CIAO DATE: 08/2014
Spring 2014
Immigrant Access to Higher Education (PDF)
Leani Garcia, Kate Brick
As the costs of higher education continue to reach new heights, access to in-state tuition for public universities and colleges is often the determining factor in whether students will be able to continue their education beyond high school. Despite having grown up and been residents of states often longer than the typical residency requirements, undocumented immigrant youth, also known as DREAMers--named after the Senate's DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act--have historically been excluded from this critical state benefit. But this is changing. The trend toward restricting admission to public colleges or denying in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants is shifting. Many states have begun to realize that supporting undocumented youth in obtaining an education is not only a humane policy, it's also an investment in the state's human capital and economy. States are approaching this in diverse ways, with the most progressive states passing laws that guarantee tuition equity and allow for state-funded financial aid and private scholarships. Others only offer tuition equity to students who have received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and are therefore in the U.S. legally. On the other end of the spectrum, a minority of states are choosing to explicitly prevent this population from accessing in-state tuition and, in the most extreme cases, from enrolling in public colleges at all (Georgia and Montana). - See more at: http://americasquarterly.org/charticles/immigrant-access-to-higher-education/#sthash.BEyxgNDX.dpuf
The Future of Latin American Studies (PDF)
Charles Hale
The field of Latin American studies has been a target for critics ever since it became a prominent feature of the U.S. academic landscape in the 1960s. Earlier critiques were quite severe, often permeated by the premise that studying Latin America from the North (and even the very concept of “Latin America” as an object of study) connoted the region’s racial and cultural inferiority. This was further aggravated by the inability to fully disentangle Latin American research from U.S. economic and geopolitical interests. Even the most apparently benign scholarship was considered to be a reinforcement of North–South hierarchies of knowledge and power. Ironically, some of the critiques came from self-identified Latin Americanists who were determined to change the field from within. A different line of questions has come from the outside, citing theoretical or methodological deficiencies in relation to well-established humanities and social science disciplines.1 While some critiques have been less constructive than others, this scrutiny has, in fact, inspired self-reflective creativity and innovation in Latin American studies. As a result, the field is not only stronger, but well-positioned to address the challenges of the twenty-first century.2
Protest U. (PDF)
Indira Palacios-Valladares
Millions of students have taken to the streets across Latin America in recent years in protests that reflect an unprecedentedly broad mobilization of popular opinion. Following massive demonstrations led by secondary school students in 2006 in Chile, university students launched a series of protests in May 2011. Powered by a coalition of public and private university students, the protests succeeded in shutting down most of the university system as well as major technical higher education institutions. Since their initiation, popular support for the students’ demands—more affordable and equitable education, and better government regulation of fraudulent practices in the education industry—has run as high as 80 percent.1 In the same year, student protests in Colombia’s most prestigious public and private universities eventually expanded to include universities and technical schools across the country, and, as in Chile, earned the support of millions of sympathizers. Students demanded that the government withdraw a proposed educational reform that would privatize student services in public universities and create private for-profit universities.
Student Debt in the Americas (PDF)
Carolina Ramirez
The promise of upward mobility for Latin America’s new middle classes has led to swelling university enrollment rates, but also to growing debt.1 In Colombia, high school graduates enrolling in higher education rose from 24.87 percent in 2002 to 45.02 percent in 2012.2 Meanwhile, in 2011, 23 percent of 25- to 34-year-old Mexicans had attained a university education, compared to only 12 percent of 55- to 64-year-olds.3 The increased demand has strained the region’s highly competitive public education institutions,4 while at the same time fueling the rise of small, private four-year universities and technical colleges—and of credit-based financing services to help students pay for them. But while a credit-financed university education opens doors, there are growing risks as an increasingly debt-burdened generation enters the workforce, with no guarantee that newly minted graduates will earn the income necessary to pay back their loans.
Academic Brain Drain (PDF)
Jesus Velasco
A recurrent theme in the immigration debate is how the United States can keep and attract the world’s brightest minds. President Barack Obama and others favor maintaining and perhaps even expanding the number of visas for high-skilled immigrants. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama said the U.S. needed to “attract the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create jobs and grow our economy.” A few days later, on January 29, 2013, at El Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada, Obama underlined the point: “Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities[…]but once they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave the country[.…]That’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform.” But there’s one highly skilled group of foreign professionals Obama doesn’t have to worry about: Mexican academics trained outside Mexico. With its low salaries and a weak infrastructure that provides little grant support, Mexico is already doing more to ensure that its star scholars don’t return home than anything Obama or the U.S. Congress could achieve.
