CLAS Fall 2006 - Full Issue
Transcript of CLAS Fall 2006 - Full Issue
FALL 2006
BERKELEY REVIEW OF
Latin American StudiesU N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , B E R K E L E Y
How will Latin America generate equalopportunities for its citizens? How willLatin America face up to and overcome
the historical rifts generated by the humanrights violations that are the legacy of militarydictatorships, guerrilla fighting and civil wars?And how should Latin America integrate itselfinto the multilateral institutions that govern aglobalized world?
These were the central themes of the speechgiven by Ricardo Lagos, president of Chile from2000 to 2006, to a UC Berkeley audience that
greeted him with loud cheers and a standingovation. In an atmosphere that can only bedescribed as electric, Professor Beatriz Manzexpressed the sentiments of many in her openingremarks, when she offered her heartfelt thanksto President Lagos for his commitment todemocracy and his personal courage in helpingto bring down the Pinochet dictatorship inChile. Her sentiments were echoed byChancellor Robert J. Birgeneau who presentedLagos with the Berkeley Medal, the university’shighest award.
continued on page 13continued on page 13
Expanding the Possibleby Kirsten Sehnbruch
Photo by Dionicia R
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Expanding the Possible 1
Who Enjoys the Fruits of Trade? 3
Defining New Fronteirs 8
Afta Thoughts on NAFTA 17
Plan Colombia: Coca Moves to the Right 22
State Terrorism in Argentina: Images and Memories 25
The Screams Behind the Photographs 27
Divided Mexico 32
Civil Government? 38
Not a Game for Angels 41
Portrait of Gaddy Tauber 44
The Writing on the Wall 48
A New Spin on Rio’s Favelas 50
Environmental Entrepreneurs 53
Democracy and development were themes
that ran through much of our fall 2006 program
at the Center for Latin American Studies
(CLAS). We were very pleased to host Ricardo
Lagos, president of Chile (2000–06) who taught
a month-long special seminar on “Democracy
and Development in Latin America” and gave a
number of lectures on campus, two of which are
reported on in this issue. President Lagos made
an exceptional contribution as a scholar, a
professor and one of the key political leaders in
Latin America. Students, faculty and staff
members are still engaged in discussions on
issues that he raised during his time in Berkeley.
Professor Brad DeLong, a UC Berkeley
economist, reflects on “Afta Thoughts on
Nafta,” perspectives and critiques 12 years after
the passage of the North American Free Trade
Agreement. The presentation was part of the
Bay Area Latin America Forum, an ongoing
series organized by CLAS.
We were also very pleased to host Ambassador
Héctor Timerman, Consul General of Argentina
in New York, who spoke about his personal
experiences under military dictatorship in
Argentina and, in particular, the case of his
legendary father, Jacobo Timerman.
In this issue, we welcome Colombian journalist
Daniel Coronell as a visiting senior scholar at
CLAS for 2006–07, a visit made by possible by
the Open Society Institute and the Scholar
Rescue Fund.
Finally, this issue features a special section on
the Mexican election, a theme that ran through
our fall program, and an extraordinary article
on organs trafficking by Professor Nancy
Scheper-Hughes, based on research from her
forthcoming book.
We are looking forward to the fifth meeting of
the U.S.–Mexico Future’s Forum, a joint project
with ITAM in Mexico City, early next year.
— Harley Shaiken
Letter from the Chair
Insi
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ChairHarley Shaiken
Vice ChairSara Lamson
Managing EditorJean Spencer
Assistant EditorSusie Seefelt Lesieutre
Design and LayoutGreg Louden
ContributingWriters
Stephanie BeasleyAnna Browne Ribeiro
Daniel CoronellJ. Bradford DeLong
Denise DresserRafael Fernández de
CastroMark Alan Healey
Pedro PetersonNancy Scheper-Hughes
Kirsten SehnbruchWendy Muse Sinek
Jean SpencerHéctor Timerman
PhotographyAP Wide World
David GarcíaMichele Gibbs
Higinio GonzálezRosa GonzálezPablo Lasansky
David R. Léon LaraAdriana LestidoDionicia Ramos
Nancy Scheper-HughesKyle SimourdScott Squire
Jacqueline Sullivan
The Berkeley Reviewof Latin American
Studies is publishedthree times a year bythe Center for Latin
American Studies,University of California,2334 Bowditch Street,
Berkeley, CA94720-2312.
