2 Harvard International Review Blog » 2008 » July

July 30, 2008

Democracy Interrupted: less transparency, more noise

Filed under: Democratization, Latin America — Jason Lakin @ 12:36 am

I have used this and other blog spaces in the past to write about the lack of transparency in state and local accounts in Mexico. On Sunday, Mexican daily REFORMA reported on yet another accounting fiasco of this type: without reporting their donations, and in the absence of auditing, state and local governments have been funneling millions of pesos to local soccer teams. As if professional sports is not enough of a racket, it seems extremely likely that these teams gain favors not because of the great entertainment service they perform for the community (overvalued at any rate), but because of their links to politicians. Of course, as usual, no one really knows what is going on, because there are no enforceable rules that, for example, make it obligatory to report on the use of public money.

In lieu of strong democratic institutions, such as an auditor to monitor the people’s money, we are treated instead to populist gestures like Sunday’s referendum on oil privatization. Never mind that the entrance of private companies into PEMEX operations is not a matter of kind, but of degree (after all, there has been some private participation in PEMEX since at least the 1990s), making it foolish to convert it into a yes/no question. Never mind that the referendum is an expensive but non-binding exercise. Worse than any of this, the referendum is not a society-wide exercise. It has been promoted largely by one political party (PRD), and is identified largely with that political party’s coalition (FAP). Since this is a partisan, non-binding referendum, it is hard to know what if anything to make of the results. After all, how many panistas, or even priistas, are likely to vote? The PRD, of course, has no credible track record of organizing elections. Its own national party elections were annulled after months of infighting because of widespread fraud. So even if the referendum is clean, which is unlikely, does it tell us anything other than that the PRD is against the privatization of PEMEX in its broadest sense? I doubt it. And sadly, we already knew that.

Meanwhile, as a separate article in REFORMA on Sunday morning made clear, impunity continues to reign in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where, for years now, most conflict has been resolved with resort to violence. Lately, there has been less of the kind of urban-based, government on protestor violence of 2006. Instead, there has been fragmented violence against businessmen, and within local communities. More troubling than the violence, however, is the failure to hold anyone responsible for anything, ever.

The sad truth is that the failure to build credible institutional constraints on the government, either by demanding accountability with respect to crime, or transparency with respect to expenditures, is the biggest challenge in Mexican democracy today. And yet this challenge receives almost no attention, while the reform of PEMEX has received hundreds of hours of demagoguery. It is worth noting that PEMEX is not exempt from this more general problem either: the money that flows through PEMEX is poorly accounted for, and the oil worker union, like its sports team counterparts, constitutes a formidable mafia that demands off-the-books payoffs for any number of socially detrimental expenses.

Alas, no referendum will be held on that subject. Doing so might actually affect someone’s interests. And we wouldn’t want to do anything to interrupt a smoothly functioning democracy.

July 28, 2008

Boxing’s Day

Filed under: General — Kiran Bhat @ 3:40 pm

An absolutely exhilirating fight between Mexican Antonio Margarito and Puerto Rican Miguel Cotto ended last night with a new man atop the World Boxing Association’s Welterweight table. The fight also made this writer think about the reasons why boxing, once arguably among the most universally appealing of all sports, has fallen so far. The reason may have more to do with the general topic of this blog than it does at first glance.

Of course, there could be several non-geopolitical factors behind boxing’s flagging popularity. It could be that boxing has no two rivals like Ali and Frazier, who define this era. Maybe it’s just that there is no great champion, or boredom with the same old formula, or even annoyance at the reduction of fifteen round fights (which tended to end in knockouts) to today’s twelve-rounders. Many have criticized the boxing’s ruling bodies for corruption, complexity, unfairness and the like. It could even be that Mixed Martial Arts is encroaching on the market. Boxing’s ills could be attributed to all of these things. Or it could be attributed to far more grandiose factors.

In the days of boxing’s rise, fighters were metaphors for their countries, and the squared circle a vicarious battlefield. When German Max Schmeling and American Joe Louis fought in 1936, they represented the core values and personalities of their respective nations, even if unwittingly. Then, in boxing’s heyday of the 60s and 70s, the great champion, Muhammad Ali, transcended, and often transgressed against core tenants of his nation and in the process became an international phenom. When he spoke against war, when he traveled abroad for his fights and when he earned headlines in dozens of languages around the world after his knockouts, Ali became a truly universal champion. Boxers today may praise their native land after victories (as Margarito did last night after he came back from an early drubbing to stop Cotto in the eleventh) or have popularity the world over, but they simply do not hold the emotional weight that they once did with the world’s population.