Indigenous Enrollment (PDF)
Alvaro Jose Mejia Arias
Since its formation in February 1971, the Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca—CRIC) has made the education of young Indigenous Colombians one of its most important goals. The dream of creating an autonomous university for Indigenous youth was finally realized in November 2003—when the CRIC’s high council formally created the Universidad Autónoma Indígena Intercultural (Autonomous Intercultural Indigenous University—UAIIN). The university, located in the city of Popayán, offers a number of certificate programs, as well as undergraduate programs in community education, law, administration and management, communication, and community development to more than 400 students. The university is administered by Indigenous authorities, and classes are taught in Spanish by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous instructors. However, graduates struggle with a major obstacle: the university’s courses are not officially recognized by the Instituto Colombiano para el Fomento de la Educación Superior (Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education—ICFES), the state entity in charge of approving and registering university programs nationwide. Because its courses do not conform to the standards of conventional Colombian universities, degrees from UAIIN are not accepted in the majority of Colombian public or private educational institutions, and are useful only for working at tribal schools administered by Indigenous authorities.
Bridge Institutions in Higher Education (PDF)
Carol Stax Brown
The United States and Latin America are both struggling to find ways to improve participation in quality education in the face of a labor-market skills gap. But all too often, policymakers, businesses and educators have looked to elite universities as a way of meeting those gaps. While important for high-end jobs, labor market and social demands also require us to look elsewhere. Increasingly, the network of technical schools and community colleges in the Americas has become an attractive alternative. In Latin America, traditional higher education has historically served the elite. Even after major investment and emphasis on human resource development over the past few decades, participation rates are still among the lowest in the world, averaging approximately 10 percent across the region. Only Sub-Saharan Africa has lower rates of tertiary school enrollment. In the U.S., while there is still a long way to go, participation rates are higher. Of 27-year-olds surveyed in 2012, 79 percent had enrolled in some form of higher education since graduating high school. The higher number in the U.S. reflects a decentralized, diverse system of higher education that strives, in its structure and design, to be accessible to a large portion of the U.S. workforce. But even there, the challenge is defining what constitutes a meaningful educational credential in the twenty-first-century workplace—and by implication, how educational “success” can be defined and supported.
Higher Ed: Private Investors Get Into the Game (PDF)
Gabriel Sanchez Zinny
The combination of sustained economic growth in Latin America, a region-wide expansion of the middle class, and a newly competitive business environment has boosted demand for quality education, and stoked desires for alternatives. The alternatives are coming from a slew of new and lower-cost online courses. This innovation has produced a wave of private investment in Latin American education in the past decade. Laureate Education, for example, led by Doug Becker, who also founded Sylvan Learning Systems in the United States, is a leading global provider of higher education. Since its first Latin American acquisition in 2000, Laureate has been rapidly expanding in the region and now owns 29 schools in Mexico, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Peru, Brazil, and Chile. In fact, Latin America is Laureate’s largest market, and just one of its universities—the Universidad del Valle de México—counts 120,000 students on 37 campuses.
The Pull and Example of Science Education in the United States (PDF)
Timothy DeVoogd
I expected high school biology students. Instead, I was facing 120 middle school students who were on an outing to Maloka, an innovative science museum in Bogotá. On the fly, I changed my presentation on how the brain works into a series of demonstrations. At the end, I was awed by the questions: “My mother has epilepsy; why is it that she doesn’t recognize me when she has a seizure?” “I have a pet bird. Does he learn like I do?” The desire to learn and discover more was palpable. Yes, Latin America lags on indices of learning, not just behind Europe and North America, but behind Asian countries with similar incomes. And it’s easy to attribute the deficits to low GDPs, civil unrest, high indices of inequality, or a culture in which education focused on the liberal arts. My experience four years ago affirmed that love of scientific learning is universal in children. It helped pull me into working with higher education in Latin America, especially in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields—and in trying to promote practices such as collaborations and exchanges that I believe will lead to improved educational outcomes and, ultimately, faster national development. What follows is a sketch of the conditions in a number of countries in the region and some proposals for how we can better integrate our hemisphere in STEM education and research. It draws on conversations with scores of scientists and administrators, both at universities and in governments throughout the Americas, and my own experiences as a neuroscientist.