Cover: PresidentRicardo Lagos on the
Berkeley campus.
If globalization is producing, as Joseph
Stiglitz has described, “rich countries of
poor people,” then what is to be done? On
October 2, 2006, Ricardo Lagos, president of
Chile from 2000 to 2006 addressed this question
with David Bonior, member of the U.S. House
of Representatives from 1977 to 2003. Both
spent a large part of their political careers
addressing issues of international trade. While the
two men demonstrated a great deal of mutual
respect for one another and were in agreement
at many points throughout the evening, each
also brought a unique perspective to the issue of
fostering both trade and development in the
Western Hemisphere. Their interaction created
an engaging and lively conversation for the
overflowing crowd at the UC Berkeley Alumni
House.
As moderator, Professor Harley Shaiken
suggested they begin by commenting on what
they believe governments can do to ensure that
gains from trade are more equally distributed,
benefiting ordinary people as well as a nation’s
overall GDP. Lagos immediately noted that a
crucial issue with respect to greater equity lies in
who is able to participate in defining the “rules
of the game.” In other words, it matters which
international players decide what protective
tariffs are permitted for a given industry,
what constitutes a violation of the rules and
what the consequences should be. At present,
economically powerful countries have greater
influence in setting the rules and resulting
agreements tend to be weighted toward their
interests.
For example, while larger countries have an
incentive to protect their own internal markets,
smaller countries such as Chile rely on their
ability to export. Therefore, small countries with
a comparative advantage in a given industry
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Valparaíso, Chile’sbusiest seaport.
Who Enjoys the Fruits of Trade?By Wendy Muse Sinek
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
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need not only reduced trade barriers but also
the opportunity to export freely without being
charged with anti-dumping sanctions by larger
countries. Similarly, when trade barriers are
lowered, capital flows to areas in which the
greatest profit can be made without regard to
national boundaries, yet labor — working
people — cannot cross these boundaries in the
same way. For this reason, Lagos argued that
labor legislation should be an integral part of
free trade agreements to ensure that countries
do not have an incentive to compete over ever-
worsening labor standards. International trade
should lead to greater development worldwide,
but for this to become a reality, smaller countries
need a stronger voice in establishing the rules of
the game.
Bonior expanded on this point, arguing that
there has been a worldwide “race to the bottom”
in terms of labor standards. He posed a revealing
contrast: In the 1950s, General Motors was the
world’s largest corporation, paying factory
workers at least $5 an hour so that they could
afford to buy the cars they produced, fostering
d l d d f h kimproved living standards for the working
class. At present, Wal-Mart is the world’s largest
corporation, yet workers receive only $8.50 an
hour, ensuring that they cannot afford to shop
anywhere but Wal-Mart. Bonior related a wealth
of statistics on deteriorating labor standards in
the United States, many of which are available
online at www.americanrightsatwork.org. The
most striking, however, may be the fact that
within the United States, every 23 minutes
someone is fired or discriminated against for
supporting a union in his or her workplace.
Clearly, the reversal of fortunes for the working
class is a concern for the United States as well as
developing countries.
In Bonior’s view, the results of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are a
prime illustration of this dynamic. Since NAFTA
lacks both labor and environmental standards,
social decisions are outside the parameters of the
agreement and resolved only by the unregulated
market. Globalization managed in this way has
created a vast income gap in both the United
States and Mexico, allowing the wealthiest
The Fruits of Tradecontinued from previous page
President Lagos withthe team that
negotiated theU.S.–Chile free
trade agreement.
