Wrap-up

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A Latin Love Affair

This article is published in the May edition of Diplo Magazine

The way certain sections of the media have been reporting Latin America, you’d be excused for thinking that the body of Che Guevara had been exhumed and was whipping up revolution from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. For some years now, events across the Western Hemisphere – where a number of centre-left governments are electorally successful – have prompted a sort of lazy journalism in the West. The Peruvian election on 9 April offered commentators yet another excuse to peer under the rock at the state of play in Latin America, and congratulate yet another bout of anti-American rhetoric.

This was no more apparent than in the week of programming that BBC’s Newsnight devoted to what it described as the ‘world’s most underreported story’. A team of correspondents were sent down to the region, where interviews with key figures such as Peruvian nationalist and presidential front-runner, Ollanta Humala, and the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, were interspersed with overwhelmingly positive coverage of the ‘revolution’ that the region seems to be undergoing. The theme of the week was a simple one, viewed through the prism of revolutionary fervour. Peru’s new nationalist hero was set to follow the trend of the last five years by throwing off the shackles of the Washington consensus – the set of International Monetary Fund-mandated policies that dictated Latin American politics through the 1990s.

Discussion in the media of Latin America is incomplete without the word ‘Bush’; as the BBC delighted in claiming, the US president is aghast at the fact that his own ‘back yard’ has turned so wilfully against him while events in the Middle East dominate the horizon. Indeed, every single facet of politics in the region was interpreted through this meme. Yet this is far from being a unified trend. In Chile, for example, the centre-left candidate Michelle Bachelet was elected President this past January. Far from lobbing ideological missiles towards the White House, Bachelet has pledged to continue with the policies of her admired predecessor, Ricardo Lagos, who forged a pro-market agenda – including a bilateral trade deal with the United States – while simultaneously addressing the social needs of his country. The result is that Chile is the region’s most successful economy.

Meanwhile, the situation in other countries is far less clear-cut than suggested by the BBC. While politicians such as Humala, Chavez and Evo Morales of Bolivia may enjoy playing up their revolutionary zeal and decrying the influence of Washington, the fact remains that they are intimately tied to the United States and, indeed, to market capitalism. Venezuela currently supplies about 15% of America’s oil needs. This figure has remained stable throughout Chavez’s presidency, and, despite the rhetoric from both sides, it is unlikely to change in the near future. The social projects and healthcare that Chavez funds – and that make up his electoral capital – are kept afloat by the healthy condition of the oil market. Should this change, then the Bolivarian revolution, as it has been dubbed, will be compromised.

The democratic credentials of some of the region’s major players are far from watertight. The BBC’s hagiography of Ollanta Humala neatly omitted a number of relevant facts. His brother, Antauro, languishes in jail, having failed in an attempt to depose President Alejandro Toledo (similarly, Hugo Chavez spent time in jail in the early 1990s following an abortive coup attempt). Meanwhile, Humala’s father, Isaac, was the founder of a racist, pro-indigenous movement that Humala was briefly associated with, and Humala has himself been accused of xenophobia. He was also implicated in the torture and ‘disappearing’ of peasants whilst serving in the armed forces during the early 1990s. It seems strange that most of the reports that champion Humala’s leftist credentials ignore these aspects of his career,

At press time, the first round of the Peruvian election had finished with Humala as the front-runner. He will do battle in a run-off election, scheduled for May or early June, most likely against the former leader, Alan Garcia. As has been noted, neither option is a particularly good one for Peru, lying as it is between a failed president and a nationalist with questionable democratic credentials. Yet if Humala wins, he will no doubt be celebrated as another American ‘neighbour’ (a strange word to use, given the thousands of miles separating Washington and Lima) of hostile mien. Yet it is worth remembering that the triumphalist populism that dominated Latin America throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century led, inexorably, to the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s that the region has only recently emerged from. It would be better for Western commentators to put their analysis in context, instead of moulding the facts to fit their romantic visions.

Bolivia nationalises gas fields

If Bolivians expected that the election of Evo Morales, the indigenous president who comfortably won last December’s election, would begin to set right centuries of exploitation by foreign companies, then they will swiftly be disabused of such a notion. This week’s announcement by Morales that the country’s lucrative gas industry is to be nationalised has prompted the predictable jitters amongst multinational organisations.

The British oil company BG Group followed Spain’s Repsol and Brazil’s Petrobras in warning of the consequences that Morales’ decision could provoke. The president on Monday sent troops to the country’s gas fields, offering the companies 180 days in which to agree new contracts which he says will make them “partners”, rather than owners, of the natural resources. While his rhetoric may be of ownership and Bolivian sovereignty over the land, the undertone is less hostile: Morale doesn’t want to drive away investors as much as strong-arm them into new contracts that will be more favourable to Bolivia. Under current terms, fifty percent is the usual figure that goes to the country; Morales intends to ramp this up to somewhere nearer the 80% mark.