MOOCs in Development: Fad or Future? (PDF)
Juan Cristobal Bonnefoy
Those following tech and continuing education news have been surprised by the rising popularity of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).1 The basic promise for professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean is quite alluring: free online access to a world-class knowledge base. But questions remain. Will this new learning methodology last, or fade quickly once the novelty is gone? Access to MOOCs—and participation in the courses—could eventually enhance capacity and performance, particularly for underserved audiences who seek continuous learning, whether for personal or professional reasons. As an added bonus, participants are able to learn under a flexible schedule suitable for working adults, freed from having to travel to a physical classroom. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is facing the same dilemma that other knowledge-intensive institutions are confronting: join the cause of MOOCs, or wait and see how other early adopters fare to see how the market evolves.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti: A Shared View from the Diaspora (PDF)
Richard Andre
In a landmark ruling, the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court last September stripped an estimated 210,000 individuals—most of whom are Dominicans born to Haitian sugar cane workers—of their citizenship, effectively leaving them stateless. The ensuing outcry from the international community has included Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat—two of the best-known contemporary authors from the island of Hispaniola. Friends for over 20 years, Danticat (from Haiti) and Díaz (from the D.R.) have been relentless in their condemnation of the ruling. In a written exchange moderated by Americas Quarterly production editor and Haitian-American Richard André, Díaz and Danticat discuss the roots and legacies of racism and conflict in the neighboring nations, the impact of the court’s ruling, and the responsibility of the diaspora to build bridges between Dominicans and Haitians and defend human rights at home and abroad.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti: Shame (PDF)
Santiago A. Canton, Wade H. McMullen, Jr.
Juliana Deguis Pierre was born in 1984 in Los Jovillos, Dominican Republic, 72 miles (116 kilometers) west of Santo Domingo. Under the country’s constitutional recognition of birthright citizenship, Deguis—the daughter of two undocumented Haitian immigrants working in the sugar cane fields—was issued a birth certificate recognizing her Dominican nationality. Now 29 years old, she has never traveled outside her native country. She speaks fluent Spanish and hardly any Creole. In 2008, Deguis visited a Junta Central Electoral (Central Electoral Board—JCE) office to request a voter identification card. The officers confiscated her birth certificate on the grounds she had two Haitian last names. The Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic denied Deguis’ appeal of the decision, with a ruling (TC-168-13) on September 23, 2013, that she was wrongly registered as Dominican at birth. With its ruling, the Constitutional Court, in effect, retroactively overturned citizenship norms that had been in effect from 1929 to 2010. A constitutional provision that excluded anyone born to foreigners “in transit” from claiming citizenship by birth was extended to anyone born to undocumented residents of the Dominican Republic.
Venezuela: How Long Can This Go On? (PDF)
Boris Munoz
On April 10, Venezuelans stayed up past midnight to watch an event on TV that just a few weeks prior would have seemed incredible, almost miraculous: after three months of intense protests, headed by students in alliance with the most combative sectors of the opposition calling for President Nicolás Maduro’s departure, the government and the opposition, thanks to mediation from the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (Union of South American Nations—UNASUR), sat down to negotiate. In fact, according to Henry Ramos Allup, a veteran National Assembly member from the opposition party Acción Democrática (Democratic Action—AD), it was the first time in over a decade that the main actors in the political conflict in Venezuela debated as civilized people. An extraordinary moment in a country whose unicameral national legislature has become at times a boxing ring. Public opinion surveys show that between 70 and 84 percent of Venezuelans support the negotiations. But one month after the start of the talks, any hope that they would resolve the crisis evaporated. The talks broke down over the government’s brutal breakup of protester camps in Caracas by the National Guard in the middle of the night while the occupants were sleeping, and over the massive arbitrary arrests—more than 300 in a week—of students and young people across the country.