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individuals to become disconnected from the
fate of society as a whole. Giving poorer
countries greater influence in establishing the
rules of the game, as Lagos suggested, would
be a step in the right direction. To facilitate
this, Bonior proposed establishing a deeper
integration (along the lines of the European
Union) to provide an arena through which all
nations in the Western Hemisphere could voice
their concerns and create a common agenda for
overall economic development.
In response, Lagos countered that existing
social and economic asymmetries between the
United States and most Latin American countries
would be the main obstacle in creating such a
confederation. Currently, there is little solidarity
within the region as a whole, so there is scant
motivation to create a unifying organization.
Moreover, building solidarity would require
greater concessions on the part of economically
powerful actors in the region. For example, when
Chile and Bolivia were negotiating a recent trade
agreement, Chile agreed to eliminate protections
on Bolivian goods immediately but allowed
Bolivia to gradually reduce their tariffs, thus
recognizing the economic asymmetries that exist
between the two nations. Lagos claimed that the
United States would need to take similar steps
with respect to Latin America and asked Bonior
if he thought the United States would be willing
to do so.
For his part, Bonior agreed that developing
countries in the region would likely require
additional trade concessions. However, he
stressed that the most important way to create
hemispheric solidarity would be to incorporate
labor standards within trade agreements.
Currently, most Latin American countries are
signatories to United Nations treaties that
give workers the right to form independent
unions, yet this right is unevenly enforced.
fBringing workers’ rights to the forefront of
trade agreements would ensure that laborers
across the hemisphere are treated fairly, thus
creating greater regional solidarity.
With this issue in mind, Bonior recalled that
when he was following the negotiations toward a
bilateral free trade agreement with Chile, the
American A.F.L.-C.I.O. had discussed labor
rights with unionized Chilean workers, and both
David Bonior andRicardo Lagos inconversation.
Photo by David R
.Léon Lara.
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
sides favored incorporating labor protections
into the trade agreement. However, when
Bonior brought the idea to a key U.S. trade
negotiator, it was dismissed. Bonior asked Lagos
for his view on which party was behind this
outcome: Was it the United States or Chile that
was opposed to tying labor rights to the trade
agreement?
Lagos responded that his impression was
that labor rights were important to both sides,
balanced with the desire for each country to
retain sovereignty over labor legislation.
Moreover, legislation in this area does not
change through executive decree; it is crafted
through the time-consuming process of
congressional approval. Reaching a final trade
agreement would have been nearly impossible if
it had been contingent on labor legislation
changes within Chile. While much progress
has been made over the past 15 years, Lagos
admitted that Chile could do more in terms of
strengthening labor rights, especially in the
area of collective bargaining protections.
At this point in the conversation, Shaiken
noted that both Lagos and Bonior appeared to
agree that discussions of globalization tend to be
conducted too narrowly. Strong contingencies
exist in both countries that support bringing the
market and government together for progressive
results, but the parameters of the debate are so
constrained that to simply raise the question
of reframing the debate is often seen as
protectionist and is dismissed out of hand. As a
result, the search for alternatives is considerably
restricted. With this in mind, Shaiken asked
both Lagos and Bonior to comment on what
alternatives they consider most important from
the point of view of their respective nations.
Lagos responded first, stating that trade
negotiations need to acknowledge the inequalities
that exist between developed and developing
countries. For example, intellectual property
rights are one of the most important issues
within trade agreements at present. However,
agreements tend to preference the rights of
countries that hold patents on intellectual
property while doing little to build technical
capacity within developing countries. Doing so
is possible, Lagos noted, citing a bilateral trade
agreement with the European Union that gives
Chilean universities the right to participate in
research and development projects established
by the EU. He argued that similar alternatives
that address social discrepancies should be
further explored.
Extending this idea, Shaiken asked Bonior to
comment on how willing the United States
might be to participate in a search for equalizing
alternatives such as the one Lagos described
and to incorporate them into future trade
agreements. Bonior appeared optimistic in this
regard. He stressed that the U.S. Congress is
now more reluctant to support unfettered free
market trade agreements because citizens feel
the negative effects of current agreements
such as NAFTA in their daily lives. It is at least
equally important for nations to protect the
rights of their workers within trade agreements
as it is to protect intellectual and other
The Fruits of Tradecontinued from previous page
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L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
Chilean imports inBolivia.