This boxing fan hopes, probably in vain, that the Olympics will renew interest in the sport on the international stage, or at the very least, in countries where boxers could become unlikely heroes by grabbing unexpected medals. Soccer now does for the world every four years what boxing used to do when it was popular. But unlike in soccer, success in boxing takes no induction into a national youth program. Unlike soccer, boxing is a sport that is genetically hardwired into every human being – fighting is as old as the species itself. And unlike in soccer, being a resident of a country with no successful national program does not significantly decrease your chances at international glory. The only requirements for boxers are a mean punch and a big heart, things that individuals the world over possess and ought to be proud of.

Now I acknowledge that boxing is a violent bloodsport which can often end in terrible tragedy, and respect those who stay away because of this fact. But considering the things that nations do to each other over land or culture, there is no shame in sending one of your best out to take on one of their best on that hallowed canvas.

UPDATE: Vijender Kumar, the Indian boxer who was mentioned as a potential medal winner from an unlikely nation in this article, did indeed capture the bronze in Beijing and came home to a hero’s welcome.

Cry ‘Havoc’ In Kashmir?

Filed under: Defense/Military, General, South Asia, Terrorism — Kiran Bhat @ 1:02 pm

India and Pakistan seem set to fight another round in their decades-long conflict.

A skirmish between Indian and Pakistani patrols in Kashmir has left an Indian soldier dead. According to reports, the battle has sparked continued fighting that lasted into Monday night and Tuesday morning local time. Combined with today’s military casualty, an official Indian conclusion that Pakistani-backed terrorists were the culprits behind last week’s bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad could quickly send things spiraling out of control.

The last time Pakistan and India’s Kashmiri Cold War went hot was in January 2002, following the suicide attacks on India’s Parliament in December 2001. An estimated 1 million troops (about 700,000 Indians and 300,000 Pakistanis) were mobilized around the disputed Line of Control. Both nuclear-armed sides prepared for all-out war, with menacing military maneuvers backing tough talk.

Thankfully, a combination of diplomacy and luck (the monsoons came) pushed war from the realm of possibility in 2002. For the past six years, the Kashmir disagreement has been played out primarily in the diplomatic theater. Yet the possibility of another fight has been simmering on the back burner for that entire time as well. Could now be the time when the possibility of armed conflict moves back to the fore?

With the first shots fired, the dogs of war may have already slipped.

July 21, 2008

Nutty? Mexico’s noisy passion for population relocation

Filed under: Development, General, Latin America — Jason Lakin @ 11:49 am

Today, Mexican daily El Universal reports on the Mexican government’s ambitious plans to relocate populations that are vulnerable to hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters. 188 of the country’s approximately 2500 municipalities (analogous to American counties) have been identified as risk-prone. By next year, a complete list will be ready, and gradual relocations will begin. The idea is to move populations away from coasts and river banks, and toward urban areas.

The federal government’s plan mirrors the concept behind the state of Chiapas’s own development program, Rural Cities, announced with great fanfare last year, and allegedly launched a few months ago. The program is supposed to encourage dispersed populations in the state to move to urban centers, newly created by the government, where service provision will be easier due to population concentration. The program is putting a particular emphasis on populations living on or near the Grijalva river, which flooded last year and left hundreds of chiapanecans living in refugee camps.

Both the state and federal government should be applauded for focusing on marginal populations living in risky areas.  But they should also be admonished for continuing to talk up grandiose plans without even minimal attention to the details of how they will be implemented.  Relocation of families is, in any country, a dicey prospect which, to be successful, implies a series of complex social and economic interventions which few governments are capable of bringing to fruition.

In Mexico, the proof of the government’s limited capacity to deal with relocation is already manifest, even before any new programs are undertaken:  the director of Rural Cities in Chiapas has acknowledged that the government is inexcusably tardy in providing housing to those displaced last year in Ostuacán, in spite of the fact that serving this community is supposed to be the model for the government’s relocation strategy.  In Baja California Sur, hundreds of families have been waiting almost two years to be relocated after their homes were destroyed by Hurricane John.

If the government cannot deal with a few hundred families that are already displaced and desperate for relocation, how does it plan to relocate thousands of families in hundreds of municipalities?  It is not immediately clear what is holding up the relocation efforts in BCS and Chiapas: probably a mix of corruption, incompetence, and rejection on the part of local communities of the terms on which the government wants to buy land for relocation.  Whatever the reason, a frank conversation about how to actually implement a relocation, and at least one successful case of relocation might seem like relevant prerequisites for undertaking a major relocation program.

But, so far, the Mexican government’s relocation programs look set to follow an old pattern in Mexico: politicians talk a lot about the right things, but nobody follows through on implementing them.  Mexicans have an expression that describes this state of affairs: “a lot of noise, few nuts.”   It’s not too late to start demanding more nuts to go with all the noise emanating from on high.