Morales ambition is worthy; after all, he was elected on a platform of nationalisation for the country’s energy supplies. Unfortunately, while this will prove popular amongst his own electorate, there is little chance that in the real world, where international energy companies wield far more clout than a single government in an unstable region, the situation will pan out the way the President hopes. Petrobras have already announced that they will be suspending their operations in the country, and a planned pipeline between the two nations has been scrapped.

Regional leaders are scheduled to meet this week, and already it looks as though a split between, on the one side, Morales and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and on the other, Lula da Silva of Brazil and Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, is all but inevitable. While Bolivia may well be forced to back down and re-negotiate its terms, the current crisis vividly demonstrates that the Latin American leftwing “revolution” – which many see as a challenge to the United States – is anything but unified.

Cameron of the Arctic

Could the Arctic wander prove to be David Cameron's Notting Hill Carnival moment? Okay, so it’s probably not likely. When William Hague donned his baseball cap at the annual street party back in 1998, he was already struggling, having inherited a cracked and open sore of a party that was utterly without direction and fighting amongst itself over how, exactly, things had gone so wrong. The cap summed up his awkwardness. Whereas Hague was already a leader whose own MPs were disdainful of his chances of winning an election, Cameron has succeeded in at least making his party a little more interesting, for the time being.

His much-invoked ‘green’ credentials were the reason behind this photo-op, one that would have been hard for any politician to pull off with aplomb, let alone Cameron with his rubicund, fleshy face and upper-teethed smile. To give him his due, he didn’t come across as wholly ridiculous, mainly because he at least has form when it comes to self-ridicule in the name of the environment; his much-mocked bicycling image has now been lampooned by Labour, which – if anything – means that is likely to be the most firmly entrenched icon of the new Conservative leader.

But how much of his nature-loving ways is legitimate? As the man who crafted the Tory party’s 2005 manifesto, it is interesting to note how that document contained merely token references to climate change. This weekend’s Guardian contained an essay by Robert MacFarlane which examines how what Cameron says he wants to do is likely to bump heads, eventually, with traditional Conservative shibboleths of “free enterprise, consumer choice and market liberty”. It is likely that much of Cameron’s posturing is just that; presenting himself early in his reign as to the left of his party – much in the way that Blair did in his first year – before, gradually, tacking back to the right, something that many expected (in reverse) of Blair but which never truly materialised. While a cursory visit to the Conservative web site urges constituents to “Vote blue, go green!”, it is highly unlikely that most Party members are entirely happy with what this would in reality mean.

The Green party highlighted that Mr. Cameron’s trip to Norway resulted in some 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere; which, replied Conservative central office proudly announced, had been offset by contributing to a climate care initiative. These types of organisations, such as Climate Care, are really nothing more than salves to the conscience, comforters that offer the same hassle-free environment-friendly kudos as recycling; it may be a good thing in the particular, but it doesn’t address the reality of the problem, namely that the meteoric rise in airline travel over the past thirty years is one of the biggest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions. Predictably Mr. Cameron’s party, just like Labour, has nothing to say about this; presumably their silence on such matters as the proposed fifth runway at Heathrow and the expansion of Stansted signifies their concurrence.

A recent New Statesman article discussed the implications of a significant surcharge – or even an outright ban – on flights for leisure purposes; while a measure like this would address the problem, the fact that it would be political suicide for whomever suggested it means that more realistic measures need to be taken. Only when politicians such as Cameron start addressing these kinds of pressing issues can they be said to be truly concerned about the environment.

Crackdown in Syria

A disturbing report from this week's New York Time suggests that, rather than the beginnings of an 'Arab Spring', as many commentators declared just over a year ago following the uprising in Lebanon against Syrian hegemony, the current regime in Damascus is putting more and more pressure on the country's fledgling opposition. The long-defunct neoconservative aim to remould the Middle East along democratic lines may not get aired much in these days, where cutting and running appears to be the "coaltion"'s defacto aim, but nonetheless this is a troubling report.

Just months ago, under intense international pressure to ease its stranglehold on neighboring Lebanon, the Syrian government was talking about ending the ruling Baath Party's grip on Syrian power and paving the way for a multiparty system.But things have moved in the opposite direction. Syrian officials are aggressively silencing domestic political opposition while accommodating religious conservatives to shore up support across the country.

Security forces have detained human rights workers and political leaders, and in some cases their family members as well. They have barred travel abroad for political conferences and shut down a human rights center financed by the European Union. And the government has delivered a stern message to the national news media demanding that they promote — not challenge — the official agenda.

