Rios Montt will be tried for genocide - Guatemala

Photo courtesy Skylight pictures

We learned yesterday, January 28 2013, that former army general and de facto ruler of Guatemala Efrain Rios Montt will face trial for charges of genocide. Rios Montt led the country during the most violent period of a 36 year internal armed conflict that resulted in over 200,000 deaths, the vast majority of which were innocent indigenous peasants.

Under his tenure (1982-83), the government carried out what many call a "scorched earth" campaign (specifically, he is charged with overseeing the massacre of over 1700 individuals) in the indigenous Ixil areas of of the country.

The former general and his defenders are using an interesting defense, claiming at once that Rios Montt either did not fully control his troops, or was not aware of the dozens of massacres of indigenous communities that happened under his watch. At the same time, Rios Montt et al are labelling the trial as an attack, not on the former general, but on the army as an institution--a clear appeal to public opinion, and maybe even to the popular president Otto Molina Perez, himself a former general who served under Rios Montt.

However, the discovery of a document called Plan Victoria (Victoria 82), sheds doubt on the general's plea of ignorance. The plan, signed by Rios Montt, identified the Ixil ethnicity as subversive and inherently supportive of the leftist rebels engaging the government in battle at the time. As part of a kind of "drain the swamp" strategy, the document planned the annihilation of indigenous communities, according to prosecutors.

On a related note, the documentary by Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis, Granito, includes footage from a conversation with the general in the early 1980s. In the footage, Yates presses the general on accusations of genocide. He denies it outright, of course, but goes on to brag about his tight control over the armed forces, which he presumably exercised in ordering the army not carry out such massacres. "If I can't control the army, then what am I doing here?" the general asks. Whether such footage will be used in the trial is uncertain (though it was used in previous attempts to try Rios Montt, in Spain), but I imagine the prosecution will strongly contest the general's purported lack of control argument.

**Update, Granito producer Paco de Onis writes in an email that "Outtakes from Skylight's documentary Granito: How to Nail a Dictator are being used as filmic evidence in the case to prove the prosecution’s command responsibility liability theory: that Ríos Montt ordered the targeted killings."**

The trial of a former dictator is, in itself, a major milestone in the fight against widespread impunity in Guatemala. A conviction would be a monumental win for the country's battered judicial system. Yet even bringing the man to trial,--as happened in Chile's prosecution of former dictator Pinochet--offers a major symbolic and normative achievement--eroding the reactionary narrative offered against getting too caught up in the past (read: seeking justice for past atrocities), or the mental and social barriers to seeking accountability for the highest political leaders, for example.

The very act of trying a former dictator helps to break down the veneer of legitimacy surrounding the period and acts in question, and helps break down impunity enjoyed by those involved in past atrocities, or those whose more recent crimes simply benefit from this umbrella of impunity. This is, arguably what happened in Argentina, Peru, and Chile, when, following trials of senior political-military leadership, the barriers to accountability for mid- and lower-level opperatives began to be swept away.

One can only hope that as Rios Montt, a pilar supporting impunity in Guatemala, is tried for crimes against humanity, that the umbrella of impunity that benefits organized crime, abusers of women, and gang members will be blown away.

Feliz Dia de la Mujer

EFE reported Friday that a group protesting violence against women was violently repressed by police in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The group of around 200 women were protesting the high rates of femicide in the country, and taking advantage of the Day of Women to pressure the legislature to ensure the free exercise of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

In 2012, there were 606 cases of femicide, according to the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. Moreover, the special prosecutor for Women's issues recorded over 22,000 reports of violence against women.

Femicide, which tends to get disproportionate media coverage (perhaps rightly so), makes up a small percentage of the 7,000+ homicides in Honduras. In Guatemala, there were 560 women murdered in 2012, down from 631 in 2011, and 695 in 2010. While the trend in Guatemala is a positive development, and reflects an overall improving security situation, the phenomenon in both countries is indicative of a general state of impunity and tolerance for violence towards women (and other underprivileged groups).

As with other types of crime, violence against women is complex in its most proximate causes (domestic disputes, infidelity, whatever the cause). However, there are a variety of social and institutional factors that permit or encourage the rise in violence against women that accompanied the dramatic rise in violence throughout the northern triangle countries over the past decade. First and foremost is generalized impunity, for most crimes, but especially those against women. Honduras, famously, has something like a 97 percent impunity rate--accounting for crimes reported to the authorities, which, in the case of violence against women, are few. It doesn't help, of course, that police are thinly stretched and poorly trained/resourced, in their pursuit of drug traffickers and gang bangers, or that private security has filled the gap of public security in many parts of the country.

La Mordida - Corruption in Mexico

With the return of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) to the Mexican presidency in December last year, plenty in the policy community and blogosphere have begun to worry that the kind of corruption and nepotism that overtly characterized PRI rule would again dominate. I don't suggest that Mexico has fixed its corruption problem, but observers rightly worry that substantial but fragile democratic gains and improvements in governance (including a major reform of the country's judicial system, initiated in 2008) could be reversed.

