Update: they've now put up this one as well, which has been renamed from its original title: "Crazy Beat Nights on the Panamericana". I guess they thought the Kerouac reference was either too obscure or too pretentious...
Further update: And also this one on the Bus Busker in Latin America. Not seen before on this blog, although friends and family may have been subjected to draft versions.
The chaps at Road Junky are putting up a few of my spare travel stories -- the more gonzo ones that I never managed to get a positive response to from the New Zealand newspapers and magazines (which is not to say that my net total of positive responses is even very high). This one has currently got fifth spot on their front page -- people who know me will recognize it as one I occasionally tell when everyone is bringing out their hair-raising travellers tales over a few beers.
Categories: Road Junky, adventure travel
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Immigration Bill Has Elements of the Kafkaesque
UPDATE
The Human Rights Commission has made a highly critical submission on the Immigration Bill in which, carefully-worded independent Crown agency that the HRC is, it also saw fit to use the expression 'kafkaesque'. The HRC also picked out for special criticism clause 9 (1) (f) -- the one discussed in my original post that makes removal, deportation or exclusions from [any] other country sufficient (or mandatory?) grounds for denial of entry to New Zealand.
There is also now an anti-Bill website, and an online petition against the Bill. Those who sign the petition are able to submit a comment with their signature.
-- original post --
The new Immigration Bill currently working its way through the New Zealand legislative process should be of grave concern to anyone who cares about civil liberties, according to two detailed articles by Gordon Campbell.
The Bill gives a frightening new range of powers to immigration officials (search, seizure and detention without warrants) and enshrines the use of secret information to make accusations against people who will have no guarantee of being able to see a summary of the evidence against them. It removes current judicial oversight of immigration proceedings. It also requires institutions, businesses and individuals (including employers or accommodation providers) to provide information on a 'suspect' and allows for this information to be provided to a broadly-defined range of overseas agencies. It provides for the compulsory collection of biometric information (including from New Zealand citizens) and fails to establish safeguards on its use.
As with other bloggers, one clause sets personal alarm bells ringing: 9 (1), which states that "no visa or entry permission may be granted, and no visa waiver may apply to any person [who]" has (a) ever been convicted of a crime punishable by at least 5 years; (b) been convicted of a crime punishable by at least 12 months in the last 10 years; or (f) "has at any time been removed, deported or excluded from another country".
One blog commenter suggested that this may just be badly drafted and that an immigration officer may -- at their discretion -- deny entry to someone deported, removed or excluded from another country, rather than denial of entry being mandatory for someone in this circumstance.
Even in this case, these conditions are draconian. Presumably 9 (1) (a) and (b) would include someone who has been a political prisoner in a state like China or Saudi Arabia. Should a human rights activist from Burma be denied entry to New Zealand because she was thrown in jail by the dictatorship?
Clause (9) (1) (f) is just crazy. In this supposedly globalised world, the nation state still carries a fair wack of arbitrary power over personal movement. The rights which citizens of many states take for granted evaporate once a border is crossed, and you can be deported, removed or excluded from a country without being anything like a criminal or badly-intentioned person. When I was in Mexico a few years ago I had the chance to chat to a guy who worked at the New Zealand embassy, who said that his colleagues at the Spanish and Italian embassies had had to process the deportations of about 100 of their citizens in the past year, who had annoyed the Mexican military by volunteering as human rights observers in Chiapas. It was with this in mind that I narrowly decided not to do the same thing myself.
As other bloggers point out, you can be refused entry to a country through a simple misunderstanding, or because some petty official doesn't like the cut of your gib. You don't have to go far to find stories of a respected British journalist detained, strip-searched and deported at LAX by paranoid US Immigration because there was an irregularity in her paperwork. Is it the intention to turn all such people away from New Zealand?
Both major parties are supporting the Bill (only the Greens and the Maori Party are likely to oppose it), so with no 'horse race'-style story available, our lamentable excuse for a mainstream media is ignoring the Bill altogether.
Campbell comments that internationally centre-left parties have been only too willing to stengthen the authoritarian reach of the state, and it has been the crusty conservatives in the British and US courts who have been the last bastion of traditional civil liberties. Unfortunately, as I've argued previously, the principles of the 'liberal' right tend to disappear in the political arena. Campbell says:
[I]n New Zealand, the centre right and its libertarian wing seem concerned merely with corporate freedom and property rights, and not with the civil rights of individuals. Thus, Act and National seem certain to applaud the extensions of state power the Bill contains, and will vote with the Government to pass them into law. Much as they may whine on about the nanny state, the centre right in New Zealand has always had a love affair with the authoritarian powers of the daddy state
So it will be down to a couple of minor parties, civil groups like the Law Society and concerned citizens to oppose this overrreaching legislation.
The Human Rights Commission has made a highly critical submission on the Immigration Bill in which, carefully-worded independent Crown agency that the HRC is, it also saw fit to use the expression 'kafkaesque'. The HRC also picked out for special criticism clause 9 (1) (f) -- the one discussed in my original post that makes removal, deportation or exclusions from [any] other country sufficient (or mandatory?) grounds for denial of entry to New Zealand.
There is also now an anti-Bill website, and an online petition against the Bill. Those who sign the petition are able to submit a comment with their signature.
-- original post --
The new Immigration Bill currently working its way through the New Zealand legislative process should be of grave concern to anyone who cares about civil liberties, according to two detailed articles by Gordon Campbell.
The Bill gives a frightening new range of powers to immigration officials (search, seizure and detention without warrants) and enshrines the use of secret information to make accusations against people who will have no guarantee of being able to see a summary of the evidence against them. It removes current judicial oversight of immigration proceedings. It also requires institutions, businesses and individuals (including employers or accommodation providers) to provide information on a 'suspect' and allows for this information to be provided to a broadly-defined range of overseas agencies. It provides for the compulsory collection of biometric information (including from New Zealand citizens) and fails to establish safeguards on its use.
As with other bloggers, one clause sets personal alarm bells ringing: 9 (1), which states that "no visa or entry permission may be granted, and no visa waiver may apply to any person [who]" has (a) ever been convicted of a crime punishable by at least 5 years; (b) been convicted of a crime punishable by at least 12 months in the last 10 years; or (f) "has at any time been removed, deported or excluded from another country".
One blog commenter suggested that this may just be badly drafted and that an immigration officer may -- at their discretion -- deny entry to someone deported, removed or excluded from another country, rather than denial of entry being mandatory for someone in this circumstance.
Even in this case, these conditions are draconian. Presumably 9 (1) (a) and (b) would include someone who has been a political prisoner in a state like China or Saudi Arabia. Should a human rights activist from Burma be denied entry to New Zealand because she was thrown in jail by the dictatorship?
Clause (9) (1) (f) is just crazy. In this supposedly globalised world, the nation state still carries a fair wack of arbitrary power over personal movement. The rights which citizens of many states take for granted evaporate once a border is crossed, and you can be deported, removed or excluded from a country without being anything like a criminal or badly-intentioned person. When I was in Mexico a few years ago I had the chance to chat to a guy who worked at the New Zealand embassy, who said that his colleagues at the Spanish and Italian embassies had had to process the deportations of about 100 of their citizens in the past year, who had annoyed the Mexican military by volunteering as human rights observers in Chiapas. It was with this in mind that I narrowly decided not to do the same thing myself.
As other bloggers point out, you can be refused entry to a country through a simple misunderstanding, or because some petty official doesn't like the cut of your gib. You don't have to go far to find stories of a respected British journalist detained, strip-searched and deported at LAX by paranoid US Immigration because there was an irregularity in her paperwork. Is it the intention to turn all such people away from New Zealand?
Both major parties are supporting the Bill (only the Greens and the Maori Party are likely to oppose it), so with no 'horse race'-style story available, our lamentable excuse for a mainstream media is ignoring the Bill altogether.
Campbell comments that internationally centre-left parties have been only too willing to stengthen the authoritarian reach of the state, and it has been the crusty conservatives in the British and US courts who have been the last bastion of traditional civil liberties. Unfortunately, as I've argued previously, the principles of the 'liberal' right tend to disappear in the political arena. Campbell says:
[I]n New Zealand, the centre right and its libertarian wing seem concerned merely with corporate freedom and property rights, and not with the civil rights of individuals. Thus, Act and National seem certain to applaud the extensions of state power the Bill contains, and will vote with the Government to pass them into law. Much as they may whine on about the nanny state, the centre right in New Zealand has always had a love affair with the authoritarian powers of the daddy state
So it will be down to a couple of minor parties, civil groups like the Law Society and concerned citizens to oppose this overrreaching legislation.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Rescuing Ingrid Betancourt: Unanswered Questions
If the amazing tale of the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others by the Colombian armed forces left me with some lingering doubts, it didn't take long for a concrete conspiracy theory to appear. A French-Swiss radio station claimed to have been informed by a reliable source inside Colombia ('put to the test many times in the past') that the FARC had been paid $20 million for the release of the hostages, and that the dramatic 'rescue' was staged.
This was vehemently denied by Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos, who said the government would have no reason to deny paying for the release of hostages, when it had already established a $100 million fund in recent months to pay rewards to guerrillas who released hostages, also offering them legal benefits. Santo said it would "look worse for the FARC" for them to have sold their comrades out.
France, Switzerland and the United Stated likewise denied they had paid a single cent for the release of the hostages
Claims that Operation Jaque ('Operation Check' -- as in chess) had been run by the Americans or even the Israelis were also dispelled. Although the army has admitted recieving training and technical assistance from the US, Israel and even the British SAS, Minister Santos swore that the operation was '100 percent Colombian'.
For the curious among us, the Colombian authorities have been drip-feeding some more details about how the operation was set up and run. Apparently, it started in April when a group of military intelligence operatives who had since December been tracking the guerrilla group that held Ingrid Betancourt, infiltrated the FARC's security ring and managed to gain the confidence of 'Cesar', the guerrilla leader directly responsible for the hostages.
By May, the the infiltrators were able to move freely in the zone, and reported the co-ordinates of the FARC camp to the Colombian Special Forces.
Military intelligence then began to hatch the cinematic plan that was agreed to by army chief Mario Montoya at the beginning of June and kept secret from all but the president and a few officials.
According to reports in El Tiempo, the inflitrators got a high-ranking guerrilla, whose indentity hasn't been revealed [my italics], to convince 'Cesar' that FARC leader Alfonso Cano had ordered the hostages to be brought to him by an international humanitarian mission to discuss a prisoner exchange. The contact with the international group had supposedly been made by another top FARC leader, 'Mono Jojoy'.
The key, according to the Colombians, was the FARC's fear of using the radio, ever since the raid into Ecuador in April that killed 'Raul Reyes' in a pinpoint bombing attack. 'Cesar' was thus unable to directly confirm the arrangement with his superiors. As the time of the operation drew near, the army surrounded what was thought to be the location of 'Mono Jojoy' to intensify this nervousness about going on air.
At the same time, the goverment circulated a false report -- picked up by the BBC -- that French and Swiss representatives were in the zone where 'Alfonso Cano' was thought to be located, to give extra veracity to the story of the exchange negotiation.
Meanwhile, from the middle of June a select group of soldiers had began to rehearse the roles they would have to play as representatives of the supposed 'humanitarian mission'. They developed details such as ensuring at least one woman was among the group (as had been the case in previous unilateral liberations by the FARC), bringing a 'cameraman' and 'journalist' along on the mission, and having a couple of the crew wear Che Guevara t-shirts to inspire confidence in the guerrillas. On the morning of the 2nd of July, army chief Montoya dispatched the entrusted few from their base with inspiring words and a reading from the Acts of the Apostles -- the one where Peter is rescued by an angel from the clutches of Herod.
The rest is history, with the moment of the hostages' liberation now available around the world in this edited video.
It's a fascinating account, but there's still something about it that seems not quite complete. There's a logistical void between the story of the 'infiltrator' bringing supposed messages from the FARC leaders to the hostage camp, and the detailed arrangements of the time and place for the helicopter pickup by the 'humanitarian organisation'. According to El Tiempo, the 'messenger' who was really a military agent, brought a message from Alfonso Cano approving the plan in the third week of June. The rescue was two weeks later, on the 2nd of July. How were the exact arrangements of time and place made, and why was 'Cesar' so sure he could trust them?
Athough the FARC may have been fearful enough to maintain radio silence, was there no way for 'Cesar' to get independent confirmation from one of his superiors, which didn't come from somebody who he'd only known since April?
If I had to hazard a guess at what we aren't being told, it would involve the mysterious 'high-ranking guerilla' who helped the military infiltrators. My guess would be that this person might be a bit higher ranking than has been suggested, and that the nature of the deal struck with him (or her) will not be publicly revealed.
This was vehemently denied by Colombian Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos, who said the government would have no reason to deny paying for the release of hostages, when it had already established a $100 million fund in recent months to pay rewards to guerrillas who released hostages, also offering them legal benefits. Santo said it would "look worse for the FARC" for them to have sold their comrades out.
France, Switzerland and the United Stated likewise denied they had paid a single cent for the release of the hostages
Claims that Operation Jaque ('Operation Check' -- as in chess) had been run by the Americans or even the Israelis were also dispelled. Although the army has admitted recieving training and technical assistance from the US, Israel and even the British SAS, Minister Santos swore that the operation was '100 percent Colombian'.
For the curious among us, the Colombian authorities have been drip-feeding some more details about how the operation was set up and run. Apparently, it started in April when a group of military intelligence operatives who had since December been tracking the guerrilla group that held Ingrid Betancourt, infiltrated the FARC's security ring and managed to gain the confidence of 'Cesar', the guerrilla leader directly responsible for the hostages.
By May, the the infiltrators were able to move freely in the zone, and reported the co-ordinates of the FARC camp to the Colombian Special Forces.
Military intelligence then began to hatch the cinematic plan that was agreed to by army chief Mario Montoya at the beginning of June and kept secret from all but the president and a few officials.
According to reports in El Tiempo, the inflitrators got a high-ranking guerrilla, whose indentity hasn't been revealed [my italics], to convince 'Cesar' that FARC leader Alfonso Cano had ordered the hostages to be brought to him by an international humanitarian mission to discuss a prisoner exchange. The contact with the international group had supposedly been made by another top FARC leader, 'Mono Jojoy'.