Behind the Numbers: Women's Rights (PDF)
Joan Caivano, Jane Marcus-Delgado
The gender-based data on social inclusion clearly indicate the opportunities and obstacles facing women in Latin America—as well as numerous contradictions and complexities. An examination of new trends, laws and policies brings to mind the Spanish expression, “Del dicho al hecho, hay mucho trecho.” In other words, even in many areas where there appears to have been significant progress, intervening barriers frequently preclude its consistent application. These persistent stumbling blocks can include insufficient state resources, an uneven infrastructure, lack of political will, prevalence of patriarchal norms and values, and the extreme socioeconomic inequality that translates into broad divergence in access to services. Other measures of women’s rights are also complicated within countries. One nation might be notable for its high levels of female representation in political power, yet fall short on policies of concern to women, like reproductive or economic rights. The growth in women’s presence in legislatures has coincided with important legal advances on women’s rights. Women legislators united in multiparty alliances have been responsible for passing laws on domestic violence, rape, quotas, and the reform of discriminatory civil and criminal codes. Yet the mere presence of women in power will not automatically produce policy outcomes favorable to women’s interests. Like men, women owe primary loyalty to their political parties and to their mearturntors and constituents. Few women are elected to office on a platform of women’s rights. If the interests of the political party contradict the interests of women’s alliances, most women opt to vote with their party.
Behind the Numbers: Insecurity and Marginalization in Central America (PDF)
Matthew Budd, Marcela Donadio
With 11 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012, Nicaragua stands out as a relatively fortunate exception in a region whose homicide rates rank among the world’s highest. Its northern neighbors all recorded rates at least three times greater: with Guatemala at 34.3 murders per 100,000 citizens; El Salvador at 41.5; and—at the top of this grim list—Honduras at 85.5. To the south of Nicaragua, only traditionally stable and more developed Costa Rica recorded a lower rate (8.8). Panama registered 17.6 murders per 100,000 in 2012.
Ask the Experts: Higher Education (PDF)
Arturo Cherbowski Lask, Francisco Suarez Hernandez, Amgad Shehata, Salvador Alva Gomez Salvador
It’s important to keep in mind that a region consists of different countries, each with its own needs and strengths, and bound to its particular culture and history—although tied firmly to a common, shared history and culture. In this mosaic, universities try to respond to their regional, national and local demands. Thus, the fields of knowledge and particular disciplines that each university develops answer to specific needs. For this reason, instead of speaking about standardization of degrees and disciplines, it would be more fitting to speak about creating an international quality standard—broad and flexible enough to include all of the particular differences in disciplines and degrees that emerge in a region—and that, at the same time, provides a firm, trustworthy metric by which to measure the quality of each degree from individual universities. Since governments have not taken a decisive lead on creating an international standard, individual universities have taken a one-to-one approach, creating the basic trust and establishing the minimum quality standards for joint degrees, credit validations and exchanges. But it’s a slow and complicated process, and one that doesn’t necessarily pave the way for a unified, international framework. To have a real regional impact, states must be willing to provide adequate resources to encourage universities to join forces and truly work together as a group. The time is ripe: the issue is being discussed passionately in international forums, and there are many interesting projects underway, including, for example, Universia’s own presidents meeting that will bring together more than 1,100 university rectors and presidents from all over the world in Rio de Janeiro to discuss, among other pressing matters, the internationalization of higher education.
Can Mexico exploit its new demographic dividend?
Nathaniel Parish Flannery
Can Mexico exploit its new demographic dividend?
With contributing research from Miryam Hazán and Carlos López Portillo Maltos of Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT).
Read a sidebar on Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT's) electronic job bank.
Read a sidebar on Mexican migrants' return to restaurant work.
José Antonio Pérez remembers as a child seeing migrants climbing onto La Bestia ("The Beast"), the train that carries Central American migrants north to the state of Oaxaca, and wondering where they were going. An uncle told him the migrants were "traveling to El Norte," the United States.
"I didn't understand," Pérez recalled. "I only understood when I was older."
At the age of 14, he joined them. He left his hometown of Arriaga, Chiapas, in 2003 and found work in a greenhouse in Chestertown, Virginia.
Sarah Stephens and Joel Brito debate: Will warming Cuba-EU ties open up U.S.-Cuba relations?
Sarah Stephens, Joel Brito
The EU has recognized that its Common Position has failed to improve human rights in Cuba. It's time for the U.S. to do the same with its embargo. BY SARAH STEPHENS Will warming Cuba-EU ties open up U.S.- Cuba relations? Yes When Louis Michel, then-development commissioner for the European Union (EU), met in 2009 with Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, he worried openly about the slow pace of EU diplomacy. “I think that if the European Union does not consolidate the normalization of relations with Cuba,” Michel said, “the Americans will do so before us.”1 He need not have been concerned. In the nearly five years since Michel and Rodríguez sat down together, the Cuban government has pursued reforms to pry the island’s economy back from the edge of crisis—ranging from creating space for entrepreneurship to ending travel restrictions. Now is the time for the United States to follow its Atlantic partner and get off the sidelines when it comes to engaging Havana. The Obama administration’s track record signals some hope: thus far, the president has used his executive authority to restore Cuban-American family travel, reinstate people-to-people trips, and reconvene the episodic talks on migration and postal delivery. But he has left undisturbed the essential architecture of U.S. policy inherited from the Eisenhower era.