Corruption is notoriously hard to measure, not just in Mexico, but globally. Transparency International (TI), authors of one of the most widely used measures, is based on perceptions of corruption, a standard criticized as a crude attempt to universally operationalize an inherently subjective definition of the phenomenon (to be fair, I believe TI does disclaim that its measures are not to be used as a comparative indicator of corruption, internationally).

In democracy and governance circles, "democracy" is often seen as an anecdote to corruption. This view, which replaced the theory advanced by Sam Huntington (and others) in the 1960s that corruption acted as a kind of economic "lubrication," has itself become increasingly complicated and questioned in recent years.

The theory works like this: if X agents' corrupt behavior is tolerated by political elites, increased political competition should provide an incentive for political challengers to expose shady dealings. Thus, as political competition increases (and power subsequently changes hands regularly), the costs of exposed corruption (or, increased public discussion, debate, and opprobrium) rise. In addition, with true competition, voters have viable alternatives to which they can turn--providing a mechanism for punishing corrupt incumbents.

I did a study that used a measure of corruption developed by Transparencia Mexicana (TM, a national TI affiliate), which measures actual experiences with corruption at the state level (rather than a kind of national "poll of polls"), to test how increased competition over the last decade has affected corruption. I looked at the relationship between state TM corruption scores and a proxy measure for competition based on state level voting for deputies (congressmen). This measure accounts for competition based not on the winners of state elections, but by the percentage of the vote gained by various parties: those with more, competitive parties, were more competitive (see Laakso and Taagepera 1979, here).

What I found was that experience with corruption in Mexico actually increased slightly as electoral competition increased. These findings square with previous work on the subject by Stephen Morris (2009), who found that while electoral competition does eventually lower corruption, this happens only after an initial period of rising experience with corruption. Others have shown that this period could last years, and, without getting too much in the weeds, some would even question whether a rise in corruption would necessarily be "initial" (rather than permanent--I'm thinking of Carothers, T.).

The logic here isn't complicated. As newly competitive parties use accusations of corruption to bludgeon their opponents, the public perceives an increase in corruption. Interestingly, while I noted that TM measures experience, literature on the issue (see Cleary and Stokes, 2006) shows that one's experience with corruption is highly dependent on their perceptions of corruption in society, not to mention awareness of extant social norms that dictate what behaviors are corrupt. This awareness is, in turn, affected by socioeconomic status and education. So the two (experience and perception) are closely related and nearly impossible to isolate. Whether the egg came before the chicken, here, is not clear, though I am optimistic about the prospects for lower corruption.

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Corruption has a myriad of terrible effects on countries where it is rampant. There's a wealth of literature exposing the way in which corruption undermines investment and growth, not just lowering investment, but distorting the allocation of scarce resources and public services in ways that harm the poor. This exacerbates inequality and undermines the rule of law, two areas where Mexico has made fragile but important progress since the democratization that began in the late 1990s.

The election of Pena Nieto's PRI doesn't reverse Mexico's democratization necessarily; state and local politics--the incubator of democratic oppositional strength that began this trend--remain competitive. But the new president has a lot to gain by attacking corruption and, hopefully, a lot to lose by allowing a return to patronage politics. One way to do this is to support the judicial reform transition from an inquisitive (Napoleonic code-based) system to an accusatory (common law, rights-based) system.

Another is to support free access to public information. Several studies (see for example, DiRienzo, et al, 2007) show a strong positive relationship between increased access to public information, especially when aided by the proliferation of information technologies, tends to result in lower levels of corruption (based on several measures). Mexico has one of the world's best right to information laws, on paper, but seriously lacks political support--from the highest levels--to enforce compliance and the provision of access to information as provided in the legislation.

A Clash of Paradigms

With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's appearance on Capitol Hill this week, the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya and the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stephens is, hopefully, more or less behind us. Eugene Robinson has an interesting analysis of Clinton's testimony and Republican--wrong-headed, according to Robinson--fixation on the administration's response to the events in the following weeks.

He makes the point that Congress is so focused on the tragic and still-unclear events of September 11 (2012), that they are overlooking larger, more nefarious developments in North Africa. These involve the decimation of Al-Qaeda and subsequent fragmentation and realignmentof sympathetic groups in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic Maghreb.

I think Robinson is mostly right. It seems though, that while conservatives were and are (rightly) concerned that the Obama administration would cover up or spin information surrounding the Benghazi attacks so close to an election, what is really at play here is a deeper indignation at the administration's apparent refusal to place the tragedy within the dominant "war on terror" narrative that dominates the public discussion of foreign policy today (certainly when we talk about the Middle East and North Africa).

Though as the administration has repeated, it did immediately call the 9/11 attacks an act of terror--despite the continuing state of confusion surrounding what actually happened at the time Obama made these remarks. But the president's statements and behavior in the coming weeks apparently did not carry enough vengeful fervour (U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments on the Sunday talk shows later that month didn't help this cause) to satisfy those who were already calling his foreign policy "weak" or "naive."

This episode is the result of a clash of paradigms, whereby (largely, but not only) conservative groups have displayed a real frustration with the Obama administration for its caution and hesitation to see the signs of insecurity in the weeks leading up to the killings, and in labelling the day's events as clearly terrorist in nature. The conservative paradigm--I imagine they would fancy themselves more "realist"--is a more bird's-eye approach to understanding the churning forces in the world. Hence, their long-running criticism of Obama's supposed lack of a grand strategy for foreign policy.