The key, according to the Colombians, was the FARC's fear of using the radio, ever since the raid into Ecuador in April that killed 'Raul Reyes' in a pinpoint bombing attack. 'Cesar' was thus unable to directly confirm the arrangement with his superiors. As the time of the operation drew near, the army surrounded what was thought to be the location of 'Mono Jojoy' to intensify this nervousness about going on air.
At the same time, the goverment circulated a false report -- picked up by the BBC -- that French and Swiss representatives were in the zone where 'Alfonso Cano' was thought to be located, to give extra veracity to the story of the exchange negotiation.
Meanwhile, from the middle of June a select group of soldiers had began to rehearse the roles they would have to play as representatives of the supposed 'humanitarian mission'. They developed details such as ensuring at least one woman was among the group (as had been the case in previous unilateral liberations by the FARC), bringing a 'cameraman' and 'journalist' along on the mission, and having a couple of the crew wear Che Guevara t-shirts to inspire confidence in the guerrillas. On the morning of the 2nd of July, army chief Montoya dispatched the entrusted few from their base with inspiring words and a reading from the Acts of the Apostles -- the one where Peter is rescued by an angel from the clutches of Herod.
The rest is history, with the moment of the hostages' liberation now available around the world in this edited video.
It's a fascinating account, but there's still something about it that seems not quite complete. There's a logistical void between the story of the 'infiltrator' bringing supposed messages from the FARC leaders to the hostage camp, and the detailed arrangements of the time and place for the helicopter pickup by the 'humanitarian organisation'. According to El Tiempo, the 'messenger' who was really a military agent, brought a message from Alfonso Cano approving the plan in the third week of June. The rescue was two weeks later, on the 2nd of July. How were the exact arrangements of time and place made, and why was 'Cesar' so sure he could trust them?
Athough the FARC may have been fearful enough to maintain radio silence, was there no way for 'Cesar' to get independent confirmation from one of his superiors, which didn't come from somebody who he'd only known since April?
If I had to hazard a guess at what we aren't being told, it would involve the mysterious 'high-ranking guerilla' who helped the military infiltrators. My guess would be that this person might be a bit higher ranking than has been suggested, and that the nature of the deal struck with him (or her) will not be publicly revealed.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
A Perspective from Inside Burma
The world (as defined by the international media) is now largely 'moving on' from the devastating cyclone Nargis in Burma/Myanmar, but of course reality proceeds at a more sluggish pace.
Recently I've been forwarded a couple of updates from a development practitioner working for an international NGO inside Burma and trying to assist the relief effort. The observations from this practitioner -- who we'll call 'John' -- provide a perspective that is different from the potted reports on the news wires. At times they read a little like an except from Catch-22.
In the first communique several weeks ago, 'John' described sitting in frustration in a comfortable hotel in Rangoon. All foreigners were restricted from visiting the affected areas in the Irawaddy delta, able only to blindly funnel aid through in the hope that it would reach the right people. The NGOs in the country were having proposals approved and were receiving funds, but were unable to obtain any detailed information from the affected areas or deploy staff skilled in programme logistics.
Meanwhile, great effort was going into restoring the ornamental parks of the capital to their former prettiness. Cranes, heavy machinery and workers toiled each day to repair the damage. At the same time, the principal waterways of the capital were still contaminated by rotting corposes, which were pushed away from the banks with long bamboo poles in the hope that they would float out to sea. It was too late for indentification, and John speculated that perhaps his 'host' didn't want to count the numbers dead, or couldn't spare the equipment for digging mass graves -- tied up as it was in the important task of park restoration.
Three weeks later, John forwarded another update. He had finally made it to the delta (six weeks late) and was endeavouring to take stock of the situation. What he found was a little different from the picture painted in the international media.
He said it was clear that many people had died needlessly, the Burmese regime cared little for the people, and there was a need for targeted humanitarian intervention.
Yet, as far as he could see, the local people had largely got on with the task of struggling through and rebuilding. In Bogale (one of the worst hit areas), by the time he arrived things seemed quite normal, the streets were clean, and all business were open.
Perhaps through no fault of the NGOs and the donors, the aid was late, and in many cases inappropriate. Post-hurricane, the 'experts' had worried about the risk of water-borne disease. International NGOs had arranged for airdrops of expensive water-purification kits, and a 747 had been chartered to bring in 15,000 50-litre plastic buckets. Yet this has turned out to be far less of an issue than predicted. Burmese village houses have guttering made of a split bamboo pole down which water runs into large clay pots (cheaper than and superior to the imported plastic buckets). Being monsoon season, there was plenty of clean drinking water and the rains were washing away parasites and mosquito eggs, meaning there wasn't much risk of water-borne disease or malaria.
Another practitioner with a food aid programme had returned from outlying villages where they had been distributing 'Kitchen Sets', complete with pots, pans, forks and spoons. He reported that people in the villages were quite mystified, having no idea what a spoon was used for.
The NGOs and development practitioners were left scratching their heads. Donor agencies had flooded the country with money and expensive equipment intended for an emergency which had largely passed and which in some cases was effectively useless. John wondered how much the donors really cared, given the overriding western agenda to open Burma up, and the opportunity to pump in money and people that the hurricane had offered.
On the other hand, the generals of the Burmese regime had seen this coming. Given their overriding interest in maintaining control of the country, their initial move of restricting the movement of aid workers, and ensuring they had little information about conditions in the hurricane-affected areas, made perfect logical sense.
Recently I've been forwarded a couple of updates from a development practitioner working for an international NGO inside Burma and trying to assist the relief effort. The observations from this practitioner -- who we'll call 'John' -- provide a perspective that is different from the potted reports on the news wires. At times they read a little like an except from Catch-22.
In the first communique several weeks ago, 'John' described sitting in frustration in a comfortable hotel in Rangoon. All foreigners were restricted from visiting the affected areas in the Irawaddy delta, able only to blindly funnel aid through in the hope that it would reach the right people. The NGOs in the country were having proposals approved and were receiving funds, but were unable to obtain any detailed information from the affected areas or deploy staff skilled in programme logistics.
Meanwhile, great effort was going into restoring the ornamental parks of the capital to their former prettiness. Cranes, heavy machinery and workers toiled each day to repair the damage. At the same time, the principal waterways of the capital were still contaminated by rotting corposes, which were pushed away from the banks with long bamboo poles in the hope that they would float out to sea. It was too late for indentification, and John speculated that perhaps his 'host' didn't want to count the numbers dead, or couldn't spare the equipment for digging mass graves -- tied up as it was in the important task of park restoration.
Three weeks later, John forwarded another update. He had finally made it to the delta (six weeks late) and was endeavouring to take stock of the situation. What he found was a little different from the picture painted in the international media.
He said it was clear that many people had died needlessly, the Burmese regime cared little for the people, and there was a need for targeted humanitarian intervention.
Yet, as far as he could see, the local people had largely got on with the task of struggling through and rebuilding. In Bogale (one of the worst hit areas), by the time he arrived things seemed quite normal, the streets were clean, and all business were open.
Perhaps through no fault of the NGOs and the donors, the aid was late, and in many cases inappropriate. Post-hurricane, the 'experts' had worried about the risk of water-borne disease. International NGOs had arranged for airdrops of expensive water-purification kits, and a 747 had been chartered to bring in 15,000 50-litre plastic buckets. Yet this has turned out to be far less of an issue than predicted. Burmese village houses have guttering made of a split bamboo pole down which water runs into large clay pots (cheaper than and superior to the imported plastic buckets). Being monsoon season, there was plenty of clean drinking water and the rains were washing away parasites and mosquito eggs, meaning there wasn't much risk of water-borne disease or malaria.
Another practitioner with a food aid programme had returned from outlying villages where they had been distributing 'Kitchen Sets', complete with pots, pans, forks and spoons. He reported that people in the villages were quite mystified, having no idea what a spoon was used for.
The NGOs and development practitioners were left scratching their heads. Donor agencies had flooded the country with money and expensive equipment intended for an emergency which had largely passed and which in some cases was effectively useless. John wondered how much the donors really cared, given the overriding western agenda to open Burma up, and the opportunity to pump in money and people that the hurricane had offered.
On the other hand, the generals of the Burmese regime had seen this coming. Given their overriding interest in maintaining control of the country, their initial move of restricting the movement of aid workers, and ensuring they had little information about conditions in the hurricane-affected areas, made perfect logical sense.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The Amazing Rescue of Ingrid Betancourt
The way it's being told by news sources, it was like something out of Biggles or Boy's Own. Six years after being kidnapped by FARC guerillas, former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was today dramatically rescued by the Colombian military along with four US military contractors and eleven members of the Colombian police and armed forces.
Ever since she and running mate Clara Rojas wandered into FARC-controlled territory during the 2002 presidential campaign, Betancourt has been by far the most high-profile hostage of the guerilla group. With her political profile and dual French/Colombian citizenship, she went beyond just being a long-suffering hostage trapped in the jungle, to become a centre of political intrigue. French president Nicolas Sakorzy had personally sworn to secure her liberty. Hugo Chavez aimed to win kudos by leading the negotiations to free her and the other hostages, and was furious when Colombian leader Alvaro Uribe froze him out of this role in November 2007.
Uribe was then seen to have made a faux pas when he authorised the cross-border raid into Ecuador that killed FARC leader 'Raul Reyes' in March. Not only did this create an international incident, but Reyes had also been the main point of contact for international representatives -- including Chavez and Sakorzy -- that were seeking to negotiate Betancourt's release. With the FARC put on the defensive and Betancourt's health rumoured to be deteriorating, hopes of a timely negotiated solution had been deflated. Yet now it's Uribe and the Colombian military who have come up trumps.
Here's the story of the rescue, as told by official news outlets, and narrated in a press conference by Betancourt herself, shortly after her release, clad in army fatigues and looking in remarkably good order for someone who has spent so long in jungle captivity.
Members of the Colombian armed forces infiltrated the FARC unit responsible for holding the key hostages. The infiltrators managed to have three separate groups of hostages brought together in the jungle south of Bogota, and to convince the local FARC commandant 'Cesar' that the hostages were to be transferred to another site in the helicopter of a fictitious organisation that was supposedly negotiating with current FARC chief Alfonso Cano.
As narrated by Ingrid Betancourt herself, early on Wednesday morning, two white helicopters landed in the jungle clearing. Men identifying themselves as delegates of an unknown international organisation, but wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, got out and spoke with the FARC leaders. But no sooner had the helicopter which was transporting the hostages taken off, than it was revealed to belong to the Colombian armed forces. The four FARC guards were quickly overpowered, and the crew of the helicopter announced; "we're the Colombian army; you're freed". According to Betancourt, the helicopter then nearly crashed, as all the hostages jumped up with joy.
Of course, the release of the hostages is great news. And as a victory for law and order without a drop of blood being spilled, it ranks alongside the Peruvian police sifting through the garbage behind a Lima apartment to track down Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman. Betancourt glowingly speculated that only the Israeli special forces could have pulled off a comparable operation.
For Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, it's a massive victory, for him personally and for his no-compromise approach to the FARC. He and the Colombian army were made to appear magnanimous and humanitarian, as they reportedly left untouched another 60 or so guerillas that were in the same area, and which they had surrounded.
But I wonder if anyone else thinks there is something too good to be true about the story? How did the army operatives infiltrate the FARC so successfully? Were they on the ground with the other guerillas in the same zone, and if so, how long had they been there? And how were the battle-hardened FARC guerillas tricked so easily into delivering their crucial bargaining chip into the hands of an unknown group? Why did the freed American contractors not appear before the Colombian media but were flown straight to the US?
I wonder if there isn't a more complicated tale to be told -- and whether in fact the full story will ever be known.
Ever since she and running mate Clara Rojas wandered into FARC-controlled territory during the 2002 presidential campaign, Betancourt has been by far the most high-profile hostage of the guerilla group. With her political profile and dual French/Colombian citizenship, she went beyond just being a long-suffering hostage trapped in the jungle, to become a centre of political intrigue. French president Nicolas Sakorzy had personally sworn to secure her liberty. Hugo Chavez aimed to win kudos by leading the negotiations to free her and the other hostages, and was furious when Colombian leader Alvaro Uribe froze him out of this role in November 2007.
Uribe was then seen to have made a faux pas when he authorised the cross-border raid into Ecuador that killed FARC leader 'Raul Reyes' in March. Not only did this create an international incident, but Reyes had also been the main point of contact for international representatives -- including Chavez and Sakorzy -- that were seeking to negotiate Betancourt's release. With the FARC put on the defensive and Betancourt's health rumoured to be deteriorating, hopes of a timely negotiated solution had been deflated. Yet now it's Uribe and the Colombian military who have come up trumps.
Here's the story of the rescue, as told by official news outlets, and narrated in a press conference by Betancourt herself, shortly after her release, clad in army fatigues and looking in remarkably good order for someone who has spent so long in jungle captivity.
Members of the Colombian armed forces infiltrated the FARC unit responsible for holding the key hostages. The infiltrators managed to have three separate groups of hostages brought together in the jungle south of Bogota, and to convince the local FARC commandant 'Cesar' that the hostages were to be transferred to another site in the helicopter of a fictitious organisation that was supposedly negotiating with current FARC chief Alfonso Cano.
As narrated by Ingrid Betancourt herself, early on Wednesday morning, two white helicopters landed in the jungle clearing. Men identifying themselves as delegates of an unknown international organisation, but wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, got out and spoke with the FARC leaders. But no sooner had the helicopter which was transporting the hostages taken off, than it was revealed to belong to the Colombian armed forces. The four FARC guards were quickly overpowered, and the crew of the helicopter announced; "we're the Colombian army; you're freed". According to Betancourt, the helicopter then nearly crashed, as all the hostages jumped up with joy.
Of course, the release of the hostages is great news. And as a victory for law and order without a drop of blood being spilled, it ranks alongside the Peruvian police sifting through the garbage behind a Lima apartment to track down Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman. Betancourt glowingly speculated that only the Israeli special forces could have pulled off a comparable operation.
For Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, it's a massive victory, for him personally and for his no-compromise approach to the FARC. He and the Colombian army were made to appear magnanimous and humanitarian, as they reportedly left untouched another 60 or so guerillas that were in the same area, and which they had surrounded.