The leadership's actions were described in interviews with top officials as well as dissidents and human rights activists. They reflect at least in part a growing sense of confidence because of shifts in the Middle East in recent months, especially the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections, political paralysis in Lebanon and the intense difficulties facing the United States in trying to stabilize Iraq and stymie Iran's drive toward nuclear power.

The report also notes the effect of increasing levels of Islamist political representation across the region - most recently in the Hamas victory - is having on secular, authoritarian regimes like that of Bashar al-Assad:

The government has also sought to fortify its position with a nod to a reality sweeping not just Syria, but the region: a surge in religious identification and a growing desire to empower religious political movements like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter group recently won 88 seats in the Egyptian Parliament in spite of government efforts to block its supporters from voting.

Rather than the relgious repression of old, the Syrian government is now seeking to wrap itself in the flag of Islam, and convince the population of its legitimacy within Islam.

Newsnight falls for Chavismo

Newsnight is this week devoting its programming to Latin America, and what it repeatedly describes as the “world’s most underreported story” – namely, the electoral changes that have seen the continent move away from the Washington consensus of the 1990s to left and centre-left governments.

Newsnight’s angle is clear: they are reading the entire continental drift as a sop in the face of George W. Bush, reducing the political will of hundreds of millions of people into an anti-American tirade that is insulting, demeaning and largely meaningless. If the first programme is anything to go by, the entire week will simply serve a foregone conclusion: that Hugo Chavez is a hero who opposes the USA’s demonic hegemon and is carving out a path of equality and self-sufficiency for the global south, inspiring and funding left-leaning candidates and turning Latin America firmly towards a neo-socialist bent.

The attitude was summed up by the gloating of Newsnight present Gavin Esler, who has clearly bought into the whole Western attitude towards Latin America – what might be called “Guevarism”, after Che Guevara, the hero of the Cuban revolution whose poster lives on in the dorm rooms of youthful idealists. The romanticised notion that Latin America represents the cradle of political opposition, a breeding ground for socialist revolutionaries and popular movements, of Sandinistas and Zapateros and the heroic Tupac Amaru, is a convenient myth for armchair guerrillas who wouldn’t care to see the same occur on their own turf. Esler bungled an interview with Otto Reich so badly that the deeply unpleasant former Venezuelan ambassador – responsible in part for the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua during the violent Central American 1980s, and author of a recent National Review article that described Castro and Chavez as the new “axis of evil” – came across as the victim of a hatchet job. Every single comment was prefaced with wallowing claims, such as “Washington has lost Latin America”, and variations thereon. Reich’s laughable claim that America has always supported democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere were met with a limp accusation of long-standing interference – although to be honest, Esler seemed to lack even the basic knowledge of the subject at hand. His interview with Peruvian presidential hopeful, Ollanta Humala, tried the same tricks – encouraging Humala to attack George Bush, throwing him questions about the relationship his government would potentially have with the US… at no point did Esler actually ask what his domestic policies would be.

Earlier in the show, a hagiographic interview with Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, by Greg Palast was predictably biased and blinkered in the manner that Palast is notorious for. His fawning over Chavez, and softball questioning put to the president via a translator (hasn’t he spent enough time there by now to learn the language?), was reminiscent of a George Bush press conference, and put the lie to Palast’s puffed-up “investigative journalist” angle. The BBC’s big claims surrounding this interview – that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world – proved to be a bust; economically, this would be true if (as Chavez wishes) the price of oil were set at $50 a barrel, but this is highly unlikely. Yet the piece made no mention of this.

Whilst turning a blind eye to the increasing stories of human rights abuses in Venezuela, and Chavez’ desire his reign as long as possible – never mind the effect on democracy – the report did, however, trump a curious statistic: that under Chavez poverty in Venezuela is down by one third. This has traditionally been where Chavez’ power resides – in the hands of the poor, who see him as a saviour, an indigenous hero who after years of neglect has finally given the majority in the country a voice. It is true that the country’s oil wealth has allowed the introduction of Cuban doctors and health facilities to places that once had none; a massive, country-wide programme has seen literacy levels rise dramatically, while free schools and universities have brought education to millions. Yet whether or not poverty has actually increased is a cause of much furious debate. Some reports ay it has decreased; others news channels, such as vcrisis.com, quote the government’s own statistics which indicate that in Chavez’s first four years in office rose from 43% to 54% of the population.

Evidently both of these sources have certain biases, but it is far from certain that poverty is on the decline. Quite where Mr. Palast came up with his figure of a third is a mystery, and he cited no official statistics to back it up. It was yet another glaring example in a factually-shy report that treated Chavez as some kind of Messiah sent down from the heavens to tackle George Bush and wield the honourable sword of socialismo.