On the other hand, the administration has repeatedly shown a willingness to approach foreign policy issues (and crises) on a case-by-case basis. This approach, I think, is more helpful in understanding the issues affecting U.S. interests in the region. The knee-jerk, war-on-terror posture just doesn't have much to offer in understanding, much less dealing with, the Arab uprisings or the situation in Mali, for example. That's not to say a grand strategy would have to adopt the neoconservative approach, just that this is the dominant paradigm, currently. The other major difference between the approaches involves leadership. Having a grand strategy purportedly allows the U.S. to influence or lead (from the front!) events around the world, while the Obama approach is more reactive in nature.

This may (or may not) be a radically new Arab world we're dealing with, and the reigning paradigm simply may not be useful in understanding it, if it ever was. Without getting too much in the weeds on the destruction wrought by our Cold War grand strategy, I argue that Obama's approach (as much the result of a preference for domestic issues than anything) is better suited to a world in which the American ability to project power is more limited than it has been in generations, particularly coming on the heels of military misadventure, economic crisis, Arab upheaval, and the (relative) decline of U.S. power.

The Truce

BBC Mundo reports that Salvadoran gangs have committed themselves to refraining from "delinquency" in four municipalities in El Salvador, as a kind of "phase two" of the truce that began in March of last year.

The article quotes José Tiberio Valladares, a leader of MS-13, "we reiterate our commitment to involve our structures [followers, gangs] in the processes being carried forward in each of these municipalities, assuming that this gives way to a process that aims to end all criminal activity."

The truce between Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, brokered (as it later turned out) in part by the Salvadoran government in March 2012, resulted in a nearly 60 percent drop in homicides (some place the drop closer to 54 percent), almost overnight. In what was the second most violent country in the world in 2011 (66 homicides per 100,000 individuals), this was a welcome development and led to plenty of talk in neighboring Guatemala about pursuing a similar course with its gang franchises.

The problem is, it isn't clear that MS-13 and Barrio 18 franchises in Guatemala and Honduras are quite as centralized or as hierarchical as their Salvadoran counterparts. And, in both countries--both larger and more geographically dispersed--gang activity accounts for a smaller proportion of the overall violence. This becomes particularly evident when you look at Guatemala, where Pacific coast, rural, and border departments are the most violent in the country. The same is true for Honduras, where coastal Atlantida, Colon, and Cortes also happen to be the departments receiving the greatest amount of drug traffic--especially since the 2009 coup--pointing to the influence of more sophisticated organized criminal networks on that country's crime spree.

So, while a truce in either country may provide a kind of respite, I'd caution against the dangers of a kind of "Balkanization" of the gangs there, whereby factions resist attempts by gang leadership to enforce a truce and could turn on each other. This possibility (which remains a real threat in El Salvador) could be all the more real, and all the more dangerous given the huge quantities of cash, weapons, and drugs that pass through Guatemala and Honduras: gang cohesion, even in the viciously loyal Maras, may or may not stand up to the potential power and riches offered by drug trafficking.

We might compare this kind of scenario to what happened to the powerful Colombian cartels following the fall of Cali and Medellin, or, arguably, to the fractionalization of Mexican cartels (and the aftermath there) in the past decade.

Whither Chavismo?

With Hugo Chavez' hospitalization in December for continued cancer treatment, El Comandante's legacy on Venezuela and Latin America, more broadly, has been cause for a lot of speculation (and some hyperventilation).

Julia Sweig at the Council on Foreign Relations has an interesting piece this week that provides a good look at "Chavismo" and its possible legacy should Chavez loss his battle with cancer in Havana. While it provides a good primer on the issue, I think it neglects to some degree the important historical and structural origins or Chavismo--some of which have changed, some persist--that might help gauge the direction of Chavez' movement.

The article leads with a picture of (presumably) a Chavez supporter's banner showing the president side-by-side with an image of Jesus. This pairing or association in the minds or hearts of Chavez supporters is no accident, in fact, it is part of a carefully crafted (dare I say, cult-like) amalgamation of the state, Christ, Chavez, and South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar. But there is more to Chavismo than a cult of personality and more to Venezuelan politics than Chavismo.

A big part of the highly anti-neoliberal, anti-party nature of Chavez' movement is a product of institutional and economic breakdown during the 1980s. Since 1958, two more or less centrist, American-allied political parties ruled Venezuela alternatively: Acción Democratica (AD) and the Christian Social Party (COPEI). Under this system, known as the punto fijo regime, the two parties used substantial oil revenues to drive import-substituted industrialization while activists on the far right and the far left were generally excluded from political participation.