Business Innovator: Lisa Besserman Lisa Besserman could be at home anywhere in the world; but last year, the Queens, New York, native put down roots in Argentina to launch Startup Buenos Aires, to motivate, support and connect startups across the globe. The 29-year-old tech entrepreneur, named one of the “100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider Australia in May, says that her goal is to put Buenos Aires “on the map of global startup ecosystems.” Her clients seem to agree. A year after its launch, her organization—which helps local startups find employees and funding, and connects local tech talent to projects and employers—has attracted some 4,000 members, including foreign firms. Besserman is a successful example of a new class of global workers that could be called “tech nomads.” In November 2012, feeling constrained by corporate culture in New York City, Besserman left her job as director of operations at AirKast Inc., a mobile app development startup, and looked at a map to determine where she’d begin her next business venture. The only requirement: the city had to have a similar time zone to the East Coast to make doing business easier.
Jaana Remes, Cynthia J. Arnson, Patricia Ellen, Raul Rodriguez-Barocio
Peace: Elections and Peace in Colombia BY CYNTHIA J. ARNSON Colombia’s 2014 presidential elections marked a watershed in the country’s politics. This was not because incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos won by nearly six percentage points, after having narrowly lost the first round to Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a hardliner backed by Santos’s political nemesis, former president Álvaro Uribe. Rather, the campaign offered—as never before—starkly opposing visions of how to end Colombia’s 50-year conflict with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC): through direct peace negotiations on a tightly constructed agenda, or through military action aimed at the FARC’s defeat or surrender. Understanding how the elections became a referendum on the peace process—and on uribismo itself—requires looking less at the candidates themselves than at the alliance, and then bitter parting, of Santos and Uribe. Santos and Zuluaga served together in Uribe’s cabinet, Santos as defense minister and Zuluaga as finance minister. Both had similar attitudes toward Colombia’s economic opening and management, which led to record levels of foreign direct investment and growth rates well above the Latin American average.
Competitive Eating Summertime in the U.S. typically evokes the image of barbecues featuring all-American fare. But for a group of unique, dedicated elite athletes, summertime food conjures up a chance at glory. Competitive eating was introduced in Coney Island on July 4, 1916, by Nathan’s Famous to determine who could ingest the most hot dogs within a set time. Since then, it has pulled in a number of other foods, including the “accoutrements,” with the sponsorship of Coca-Cola and Heinz Ketchup—not to mention the upset-stomach reliever Pepto-Bismol. The sport revived in the mid-1990s when brothers George and Richard Shea took the helm of Nathan’s Famous’ publicity machine and gave it an air of serious athleticism, with rules overseen by two main bodies. The better-known Major League Eating (MLE) is run by the Shea brothers and hosts over 80 competitive eating events a year around the United States. But the crowning event remains the annually televised Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. Then there’s All Pro Eating Promotions, best known for inventing “picnic-style rules” in the U.S.—competitors must eat the food as presented, without mutilating it in any way.
Johanna Mendelson, Anthony Spanakos, Roger-Mark De Souza
Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez BY ANTHONY SPANAKOS During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. With the region’s highest growth rates and the lowest levels of inequality, it was also one of the most stable democracies in the Americas. But starting in the early 1980s, things fell apart. The nation endured three coup attempts and one presidential impeachment. Per capita growth plunged, and mass protests became the norm. What happened? Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse, edited by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez, offers some intriguing answers. Pointedly departing from much of the current research (and political discussion) on Venezuela, which focuses on the 14-year presidency (1999–2013) of late President Hugo Chávez, the editors have assembled a distinguished group of experts with the aim not only of exploring, as they put it, the “enigma” of Venezuela’s pre-Chávez collapse, but to explain why some countries go through such turbulence. The unexpected outcomes in Venezuela are used by the authors to challenge hypotheses that rely on big data analysis to explain economic collapse. While the explanation behind Chávez’ rise to power may draw attention, as Venezuela continues to be rocked by internal conflict following his death, it is the book’s second aim that makes it stand out as an important work of scholarship.