet’s rule (1973–1989) by Chilean director Pablo Larraín, 36. The first two were Tony Manero (2008) and Post Mortem (2010). The 110-minute film, starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, is based on Plebiscito, an unproduced play by Chilean novelist Antonio Skármeta about René Saavedra, a young advertising executive who spearheaded the “No” campaign and managed to outflank the pro-Pinochet forces, who were outspending the opposition 30-to-1, with a shrewd messaging strategy that mobilized almost 4 million supporters.
Sergio Teixeira
Brazil, the country of the future” was a sarcastic cliché popular among Brazilians to describe a country striving to reach an economic potential that always seemed just out of reach. The past decade, however, offered hope that Brazil was finally fulfilling the cliché’s promise. As hyperinflation became a distant memory, the hemisphere’s largest country joined Russia, India and China in the ranks of emerging economies. The story of the passage from cliché to reality is explored in Multinacionais brasileiras: competências para a internacionalização (Brazilian Multinationals: Competences for Internationalization), co-authored by Afonso Fleury, a professor in the department of production engineering at Universidade de São Paulo, and Maria Tereza Leme Fleury, director and professor at Escola de Administração de São Paulo da Fundação Getúlio Vargas.