This arrangement was effective (a relative term) through much of the 1970s when oil revenues were high and the party in power could spend lavishly. As with many resource booms though, when oil prices declined in the 1980s not only did revenues crash, but a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy remained. Failure to address the problems of increasing poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and skyrocketing foreign debt reached a climax in 1989. Newly reelected president Carlos Andres Pérez responded to the dire economic situation by enacting severe austerity measures as part of his gran viraje (great turnaround). On February 27, in response to these measures and a spike in gas prices in Caracas and around the country, mass protests shattered the political calm that had defined the country for decades. These mass disturbances, known as the Caracazo, resulted in nearly 300 (unofficial counts approached 2000) deaths and laid the groundwork for the decline of punto fijo, despite failing to reverse the measures or turn the administration out of power.

The decade that followed was characterized by continued economic decline, despite deep liberalizing economic reforms. Venezuelans experienced soaring inflation—up to 80 percent in 1989—increased unemployment and a decline of up to 40 percent GDP since the early 1980s, as the state privatized many of its heavy industry and communications assets. The percentage of the population living in poverty rose from approximately 17 percent in 1980 to over 48 percent in 1997. As the economy declined, racial and class cleavages also were exacerbated.

It is hard to overestimate the deep and lasting effect of such decay on a population; these effects, and the resulting backlash were compounded by the structural readjustment programs that the country adopted in the years that followed.

Such were the conditions in the country when Chávez, then a young army officer, led a failed coup against the Pérez administration in February 1992. While the coup failed and Chávez was imprisoned, the young officer was granted a chance to speak to his fellow rebels and to the country. In his speech, Chávez took responsibility for the coup and called on his sympathizers to stand down while at the same time demanding reform. In doing so, Chávez endeared himself to disillusioned Venezuelans and began building a personal political constituency. Moisés Naím, a Venezuelan economist writes, “His televised image conveyed the possibility of change, a break from the political and economic schemes usually blamed for the country’s problems. A new face unrelated to the traditional power structures and offering to guide the nation back to prosperity, equality, and integrity…”

The young army officer’s discourse was particularly effective in the barrios of Caracas and other major cities. These masses of impoverished, disenfranchised barrio-dwellers—the pueblo-pobreza—now make up the backbone of the chavista movement’s goal of implementing a “participatory democracy.” The son of school teachers and a man with some indigenous heritage, Chávez’ credentials with such groups were impeccable.

Chavismo, which has been described as populist, nationalist, and at times militarist, overlaps a with a kind of parallel phenomenon known as Bolivarianismo--an idealized interpretation of “the Liberator” Simón Bolívar’s principles. What it adds to the Chavez portfolio is an ostensibly socialist and a strong pan-Latin American sentiment.

The character of Bolívar in Chávez’ agenda has a largely symbolic but crucially legitimizing function. Chavez has come to invoke the collective memory of Bolívar regularly. In doing so, the president cites Bolívar’s supposedly socialist tendencies. “Every day, in fact, I become more convinced that the evolution of Bolívar’s thought pointed toward socialism. If he had lived a few decades longer, I am absolutely sure he would have become a socialist…”

Chavismo's party structure, "direct" democracy, and constitutional/electoral reforms will have an important impact on Venezuelan politics after Chavez; more on that in a later post.

Latin Ameri--Brazil's Middle Class

The Americas Quarterly's fall issue focused on Latin America's rising middle class: "Who are Latin America's new middle classes and what effect will they have on politics, economics and business?" One article, by the World Bank's Luis Felipe López-Calva, dives into the definitions and origins of this burgeoning middle class, a phenomenon that seems to be (finally) gaining traction/acceptance/notice among among the foreign policy community.

One of the main factors behind this monumental, and welcome (if still tentative) trend is thought to be the consistently high price of raw materials produced by Latin America--Peruvian copper and gold, Brazilian soybeans, etc. But important and substantial political and policy shifts have played a huge role in translating raw wealth (Latin Americans have long exported massive amounts of raw material with profits accruing only to the region's tiny elite--coffee anyone?) into development.

Brazil, a country that accounts for nearly a third of the region's population, deserves a big portion of the credit.  That country's bolsa familia program, a consolidation (and expansion, under Lula) of several smaller conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs that began under Fernando Enrique Cardoso, has played an important part in bringing the poverty rate down from around 44 percent in 1990 to about 24 percent in 2009--nearly cutting it in half.

A close look at bolsa familia shows that this is an impressive, if mixed, program, in terms of outcomes. First, the idea behind the thing is to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and develop long-term human capital through health care and education mandates. These mandates--for recipients--come in the form of minimum school attendance (at least 85 percent monthly attendance for kids between 6 and 15 years) and vaccinations and medical check-ups, among other things. No medical check-ups? Not attending school? No cash.

The idea behind the "conditionality" of the CCT is two-fold: First, conditionality makes cash cash transfer schemes ("handouts" to some) palatable to voters and policy makers. Second, health, nutritional, and educational conditions are thought to ease the opportunity costs poor people face when deciding whether or not to send a pregnant mom to the clinic or pull a child out of school to work, for example.

The program is huge. It reaches some 46 million individuals (around a quarter of the population). On educational measures, bolsa familia had a clear and positive (if slight) impact, resulting in a 3.6 percent lower probability of children being absent from school, and 1.6 percent lower likelihood of dropping out. At the same time, kids whose families benefit from the program were more likely to be failing school, an indication that progress doesn't come from just showing up, and an indictment on the poor quality of Brazilian schools (especially in the poor and rural northeast).