But I wonder if anyone else thinks there is something too good to be true about the story? How did the army operatives infiltrate the FARC so successfully? Were they on the ground with the other guerillas in the same zone, and if so, how long had they been there? And how were the battle-hardened FARC guerillas tricked so easily into delivering their crucial bargaining chip into the hands of an unknown group? Why did the freed American contractors not appear before the Colombian media but were flown straight to the US?
I wonder if there isn't a more complicated tale to be told -- and whether in fact the full story will ever be known.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Euro 2008 Final: Spain or Germany?
Can the flaky underachieving Spanish finally make the most of their talent and take their first title in 44 years? Or will the pace and physicality of Michael Ballack, Lucas Podolski et al once again prove the observation that "football is a game in which eleven players pass the ball up and down the field until Germany wins".
Perhaps more crucially, will I get up in time to see part of the game?
Questions to be answered in a few hours time.
[UPDATE]
Miracles do happen. Not only did Spain shake off their hoodoo and take the game 1-0, but I also got up early enough to catch the second half (the first half had to wait for the replay at 8:30 pm. I join most neutrals in being overjoyed at Spain's achievement, both because of my penchant for the historical underdog, and because they were the best team in the game and the tournament overall. As someone who has seen it happen too many times, I always expected Germany to sneak an equaliser in the 88th minute, but in the end it didn't happen, and Spain's relative profligacy didn't cost them (at times you felt like shouting at their tricky little midfielders to just take a goddamn shot as they decided to make three extra passes when five metres from the goal).
It was a pretty exciting tournament with the goals and fluid, attacking play continuing into the knockout rounds (and just two quarter-finals decided on penalties). A fan of the international game should come away feeling rather more positive than after the eventual letdown that was the last World Cup. The improved spectacle was due perhaps to more evenly-matched teams (meaning fewer boring mismatches), perhaps to younger lineups without experienced defensive formations (meaning attacking tactics were necessary), perhaps to good refereeing.
In any case, the boring dour teams largely fell out at the earlier stages (France, Italy, Sweden and the stonewalling Greeks) while those who progressed were those with greater enterprise (in particular the finalists, Holland, Turkey, and the at-times dazzling Russians).
For football fans, attention now shifts to the qualifying stages for the next World Cup in South Africa in 2010. While the European teams are just starting off, other continents are already part way through their process. I'm pleased to report that many of my favoured teams remain in contention, including Colombia, Guatemala, and even lowly New Zealand. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Peru, who after recent losses by 5-1 to Ecuador and 6-0 to Uruguay appear to be doing their best to get relegated to another continent. Maybe we should let them join Oceania.
Perhaps more crucially, will I get up in time to see part of the game?
Questions to be answered in a few hours time.
[UPDATE]
Miracles do happen. Not only did Spain shake off their hoodoo and take the game 1-0, but I also got up early enough to catch the second half (the first half had to wait for the replay at 8:30 pm. I join most neutrals in being overjoyed at Spain's achievement, both because of my penchant for the historical underdog, and because they were the best team in the game and the tournament overall. As someone who has seen it happen too many times, I always expected Germany to sneak an equaliser in the 88th minute, but in the end it didn't happen, and Spain's relative profligacy didn't cost them (at times you felt like shouting at their tricky little midfielders to just take a goddamn shot as they decided to make three extra passes when five metres from the goal).
It was a pretty exciting tournament with the goals and fluid, attacking play continuing into the knockout rounds (and just two quarter-finals decided on penalties). A fan of the international game should come away feeling rather more positive than after the eventual letdown that was the last World Cup. The improved spectacle was due perhaps to more evenly-matched teams (meaning fewer boring mismatches), perhaps to younger lineups without experienced defensive formations (meaning attacking tactics were necessary), perhaps to good refereeing.
In any case, the boring dour teams largely fell out at the earlier stages (France, Italy, Sweden and the stonewalling Greeks) while those who progressed were those with greater enterprise (in particular the finalists, Holland, Turkey, and the at-times dazzling Russians).
For football fans, attention now shifts to the qualifying stages for the next World Cup in South Africa in 2010. While the European teams are just starting off, other continents are already part way through their process. I'm pleased to report that many of my favoured teams remain in contention, including Colombia, Guatemala, and even lowly New Zealand. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Peru, who after recent losses by 5-1 to Ecuador and 6-0 to Uruguay appear to be doing their best to get relegated to another continent. Maybe we should let them join Oceania.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Bogotá Tales
A story told by Paola's flatmate Olguita about her an experience of her mother's cousin's wife (that description alone may sound a warning, but we'll get back to that later). For now, let's call Olguita's extended family member Rosa.
It was the señora Rosa's first trip to Bogota, and she was very nervous, having heard so much about what a dangerous place it was. Travelling across town on the bus, she was seated next to a man who she thought looked like a suspicious character. While looking out the window at the crowds and sights, she suddenly felt that her purse was lighter in her hand.
Convinced that she had been sneakily robbed, in a flash of panic she turned to the man sitting next to her and snapped: "the wallet!". The man gave a startled look and started to shuffle guiltily away across the seat. Rosa's heart was racing. She clutched her keys in a fist and jabbed them towards the man's ribs. "Give me the wallet" she demanded, her voice shaking.
Looking uneasily at the pointy object being pushed towards his stomach, the man reached slowly into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet, which the señora Rosa snatched back and placed in her purse. The man got up from the seat, beat a hasty retreat to the front of the bus, and got off at the next stop.
When the señora Rosa got to her cousin's place and was able to check her belongings, she found that she had an extra wallet -- belonging to the man on the bus.
Certain aspects of this tale, such as the relation of the protagonist to the story-teller, and the lack of further details (like, what did the señora do then?) raise alarm bells*. It has many of the characteristics of an urban legend. But I guess the point is not so much whether it's true, but that it could be. In Bogotá, the moral says, people can even get mugged by accident.
I actually like better another story told by Olguita, this time about her immediate family. Her cousins had gone out on the town with a friend, taking the family car. The boys were out partying until the small hours, until in a rather inebriated state, they somehow managed to drag the car back home and sneak into the house.
The next day Olguita's uncle asked them how the night had been. "Oh, you know, nothing special, said Olguita's cousin. " We came home really early".
Olguita's uncle nodded sagely. "Yes, isn't it amazing how early they're getting the paper out these days", he mused.
On their arrival home, the boys had parked on top of the recently delivered morning newspaper, which was found jammed under the car's right front tyre.
*This story relies on the tendency not to use possessive pronouns in Spanish for things where ownership is obvious -- so the señora demanded 'la billetera' rather than 'mi billetera'. But it also requires a suspension of disbelief that in a situation of dispute she wouldn't have insisted she wanted 'my wallet'.
It was the señora Rosa's first trip to Bogota, and she was very nervous, having heard so much about what a dangerous place it was. Travelling across town on the bus, she was seated next to a man who she thought looked like a suspicious character. While looking out the window at the crowds and sights, she suddenly felt that her purse was lighter in her hand.
Convinced that she had been sneakily robbed, in a flash of panic she turned to the man sitting next to her and snapped: "the wallet!". The man gave a startled look and started to shuffle guiltily away across the seat. Rosa's heart was racing. She clutched her keys in a fist and jabbed them towards the man's ribs. "Give me the wallet" she demanded, her voice shaking.
Looking uneasily at the pointy object being pushed towards his stomach, the man reached slowly into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet, which the señora Rosa snatched back and placed in her purse. The man got up from the seat, beat a hasty retreat to the front of the bus, and got off at the next stop.
When the señora Rosa got to her cousin's place and was able to check her belongings, she found that she had an extra wallet -- belonging to the man on the bus.
Certain aspects of this tale, such as the relation of the protagonist to the story-teller, and the lack of further details (like, what did the señora do then?) raise alarm bells*. It has many of the characteristics of an urban legend. But I guess the point is not so much whether it's true, but that it could be. In Bogotá, the moral says, people can even get mugged by accident.
I actually like better another story told by Olguita, this time about her immediate family. Her cousins had gone out on the town with a friend, taking the family car. The boys were out partying until the small hours, until in a rather inebriated state, they somehow managed to drag the car back home and sneak into the house.
The next day Olguita's uncle asked them how the night had been. "Oh, you know, nothing special, said Olguita's cousin. " We came home really early".
Olguita's uncle nodded sagely. "Yes, isn't it amazing how early they're getting the paper out these days", he mused.
On their arrival home, the boys had parked on top of the recently delivered morning newspaper, which was found jammed under the car's right front tyre.
*This story relies on the tendency not to use possessive pronouns in Spanish for things where ownership is obvious -- so the señora demanded 'la billetera' rather than 'mi billetera'. But it also requires a suspension of disbelief that in a situation of dispute she wouldn't have insisted she wanted 'my wallet'.
Venezuela, Once More
If you get past this first paragraph without a groan, it's because you not only read my previous posts
So I'll skip the
Categories: development, Latin America
So I'll skip the
Categories: development, Latin America
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Peru to (Finally)Get Ministry for the Environment
In a couple of posts on Peru, I've mentioned that it has no Ministry for the Environment. Within a generally weak state apparatus, this appears a particularly glaring absence. With its huge tract of jungle and numerous ecological niches, Peru is one of the world's greatest reservoirs of biodiversity. It also has a long history of rapacious resource exploitation: boom and bust periods of nitrate, guano,and rubber exploitation left scars on the environment, while the mining industry has a long history of contamination and damage.
Despite this, until no central authority has been charged with overseeing the protection of the environment. Bodies like the National Commission on the Environment (CONAM) and Institute of Natural Resources (INRENA) lack teeth and have roles that gap and overlap with regional governments. The Ministry of Mining and Energy has the role of assessing environmental impact reports at the same time as it is supposed to promote investment in mining.
Credit to Alan Garcia's government: it has recently announced that a Ministry for the Environment will be established. The exact shape and role of the Ministry is yet to be determined by legislation, but it will be part of central government with its own Minister and oversight of all things environmental.
Some commentators are suggesting that the long-overdue measure has only occurred because the government needs to demonstrate that it is serious about getting its laws and regulations in shape for the entry into force of the free trade agreement with the US. This may be so, but it's better than not happening at all. This also suggests some credit should be given to the centre-left Democrats like Charles Rangel and Sander Levin who negotiated the strengthening of the labour and environmental conditions in the FTA.
Of course, the real test is just how active and effective a Ministry for the Environment will be in a country where the president has recently complained that too many natural areas are 'lying idle' and declared several major mining projects to be 'in the national interest'.
Despite this, until no central authority has been charged with overseeing the protection of the environment. Bodies like the National Commission on the Environment (CONAM) and Institute of Natural Resources (INRENA) lack teeth and have roles that gap and overlap with regional governments. The Ministry of Mining and Energy has the role of assessing environmental impact reports at the same time as it is supposed to promote investment in mining.
Credit to Alan Garcia's government: it has recently announced that a Ministry for the Environment will be established. The exact shape and role of the Ministry is yet to be determined by legislation, but it will be part of central government with its own Minister and oversight of all things environmental.
Some commentators are suggesting that the long-overdue measure has only occurred because the government needs to demonstrate that it is serious about getting its laws and regulations in shape for the entry into force of the free trade agreement with the US. This may be so, but it's better than not happening at all. This also suggests some credit should be given to the centre-left Democrats like Charles Rangel and Sander Levin who negotiated the strengthening of the labour and environmental conditions in the FTA.
Of course, the real test is just how active and effective a Ministry for the Environment will be in a country where the president has recently complained that too many natural areas are 'lying idle' and declared several major mining projects to be 'in the national interest'.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Paradoxes of Development Part 1
If I'm asked to think of how life should be, I think of my time in La Antigua, Guatemala. In a valley with a climate of eternal spring, in a town of cobblestone streets with flowers growing from rooftops, I and scores of other backpackers happily wiled away our days studying or teaching in language schools. We drank mojitos and played dominoes with the beautiful daughters of the local oligarchy; relaxed in splendid baroque courtyards full of hanging plants in large ceramic pots; ate delicious late breakfasts of fresh beans and eggs, seasoned with green chili and served by indulgent mestizo matrons.
In the streets, local women in colourful, elaborately woven ponchos sold crafts or plump bocadillos of chicken and avocado. People were friendly and smiled a lot. On Sundays, people gathered to gossip and flirt in the plaza, as the hazy outline of Volcan de Agua hovered over the 17th-century arches. To this day it brings me pleasant memories.
But did not the whole reality of this idyll rest -- from the 16th century to the modern day -- on hierarchy, exploitation and oppression?
Beyond the pretty plazas of Antigua was a polluted capital of slums and rampant crime, a rural hinterland of peasants struggling to subsist on patches of land, rich landlords exporting cash crops on the back of exploited rural labourers. The whole country was still traumatized by a vicious, twenty-year civil war that had seen death squads rampaging through indigenous villages.
Gazing dreamily over the volcanoes from our sunny courtyards as we drank the damn fine coffee, we were inheriting the role of the Spanish colonial elite. Look into almost any critical history of Latin America, and this lot come out the villains. Whether as the first wave of a long line of outsiders tapping the continent's 'open veins'; a corrupt and decadent culture who bequeathed fatalism, supersitition and lethargy to their mestizo descendants; or simply inflexible defenders of privilege who failed to ever achieve political reform, the Spanish tend to get the blame.
And yet...has anyone devised an urban layout more harmonious, an architecture more suited for living; a religion richer in ritual, metaphor and existential comfort, a more seductive blend of music and food and romance?
Compared to Guatemala, New Zealand is an oasis of peace, equitable wealth distribution, transparent government and progressive politics. Despite a few economic hiccups in the past forty years, we're still in the world's twenty 'most developed' countries. We've always been at the forefront: land reform, the vote for women, social welfare programmes, rejection of the nuclear umbrella, civil rights for gay people. We're thirty years into an imperfect but world-leading process to compensate indigenous tribes for historical abuses.
Life should be good, right?
Instead, people are grumpy and bitter that they aren't even better off. The political issues that most excite people are tax cuts are retaining the legal right to hit their kids. There's precious little respect for the life of the intellect. The popular press has nearly scraped right though the bottom of the barrel. Our cities have nothing that is visionary and very little that is even attractive. The slums of third world cities are hardly more depressing, and certainly more colourful, than the surburban monotony of Papakura, Tawa, or Bishopdale. Social interaction is timid and superficial. We go out to bars where we can't hear, and drink until we can't speak. When we win at our favourite sport we feel only relief; when we lose we're plunged into wordless despair. An undercurrent of violence simmers uncomfortably beneath the surface of our society.