Phot
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property rights for the goods those workers
create. Since workers’ rights are often left out
of the equation, ordinary people experience
growing inequities, and they are beginning
to pressure their representatives to ensure
that future agreements contain basic social
protections. Bonior closed his comments by
stating that if representatives are not responsive,
people will likely take their grievances to the
streets, engaging in demonstrations against
globalization until the process of reaching trade
agreements is democratized.
In his closing remarks, Lagos reflected on the
broader context of the discussion, in which some
international actors have had more influence
upon the world than others. In different historical
cycles, powerful states — Egypt, Greece, Rome,
the British Empire and, at present, the United
States — have arisen, spent their time on the
world stage and, inevitably, receded. The issue
for powerful states, then, is this: When one is in
the position to set the “rules of the global game,”
will the stage be set such that, when one’s power
and influence is lost, the arrangement remains
satisfactory and fair? Trade discussions, and the
agreements that result from them, are just part
f h h b d l h hof the answer to this broader question. Although
it is difficult to achieve — and in fact would be a
historical first — Lagos urged the United States
to take advantage of its position in the world to
reduce inequalities and create more equitable
ytrade agreements. In this way, not only
nations, but ordinary people within them can
begin to realize greater economic gains from
international trade.
The discussion “Trade, Development and theAmericas” was held at UC Berkeley on October2, 2006. Ricardo Lagos was the president of Chilefrom 2000 to 2006 and a visiting professor atCLAS in fall 2006. David Bonior is currentlyProfessor of Urban, Labor and MetropolitanAffairs at Wayne State University. Previously, hewas a member of the U.S. Congress from 1977 to2003 and House Democratic whip from1991–2002. The discussion was moderated byCLAS Chair Harley Shaiken.
Wendy Muse Sinek is a Ph.D. candidate in theTravers Department of Political Science at UCBerkeley.
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
Ricardo Lagos,David Bonior andHarley Shaiken onthe Berkeleycampus.
Photo by David R
.Léon Lara.
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H istory will certainly rememberRicardo Lagos as one of Chile’sgreatest presidents. Few presidents, in
the Americas or elsewhere, can point to a similarlist of achievements following six years inoffice, even without having had to operateunder constitutional constraints similar to thosethat often tied the hands of President Lagos.
The people who received the president witha standing ovation at UC Berkeley were well-disposed to admire him. As they repeatedlyrose to their feet to applaud and cheer, I wasreminded of another such reception that Iwitnessed not long ago.
Once a year, Chile’s business leaders meet atan annual congress, the ENADE. At its 2000meeting, a recently elected President Lagos wasgreeted with open skepticism and a degree ofhostility by the business community whichfeared a socialist president would lead Chile’seconomy further into the doldrums. At the 2005ENADE conference, however, I observed the
same audience receive President Lagos with astanding ovation. Business leaders, who in Chileare notoriously right-wing, openly expressedtheir admiration and respect for this left-wing
ypresident and his government, which theyconsider to have been very successful overall.Any criticisms of his government werereserved and centered on relatively minorissues; sometimes they even appeareddownright contrived.
The respect and approval Lagos had generatedffrom such an unlikely source was indicative of
opinions nationwide: During his six years inoffice, Chile’s most important public opinion
ypoll accorded him approval ratings that rarelydipped below 60 percent and sometimes evenexceeded 70 percent. Equally significant, hisdisapproval ratings generally hovered between10 and 15 percent.
Such polls reflect the extent to whichfPresident Lagos managed to reconcile some of
the historic divisions that have characterized
Defining New Frontiers By Kirsten Sehnbruch
Ricardo Lagos andHarley Shaiken
chat with a studenton the Berkeley
campus.
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
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Chilean politics since at least 1973, a featachieved in large part through the sheer forceof his personal moral convictions.
So what did his government do? Why was heso popular? Unfortunately, a brief article suchas this one can only hope to present a fewsummary answers.
