Sunday Reading 31-August-2008

Alex Thurston (The Agonist) on “The Settler Colony Theory“:

I actually think that the US does better with issues of race than Europeans do – and, as the friend I mentioned above says, perhaps it’s easier for them to create a communal ethic because their societies have until recently tended to be more ethnically homogeneous than ours. In fact, with the latest waves of immigration we’ve seen some real cracks in that ethic, or the facade of that ethic, and some real tests for European societies. If nothing else, I think our tortured experience of race and racism in this country has allowed us to begin speaking more honestly about race than in many societies around the world.

But at the same time, there’s been no real reckoning in America. And by that I’m not talking about reparations for African Americans or Native Americans, or affirmative action, or violence, but rather a deep examination – or re-examination – of American identity in a way that would let us say, “we’re all in this together,” and really mean it. Underlying all the struggles that progressives face is the lack of such a mentality, worn down by the constant divisive politics of the right.

Moving forward

In Paraguay, the new President Francisco Lugo, has appointed former finance minister Dionisio Borda to his old post, under the new, supposedly socialist (I’d argue it’s more “liberation theology”) regime. Borda’s success had been in balancing the “free trade” assumptions of the former leadership with the necessity for government-controlled services in the dirt-poor country. He is getting a boost from Nobel Economics Laureate Joseph Steiglitz. Gustavo Setrini’s “Stiglitz Goes To Paraguay: Move Over Chicago, A Cambridge Boy’s in Town” is on the 25-August-2008 Upside Down World site:

With great authority and occasional cheek, Stiglitz enumerated the flaws and misconceptions that characterized the past decade of development thinking. Stiglitz openly declared that bilateral free-trade agreements almost inevitably favor the U.S. and offer few advantages for poorer, agricultural economies such as Paraguay’s, that “trickle-down” economics does not work and has never worked, that land reform was the basis of successful development experiences in East Asia, that privatization is not an automatic or necessarily the best answer to the woes of publicly owned enterprise, that U.S. monetary policy, rather than Latin American industrial policy, was to blame for the region’s “lost decade” in the 1980s, and that public investments form the basis for private dynamism in developing countries as much as in advanced countries like the United States. Stiglitz summarized his basic position, pointing toward the current U.S. mortgage crisis and stating that markets alone produce neither efficient nor socially desirable outcomes but instead provoke periodic crises that erase the gains of growth and hit the poor the hardest.

No-man’s land

Kari Lydersen writes in Upside Down World on an overlooked border dispute, between farmers and developers at a proposed Ciudad Juarez border crossing:

A key chunk in this development is the area known as Lomas de Poleo in Anapra, a community founded in the 1970s largely by migrants from Vera Cruz and other southern parts in search of a humble plot of land to raise a few animals. Over the decades the community – about 400 families at its peak – has petitioned for title to the land under Mexican land reform laws. The land’s ownership chain is a complicated saga including the company Carbonifera, several murky private sales, appropriation by the federal government after tax default, and the current residents’ ongoing claims. At least one federal document proclaims the land national property.

And under land reform laws that allow people to acquire title to unused land if they are farming it, many families have had valid land claims filed with the government for years.

But brothers Jorge and Pedro Zaragoza, from one of the richest business families in northern Mexico, are now claiming the land is theirs, inherited from their father who they say bought it in 1963.

No one showed much interest in the destitute parcels until 2002, when the Jeronimo project plans became public knowledge and the Zaragozas began trying to kick residents out of Lomas de Poleo. Since then the residents and the Zaragoza brothers – scions of local gas, dairy and Corona beer franchises, among other industries – have been locked in a grueling, litigious and often violent struggle over the land. Four years ago the Zaragozas erected a concrete and barbed wire fence around the disputed area, with the roads blocked by guard shacks where armed private security guards allegedly harass residents and prevent visitors and food deliveries.

Foreign Affairs

Laura Carlsen, writing in the 22-August-2008 Counterpunch is more optimistic about changes in U.S. policy towards Latin America under an Obama administration than I am. I don’t think a complete rework of the Merida initiative or of agricultural policy… or any tweaking of NAFTA … is really in the cards, but Carlsen holds out the hope that some things will be better:

Obama’s platform marks a major departure from continuing Bush policy in the region. When John McCain tapped Otto Reich as his Latin America adviser he signaled his intention to continue the very worst of the past policy. This has made blood boil in Latin American countries. Reich alienated Central Americans for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. He infuriated the Venezuelans by supporting the 2002 coup, and angered the Cubans by protecting Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, convicted of anti-Cuba terrorist attacks. Everywhere he’s gone he’s left a trail of human rights violations and murky political manipulations a mile wide.

Obama’s foreign policy team, on the other hand, mixes crusty veterans with new thinkers and appears to be in flux. This shows in the Latin America policy proposal, where, for example, hardline support for Plan Colombia stands alongside opposition to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Meet the neighbors

I’m hardly the only gringo in Latin America working to explain where I live to outsiders.

Duderingo at Abiding in Bolivia and Tracy Eaton at Along the Malecon try to overcome at least some of the misunderstandings and bone-headed inability of the American media to get things right about their countries — Bolivia and Cuba, respectively.

Ecuador Rising – Hatarinchej and BoRev.net (as in “Bolivarian Revolution”) advocate for the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela … presenting points of view at odds with the U.S. “mainstream media”.

If I could read it, I might be able to tell you something about tetrakihi’s site, Мексика. The mystery wrapped in an enigma that is Mexico for those mysterious enigmatic Russians.