Do the most pleasant ways of organising life need to be the province of a privileged elite? Does opportunity to contemplate the volcanoes over a coffee rely on an underclass of peasants slaving in the fields? Does it take antidemocratic tyranny to make the imaginative leap beyond acquiring the next consumer good?
Does equity and progress produce only people envious of each other's imagined advantages, squabbling over their rightful share? Does successful political compromise and the rule of law just produce a nation of NIMBYs? Does beauty, charm and passion require hierarchy, oppression and supersitition? Does development equal banality?
Or could it be that it's all even more complicated than we thought; that there are good things hidden in the middle of the worst systems? That our greatest satisfactions might be our greatest illusions? That we haven't even really started to figure it out?
In the streets, local women in colourful, elaborately woven ponchos sold crafts or plump bocadillos of chicken and avocado. People were friendly and smiled a lot. On Sundays, people gathered to gossip and flirt in the plaza, as the hazy outline of Volcan de Agua hovered over the 17th-century arches. To this day it brings me pleasant memories.
But did not the whole reality of this idyll rest -- from the 16th century to the modern day -- on hierarchy, exploitation and oppression?
Beyond the pretty plazas of Antigua was a polluted capital of slums and rampant crime, a rural hinterland of peasants struggling to subsist on patches of land, rich landlords exporting cash crops on the back of exploited rural labourers. The whole country was still traumatized by a vicious, twenty-year civil war that had seen death squads rampaging through indigenous villages.
Gazing dreamily over the volcanoes from our sunny courtyards as we drank the damn fine coffee, we were inheriting the role of the Spanish colonial elite. Look into almost any critical history of Latin America, and this lot come out the villains. Whether as the first wave of a long line of outsiders tapping the continent's 'open veins'; a corrupt and decadent culture who bequeathed fatalism, supersitition and lethargy to their mestizo descendants; or simply inflexible defenders of privilege who failed to ever achieve political reform, the Spanish tend to get the blame.
And yet...has anyone devised an urban layout more harmonious, an architecture more suited for living; a religion richer in ritual, metaphor and existential comfort, a more seductive blend of music and food and romance?
Compared to Guatemala, New Zealand is an oasis of peace, equitable wealth distribution, transparent government and progressive politics. Despite a few economic hiccups in the past forty years, we're still in the world's twenty 'most developed' countries. We've always been at the forefront: land reform, the vote for women, social welfare programmes, rejection of the nuclear umbrella, civil rights for gay people. We're thirty years into an imperfect but world-leading process to compensate indigenous tribes for historical abuses.
Life should be good, right?
Instead, people are grumpy and bitter that they aren't even better off. The political issues that most excite people are tax cuts are retaining the legal right to hit their kids. There's precious little respect for the life of the intellect. The popular press has nearly scraped right though the bottom of the barrel. Our cities have nothing that is visionary and very little that is even attractive. The slums of third world cities are hardly more depressing, and certainly more colourful, than the surburban monotony of Papakura, Tawa, or Bishopdale. Social interaction is timid and superficial. We go out to bars where we can't hear, and drink until we can't speak. When we win at our favourite sport we feel only relief; when we lose we're plunged into wordless despair. An undercurrent of violence simmers uncomfortably beneath the surface of our society.
Do the most pleasant ways of organising life need to be the province of a privileged elite? Does opportunity to contemplate the volcanoes over a coffee rely on an underclass of peasants slaving in the fields? Does it take antidemocratic tyranny to make the imaginative leap beyond acquiring the next consumer good?
Does equity and progress produce only people envious of each other's imagined advantages, squabbling over their rightful share? Does successful political compromise and the rule of law just produce a nation of NIMBYs? Does beauty, charm and passion require hierarchy, oppression and supersitition? Does development equal banality?
Or could it be that it's all even more complicated than we thought; that there are good things hidden in the middle of the worst systems? That our greatest satisfactions might be our greatest illusions? That we haven't even really started to figure it out?
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Sustainability of Development
The semester passes quickly. In a couple of weeks, this subsection of my development studies course is all over, and next Friday I have to hand in the 'journal' which is made up by the last umpteen posts on this blog.
I've jumped about thematically, and have spent an inordinate amount of time on a couple of peripheral topics. I'll try and wrap it up in some kind of coherent way.
Within much of the standard development theory, a range of competing theories -- from both liberal/modernisationist and Marxist/dependency perspectives -- assume similar processes and results for development: urbanisation, industrialisation, economic growth and increased material consumption.
In the last couple of weeks we've been looking at critiques of those assumptions from the indigenous, rural, feminist, environmentalist, and postmodernist angles.
I'm just going to look briefly at one of those: the environmental perspective. This is often presented as the true full-frontal challenge to the 'development' paradigm. It worms its way into most debates, whether they be in the letters to the editor, blog comments section, and questions to visiting speakers (the Joe Stiglitz talk was no exception).
Let for a moment me take on the character of the environmentalist interlocutor.
All these arguments you're having, you the capitalists and you the socialists, they all assume that what we want is growth. As if there are unlimited resources and we can just keep on growing. We let me tell you, we live on a single planet with finite resources, and we just can't keep on growing forever...
Taken at face value, there's a lot there to nod sagely and agree with. We do indeed live on a physical world with finite resources. (We haven't figured out how to live anywhere else yet, and even if we could create some controlled environment on Mars, I know where I'd rather be). In just a couple of hundred years of industrial development, we've managed to make some significant alterations to fragile membrane of rocks and gases on which we live. About thirty years ago, we'd begun to punch a hole in the ozone layer. Now climate change is the dominant issue. Who knows what irreversible changes will eventually be seen in the world's oceans?
Preserving the environment and even rolling back some of the damage is an essential part of development. GDP per capita is an inadequate measure of human wellbeing, and no technological miracle in the near future will make it reasonable for replicas of Los Angeles to cover the planet.
Yet, I do have some problems with the attitudes that are lurking in this environmentalist objection. Firstly, there's a strong streak of pessimism about human potential and the ability to creatively overcome difficulties. Collective action to address the ozone problem was an example of what canbe achieved when needed. Climate change presents a far greater challenge, but we can only keep trying. Also, if the negative consequences of our actions are often unpredictable, so are the positive twists of fate: who in the 1950s and 1960s would have predicted the internet, or even the Green Revolution.
More importantly, I find the 'no more growth' to frequently be in bad faith. All too often, it is delivered by the 'we live a sustainable lifestyle with our olives and organic chickens in Martinborough, our solar heating panels and our Toyota Prius' set. If such people reluctantly acknowledge their inability to 'wean' themselves off all modern conveniences, they rarely accept that their position as privileged members of an interdependent capitalist society (computer programmer, consultant, boutique food producer) is the result of a centuries-long chain of specialisation, high energy use, and resource exploitation.
As I said in the 'why do I care' post, the freedoms they [I] have, and the ability to worry so much about future generations, are a direct result of the material prosperity which we have inherited from the resource-using technological development of the past. Making a choice to live a certain kind of life with the cushion of money in the bank and modern services at hand is entirely different from condemning people in developing countries to stick to their donkey-powered wells.
Of course the very same processes that built Sheffield and Los Angeles can't be repeated in exactly the same way all around the world. And the rest of the world has probably learnt enough not to want that (ok, China's current development pathway notwithstanding). But assertingthat 'sustainable development is impossible' is a unilateral declaration that progress has ended. This violates the Kantian or Rawlsian principle of integrity (if you didn't know your place within it, what kind of world would you wish for).
Witin the debates are about how the lives of the world's billions of poor can be improved, putting forward the 'no more growth' environmentalist objection is a little like saying 'I don't care'.
I've jumped about thematically, and have spent an inordinate amount of time on a couple of peripheral topics. I'll try and wrap it up in some kind of coherent way.
Within much of the standard development theory, a range of competing theories -- from both liberal/modernisationist and Marxist/dependency perspectives -- assume similar processes and results for development: urbanisation, industrialisation, economic growth and increased material consumption.
In the last couple of weeks we've been looking at critiques of those assumptions from the indigenous, rural, feminist, environmentalist, and postmodernist angles.
I'm just going to look briefly at one of those: the environmental perspective. This is often presented as the true full-frontal challenge to the 'development' paradigm. It worms its way into most debates, whether they be in the letters to the editor, blog comments section, and questions to visiting speakers (the Joe Stiglitz talk was no exception).
Let for a moment me take on the character of the environmentalist interlocutor.
All these arguments you're having, you the capitalists and you the socialists, they all assume that what we want is growth. As if there are unlimited resources and we can just keep on growing. We let me tell you, we live on a single planet with finite resources, and we just can't keep on growing forever...
Taken at face value, there's a lot there to nod sagely and agree with. We do indeed live on a physical world with finite resources. (We haven't figured out how to live anywhere else yet, and even if we could create some controlled environment on Mars, I know where I'd rather be). In just a couple of hundred years of industrial development, we've managed to make some significant alterations to fragile membrane of rocks and gases on which we live. About thirty years ago, we'd begun to punch a hole in the ozone layer. Now climate change is the dominant issue. Who knows what irreversible changes will eventually be seen in the world's oceans?
Preserving the environment and even rolling back some of the damage is an essential part of development. GDP per capita is an inadequate measure of human wellbeing, and no technological miracle in the near future will make it reasonable for replicas of Los Angeles to cover the planet.
Yet, I do have some problems with the attitudes that are lurking in this environmentalist objection. Firstly, there's a strong streak of pessimism about human potential and the ability to creatively overcome difficulties. Collective action to address the ozone problem was an example of what canbe achieved when needed. Climate change presents a far greater challenge, but we can only keep trying. Also, if the negative consequences of our actions are often unpredictable, so are the positive twists of fate: who in the 1950s and 1960s would have predicted the internet, or even the Green Revolution.
More importantly, I find the 'no more growth' to frequently be in bad faith. All too often, it is delivered by the 'we live a sustainable lifestyle with our olives and organic chickens in Martinborough, our solar heating panels and our Toyota Prius' set. If such people reluctantly acknowledge their inability to 'wean' themselves off all modern conveniences, they rarely accept that their position as privileged members of an interdependent capitalist society (computer programmer, consultant, boutique food producer) is the result of a centuries-long chain of specialisation, high energy use, and resource exploitation.
As I said in the 'why do I care' post, the freedoms they [I] have, and the ability to worry so much about future generations, are a direct result of the material prosperity which we have inherited from the resource-using technological development of the past. Making a choice to live a certain kind of life with the cushion of money in the bank and modern services at hand is entirely different from condemning people in developing countries to stick to their donkey-powered wells.
Of course the very same processes that built Sheffield and Los Angeles can't be repeated in exactly the same way all around the world. And the rest of the world has probably learnt enough not to want that (ok, China's current development pathway notwithstanding). But assertingthat 'sustainable development is impossible' is a unilateral declaration that progress has ended. This violates the Kantian or Rawlsian principle of integrity (if you didn't know your place within it, what kind of world would you wish for).
Witin the debates are about how the lives of the world's billions of poor can be improved, putting forward the 'no more growth' environmentalist objection is a little like saying 'I don't care'.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Venezuela: Yes, There's More
In two recent posts I covered the debate about social and economic policies in Venezuela, partly to emphasize how in considering development issues it's important to understand the facts and all their nuances before lanching into ideological debates.
I linked to an article from Francisco Rodriguez, former economist to the Venezuelan national assembly, who made the intriguing argument that the Hugo Chavez government had not actually made a very high priority of addressing poverty (something generally assumed by both boosters and critics of Chavez).
I then discovered a piece by US analyst Mark Weisbrot, who critiqued Rodriguez' use of data and suggested that in fact the evidence generally pointed to increased social spending and steady progress for the Venzuelan poor.
My second post was sympathetic to Weisbrot's contention that the picture changed after a fuller review of the data. However, I then received a communication from Francisco Rodriguez himself, who pointed out that I had obviously not seen his rebuttal to Weisbrot. He noted that because Foreign Policy does not allow the use of footnotes, it hadn't been possible to make clear all the data sources he had used, which in fact drew from the work he has been doing for at least ten years.
Rodriguez says that the arguments of Weisbrot "[rely] on erroneous reading of the evidence or use of severely biased indicators that do not accurately reflect the evolution of the Venezuelan economy or the well-being of the poor".
Let's review the substance of the rebuttal to Weisbrot, under the categories I used in the previous two posts.
Spending Priorities
Rodriguez questions the relevance of Weisbot's point that the absolute level of social spending has increased during the Chavez administration. Given that Venezuela has had a huge windfall thanks to oil boom, he points out, all categories of spending are going to increase. Therefore, " if we are interested in evaluating a government’s priorities... we want to study how it has allocated it among different possible objectives". And he returns to his original point that the relative portion allocated to Venezuelan health, education, and housing is the same as it was in the 1990s.
The only big increase in government social spending is on social security, which Rodriguez argues is regressive because people in the informal economy don't have access to pensions (an important point, and akin to my convoluted argument about Peruvian labour laws in this post -- i.e. for them to be important, first you've got to have a job).
Weisbrot had also pointed to what he quoted as $13 billion social spending by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. Rodriguez publishes the detailsof the PDVSA budget, showing that of this spending only about a quarter is on health, education and housing (the 'misiones'). The rest of the 'social spending' includes debt refinancing, infrastructure projects, and defense projects.
My question would be: although not as large as claimed, the social programmes funded by PDVSA are new initiatives, and therefore should they not bolster the total proportion of public spending counted as 'social'?
Inequality
In the two previous posts I described how Weibsrot and Rodriguez disagreed about whether inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, had gone up or down during the Chavez administration. Weisbrot had been unsure about which sources Rodriguez had used for his inequality measures and suggested that they might have been cherry picked. He cited data from the Venezuelan National Statistics Insitute to suggest that inequality has actually dropped since Chavez came to power.
In his rebuttal, Rodriguez points out that the series cited by Weisbrot excludes people whose reported income is zero (presumably the poorest of the poor). Furthermore, he provides time-series graphs using data derived directly from the Venezuelan Household Surveys. Using different methods (and including people with zero income), these all show that income inequality has dropped from a peak in 2002, but is only now back to the level it was in 1995. Latest data suggests inequality is still on a downward track, but that still excludes the zero-income groups, so the jury is out.