Hopefully the rest of the week’s editions will present a more nuanced account of the complex situation in Latin America, but it seems there is little chance. The BBC seems to have fallen for the kind of post-colonialism that often afflicts reporting from Africa – treating the entire continent as a homogenous mass, and fixing facts and figures around the conveniently romantic story. Perhaps an account of Chile – who, despite its socialist President, Michele Bachelet, is taking a far more sober and balanced approach to its dealings with the outside world – will redress the balance. Yet on this first programme, there is little hope that this will happen.

Haiti's general election poses more questions than answers

This article was first published in the April 2006 issue of Diplo Magazine

Haiti is a country that rarely figures in the Western media, and when it does the coverage is overwhelmingly negative: a steady drip-feed of coups, civil unrest, political assassination and brutal violence. The first months of this year have been no exception to this dismal rule. The general election on 7 February was rocked by accusations of fraud, plunging the country into a fresh crisis, and quite possibly dashing hopes that the country’s long-running strife would be consigned to the past.


The poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti has struggled throughout its history with appalling leadership on a vast scale. The site of the world’s first successful slave revolt, in 1804 Haiti became only the second independent nation in the Americas. Sadly this auspicious beginning proved illusory. Over the decades, the country’s intrinsic problems of poverty, lack of development, poor nutrition and education, not to mention its strategic importance to the burgeoning superpower to the north, have left it the most impoverished nation in the hemisphere. The statistics are bleak: life expectancy for men is 48, one child in ten fails to reach his or her fifth birthday, and over 85% of the population subsist on less than a dollar per day.


Haiti’s recent history is bleak. After the overthrow of the notorious Duvalier dictatorship in 1989, a quasi-democracy was born, and in 1991 the country held its first election. Yet coups and attempted insurrections resulted in constant upheaval, and finally, the fig-leaf of legitimacy was torn aside in 2004, as US Special Forces stormed the country to remove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ostensibly to prevent further unrest. While Aristide was undoubtedly corrupt, there was a sinister motive behind the American intervention. The Haitian government had committed the cardinal sin of seeking to address the country’s crippling poverty, and in doing so had made economic decisions that threatened the rude health of the companies that had set up shop in Port-au-Prince during the nineties. As Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973, had already found out, a sovereign nation cannot snub Washington and think they will escape without a bruised nose.


Since 2004 – the bicentennial year – Haiti has been under the interim control of Boniface Alexandre, who has gingerly steered the country toward this year’s election. During that time, despite the further decline of the economy and mass emigration that sees the few educated nationals leave as soon as possible, there has been one source of hope: the election itself, seen optimistically as a turning point. Some 33 candidates ran, and despite an increase in violence and kidnapping, the hopeful mood prevailed. Yet barely had the polling stations closed before the results were in doubt. Burned ballot papers were discovered at a city dump, and 150,000 votes were invalidated due to tally sheets being incorrectly filled out by poll workers. Frontrunner and former president Rene Preval, who saw his initial share of 61% drop to 48.7%, claimed that he was denied an outright victory due to ‘massive fraud and gross errors’. His supporters, who include the country’s main street gangs, organised protests that swiftly turned violent.


A last-minute intervention by the Brazilian-mandated UN peacekeepers and the Organisation of American States led to a deal which exploited a loophole in Haitian law, allowing some 85,000 blank votes to be disregarded (they had previously been counted as a separate category). This tipped Mr Preval’s share of the vote up to 51%, edging him just over the crucial 50% mark and thus avoiding a recall election. Despite this, the electoral debacle doesn’t bode well for the future health of Haiti’s democracy. The election official, Jacques Bernard, has been forced to flee the country in fear of his life after his farmhouse was burned down. The general picture is of a country on the edge of social unrest, hardly the brave new world that the election was supposed to herald.


And even if the result is confirmed, will the president-elect be allowed to keep his campaign promises? The United States made it abundantly clear during the campaign that they were not in favour of Mr Preval. As far as Washington is concerned, in a polarised world, the Haiti result indicates that it has elected to follow the centre-left pattern of government that has taken hold over the last five years throughout the Americas. Furthermore, Preval was once the protégé of the exiled Aristide, although the two no longer see eye to eye. With these things in consideration, it is important that recognition from the US, as well as other world organisations, is swift. US State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack sounded a hopeful note, saying that his country ‘should unconditionally support a government that wins a democratic election’.


As the only Haitian-elected leader to complete his term of office (from 1995-2000) without either being ousted, assassinated or seeking to extend his rule by extrajudicial means, Mr Preval commands a respect unique in his country. The name of his party, Lespwa, the Creole word for ‘hope’, is fitting. If he can bring stability and a period of legitimate rule, then perhaps the corner towards national unity and reconstruction could be turned. With luck, between now and his 29 March inauguration, a period of calm will prevail. Preval’s task is colossal, but one with immense rewards: the steering of this blighted country, now in its third century as an independent nation, towards a better future.