Unfortunately, the program had similar effects on healthcare attainment. Recipient families surveyed in 2010 were apparently no more likely to have their kids immunized--another indictment of Brazil's failure to provide much of its population with access to good healthcare infrastructure.

The program did better on nutritional measures, yielding significant improvements in infant nutrition (a variable with huge long-term impacts on childhood development),and a 26 percent increased chance of children under 5 years having a normal weight and height.

Not surprisingly, the program has had huge (and less conflicted) impacts on poverty. Between 2003, the year the program began in its current, robust form, and 2008, extreme poverty in Brazil fell from 12 percent to 4.8 percent. Despite the fact that the program suffers from some "leakage" (including individuals and families who should not qualify for benefits) and "exclusion" (not including some who do), over 70 percent of cash benefits reach the poorest 20 percent of the population, with around 95 percent reaching the bottom 40 percent, a subgroup that closely resembles the number of Brazilians living near or under the poverty line. Analysts believe that the program accounts for a major portion of this drop in poverty, and especially, extreme poverty.

And, as a preemptive response to the refrain that handouts lower the incentive to work, consider that labor market participation increased among recipients by an average of 2.6 percent (4.3 percent among women, compared to non-participant counterparts). Stable access to cash also makes people eligible for credit (Brazil has a robust micro-credit culture, evidenced by TVs and refrigerators in the homes of most favela-dwellers), which helps build a stronger domestic market for durable goods. One study estimated that for each real spent, the Brazilian GDP will increase by R$1.44--not a bad bang for the buck.

Latin American economies need to support the development of a robust middle class (not just a class of "not poor, but not middle class yets"), something that can survive economic downturns like we saw in 2008-09. This is good, not just for democracy ("no middle class [bourgeois], no democracy"), but for the lives of millions in the region who have long struggled under the yolk of oppressive poverty and oppressive dictatorships.

China may be good for this trend. While many have some apprehension about China's intentions (China surpassed the U.S. as South America's biggest trading partner in 2010), and worry about Latin America becoming another "China's Africa," they have also shown a willingness to invest in, and provide easy financing to moderate leftist governments working to expand spending on the poor and middle classes. At the very least, their rapid development and voracious appetite for timber, various ores, and agricultural products bodes well for continued investment. Its relationship with some governments (see for example Ortega, Daniel or Chavez, Hugo) and their combined impact on democratic and civil rights are less certain.

Not all China does in the region should make Americans hyperventilate. Yo-yo Ma's Obrigado Brazil might attest to that (Yeah yeah, I know he's American, born in France...).

Changing public support for the US trade embargo on Cuba

Digging through some grad school papers, I'd like to share some work I did on public opinion towards the U.S. embargo on Cuba, before it becomes totally irrelevant.

The question I had concerned an apparent growth in support for trade and travel normalization towards the island. The "embargo" refers to the trade sanctions placed on Cuba in 1961 and strengthened or modified several times since. The GAO calls it "the most comprehensive set of US economic sanctions on any country."

When the Cold War ended in the 1990s and the communist threat had presumably been defeated, Cuba watchers predicted that the fall of the communist regime was imminent. We see how that panned out. Yet despite continued abuses by the Castro regime, Americans, who were once staunchly opposed to easing trade restrictions towards Cuba, are now generally supportive of trade liberalization according to polling over the last twenty years as shown in the figure below (which draws from 19 polls conducted between 1990 and 2009 in which respondents were asked specifically about their opinion on the trade embargo against Cuba). 

Admittedly, certain polls do show an ambivalent opinion on the embargo and one actually shows Americans still supporting the policy. Whether American opinion is firmly planted in either camp is beyond the scope of this paper to prove. More likely, Americans in general are either uneducated on the matter or unconcerned with it, and as a result, ambivalent. Nevertheless, while certainly not uniform in the degree of opposition towards the embargo, the results indicate that the trend away from the strong support for the policy in the 1990s, and more or less towards support for normalization today, is clear.

What accounts for this change? The changing demographics in the Cuban-American (CA in figure 2) population—particularly in the southern part of the state of Florida—has led to a perceivable change in attitude in that population and as a result, the American population in general concerning policy towards Cuba. Understandably, Americans of Cuban descent are a tiny minority of the population and cannot possibly account for the total swing in opinion.

However, because Cuban-Americans are a relatively distinct group--50 percent living in Miami-Dade, Florida alone, and generally an older population--among Latinos, and foreign policy making is a peculiar process (relative to other policy processes), their influence is outsized. The fact that Florida is a swing state and a major electoral prize for presidential elections certainly doesn't hurt. But Americans' views of foreign policy issues tend to be more "expert"-driven than other policy areas. Unless they perceive a strong division among experts--knowledgeable and outspoken officials, business elite, members of the press, etc.--they are likely to accept the current policies as status quo. The most outspoken and influential elites have, until recently, tended to support hard-line policies towards the island.


And what, exactly has changed? Well, the demographic makeup of the influential Cuban-American population (especially in south Florida) has changed, or, more accurately, continued changing (since the 1980s) and may have reached a tipping point.