Poverty reduction
Weisbrot had interpreted Rodriguez as saying that many developing countries achieved a two point reduction in poverty for every point of GDP growth -- meaning Venezuela would have had to eliminate poverty entirely by 2007. Rodriguez makes clear that he was talking about the 'income elasticity of poverty reduction', a technical calculation, which, despite digging tentatively into some background reading, I can't entirely understand. Suffice to say that according to Rodriguez, given its level of economic growth, Venezuela should have seen poverty reduced to between 18--22.5 percent, rather than the 27 percent that has been achieved.
In correspondence, Francisco Rodriguez agreed that Peru was a far worse performer again (having seen poverty reduce very slowly from 54 to 43 percent in a period when its economy grew by around 40 percent) but that Chile, Mexico and Brazil are the examples commonly cited as having combined economic growth with good social progress. I'd note that each of these countries is subject to its own debate -- there are some discussions of Chile here and here.
Literacy
Rodriguez had written a paper with co-author Daniel Ortega (presumably not the Nicaraguan Sandinista leader) which cast grave doubt on whether the Chavez government's Mision Robinson literacy programme had taught 1.5 million Venezuelans to read and write. Using information from the Venezuealan Household Surveys, Rodriguez and Ortega pointed out that there were still more than a million illiterate Venezuelans in 2005, barely less than the 1.1 million before the start of the Mision Robinson programme.
Weisbrot complained that Rodriguez had used a question from the Household Survey not designed to measure literacy, and also took issue with some of the methodology in the analysis. But Rodriguez argues in his rebuttal that if we assume the Household Survey data to be accurate, there is no possible interpretation consistent with the claim that Mision Robinson enrolled and educated 1.5 million people. At most, around 40,000 people (a small fraction of the number claimed) could have been taught to read and write since 2003.
Health Indicators
Weisbrot suggested that individual indicators which Rodriguez reported as worsening (low birth-weight babies, ) could be due to measurement errors, since overall the indicators show improvement. Rodriguez counters by arguing that under a government with a strong focus on poverty we should expect to see across-the-board improvements. Instead, infant mortality has declined at the same rate as during the 90s, while some things might have got worse. He concludes by agreeing with Weisbrot that "official Venezuelan statistics are far from...ideal", pitching this as further evidence of a haphazard approach by the government to implementing and evaluating its social programmes..
Conclusions
Phew. There endeth the debate (for now at least). Why have I spent so much time on this, and how indeed do I justify including it in what is supposed to be my development studies journal (ends next week)?
I guess because in looking at development issues there are several different questions to ask. There's the question of what development is, which is a favourite in the humanities section of the academic setting and which I've flirted with in a couple of recent posts. There's the question of how this can be achieved, which is the issue that a lot of the practical and political debate focuses on. Then there's the third question, worth asking before we jump to the second or even the first: do we know what's actually going on?
Categories: development, Latin America
I linked to an article from Francisco Rodriguez, former economist to the Venezuelan national assembly, who made the intriguing argument that the Hugo Chavez government had not actually made a very high priority of addressing poverty (something generally assumed by both boosters and critics of Chavez).
I then discovered a piece by US analyst Mark Weisbrot, who critiqued Rodriguez' use of data and suggested that in fact the evidence generally pointed to increased social spending and steady progress for the Venzuelan poor.
My second post was sympathetic to Weisbrot's contention that the picture changed after a fuller review of the data. However, I then received a communication from Francisco Rodriguez himself, who pointed out that I had obviously not seen his rebuttal to Weisbrot. He noted that because Foreign Policy does not allow the use of footnotes, it hadn't been possible to make clear all the data sources he had used, which in fact drew from the work he has been doing for at least ten years.
Rodriguez says that the arguments of Weisbrot "[rely] on erroneous reading of the evidence or use of severely biased indicators that do not accurately reflect the evolution of the Venezuelan economy or the well-being of the poor".
Let's review the substance of the rebuttal to Weisbrot, under the categories I used in the previous two posts.
Spending Priorities
Rodriguez questions the relevance of Weisbot's point that the absolute level of social spending has increased during the Chavez administration. Given that Venezuela has had a huge windfall thanks to oil boom, he points out, all categories of spending are going to increase. Therefore, " if we are interested in evaluating a government’s priorities... we want to study how it has allocated it among different possible objectives". And he returns to his original point that the relative portion allocated to Venezuelan health, education, and housing is the same as it was in the 1990s.
The only big increase in government social spending is on social security, which Rodriguez argues is regressive because people in the informal economy don't have access to pensions (an important point, and akin to my convoluted argument about Peruvian labour laws in this post -- i.e. for them to be important, first you've got to have a job).
Weisbrot had also pointed to what he quoted as $13 billion social spending by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA. Rodriguez publishes the detailsof the PDVSA budget, showing that of this spending only about a quarter is on health, education and housing (the 'misiones'). The rest of the 'social spending' includes debt refinancing, infrastructure projects, and defense projects.
My question would be: although not as large as claimed, the social programmes funded by PDVSA are new initiatives, and therefore should they not bolster the total proportion of public spending counted as 'social'?
Inequality
In the two previous posts I described how Weibsrot and Rodriguez disagreed about whether inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, had gone up or down during the Chavez administration. Weisbrot had been unsure about which sources Rodriguez had used for his inequality measures and suggested that they might have been cherry picked. He cited data from the Venezuelan National Statistics Insitute to suggest that inequality has actually dropped since Chavez came to power.
In his rebuttal, Rodriguez points out that the series cited by Weisbrot excludes people whose reported income is zero (presumably the poorest of the poor). Furthermore, he provides time-series graphs using data derived directly from the Venezuelan Household Surveys. Using different methods (and including people with zero income), these all show that income inequality has dropped from a peak in 2002, but is only now back to the level it was in 1995. Latest data suggests inequality is still on a downward track, but that still excludes the zero-income groups, so the jury is out.
Poverty reduction
Weisbrot had interpreted Rodriguez as saying that many developing countries achieved a two point reduction in poverty for every point of GDP growth -- meaning Venezuela would have had to eliminate poverty entirely by 2007. Rodriguez makes clear that he was talking about the 'income elasticity of poverty reduction', a technical calculation, which, despite digging tentatively into some background reading, I can't entirely understand. Suffice to say that according to Rodriguez, given its level of economic growth, Venezuela should have seen poverty reduced to between 18--22.5 percent, rather than the 27 percent that has been achieved.
In correspondence, Francisco Rodriguez agreed that Peru was a far worse performer again (having seen poverty reduce very slowly from 54 to 43 percent in a period when its economy grew by around 40 percent) but that Chile, Mexico and Brazil are the examples commonly cited as having combined economic growth with good social progress. I'd note that each of these countries is subject to its own debate -- there are some discussions of Chile here and here.
Literacy
Rodriguez had written a paper with co-author Daniel Ortega (presumably not the Nicaraguan Sandinista leader) which cast grave doubt on whether the Chavez government's Mision Robinson literacy programme had taught 1.5 million Venezuelans to read and write. Using information from the Venezuealan Household Surveys, Rodriguez and Ortega pointed out that there were still more than a million illiterate Venezuelans in 2005, barely less than the 1.1 million before the start of the Mision Robinson programme.
Weisbrot complained that Rodriguez had used a question from the Household Survey not designed to measure literacy, and also took issue with some of the methodology in the analysis. But Rodriguez argues in his rebuttal that if we assume the Household Survey data to be accurate, there is no possible interpretation consistent with the claim that Mision Robinson enrolled and educated 1.5 million people. At most, around 40,000 people (a small fraction of the number claimed) could have been taught to read and write since 2003.
Health Indicators
Weisbrot suggested that individual indicators which Rodriguez reported as worsening (low birth-weight babies, ) could be due to measurement errors, since overall the indicators show improvement. Rodriguez counters by arguing that under a government with a strong focus on poverty we should expect to see across-the-board improvements. Instead, infant mortality has declined at the same rate as during the 90s, while some things might have got worse. He concludes by agreeing with Weisbrot that "official Venezuelan statistics are far from...ideal", pitching this as further evidence of a haphazard approach by the government to implementing and evaluating its social programmes..
Conclusions
Phew. There endeth the debate (for now at least). Why have I spent so much time on this, and how indeed do I justify including it in what is supposed to be my development studies journal (ends next week)?
I guess because in looking at development issues there are several different questions to ask. There's the question of what development is, which is a favourite in the humanities section of the academic setting and which I've flirted with in a couple of recent posts. There's the question of how this can be achieved, which is the issue that a lot of the practical and political debate focuses on. Then there's the third question, worth asking before we jump to the second or even the first: do we know what's actually going on?
Categories: development, Latin America
Friday, May 16, 2008
Stone the Mayor's House, That'll Help
While I'm doing my development studies course, issues I've wondered about before seem to become clearer. Confused and contradictory situtations that baffled me when travelling in Latin America start to slot into narratives of economic structure and class struggle; social indicators and policy choices.
But every now and again I'm reminded that, beyond the classroom and books, the real world is as incoherent as ever.
When I lived in Peru, I became sceptical about the routine of marches, strikes and roadblocks that occurred on an almost weekly basis. These often seemed to be futile, as protesters demanded things which were beyond the government's control, or which wouldn't have made any difference to their problems (such as the resignation of president Alejandro Toledo). The sight of a street blocked by a heap of rocks drew an exasperated sigh, as all it seemed to achieve was to prevent ordinary people from making it to work or school.
At worst, such disturbances were childish and destructive, such as when supporters of Antauro Humala tore up the paving stones in Arequipa's beautiful plaza de armas during the 'Andahuaylazo' in January 2006 (a 'rebellion' in the Andean town of Andahuaylas that achieved only the death of three provincial policeman).
Back in New Zealand, immersed in written history and politics, I castigate myself for becoming so blinkered and bourgeois. Latin American history has seen such unrelenting domination of political and economic power by small elites, and such exclusion of indigenous people and the rural poor, that oppositional politics seems an obvious response, perhaps the only way that marginalised groups have made any gains.
Then I read this article from La Republica, and it takes me back . In the frigid and chaotic Andean city of Juliaca, a group of concerned citizens decided to protest against the price rise of basic goods. Hundreds of people blocked streets with stones, and impeded the transit of the the few bicycles and taxis. Later, a few of them went down to the residence of the regional president and threw stones through his window. Then they did the same at the house of Juliaca's mayor, whom they accused of 'being in league with [Peruvian president] Alan Garcia'
The unavoidable question for me is: why? In the abstract, we can talk about poverty, frustration and exclusion. But how throwing stones through someone's window is ever going to help anything, let alone make food prices go down, is unclear. Sure, the national government continues to appear distant and uncaring, but not even they can do much about the international price of foodstuffs. As for being in league with the president, there are indeed constitutional requirements that regional authorities do not act directly in contradiction of national policies. But these authorities were democratically elected by the people of the region. Privileged local elites, maybe, though the mayor of Juliaca, David Mamaní Paricahua, is (I deduce from his name) of indigenous background
This routine is repeated so often, it's almost as if the blocking streets and throwing stones were themselves the real purpose, and the political cause just an excuse. Maybe it's reactionary, but sometimes you can't help thinking that development problems have their roots in some social and cultural malaise that renders debates about economic structure and social policy largely irrelevant. How to get beyond such a malaise, is something I confess to having little idea about.
But every now and again I'm reminded that, beyond the classroom and books, the real world is as incoherent as ever.
When I lived in Peru, I became sceptical about the routine of marches, strikes and roadblocks that occurred on an almost weekly basis. These often seemed to be futile, as protesters demanded things which were beyond the government's control, or which wouldn't have made any difference to their problems (such as the resignation of president Alejandro Toledo). The sight of a street blocked by a heap of rocks drew an exasperated sigh, as all it seemed to achieve was to prevent ordinary people from making it to work or school.
At worst, such disturbances were childish and destructive, such as when supporters of Antauro Humala tore up the paving stones in Arequipa's beautiful plaza de armas during the 'Andahuaylazo' in January 2006 (a 'rebellion' in the Andean town of Andahuaylas that achieved only the death of three provincial policeman).
Back in New Zealand, immersed in written history and politics, I castigate myself for becoming so blinkered and bourgeois. Latin American history has seen such unrelenting domination of political and economic power by small elites, and such exclusion of indigenous people and the rural poor, that oppositional politics seems an obvious response, perhaps the only way that marginalised groups have made any gains.
Then I read this article from La Republica, and it takes me back . In the frigid and chaotic Andean city of Juliaca, a group of concerned citizens decided to protest against the price rise of basic goods. Hundreds of people blocked streets with stones, and impeded the transit of the the few bicycles and taxis. Later, a few of them went down to the residence of the regional president and threw stones through his window. Then they did the same at the house of Juliaca's mayor, whom they accused of 'being in league with [Peruvian president] Alan Garcia'
The unavoidable question for me is: why? In the abstract, we can talk about poverty, frustration and exclusion. But how throwing stones through someone's window is ever going to help anything, let alone make food prices go down, is unclear. Sure, the national government continues to appear distant and uncaring, but not even they can do much about the international price of foodstuffs. As for being in league with the president, there are indeed constitutional requirements that regional authorities do not act directly in contradiction of national policies. But these authorities were democratically elected by the people of the region. Privileged local elites, maybe, though the mayor of Juliaca, David Mamaní Paricahua, is (I deduce from his name) of indigenous background
This routine is repeated so often, it's almost as if the blocking streets and throwing stones were themselves the real purpose, and the political cause just an excuse. Maybe it's reactionary, but sometimes you can't help thinking that development problems have their roots in some social and cultural malaise that renders debates about economic structure and social policy largely irrelevant. How to get beyond such a malaise, is something I confess to having little idea about.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Bringing It All Back Home
Despite, or perhaps because of this currently being my 'development studies diary', I should lay off the theoretical discussion and stats for a bit and bring it back to a bit more of a personal level.
This occurred to me in the light of an entertaining and provoking visiting lecture from Jeph Matthias, himself a former Development Studies student at Victoria. I came in a bit late, so didn't catch whether he was a biologist-turned doctor-turned development worker, or had made some other combination of those career movements. In any case, his current role is working in a remote town on the Nepal-Tibet frontier.