In the economic sphere, the recovery ofgrowth, the expansion of free trade and theinstitution of a structural fiscal surplus set asidefor the reduction of the national debt and futuresocial investment are the hallmarks of the Lagosadministration.
Having taken over Chile’s government at a timewhen the economy had taken a dip, rkk esulting in asharp increase of poor quality employment andunemployment, Lagos managed to turn thisscenario around. With the help of historically highcopper prices, the strong growth rates thatChileans had become accustomed to wererecovered. It is a measure of his government’sforesight and long-term planning that hisadministration instituted the above-mentionedbudget rule, largely intended to protect Chilefrom future economic fluctuations.
However, what President Lagos willundoubtedly be remembered for most, interms of Chile’s economic development, is hisgovernment’s successful negotiation of a series
of free trade agreements, which include treatieswith the United States, the European Union andSouth Korea, as well as with several neighboringcountries in Latin America and, most recently,China. Such agreements have not only integratedChile further into the global economy, they havealso demonstrated the country’s commitment tointernational institutional treaties and democracy.
Chile’s free trade agreements with the UnitedStates and the European Union in particular
fsymbolize the country’s democratic “coming ofage” process. As recently as 1999, segments of theChilean military, which violently opposed thearrest of General Pinochet in London, murmuredthat they were prepared to intervene should thedemocratic government fail to protect their
yinterests. Such rumblings were permanentlyysilenced by these free trade agreements, simply
because the Chilean business community,which had supported the former dictator andthe military, now has too much to lose if theseagreements are suspended.
Despite the economic and symbolic importanceof Chile’s free trade agreement with the UnitedStates, President Lagos nevertheless stood upfor his principles in the midst of its negotiationprocess when his government voted againstthe Bush administration’s decision to invadeIraq in the United Nations Security Council,
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L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
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President Lagosand then-DefenseMinister MichelleBachelet at amilitary parade in2004.
defying warnings that such a stance couldjjeopardize the treaty. Few political leaders inhis position would have run such a risk for amatter of principle.
During his stay at UC Berkeley, Lagosemphasized that such a strategy is a necessaryone for smaller countries. “We need clear rules,”he repeatedly stressed. Unlike large and powerfulcountries, small nations do not have the politicalclout to dictate the rules of global engagementas they go along but have to rely on theenforcement and application of establishedrules. “As a small country, I could not jeopardizethis principle,” Lagos explained.
The economic policies of the Lagos administrationwere closely coupled with equally importantsocial policies. “Growth with Equity” (Crecer conIgualdad) had been Lagos’ campaign slogan, andhis government certainly attempted to makegood on this promise.
Extensive health care reforms, social programsto further reduce poverty, 12 years of compulsoryeducation, the institution of longer school days,programs to improve the quality of education,significant increases of the minimum wage andthe institution of an unemployment insurancesystem are only some of the policies that markedthe social agenda of the Lagos government.
Critics, however, tend to argue that thesereforms do not go far enough. My own book TheChilean Labour Market (Palgrave, 2006), forexample, contends that these reforms do notchange the fundamental structures of Chile’ssocial policy institutions, which will make itdifficult to achieve greater equity. In particular, Ihave criticized the Concertación, Chile’s rulingcoalition, for a lack of focus on employmentpolicy as the crucial link between economic andsocial policies.
Nevertheless, the reforms initiated by theLagos government represent an important stepin the right direction. It must be acknowledgedthat Chile’s government has expended moreeffort and resources on its social political agendathan any other Latin American country duringrecent decades, even while its political systemconstrained the government’s ability toundertake more fundamental reforms. In thearea of social policy reform, Lagos picked his
b l l h hbattles wisely, thus perhaps generating greaterycapacity for future change than is widely
assumed at present.It is important to remember that President
Lagos, like his Concertación predecessors, couldnever count on a majority in the Chilean senate.As a result of the undemocratic constitutionallimitations with which the Pinochet dictatorship
ghad saddled Chile’s renascent democracy, amongthem nine unelected senators, political powerwas skewed towards the opposition.Furthermore, this constitution required atwo-thirds majority in the senate to changeimportant legislation, such as the institution andstructure of the pension system.