Perhaps the most important shift in demographics among Cuban-Americans is the percentage of foreign born vs. those born in the United States. A 2002 University of Miami report shows that in 1980, the large majority, 78%, of Cubans living in America were born abroad. Ten years later, that figure had dropped to 72%, and by the year 2000: 68%. By the year 2008, when the Pew Hispanic Center last produced its Cuban-American profile report, approximately 60% of the population was foreign born. While such a profile is still unique among Hispanic populations in the United States, it demonstrates a significant change in the population over time.

Hidden within the unique age and SEC makeup of Cubans in America is an important division amongst early émigrés (pre-1980) and late émigrés (post-1980).

The first large waves of Cuban emigrants began leaving the island in the 1960s and 70s because of political oppression from the Castro regime. These groups, who had learned to survive amidst the conservative Batista regime and were in turn abused by the Communists, were driven to leave the island by politically based attacks coming from newly powerful leftists. The rationale for leaving the island then, was clearly political for most of the early groups of émigrés. United States policy concerning these groups was also very generous. Where the Cuban authorities were happy to allow dissidents and opponents leave the island, American authorities instituted policies granting immediate citizenship and even financial aid to new arrivals.

In the late 1970s and especially in 1980, emigration patterns from Cuba began to change. As Cuban exit restrictions grew stronger and Castro’s main political foes were mostly gone, emigration declined. However, in 1980, a spike in anti-Castro sentiment—which some attribute to increased visitation from Cubans living in America—led to a unilateral decision by the regime to allow those who wished to leave the island to do so from the northwestern port of Mariel.

The main driver behind the Mariel boat lift and most subsequent emigration was economic, not political. As islanders watched their economy and infrastructure decay, dreams of prosperity in the US created a strong incentive to leave. The Marielitos, as they are known, were an economically disadvantaged group compared with the pre-1980 groups. While Castro also released some criminals and mentally ill persons, the poor and working class and dark-skinned made up the largest portion of the 1980 and following emigrant groups. Finally, these groups, who were largely raised and socialized in communist Cuba, did not receive the same generous treatment from the United States upon arrival and were less welcome than their conservative, more affluent older counterparts were.

While sons and daughters of the pre-1980 group of emigres adopt some of their parents’ animosity towards the Cuban regime, young Cubans as a group tend to be very much more open to the possibility of diplomatic, travel, or trade liberalization. As they come of age, and become more influential in business, media, and social spheres, their weak support for (or perhaps lower concern with) hard-line policy towards the island will continue to influence broader public opinion.

Excluding the surge in Balsero arrivals in 1994, the stabilization of immigration patterns since 1980 has resulted in destabilization in the Cuban-American population in recent years. A steady stream of economic refugees from the island, combined with an aging conservative, hard-line population of political refugees and a growing influence of younger, liberal Cuban-Americans has resulted in a changing profile that looks nothing as it did 30 years ago.

In short, the more things have stayed the same, the more they have changed.

Violent Crime in Nicaragua and the Northern Triangle of Central America

Most of Latin America has left behind decades of civil war, insurgencies, and dictatorships that characterized the region throughout much of the 20^th century. For the three countries that comprise the “northern triangle” of Central America—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—however, democratic governance has been accompanied by levels of violence that rival or surpass those experienced during periods of war. For those countries in the southern part of Central America (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama), violent crime rates have been among the lowest in the region for decades.

Nicaragua provides an especially compelling mystery. Made famous in the U.S. during the late 1970s and 1980s following the Sandinista revolution and the ensuing contra war, Nicaragua contains many of the structural and historical elements that would lead one to expect the same levels of violence experienced in neighboring countries to the north. In fact, Nicaragua shares a colonial history similar to that of its northern neighbors; similar poverty, employment, and literacy levels; and experience with internal armed conflict—elements often associated with chronic crime and violence.

Poverty and underdevelopment, widespread throughout Central America, are especially acute in Nicaragua. In 2005, 46 percent of Nicaraguans lived in poverty—12 percent lived on less than US$1.25 per day—and the country had devastating unemployment and employment instability.

Looking at general (non-violent, or non-life-taking) crime including theft, drug use, assault, and extortion, Nicaragua does in fact appear very similar to their peers to the north. In the 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), 16.5 percent of Nicaraguans reported being victimized by a crime; in 2010, 19.2 percent gave the same response. Compare this to Guatemala, where 17.1 percent (2008) and 23.3 percent (2010) reported being victimized; or Honduras, where 13.7 percent and 14 percent were victimized by crime in 2008 and 2010, respectively.

However, in 2012, Nicaragua had a homicide rate of 12 deaths per 100,000 citizens, only a third of Guatemala’s rate of 38 per 100,000 and far lower than Honduras’ tragic 92 per 100,000 citizens—compared to 4.2 in the U.S. and a global average of 6.9. While higher than the global average, Nicaragua’s homicide rate is far below the northern triangle average of 56.

Why then does Nicaragua have a generally high crime rate, but a low murder rate?

While Central America (and Latin America, broadly speaking) has a long history with pervasive violence, the roots of current iterations lie in periods of civil war that raged throughout the region during the late 20^th century.

Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans fled the region, many of which settled in the United States, particularly California. As migrants settled in poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles faced with limited access to work or social services, an inability to speak English, precarious economic conditions, and rampant criminality, large numbers of youth joined gangs. The most prevalent of these were the largely Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, and the ethnically mixed 18^th Street Gang, known as Barrio 18 or simply Mara 18 (M-18).

Following the end of armed conflicts in Central America, many war refugees began returning home. In 14 months after Salvadoran peace accords, 375,000 Salvadorans returned from the U.S. Beginning in the mid 1990s, the United States also began deporting undocumented immigrants en masse, particularly following enactment of the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996. Large numbers of these deportees—20,000 between 2000 and 2004—had criminal, drug or gang related histories. As thousands of young gang associates landed in post-conflict settings beset by rampant criminality, no social support networks, devastated infrastructure and economy, many found themselves drawn to what they knew—crime and theft. Gang membership and criminal behavior was abetted by the widespread availability of firearms left over from the civil wars.

This wave of deportees from the U.S. brought a distinct brand of gang culture, associated with a particular lifestyle, including dress and tattoos. This culture was quickly imitated and adopted by small-time gangs throughout the region, who left their neighborhood-based pandilla identity for a more fearsome and attractive mara identity. As pandillas adopted the symbolic identity of maras, they found themselves drawn into gang warfare, something that increased cohesion among the “cliques” (Spanish clikas or franchises) that happened to share the same name, even when many of their members did not even know each other. This is the story of the northern triangle.

Nicaragua experienced its own civil strife and mass migration, but ended up with very different results. Between 1978 and 1980, thousands of Nicaraguans fled the country as Sandinistas fought and eventually ousted the regime of Anastasio Somoza. Crucially, the identity and class of people who left Nicaragua was very different from the profile of those who fled El Salvador and Guatemala. In the first surge of 1978 and 1979, during the revolution, it was largely wealthy Nicaraguans fearing the socialistic makeup of the Sandinistas, who left for the United States—specifically, Miami. During the Contra war, many more poor Nicaraguans fled the war-torn countryside for nearby Costa Rica. Very few ended up in the gang-ridden barrios of Los Angeles, and thus, really did not associate with the nascent mara culture.

Migration patterns explain why a historic regional phenomenon—pandillas (gangs)—have evolved or been usurped by maras in the northern triangle countries but not in Nicaragua. Nicaraguan pandillas, while engaged in their own mostly petty criminal enterprises and inter-gang conflicts, were not drawn into the all out gang warfare that is such an important part of marero identity—and they are simply less violent.

The effects of immigration, however, do not adequately explain the qualitative difference between pandillas and maras. Government policies towards vulnerable or at-risk groups (and self-declared mareros) in post-conflict transitions and police responses to delinquency and gang activity played a decisive role in both the development of maras and their involvement with violent crime.

In the early years of the new millennium, several countries adopted a series of legislative and law enforcement reform packages widely known as mano dura, or “iron fist.” This shift towards mano dura was decisive in the northern triangle, and contributed to a qualitative change in the nature of youth gangs in the region.

El Salvador began the shift towards mano dura with its Ley anti-mara (Anti-mara law), passed in 2003 under the conservative administration of Francisco Flores Pérez. The law went into effect in July 2003, and by August of the following year, over 19,000 individuals were detained for belonging to a gang. Guatemala and Honduras, facing rampant criminality and rising homicide rates, enacted their own set of anti-gang policies in 2003: plan escoba (“plan sweep” or “operation broom-sweep”) and Cero Tolerancia (Zero Tolerance), respectively.

While the mano dura policies enacted in the northern triangle were frequently popular and in some cases delivered a brief decline in crime and violence, their net effect was to major deteriorations in crime and violence. Honduras enjoyed a brief decline in homicides in 2003 and 2004, but beginning in 2007, the country’s homicide rate rose dramatically from around 45 murders per 100,000 to approximately 92 per 100,000 just four years later—more than doubling in that period.

This trend largely holds for Honduras’ neighbors. In Guatemala, the homicide rate actually increased between 2002 and 2003, and continued to rise until it peaked at just over 46 per 100,000 in 2009; its murder rate has remained near 40 since then. El Salvador however, actually saw its “least violent” year in the past two decades in 2002 (bottoming out at 47 per 100,000), the year before Flores Pérez’ mano dura took effect.

Prisons in the northern triangle became fertile recruiting grounds for large numbers of youth males, already disaffected by poverty, lack of economic or professional opportunity, and the humiliation of being criminalized by the legal system. The qualitative “leap” came when mareros from clikas throughout the region came together in prisons, recognizing a familiar set of symbols and identity—including a history of war with the opposing mara—a nationwide and, arguably, region-wide “institution” began to develop.

The Nicaraguan government, on the other hand, has largely focused its efforts vis-à-vis youth gangs on prevention and rehabilitation. Whereas in the northern triangle, nascent maras consolidated their brand in prisons, reintegration programs built around worker training, education, and demobilization programs stifled the evolution of Nicaraguan gangs. Finally, the complete breakdown of the Somoza regime and the development of a community oriented National Police enabled the state to maintain a large presence throughout most of urban Nicaragua, further inhibiting the large-scale institutionalization of gangs.