Jeph had some philosophical thoughts on development and a couple of nice metaphors about what it means and where we're going. He felt that human development has reached a stage where we are going to see qualitative change: "as boiling water changes state into steam, so we have to decide whether were going to be part of the remaining water bubbling away in the pot, or part of the new state" (ok, so it didn't sound nearly as zealous the way he said it -- Jeph followed all his comments with "maybe").
His another analogy was with a hive of bees -- there have always been insects that fly around by themselves, but at some stage bees decided to dedicate themselves to restricted roles within the greater whole of the hive (again, less totalitarian-sounding the way he described it). It wasn't clear if the bee metaphor best described the way global society would have to reorganize itself as the reality of resource shortages hit, or how highly interdependent late capitalism is organised now.
However, what most caught my attention was a little excerpt he gave us from his 'development studies diary', which he'd written about climbing in the Kaikouras and shooting goats -- making the point about the feral urges continuing to be what drives us, even as we move to supposedly more civilized states. Maybe my diary ought to be a little bit less dry and boring, I wondered.
Jeph showed a photo of his brother-in-law in a yak herder's tent high in the Himalayas and asked us how the two people were different. Discussion concluded that the yak herder had a great array of skills which equipped him to survive in that environment. Jeph's brother-in-law didn't have those abilities, but had use of lots of things (his MacPac gear; a GPS system) that he couldn't possibly have made himself, taking advantage of the massive interdependence of western civilisation (the hive?).
It reminded me of what I said in my first 'why do I care' post. As I said there, even in the not especially remote rural areas of Latin America, people were far more capable of handling the environment with the few tools they had available than I or most other backpackers. Yet we had privileged lives, with more freedom than they could dream of.
There's something disturbing about that -- about the helplessness of the westerner, as well as his privilege. Ever since labour specialisation really got going during the industrial revolution, people have drifted away from the state of being practical and self-sufficient enough to take care of ourselves. Although we live long and comfortable lives, there's an undercurrent of discomfort and angst about having lost -- or never acquired -- the capacity to exercise those practical skills
Reflecting on Jeph shooting his goat, a student in the class mentioned some studies of comparative happiness which found that across a wide range of cultures, the access to the sex, food, water, and shelter. Is development, indeed all human endeavour, just an extension of our biological drives?
I don't mean to really answer that, although I will mention in passing my scepticism towards the pat explanations offered by evolutionary psychology.
Better to talk about my own experiences. There might be children reading this blog, so I won't discuss the first of those biological drives. But it's true that it's hard to find an experience close to as profound as the quenching an intense thirst. Among my vivid memories is working all day in 36-degree heat on a carnival lot in New York and finally getting a chance to slot my $1 into the Coke machine (or was it Pepsi?) and feel the simultaneous explosions of cold, bubbles and sugar in my parched throat.
That same carnival tour (maybe the hardest I've ever worked) holds memories of other intense experiences related to fulfilling basic needs. A mammoth cheesburger of Alberta beef after setting up all day on the carnival lot in Edmonton. A precious few hours drifting into sleep, on a Greyhound bus following a long straight road through the Canadian night. Sleep in particular takes on the character of a sexual or religious experience when you're very short of it.
Yet there are different things that I remember most keenly; that have made life something to be thankful for. Natural landscapes: the first time crossing Burke's Pass into the tussocky vastness of the McKenzie country; the first awe-inspiring view of the Andes coming into land in Santiago; soft summer evening light over the lush islands of the Whangarei heads; the view from El Morro in Arica towards the distant snowy peaks of Coropuna and Solimana rising out of the blue haze
Cities as well: the first impressions of Paris, with the huge gold domes of Hotel des Invalides rising over the Seine. London's irresistible melancholy, the air heavy with two thousand years of history.
Or some combination of the two: can anyone have dreamed a more beautiful setting than La Antigua, Guatemala, with its ruined baroque churches overflowing with bougainvillea, its green volcanoes turning transluscent in the sunset, and its late wet-season night time flashes of lightning in the hills? A more timeless feeling than looking out from the orange-tree and fish-pond courtyards of La Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, to the Sierra Nevada and the Andalusian plain?
Those make nice pictures, but there are still other things that matter more. Achievements: for me, not the routine expected things like getting a degree or a job as a policy analyst, but occasional successes that somehow belong more in the real world -- a blog post or article appreciated by strangers; a tour to the Colca Canyon sold to a group of sceptical tourists; even something as insignificant as a goal that helps the team win the division 3 lunchtime indoor football match.
And of course, time spent with family and friends, shared experiences, especially if they're combined with some of the other life-enhancing things (food, wine, scenery, success, sport).
Finally, reminding myself of all these things, I hit upon the most and uniquely human experience of all: nostalgia.
Categories: development, Latin America
This occurred to me in the light of an entertaining and provoking visiting lecture from Jeph Matthias, himself a former Development Studies student at Victoria. I came in a bit late, so didn't catch whether he was a biologist-turned doctor-turned development worker, or had made some other combination of those career movements. In any case, his current role is working in a remote town on the Nepal-Tibet frontier.
Jeph had some philosophical thoughts on development and a couple of nice metaphors about what it means and where we're going. He felt that human development has reached a stage where we are going to see qualitative change: "as boiling water changes state into steam, so we have to decide whether were going to be part of the remaining water bubbling away in the pot, or part of the new state" (ok, so it didn't sound nearly as zealous the way he said it -- Jeph followed all his comments with "maybe").
His another analogy was with a hive of bees -- there have always been insects that fly around by themselves, but at some stage bees decided to dedicate themselves to restricted roles within the greater whole of the hive (again, less totalitarian-sounding the way he described it). It wasn't clear if the bee metaphor best described the way global society would have to reorganize itself as the reality of resource shortages hit, or how highly interdependent late capitalism is organised now.
However, what most caught my attention was a little excerpt he gave us from his 'development studies diary', which he'd written about climbing in the Kaikouras and shooting goats -- making the point about the feral urges continuing to be what drives us, even as we move to supposedly more civilized states. Maybe my diary ought to be a little bit less dry and boring, I wondered.
Jeph showed a photo of his brother-in-law in a yak herder's tent high in the Himalayas and asked us how the two people were different. Discussion concluded that the yak herder had a great array of skills which equipped him to survive in that environment. Jeph's brother-in-law didn't have those abilities, but had use of lots of things (his MacPac gear; a GPS system) that he couldn't possibly have made himself, taking advantage of the massive interdependence of western civilisation (the hive?).
It reminded me of what I said in my first 'why do I care' post. As I said there, even in the not especially remote rural areas of Latin America, people were far more capable of handling the environment with the few tools they had available than I or most other backpackers. Yet we had privileged lives, with more freedom than they could dream of.
There's something disturbing about that -- about the helplessness of the westerner, as well as his privilege. Ever since labour specialisation really got going during the industrial revolution, people have drifted away from the state of being practical and self-sufficient enough to take care of ourselves. Although we live long and comfortable lives, there's an undercurrent of discomfort and angst about having lost -- or never acquired -- the capacity to exercise those practical skills
Reflecting on Jeph shooting his goat, a student in the class mentioned some studies of comparative happiness which found that across a wide range of cultures, the access to the sex, food, water, and shelter. Is development, indeed all human endeavour, just an extension of our biological drives?
I don't mean to really answer that, although I will mention in passing my scepticism towards the pat explanations offered by evolutionary psychology.
Better to talk about my own experiences. There might be children reading this blog, so I won't discuss the first of those biological drives. But it's true that it's hard to find an experience close to as profound as the quenching an intense thirst. Among my vivid memories is working all day in 36-degree heat on a carnival lot in New York and finally getting a chance to slot my $1 into the Coke machine (or was it Pepsi?) and feel the simultaneous explosions of cold, bubbles and sugar in my parched throat.
That same carnival tour (maybe the hardest I've ever worked) holds memories of other intense experiences related to fulfilling basic needs. A mammoth cheesburger of Alberta beef after setting up all day on the carnival lot in Edmonton. A precious few hours drifting into sleep, on a Greyhound bus following a long straight road through the Canadian night. Sleep in particular takes on the character of a sexual or religious experience when you're very short of it.
Yet there are different things that I remember most keenly; that have made life something to be thankful for. Natural landscapes: the first time crossing Burke's Pass into the tussocky vastness of the McKenzie country; the first awe-inspiring view of the Andes coming into land in Santiago; soft summer evening light over the lush islands of the Whangarei heads; the view from El Morro in Arica towards the distant snowy peaks of Coropuna and Solimana rising out of the blue haze
Cities as well: the first impressions of Paris, with the huge gold domes of Hotel des Invalides rising over the Seine. London's irresistible melancholy, the air heavy with two thousand years of history.
Or some combination of the two: can anyone have dreamed a more beautiful setting than La Antigua, Guatemala, with its ruined baroque churches overflowing with bougainvillea, its green volcanoes turning transluscent in the sunset, and its late wet-season night time flashes of lightning in the hills? A more timeless feeling than looking out from the orange-tree and fish-pond courtyards of La Alhambra in Grenada, Spain, to the Sierra Nevada and the Andalusian plain?
Those make nice pictures, but there are still other things that matter more. Achievements: for me, not the routine expected things like getting a degree or a job as a policy analyst, but occasional successes that somehow belong more in the real world -- a blog post or article appreciated by strangers; a tour to the Colca Canyon sold to a group of sceptical tourists; even something as insignificant as a goal that helps the team win the division 3 lunchtime indoor football match.
And of course, time spent with family and friends, shared experiences, especially if they're combined with some of the other life-enhancing things (food, wine, scenery, success, sport).
Finally, reminding myself of all these things, I hit upon the most and uniquely human experience of all: nostalgia.
Categories: development, Latin America
Monday, April 21, 2008
The Facts Strike Back for Chavez
There's nothing like a bit of cut and thrust with facts and figures to shake up your prejudices.
In a recent post I cited former economist to the Venezuelan national assembly, Francisco Rodriguez, as casting doubt on the achievements of the Hugo Chavez government, and even suggesting that his image of being oriented towards helping the poor is mostly a public relations coup.
However, I've since discovered a substantive riposte from Mark Weisbrot, economist at US progressive think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research. Weisbrot pulls apart the arguments of Rodriguez, showing how they make distinctly selective use of available data.
These are the specific claims from Rodriguez that Weisbrot disputes:
Inequality has increased under Chavez, with the Gini coefficient going from 0.44 in 200o to 0.48 in 2005
Weisbrot reveals this as cherry picking, with the two figures taken by Rodriguez from different data sources, and no good reason for these two years being chosen. In fact, when the available measures of inequality from various sources (UN Economic Commission for Latin America, the World Bank and Venezuela's National Statistics Institute) are seen over their full periods, there appears to be a decrease in inequality under Chavez. Weisbrot notes that by comparison the Gini index in the US has gone from 40.3 to 46.9 during 1980--2005, a large upward distribution of income.
Other countries have reduced poverty by two percentage points for every percentage point of GDP growth (as opposed to one point in Venezuela)
I did point out in my original post the Rodriguez hadn't named any of these countries. Weisbrot makes the point that if Venzuela had reduced poverty by two percent for every point of GDP growth, it would have completly eradicated poverty -- an implausible achievement in four years.
Chavez has not increased the proportion of government spending on health education and housing
Again, Rodriguez has been selective in his choice of indicators. Weisbrot questions why he only mentions central government spending when there have been large allocations from the National Development Fund run by PDVSA (the state oil company). And the social spending from central government has increased in absolute terms, from 8.2 percent of GDP in 1998 to 13.6 percent in 2006. Overall, social spending is now 20.9 percent of GDP, and in real per capita terms has increased by 314 percent in this period.
Certain indicators such as low birth weight, access to piped water, and number of dwellings with dirt floors have worsened under Chavez
More cherry picking. Showing the full range of social indicators, Weisbrot demonstrates that most have improved over the past few years, with a notable improvement in access to sanitation and a steady decline in infant mortality. Seen alongside the rest of the data, it's possible that the indictators cited by Rodriguez could be measurement anomalies.
There's no evidence that the Robinson literacy programme has had any effect
There's some discussion of the methodology used by Rodriguez to draw this conclusion. Weisbrot says he relies on a survey that wasn't designed to measure literacy. He concludes that there's not enough evidence either way.
Chavez's big spending and the rise in imports threatens to cause a balance of payments crisis
Weisbrot points out that while imports might be increasing, Venezuela still has a very significant balance of payments surplus of around 8% of GDP, which, if it were applied to the United States, would see a surplus f $1.1 trillion rather than their actual $739 billion deficit.
Weisbrot does accept a couple of the Rodriuguez criticisms as reasonable. For one, the exchange rate is over valued, subsidising imports and making non-oil exports too expensive. At 25 percent inflation is also too high, though Weisbrot notes that it was 40 percent when Chavez came to power, and 100 percent in 1996. Finally, there are shortages of basic foods, although Weisbrot sees no reason why Venezuela can't import plenty more, being a very long way from having a balance of payments crisis. He denies that Venezuela is in anything like the situation of previous Latin American governments (Alan Garcia's 80s regime et al) described in The Macroeconomics of Populism.
Weisbrot also argues that social progress would have been a lot better if it hadn't been for the economic crisis caused by the oil company's strike in 2003, at a time when it was controlled by the Venezuelan opposition. The statistical tables show this caused a blip in many indicators, including a temporary leap in poverty. Weisbrot concludes:
"While it is useful to discuss the imbalances in the Venezuelan economy and what might be done to correct them, there is little use in presenting such a grossly exaggerated picture of an economy as if it were on the brink of ruin, and pretending that Venezuela's poor have not benefited from the economy's most rapid economic expansion in decades, and from the government's large increases in social spending and programs."
Against the weight of evidence, it seems clear that Francisco Rodriguez has set out with a pre-formed conclusion about lack of progress under Chavez, and has set out to fit the evidence around that. The reasons may be ideological, or they may date from his personal frustrations in working with the Chavez government, disapproval of its methods, or a belief that the country is headed down the wrong track.
In any case, it's a reminder of how easy it is for basic facts and figures to be politicised. For me, with pre-existing scepticism towards Chavez based on his buffoonery, authoritarian tendencies, and clumsy attempts to interfere in other countries, it's all too easy to just accept claims like those of Rodriguez at face value.