One of the most important measures thatLagos successfully negotiated, therefore, wasthe reform of this constitution. Similarly, hisgovernment brought Chile’s military statutes inline with the standards of a modern democracy.Future Chilean presidents, for example, will beable to fire the heads of their armed forces, aprerogative that General Pinochet’s constitutionhad denied Chile’s democratically electedleaders.
The importance of these reforms cannot beoveremphasized. Not only will they allow futurepresidents to pass fundamental legislation moreeasily, but they also constitute a crucial step in theprocess of strengthening and deepening Chile’sdemocracy as well as its institutional capacities.
However, President Lagos’ greatest domesticachievement was the deepening of the processof national reconciliation initiated by his
fpredecessors, which will bring some measure ofhope for justice to the victims of the Pinochetdictatorship.
The prosecution of General Pinochet by judgesJuan Guzmán (for human rights violations) andSergio Muñoz (for corruption) was unthinkableonly a few years ago. It is now a reality. The samegoes for countless other officials of the Pinochetdictatorship and their henchmen. PresidentLagos was always careful to assert that he wouldnot interfere in the procedures of the judiciary,which should work independently of politics,but there can be no doubt that his personal andmoral stature did a lot towards ensuring thatjustice is slowly but surely being done in Chile.
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Defining New Frontierscontinued from previous page
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The same can be said for the Valech report,compiled specifically at the behest of the president,which details the human rights violationsperpetrated under General Pinochet’s regime.The report lists the anonymous testimonies ofapproximately 29,000 people who were torturedand who have subsequently received basic life-long pensions and other benefits as a smallmeasure of compensation. Although the reportwas compiled with very limited resources and canbe criticized for its methodology, it constitutes ahistorical document of immense significance,principally because it made information on theextent of human rights violations in this sadchapter of Chile’s recent history available toeveryone.
At the same time, however, the Lagosadministration also pursued an active dialoguewith Chile’s military to unravel the truth aboutthese human rights violations. This dialogue hasfurther resulted in reforms which have redefinedthe role of the military in Chile today andwill allow it to regain its historical status as aprofessional and apolitical actor. Such measuresrepresent an important step in bringing about aprocess of national reconciliation, the prerequisitefor healing the wounds of the past.
In his Berkeley speech, President Lagos saidthat his government defined new frontiers forChile, making possible what was previously
thought of as impossible. This is true of a wholenumber of matters, which range from the mostpractical (such as the construction of pavedroads through remote rural areas) to the morepolitical (such as the constitutional reforms). AsLagos pointed out in his talk, he enjoyed greaterfreedoms to do things than his predecessors,presidents Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei, buthe has also left his successor, Michelle Bachelet,with an even greater range of freedoms, whichwill allow her government to function moreeffectively and to pursue the social agendathat the Lagos administration was unable tocomplete.
Handing over the Chilean presidency to awoman can perhaps be considered as one of themost important expressions of the new frontiersLagos defined in Chile. During his period inoffice, he appointed women to key posts in hiscabinet, including those of Foreign Affairs andDefense. Since cabinet posts in Chile are the bestpositions for achieving public recognition and
fpopularity, Lagos must receive a large share ofthe credit for the fact that the two presidentialcandidates who emerged from the Concertaciónin 2005, Soledad Alvear and Michelle Bachelet,were women.
His successor, President Bachelet, is not only awoman but also a socialist with a militant past,which is itself an expression of the acceptance
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
President Lagosvisits the HumanRights Memorialconstruction site.
Photo courtesy of ww
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that socialism has regained in Chile. She isdivorced and an agnostic (as was RicardoLagos himself), but she is also the singlemother of three children. Such a combinationof characteristics must be viewed as anexpression of the sociocultural frontiers thatChile is exploring and to which the person andpolicies of Ricardo Lagos made an immeasurablecontribution.