At first glance, the rise of maras in the northern triangle seems to have coincided with a dramatic spike in violent crime in the countries where they appear, while neighboring countries in the region (i.e. Nicaragua and Costa Rica) who do not host maras have not seen the same rise in violence. Indeed, a closer look at the fearsome and hyper-violent nature of the maras themselves, added to the fact that mareros are locked in a deadly gang war in a context where involvement in drug trafficking has added enormous arms and resources to the mix would seem to support the idea that maras are directly responsible for most of the violence sweeping the region.

However, a look at the geographical distribution of violence in each country complicates the assumed role of maras in creating the widespread violence apparent in the northern triangle. The distribution of homicides in Honduras, for example, does not clearly match with the largest centers of gang activity. The occurrence of large numbers of violent deaths outside of the major gang centers of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, for instance, points to the increasing involvement of narcotics traffickers in rural coastal areas and border departments.

In Guatemala, the rural departments of Zacapa, Escuintla, Santa Rosa, and Chiquimula all have murder rates of at least 75 per 100,000. These departments—Escuintla and Santa Rosa on the Pacific coast; Jutiapa, Chiquimula, Zacapa, and Izabal on the Salvadoran or Honduran border; and Petén, a major destination for illicit air traffic—all lie on major narcotics trafficking routes.

Human rights observers (international and domestic) and NGOs working in Honduras have documented a sharp increase in killings of several vulnerable groups, including journalists, LGBT activists, union leaders, and members of peasant organizations. Their deaths shed significant doubt on the possible involvement of gangs.

A more helpful way to think of the mara phenomenon vis-à-vis violent crime would be as a parallel force—an indirect, facilitating factor in the disintegration of rule of law, rather than the direct cause.

Gangs, including maras, have a corrupting effect on the state, and their ability to function despite mass incarceration of their members is particularly overwhelming for law enforcement and judicial institutions, which has lead to a situation of widespread impunity. 

Impunity is especially rampant in the most violent rural areas of the northern triangle, spaces where the state is largely absent (in the form of institutions, social services, police, etc.), and are filled by a range of illicit actors including gangs and organized crime who have the resources and a demonstrated willingness to kill on a huge scale. Countries in the region, such as Nicaragua, that have been able avoid the mara phenomenon, and perform better in countering impunity, experience lower rates of violent crime.

International impacts of U.S. gun policy

One of the most stimulating things about international affairs, for me, is the struggle to grasp and understand the complex interactions of people, politics, and policies on events around the world, or in neighboring countries. The Western Hemisphere is place I find especially interesting because events in North, Central, and South America very often have impacts on, or (more likely) are influenced by the people, politics, and policies in the U.S., and my city of residence, Washington, D.C.

The issue of guns and gun control is one of those complex and messy issues I love to grapple with. The politics of guns is, as we see every few months in this country, highly personal and deadly serious. Yet, despite ubiquitous attempts to do so, solutions to gun-related crime (including, but not limited to spectacular mass shootings) do not fit on bumper stickers. The issue becomes more complex when we examine U.S. federal and state gun policies in an international context.

The Atlantic had a great writeup on the impacts of liberal U.S. gun policies on violence in Latin America. The article notes that 70 percent of guns seized by Mexican authorities from drug cartels in 2011 were U.S.-made. Importantly, these massive caches of high-calibre weaponry are generally purchased legally but used to disastrous (illegal) ends. The escalated conflict against violent cartels that began in 2006 has left over 60,000 dead in Mexico (the number may well be higher, as the Mexican government stopped releasing official figures, and exact tallies are unreliable).

While it is unreasonable to place the blame for all of these deaths on U.S. policy, the ease with which cartels access military grade weapons (not withstanding Operation Fast and Furious' allowance of some arms to cross the southern border) should at least give pause to those who defend current policies solely on the basis of 2nd amendment rights.

The problem doesn't stop in Mexico. The northern triangle countries of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) are awash in guns--again, many of which purchased in or provided by the U.S. (over the course of Cold War-era civil wars). Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world. El Salvador is not far behind. Easy access to guns is undeniably part of the problem.

While violence is the manifestation of decades (or centuries) of complex and tortured political histories in many Latin American countries (the frequent U.S. contribution to which is the subject of ample literature), Americans have a moral, if not legal responsibility to assess the impacts of their policies on their neighbors.

As if the question hasn't been asked before, where does one's right to carry stop, and another's right to live in security begin? The international dimensions of this question are not irrelevant.

I'm sure many gun advocates would take issue my separating rights to carry vs. right to live in security. My intention is not to question one's right to bear per se, (this is a topic for another conversation, which really shouldn't be separate from the international discussion but...) but to question the unfettered, increasingly unrestricted enjoyment of that right.

The right to buy (or sell) without restriction is not necessarily the same as the right to bear.

Thankfully, the debate following the shootings in Newtown may be pushing Americans to reconsider the ease with which military grade weapons are bought and sold. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Virginia Senator Mark Warner (both enjoy high marks from the NRA) recently signalled their willingness to countenance more restrictive gun legislation. We'll see what happens.