Categories: development, Latin America
In a recent post I cited former economist to the Venezuelan national assembly, Francisco Rodriguez, as casting doubt on the achievements of the Hugo Chavez government, and even suggesting that his image of being oriented towards helping the poor is mostly a public relations coup.
However, I've since discovered a substantive riposte from Mark Weisbrot, economist at US progressive think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research. Weisbrot pulls apart the arguments of Rodriguez, showing how they make distinctly selective use of available data.
These are the specific claims from Rodriguez that Weisbrot disputes:
Inequality has increased under Chavez, with the Gini coefficient going from 0.44 in 200o to 0.48 in 2005
Weisbrot reveals this as cherry picking, with the two figures taken by Rodriguez from different data sources, and no good reason for these two years being chosen. In fact, when the available measures of inequality from various sources (UN Economic Commission for Latin America, the World Bank and Venezuela's National Statistics Institute) are seen over their full periods, there appears to be a decrease in inequality under Chavez. Weisbrot notes that by comparison the Gini index in the US has gone from 40.3 to 46.9 during 1980--2005, a large upward distribution of income.
Other countries have reduced poverty by two percentage points for every percentage point of GDP growth (as opposed to one point in Venezuela)
I did point out in my original post the Rodriguez hadn't named any of these countries. Weisbrot makes the point that if Venzuela had reduced poverty by two percent for every point of GDP growth, it would have completly eradicated poverty -- an implausible achievement in four years.
Chavez has not increased the proportion of government spending on health education and housing
Again, Rodriguez has been selective in his choice of indicators. Weisbrot questions why he only mentions central government spending when there have been large allocations from the National Development Fund run by PDVSA (the state oil company). And the social spending from central government has increased in absolute terms, from 8.2 percent of GDP in 1998 to 13.6 percent in 2006. Overall, social spending is now 20.9 percent of GDP, and in real per capita terms has increased by 314 percent in this period.
Certain indicators such as low birth weight, access to piped water, and number of dwellings with dirt floors have worsened under Chavez
More cherry picking. Showing the full range of social indicators, Weisbrot demonstrates that most have improved over the past few years, with a notable improvement in access to sanitation and a steady decline in infant mortality. Seen alongside the rest of the data, it's possible that the indictators cited by Rodriguez could be measurement anomalies.
There's no evidence that the Robinson literacy programme has had any effect
There's some discussion of the methodology used by Rodriguez to draw this conclusion. Weisbrot says he relies on a survey that wasn't designed to measure literacy. He concludes that there's not enough evidence either way.
Chavez's big spending and the rise in imports threatens to cause a balance of payments crisis
Weisbrot points out that while imports might be increasing, Venezuela still has a very significant balance of payments surplus of around 8% of GDP, which, if it were applied to the United States, would see a surplus f $1.1 trillion rather than their actual $739 billion deficit.
Weisbrot does accept a couple of the Rodriuguez criticisms as reasonable. For one, the exchange rate is over valued, subsidising imports and making non-oil exports too expensive. At 25 percent inflation is also too high, though Weisbrot notes that it was 40 percent when Chavez came to power, and 100 percent in 1996. Finally, there are shortages of basic foods, although Weisbrot sees no reason why Venezuela can't import plenty more, being a very long way from having a balance of payments crisis. He denies that Venezuela is in anything like the situation of previous Latin American governments (Alan Garcia's 80s regime et al) described in The Macroeconomics of Populism.
Weisbrot also argues that social progress would have been a lot better if it hadn't been for the economic crisis caused by the oil company's strike in 2003, at a time when it was controlled by the Venezuelan opposition. The statistical tables show this caused a blip in many indicators, including a temporary leap in poverty. Weisbrot concludes:
"While it is useful to discuss the imbalances in the Venezuelan economy and what might be done to correct them, there is little use in presenting such a grossly exaggerated picture of an economy as if it were on the brink of ruin, and pretending that Venezuela's poor have not benefited from the economy's most rapid economic expansion in decades, and from the government's large increases in social spending and programs."
Against the weight of evidence, it seems clear that Francisco Rodriguez has set out with a pre-formed conclusion about lack of progress under Chavez, and has set out to fit the evidence around that. The reasons may be ideological, or they may date from his personal frustrations in working with the Chavez government, disapproval of its methods, or a belief that the country is headed down the wrong track.
In any case, it's a reminder of how easy it is for basic facts and figures to be politicised. For me, with pre-existing scepticism towards Chavez based on his buffoonery, authoritarian tendencies, and clumsy attempts to interfere in other countries, it's all too easy to just accept claims like those of Rodriguez at face value.
Categories: development, Latin America
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The Costs of War
Recently there's been a bit of attention given to Joseph Stiglitz's estimate that the war on Iraq has so far cost $3 trillion. New Zealand blogger No Right Turn has a short post considering the opportunity cost of that amount.
It's not necessarily a point to be made only in hindsight. I thought it was worth posting the text of a letter I wrote to the New Zealand Listener back in the early days of the war in 2003 (even before blogging), when it was possible to imagine a greatly more optimistic combination of cost and outcome:
In the leadup to the war on Iraq, while bad cops Bush and Rumsfeld itchily fingered their holsters, the good cops (Powell and Blair) tried to talk the rest of us round with dire warnings about the ‘clear and present danger’ posed by Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. The principal rationale for the unprecedented doctrine of the pre-emptive strike was based on vague but scary scenarios of such weapons exploding in the streets of Tel Aviv, New York or London.
Now, after the crushing military victory within 21 days, coverage alternates between chest-beating triumphalism and worries about how to address the chaos that has been engendered in Iraq. While the Americans have anounced they will unilaterally continue ‘weapons inspections’, this is presented as a mere afterthought. Who now remembers that the war was supposed to be about some kind of perverse form of self-defense?
It's not necessarily a point to be made only in hindsight. I thought it was worth posting the text of a letter I wrote to the New Zealand Listener back in the early days of the war in 2003 (even before blogging), when it was possible to imagine a greatly more optimistic combination of cost and outcome:
In the leadup to the war on Iraq, while bad cops Bush and Rumsfeld itchily fingered their holsters, the good cops (Powell and Blair) tried to talk the rest of us round with dire warnings about the ‘clear and present danger’ posed by Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. The principal rationale for the unprecedented doctrine of the pre-emptive strike was based on vague but scary scenarios of such weapons exploding in the streets of Tel Aviv, New York or London.
Now, after the crushing military victory within 21 days, coverage alternates between chest-beating triumphalism and worries about how to address the chaos that has been engendered in Iraq. While the Americans have anounced they will unilaterally continue ‘weapons inspections’, this is presented as a mere afterthought. Who now remembers that the war was supposed to be about some kind of perverse form of self-defense?
Clearly, however, if Saddam did possess weapons of mass destruction, he did not have the capacity to deploy them in any meaningful way. In some of the debate around the war, it has been suggested that Saddam refrained from using chemical weapons against the advancing Coalition forces because that would have proved they were justified in invading in the first place. But if this crazed and brutal dictator cared enough about losing the moral high ground to refrain from using his WMD in last ditch defense, with nothing to lose, what makes us believe he would ever have used them aggressively, or even (probably traceably) supplied them to someone else?
Maybe this is churlish semantics, since Iraq has been liberated once and for all of a thuggish despot. Maybe that outweighs the possibly thousands of civilians killed or maimed, the unknown number of Iraqi conscript soldiers slaughtered, the irreparable damage to international law, the chaos, anarchy and looting. Quite plausibly, Iraq will be better off in the long term. And perhaps this was the real motivation all along. Bush, Blair and co. wanted to rid the world of a terrible scourge and better the lot of humanity. They just had to conjure up alternative, more self-interested arguments because they didn’t think everybody else would have the moral courage to accompany them in their venture.
But hang on a minute. If purging scourges of humanity and aiding oppressed peoples was their aim, shouldn’t they, in the spirit of good accountable government, have first conducted some decent cost-effectiveness studies? What would the $75-200 billion spent on the war on Iraq have achieved if used, say, to help address the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Lonely Planet Plagiarism
The guys over at Road Junky (see my bio) will be chortling over this. A writer for Lonely Planet called Thomas Kohnstam has admitted making up or plagiarising large chunks of the twelve books he has worked on. Worse still, he didn't even visit Colombia -- the subject of one of his publications, claiming that he 'didn't get paid enough' to go there . Kohnstam said:
Anyone with a gig as writing for the Lonely Planet must surely have been a better writer, a more intrepid and knowledgeable traveller, and a more determined self-marketer than us, we assumed. What bitter irony to find that they were employing some clown who didn't even want the job.
To add insult to injury the article reports that: "Lonely Planet has conducted a review of all Mr Kohnstamm's guide books, but says it has failed to find any inaccuracies in them". One wonders whether the 'review' involved visiting the countries in question.
[and let's just try and ignore the extra little insult in the AAP article which twice refers to 'Columbia' -- I'm presuming here that they didn't publish a guide to a New York university].
"I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate.
"They don't pay enough for what they expect the authors to do."
Sure, so everything is about money these days, and freelance writers are exploited. But man, what has gone wrong with the world? For me and all the twentysomething wannabe Hemingways I met as a backpacker, scrounging around Latin America and jotting down things in a notebook was something we looked for excuses to keep doing as long as possible. The idea of actually getting paid to do so seemed like an impossible dream.Anyone with a gig as writing for the Lonely Planet must surely have been a better writer, a more intrepid and knowledgeable traveller, and a more determined self-marketer than us, we assumed. What bitter irony to find that they were employing some clown who didn't even want the job.
To add insult to injury the article reports that: "Lonely Planet has conducted a review of all Mr Kohnstamm's guide books, but says it has failed to find any inaccuracies in them". One wonders whether the 'review' involved visiting the countries in question.
[and let's just try and ignore the extra little insult in the AAP article which twice refers to 'Columbia' -- I'm presuming here that they didn't publish a guide to a New York university].
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Hugo Chavez -- Not Helping the Poor that Much?
Following on from the previous post about inequality, here's an interesting article in Foreign Policy by Francisco Rodriguez, chief economist to the Venezuelan National assembly from 2000-04. Rodriguez deconstructs the belief, prevalent among not only Hugo Chavez supporters but also his critics, that Chavez has redistributed resources to the poorest in Venezuelan society.
Certainly, there is a wide range of different opinions of Chavez and his government, which we might summarise as follows:
a) Chavez is a dictator who is buying support by redistributing the oil wealth. He will eventually make himself president for life, let all the terrorists camp out in his back yard and form some kind of nuclear alliance with Iran
b) Chavez is popular among many in Venezuela because he has used the oil price boom to establish promising though rather haphazard social programes for people who have always been marginalised. He's an annoying (though occasionally amusing) demagogue who has authoritarian tendencies and but has won his elections fair and square
c) Chavez is the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar and Che Guevara combined, a charismatic leader who is righting the wrongs of centuries and setting a model for 21st century socialism.
What supporters and opponents alike (I'm more or less category B) agree on is that Chavez has redistributed wealth and prioritised helping the poor. Yet this orthodoxy is precisely what is questioned by Francisco Rodriguez. Having worked closely with the Venezuelan adminstration, Rodriguez argues that the perception that Chavez has done a lot for the poor is mainly the product of good public relations campaigns.
Although poverty in Venezuela was reduced from 53 to 27 percent between 2003 and 2007, Rodriguez claims this is almost entirely due to rapid economic growth in the wake of the oil boom. The one percentage point reduction in poverty for every point of GDP growth is a poor return, says Rodriguez, compared with other (unnamed) developing countries which have managed two points of poverty reduction per point of GDP growth. In addition, he says:
The average share of the budget devoted to health, education, and housing under Chávez in his first eight years in office was 25.12 percent, essentially identical to the average share (25.08 percent) in the previous eight years. And it is lower today than it was in 1992, the last year in office of the "neoliberal" administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez -- the leader whom Chávez, then a lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army, tried to overthrow in a coup, purportedly on behalf of Venezuela's neglected poor majority.
The further statistics Rodriguez cites include:
-- the Gini coefficient (a way of measuring income inequality, the higher the worse) increased from 0.44 to 0.48 between 2000 and 2005
-- infant mortality has dropped, but at the same rate (3.3 percent per annum) as the previous nine years, and much less quickly than in Argentina, Chile and Mexico (5.2--5.5 percent per annum)
-- the percentage of underweight babies, percentage of people without access to running water, and percentage of people living in house with earthen floors all slightly increased between 1999--2006
-- the much vaunted Robinson literacy programme shows "little evidence [of having] had any statistically distinguishable effect on Venezuelan illiteracy"
The most notable policies of the Chavez administration, according to Rodriguez, have in fact been its nationalisations and expansion of state economic (rather than social) activities. These appear to be leading to a re-run of the 'macroeconomics of populism', a particularly Latin America affliction where expansionary government policies eventually lead to balance of payments problems, spiralling inflation, and a decline in real wages (Alan Garcia's 1985-90 mandate in Peru perhaps winning the prize for the most disastrous example of this cocktail).
His concluding paragraphs strike me as rather wise and, for those who've paid attention to any of my previous posts, run along similar lines to other conclusions I've favoured:
It would be foolhardy to claim that what Latin America must do to lift its population out of poverty is obvious. If there is a lesson to be learned from other countries' experiences, it is that successful development strategies are diverse and that what works in one place may not work elsewhere. Nonetheless, recent experiences in countries such as Brazil and Mexico, where programs skillfully designed to target the weakest groups in society have had a significant effect on their well-being, show that effective solutions are within the reach of pragmatic policymakers willing to implement them. It is the tenacity of these realists -- rather than the audacity of the idealists -- that holds the greatest promise for alleviating the plight of Latin America's poor.
Categories: development, Latin America
Certainly, there is a wide range of different opinions of Chavez and his government, which we might summarise as follows:
a) Chavez is a dictator who is buying support by redistributing the oil wealth. He will eventually make himself president for life, let all the terrorists camp out in his back yard and form some kind of nuclear alliance with Iran
b) Chavez is popular among many in Venezuela because he has used the oil price boom to establish promising though rather haphazard social programes for people who have always been marginalised. He's an annoying (though occasionally amusing) demagogue who has authoritarian tendencies and but has won his elections fair and square
c) Chavez is the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar and Che Guevara combined, a charismatic leader who is righting the wrongs of centuries and setting a model for 21st century socialism.