July 14, 2008

Collateral Damage

Filed under: Defense/Military, General, Latin America — Jason Lakin @ 2:04 pm

In the past week, the costs of the “war on drugs” in Mexico have become increasingly obvious and onerous. First, the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) released a report damning the military’s human rights abuses, specifically abuses of people not directly involved in the drug wars. The Secretary of Defense largely accepted this condemnation. Then it was revealed that violence, or at least the fear of violence, has spread to the state university in Sinaloa, where students were evacuated twice during the last semester; campus protests against the increasing violence were organized over the weekend. On Sunday, it was reported that five shoppers at a mall in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, were taken hostage by thugs, after the gangsters shot a high ranking police officer. Today, four innocent teenagers and three other young adults were shot in Sinaloa, caught in the cross-fire between rival gangs.

These events give the lie to the notion that the “war on drugs” is simply a battle between high level government and cartel officials that by and large does not affect normal people. To the contrary, the violence, and threat of the same, appears to be spreading well beyond the confines of government versus kingpin. The government will undoubtedly make the usual claims about things needing to get worse before they get better, and the violence demonstrating that the drug lords are becoming more desperate because the government is winning.

These claims are not necessarily false. But would the President please explain how we will know when the war is almost over and the violence is finally going to decline? Or how we will know if the government is actually losing the war and it is time for a new strategy? Or whether there is any limit to the number of innocent people who must die before strategies are rethought?

The problem with the claims of the prosecutors of this war is not that they are false, but that they are not falsifiable. Any amount of violence can be justified. Any length of time fighting a losing war can be justified. Any number of dead is reasonable collateral damage. Only faith can guide us in knowing when enough is enough.

God help us all.

July 1, 2008

Right To Life

Filed under: Development, General, Health, Human Rights, Latin America — Jason Lakin @ 8:56 pm

Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most forgotten states, is finally getting a little bit of the attention it deserves. Guerrero is not Mexico’s poorest state, but this is largely due to the fact that Acapulco and a few other resort towns awash in cash skew the state’s average income upwards. Poor people living in rural Guerrero are as poor as the poorest Mexicans anywhere. Maternal mortality in Guerrero’s most neglected region, the hard-scrabble mountains that border Oaxaca, is four times the Mexican average. Dispersed populations often have to walk hours to receive education or health services.

Last year, the community of Mini Numa, in what has long been one of Mexico’s poorest municipalities (and Guerrero’s poorest), Metlatónoc, decided they had had enough. The municipality of Metlatónoc has never had a proper health clinic. The Fox administration made some advances on this front, donating a few trailers which have served as the health clinic for the last few years. Last year, when I visited the region, plans to build a US$100,000 clinic were finally under way.

However, people living in the small community of Mini Numa still have to walk as far as two hours to get services in the municipal capital. And they often find the clinic closed when they arrive. At least five preventable deaths occurred last year as a result of the combination of long distances and closed clinics. Arguing that the lack of a clinic in their community violates their right to health (and life), the community is making waves by filing a suit against the government, with the help of the widely recognized NGO Tlachinollan.

Guerrero’s poor are finally front page news in national newspapers, and the President has even been forced to respond by pledging to send doctors southward. But now what? The state of Guerrero argues that the community of Metlatónoc is too small to place a clinic there; the Secretary of Health only places clinics in communities of a certain size and distance from other clinics. Although this argument has tended to be dismissed, it is not without merit: there is no sense in building clinics in every tiny community or throwing up a new clinic every 5 feet. Doing so implies a huge resource investment and ambiguous payoffs.

The community of Mini Numa does not have a right to a health clinic. Nor does any Mexican. They do, however, have a right to decent health care. The question is how to provide it. It would be too bad if this case turns into a silly argument about whether Mini Numa deserves a health clinic. Mexico has many dispersed communities like Mini Numa. They cannot all have health clinics. A better solution to the problem of providing services to such communities would be to create a reliable, public, subsidized transport/ambulance system that could respond quickly to emergencies and transport families to the nearest clinic. This implies improved road and vehicle infrastructure. It is not cheap. But, unlike building a clinic in every backyard, it might be effective.

However, the rot, of which Mini Numa’s unfortunate deaths are a symptom, runs deeper. Even if families in Mini Numa could get to the clinic in Metlatónoc in a split second, there would often not be anyone there. This too happens all over rural Mexico. Why? Because Mexico has a faulty labor relations system and many doctors do not show up for work in poor rural communities. No one pays much attention to what these doctors do, and if anyone dares to question them, the union usually backs them up. Furthermore, health clinics in these areas often fall quickly into disrepair. Doctors don’t work to keep them up, and municipal presidents are busy buying off voters and investing in church bells. Mexico’s decentralized health system allows everyone to pass the buck when people die, as they have in Mini Numa, as a result of these failures.

The President can send a doctor. He can even promise to build a clinic in Mini Numa. These are band-aid solutions. Mexico, like many other countries, needs deep-rooted labor reforms, centralization of key health goals and responsibilities, major investments in infrastructure, and a creative set of regulations to deal with dispersed communities. Mini Numa’s brave attempt to use the courts to change Mexico is a golden opportunity. Let’s hope it isn’t squandered.