By demonstrating not only that a socialist cansuccessfully run the economy but also combineeconomic growth with a comprehensive agendaof social policies, President Lagos introduced“The Third Way” to Latin America.
While some may lament the loss of traditionalsocialist agendas, the approval ratings thatPresident Lagos generated within Chile, togetherwith the recognition he has received beyond hiscountry’s borders, suggests that many morewelcome the fact that socialism has beenreformed to constitute a realistic, practical and
responsible long-term alternative to failedneoliberal reforms.
There can be no doubt that Ricardo Lagos’approach has smoothed the way for otherleft-wing leaders to be elected in a region thatsorely needs to overcome levels of povertyand inequality which are high enough to fuelunrest and may even destabilize the hard-woninroads democracy has made on the continent.
Perhaps history will consider this to bePresident Lagos’ most important contributionto defining new frontiers.
Kirsten Sehnbruch is a senior visiting scholar andlecturer at CLAS.
Defining New Frontierscontinued from previous page
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President Lagosgreets well-wishers
on the day he leftoffice.
President Lagos began his speech by summarizingthe progress Latin America has made over thelast decades. First, he highlighted the fact thatdemocratic institutions, especially electoralprocesses, have consistently improved acrossLatin America. Today virtually all governmentsin the region have been elected democratically.While it is true that some governments didnot finish their terms in office, even in thesecases the rule of law was upheld and legitimateconstitutional means were applied to appointinterim or successor governments. Lagosemphasized that, despite many persistentimperfections, there is more democracy in LatinAmerica today than there was only a couple ofdecades ago, a fact that constitutes real andundeniable progress.
Second, Lagos pointed out the growinginfluence of a cadre of well-trained andtechnically competent professionals who run theeconomies of most Latin American countriestoday. This has led to the de-politicization ofeconomic policy-making in the region, which hepredicted will have positive consequences for thecontinent’s development as a whole.
Third, the overall level of economic developmentin the region has improved to the point that,with only two exceptions, Latin Americancountries no longer qualify for foreign aid.Most are now considered to be middle-incomecountries, facing problems of a different naturefrom those of the past.
yWhile this overall scenario is undoubtedlyyencouraging, the region still battles many
unresolved problems. President Lagos spelledout three major challenges facing Latin America:The first such challenge is how individualcountries can build societies that provide their
ycitizens with equal opportunities so that theycan achieve greater equity.
While growth and investment are essentialingredients in this process, they alone are notenough. Lagos pointed out that one of the mainreasons why unrest periodically resurfaces inLatin America is because large segments of thepopulation perceive that growth is passing themby. “There’s no point in having a 5 percent or 6percent growth rate, if the school system, thehealth care system and the general infrastructureremain the same,” he emphasized.
Expanding the Possiblecontinued from page 1
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The UC Berkeleyaudience wavesflags as PresidentLagos enters theroom.
Photo by Scott Squire.
Given the inadequate trickle-down effect inthe region, it is the job of governments tocomplement economic growth with effectivepublic policies, if necessary discriminating in favorof the most vulnerable. The role of democracy,which treats individuals as equal citizens andnot as unequal consumers, is a crucial one indetermining which public goods should beavailable to everyone. While no one today canreasonably question the reality of marketeconomies, the debate continues as to how andto what extent governments should provide suchpublic goods. In the end, only democracy canprovide the answer to this question.
Since its transition to democracy in 1990,Chile has dealt with these challenges byconsistently diverting the additional incomegenerated by economic growth into socialpolicies. The Chilean poverty rate was cut inhalf through policies designed to generatecapabilities for the poor and extensive reformsin the areas of social security, health care andeducation. These policies have benefited thepopulation at large, but especially lower-incomehouseholds.
The second challenge that Latin America facesis the equally important issue of how to dealwith a past blemished by human rights violations.Civil wars, guerrilla activities and dictatorshipshave left brutal marks on the region’s history.Lagos argued that “Tomorrow exists only afteryou settle the account with the past.”
yIt was in an effort to deal with Chile’s historythat, as president, Lagos set up a human rightscommission which investigated past violationswith stunning thoroughness and detail. Thecommission produced a final report, knownas the Informe Valech, which recorded thetestimonies of 35,000 people, of whom 29,000were recognized as having suffered torture, in acountry with a population of 10.5 million at thetime of the dictatorship.