What supporters and opponents alike (I'm more or less category B) agree on is that Chavez has redistributed wealth and prioritised helping the poor. Yet this orthodoxy is precisely what is questioned by Francisco Rodriguez. Having worked closely with the Venezuelan adminstration, Rodriguez argues that the perception that Chavez has done a lot for the poor is mainly the product of good public relations campaigns.
Although poverty in Venezuela was reduced from 53 to 27 percent between 2003 and 2007, Rodriguez claims this is almost entirely due to rapid economic growth in the wake of the oil boom. The one percentage point reduction in poverty for every point of GDP growth is a poor return, says Rodriguez, compared with other (unnamed) developing countries which have managed two points of poverty reduction per point of GDP growth. In addition, he says:
The average share of the budget devoted to health, education, and housing under Chávez in his first eight years in office was 25.12 percent, essentially identical to the average share (25.08 percent) in the previous eight years. And it is lower today than it was in 1992, the last year in office of the "neoliberal" administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez -- the leader whom Chávez, then a lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army, tried to overthrow in a coup, purportedly on behalf of Venezuela's neglected poor majority.
The further statistics Rodriguez cites include:
-- the Gini coefficient (a way of measuring income inequality, the higher the worse) increased from 0.44 to 0.48 between 2000 and 2005
-- infant mortality has dropped, but at the same rate (3.3 percent per annum) as the previous nine years, and much less quickly than in Argentina, Chile and Mexico (5.2--5.5 percent per annum)
-- the percentage of underweight babies, percentage of people without access to running water, and percentage of people living in house with earthen floors all slightly increased between 1999--2006
-- the much vaunted Robinson literacy programme shows "little evidence [of having] had any statistically distinguishable effect on Venezuelan illiteracy"
The most notable policies of the Chavez administration, according to Rodriguez, have in fact been its nationalisations and expansion of state economic (rather than social) activities. These appear to be leading to a re-run of the 'macroeconomics of populism', a particularly Latin America affliction where expansionary government policies eventually lead to balance of payments problems, spiralling inflation, and a decline in real wages (Alan Garcia's 1985-90 mandate in Peru perhaps winning the prize for the most disastrous example of this cocktail).
His concluding paragraphs strike me as rather wise and, for those who've paid attention to any of my previous posts, run along similar lines to other conclusions I've favoured:
It would be foolhardy to claim that what Latin America must do to lift its population out of poverty is obvious. If there is a lesson to be learned from other countries' experiences, it is that successful development strategies are diverse and that what works in one place may not work elsewhere. Nonetheless, recent experiences in countries such as Brazil and Mexico, where programs skillfully designed to target the weakest groups in society have had a significant effect on their well-being, show that effective solutions are within the reach of pragmatic policymakers willing to implement them. It is the tenacity of these realists -- rather than the audacity of the idealists -- that holds the greatest promise for alleviating the plight of Latin America's poor.
Categories: development, Latin America
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thoughts for Food
Writing in Dissent Magazine, Thomas Pogge takes on the complex issue of international economic growth and inequality. His main aim is to take issue with the idea that 'first we've got to grow the cake before we share it out' and the assumption that the best way to reduce poverty is through all-out economic growth that will benefit all through trickle-down processes. Instead he suggests that more equitable economic growth may be of much greater benefit to the poorest, even if it's a little slower, at a very small opportunity cost to the richest.
Pogge's starting point is one of nifty dynamic graphs of international GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) along the lines of those developed by and displayed on the
Gapminder website. This one was displayed in the March 2004 issue of the Economist as a piece of one-upmanship on market globalisation critics. Charted at country level, poorer countries have grown more slowly over the last twenty years than rich countries. However, when you account for each country's population (changing the size of the dots on the graph) , the slope of the trend is reversed, thanks to the success of China and India.
All very well, says Pogge. But this considers only one of the dimensions of inequality -- between countries. Also relevant is inequality within countries. Little can be inferred about the poverty-reducing effect of a country's growth in average wealth if all the extra income is going to the richest. For example, survey data indicates that the income of the bottom decile in the United States is not much more than that of the bottom decile in Hungary, and only half that of the bottom decile of Japan or Norway.
Pogge makes what I agree is the important point that the relative income share is also important to consider, because "many things money can buy are positional or competitive: political influence, for instance, and access to education and even health care depend not merely on how much money one has to spend but also on how much others are willing and able to spend on those same goods".
That is a point that can be disputed at an ideological level, and then we get into complicated debates about rewards and incentives. But even if we just stick to differences in absolute income levels, the situation is a lot more extreme when developing countries are considered. For example, the income of the poorest decile in Turkey is nearly three times that of Colombia's poorest (although the two countries have a similar GDP per capita at PPP), and the lowest decile in Colombia earns only 7.4% of the average national income. Even more strikingly, in Vietnam, which is only half as rich as Colombia, the poorest decile has an income more than twice as high as the poorest decile in Colombia.
Pogge goes on to consider China, the great poster child for development through maket globaisation. While he acknowledges that there have been large gains for Chinese, including the poorest, he wonders whether even greater reductions in poverty could have been possible with more equitable growth. Between 1990 and 2005, the national per capita Chinese income grew by 236 percent, but that of the bottom decile just 77 percent, while their relative share declined from 30 to 16 percent of the average. Had the relativities been retained, suggests Pogge, even at the expense of a couple of percentage points of growth per annum, the poorest 40 percent of Chinese would all be better off in absolute terms than they are today.
Finally, he considers inequality between human beings world wide. Here he suggests that China's success may have been at the expense of the global poor elsewhere. With only a limited amount of access possible to the still-protected markets of the rich and powerful nations, could China have crowded out the gains of other developing nations by winning the race to the bottom in terms of labor and environmental standards? It's a provocative thesis, but if valid, would be a caution against supposing that other nations can simply follow China's path.
Overall, comparing humans to other humans paints the most dramatic picture of all. Sticking to PPP terms, the poorest quintile of humanity controls just 0.4 percent of the world's wealth, while the richest 1 percent controls 31.6 percent. Doubling the wealth of the bottom two quintiles (40 percent) of the world's population would take just 1.5 percent of the wealth of the top 1 percent. Pogge concludes:
Most of the massive severe poverty persisting in the world today is avoidable through more equitable institutions that would entail minuscule opportunity costs for the affluent. It is for the sake of trivial economic gains that national and global elites are keeping billions of human beings in life-threatening poverty with all its attendant evils such as hunger and communicable diseases, child labor and prostitution, trafficking, and premature death. Considering this situation from a moral standpoint, we must now assess growth—both globally and within most countries—in terms of its effect on the economic position of the poor.
It's a good argument that helps cut through some of the ideological fog in all the contradictory statistics. But it still leaves the massive question of just how you do engineer economic growth with less inequality. If it requires 'more equitable institutions', what are these equitable institutions, and how should they work?
Pogge's starting point is one of nifty dynamic graphs of international GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) along the lines of those developed by and displayed on the
Gapminder website. This one was displayed in the March 2004 issue of the Economist as a piece of one-upmanship on market globalisation critics. Charted at country level, poorer countries have grown more slowly over the last twenty years than rich countries. However, when you account for each country's population (changing the size of the dots on the graph) , the slope of the trend is reversed, thanks to the success of China and India.
All very well, says Pogge. But this considers only one of the dimensions of inequality -- between countries. Also relevant is inequality within countries. Little can be inferred about the poverty-reducing effect of a country's growth in average wealth if all the extra income is going to the richest. For example, survey data indicates that the income of the bottom decile in the United States is not much more than that of the bottom decile in Hungary, and only half that of the bottom decile of Japan or Norway.
Pogge makes what I agree is the important point that the relative income share is also important to consider, because "many things money can buy are positional or competitive: political influence, for instance, and access to education and even health care depend not merely on how much money one has to spend but also on how much others are willing and able to spend on those same goods".
That is a point that can be disputed at an ideological level, and then we get into complicated debates about rewards and incentives. But even if we just stick to differences in absolute income levels, the situation is a lot more extreme when developing countries are considered. For example, the income of the poorest decile in Turkey is nearly three times that of Colombia's poorest (although the two countries have a similar GDP per capita at PPP), and the lowest decile in Colombia earns only 7.4% of the average national income. Even more strikingly, in Vietnam, which is only half as rich as Colombia, the poorest decile has an income more than twice as high as the poorest decile in Colombia.
Pogge goes on to consider China, the great poster child for development through maket globaisation. While he acknowledges that there have been large gains for Chinese, including the poorest, he wonders whether even greater reductions in poverty could have been possible with more equitable growth. Between 1990 and 2005, the national per capita Chinese income grew by 236 percent, but that of the bottom decile just 77 percent, while their relative share declined from 30 to 16 percent of the average. Had the relativities been retained, suggests Pogge, even at the expense of a couple of percentage points of growth per annum, the poorest 40 percent of Chinese would all be better off in absolute terms than they are today.
Finally, he considers inequality between human beings world wide. Here he suggests that China's success may have been at the expense of the global poor elsewhere. With only a limited amount of access possible to the still-protected markets of the rich and powerful nations, could China have crowded out the gains of other developing nations by winning the race to the bottom in terms of labor and environmental standards? It's a provocative thesis, but if valid, would be a caution against supposing that other nations can simply follow China's path.
Overall, comparing humans to other humans paints the most dramatic picture of all. Sticking to PPP terms, the poorest quintile of humanity controls just 0.4 percent of the world's wealth, while the richest 1 percent controls 31.6 percent. Doubling the wealth of the bottom two quintiles (40 percent) of the world's population would take just 1.5 percent of the wealth of the top 1 percent. Pogge concludes:
Most of the massive severe poverty persisting in the world today is avoidable through more equitable institutions that would entail minuscule opportunity costs for the affluent. It is for the sake of trivial economic gains that national and global elites are keeping billions of human beings in life-threatening poverty with all its attendant evils such as hunger and communicable diseases, child labor and prostitution, trafficking, and premature death. Considering this situation from a moral standpoint, we must now assess growth—both globally and within most countries—in terms of its effect on the economic position of the poor.
It's a good argument that helps cut through some of the ideological fog in all the contradictory statistics. But it still leaves the massive question of just how you do engineer economic growth with less inequality. If it requires 'more equitable institutions', what are these equitable institutions, and how should they work?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Modernisation, Shmodernisation
Excuse the potted summaries of my development studies lectures. They are part of my 'diary', which will contribute to a portion of my course work grade.
A couple of weeks into the lectures, we got to Modernization Theory, the starting point for any discussion of development theories. This comes from the period around the end of the Second World War, when there was a surge of interest in how the poor benighted masses of the world could improve their lives by becoming much more like us in the West.
On the one hand, getting the starving natives to the point of having a refrigerator and a car in the driveway would make them less susceptible to the Red Peril. On the other hand, if you were a communist, modernisation had to be part of the glorious dialectical march of history.
According to the standard view, modernisation happens along a number of different dimensions. To the uninitiated, a lot of this will look less like a theory than the set of assumptions we still go by most of the time.
Population -- high birth and death rates give way to a period of rapid population growth, then finally to a stabilising population with both birth and death rates low.
Economy -- subsistence agriculture with little specialisation and exchange through reciprocity eventually sees production removed from consumption, a high degree of specialisation, and exchange through money rather than reciprocity.
Society -- tribal societies where kinship networks dominate and social status is inherited give way to meritocractic societies based on the nuclear family and a secular, scientific education. Class becomes a key organising factor of society.
Politics -- tribal groups with local control and close association between political and religious leaders give way to the modern democractic state with mass participation in politics based on political parties, separation of church and state, and mass communication through the media.
Geography -- modernisation diffuses through space, with transport, trade and urban centres hastening the process of modernisaton and vice versa. The spread of modernisation can be measured by things like kms of roads, telephone connections, kids in school, and newspaper circulation (and nowadays mobile phones and internet connections).
Although we are about to learn about all the critiques of modernization theory and how it has been superceded by theories that are more sophisticated or diametrically opposed, much of it clearly still drives how we think about the world. For example, a lot of people might have had deep reservations about the likelihood of the neoconservative dream of turning Iraq into a 'modern, secular liberal democracy' and thereby 'transforming the Middle East'. More people still rejected the means by which it was to be achieved. But there was certainly a general sense that it was a desirable goal.
A couple of weeks into the lectures, we got to Modernization Theory, the starting point for any discussion of development theories. This comes from the period around the end of the Second World War, when there was a surge of interest in how the poor benighted masses of the world could improve their lives by becoming much more like us in the West.
On the one hand, getting the starving natives to the point of having a refrigerator and a car in the driveway would make them less susceptible to the Red Peril. On the other hand, if you were a communist, modernisation had to be part of the glorious dialectical march of history.
According to the standard view, modernisation happens along a number of different dimensions. To the uninitiated, a lot of this will look less like a theory than the set of assumptions we still go by most of the time.
Population -- high birth and death rates give way to a period of rapid population growth, then finally to a stabilising population with both birth and death rates low.
Economy -- subsistence agriculture with little specialisation and exchange through reciprocity eventually sees production removed from consumption, a high degree of specialisation, and exchange through money rather than reciprocity.
Society -- tribal societies where kinship networks dominate and social status is inherited give way to meritocractic societies based on the nuclear family and a secular, scientific education. Class becomes a key organising factor of society.
Politics -- tribal groups with local control and close association between political and religious leaders give way to the modern democractic state with mass participation in politics based on political parties, separation of church and state, and mass communication through the media.
Geography -- modernisation diffuses through space, with transport, trade and urban centres hastening the process of modernisaton and vice versa. The spread of modernisation can be measured by things like kms of roads, telephone connections, kids in school, and newspaper circulation (and nowadays mobile phones and internet connections).
Although we are about to learn about all the critiques of modernization theory and how it has been superceded by theories that are more sophisticated or diametrically opposed, much of it clearly still drives how we think about the world. For example, a lot of people might have had deep reservations about the likelihood of the neoconservative dream of turning Iraq into a 'modern, secular liberal democracy' and thereby 'transforming the Middle East'. More people still rejected the means by which it was to be achieved. But there was certainly a general sense that it was a desirable goal.
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