Lagos dwelt on the courage needed toundertake such a confrontation with the past
yand the difficulties involved in the process. Everycountry has to find its own way to face theseissues, but each must find a way. The presidenthighlighted the importance of moral and ethicalvalues as essential ingredients in any suchprocess if Latin America’s democracies are to
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
14
Phot
o by
Sco
tt S
quir
e.
President Lagosand Chancellor
Birgeneau.
Expanding the Possiblecontinued from previous page
15
achieve not only legitimacy but also the rule oflaw. He emphatically stated that no one shouldbe above the law.
The third challenge that President Lagosdiscussed is how to integrate the region intoa globalized world. To have an impact onglobal affairs, Latin America needs to speakwith one voice.
Speaking from the Chilean perspective,
Lagos explained that for small and developing
countries without significant political clout, the
rules defining global interactions are especially
important if their rights are to be respected by
their larger and more powerful neighbors. This
logic applies not only to trade in a globalized
world — an area that Chile has pioneered with
bilateral free trade agreements — but also to a
host of other matters that need to be resolved at
the global, multilateral level. He pointed out that
problems such as global warming, damage to the
ozone layer and human rights violations are the
kinds of issues that can only be resolved at the
multilateral level.“The question of human rights, for example,
is not a question of a particular country,” heemphasized. “Whenever a human right isviolated, some other human being has the rightand the duty to denounce this, no matter wherethey live. Frontiers with regard to human rightsviolations cannot exist anymore.”
While Lagos highlighted the importance ofthe United Nations Charter, which was signed in1945 to create a multilateral institution in whichsolutions for lasting peace and economicdevelopment could be devised, he also questionedwhether current institutional structures, inparticular the veto power of the five permanentmembers of the UN Security Council, reflect thepower structures of the past more than those ofthe present.
Latin Americans must learn from the experienceof European countries, which have been able tointegrate as well as develop mechanisms fordiscussing world affairs. Using the experience ofChile and Mexico, which were able to define acommon position with regard to the UNSecurity Council’s decision on Iraq, Lagosillustrated that it is indeed possible for LatinAmerican nations to act in concert and thusinfluence other countries in the world. Suchconcerted action is essential for a continent thatrelies on the application of international law.
Following his talk, President Lagos answered a
series of questions, some of which were receivedvia the internet prior to the event. One questionsent from New Zealand asked whether thepresident saw a conflict between an expandedMercosur and a potential Free Trade Agreementof the Americas. In his response, President Lagosstated that he did not view these differenttrade associations as conflicting, but that twoimportant considerations should be borne inmind with regard to their design. The first is thatcountries with different levels of economicdevelopment should make accommodations forthese discrepancies in their negotiations. Heused the example of Chile’s free trade agreement(FTA) with Bolivia to illustrate this point. SinceChile is the more developed of the two countrieswith the greater proportion of their total trade, itagreed to drop most of its own tariffs to zeroimmediately while allowing Bolivia to reduce itstariffs gradually.
The second point President Lagos made wasthat FTA negotiations must bear in mind that
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
Photo by Scott Squire.
President Lagoswearing theBerkeley Medal.
tariffs make up a significant proportion of thetotal fiscal income for some countries. This isparticularly true of smaller, less developednations. For example, in some Caribbeancountries the elimination of tariffs could wipeout up to 40 percent of fiscal revenues. Alongsimilar lines, such negotiations must also makeallowances for the exclusion of certain sectors,such as intellectual property or governmentprocurement, from the FTAs.
President Lagos emphasized the need to learnfrom the successful integration of theEuropean Union, which throughout its historyhas accompanied the integration of newmembers with significant fiscal transfers fromricher countries to poorer ones, especially duringits most recent inclusion of less developedEastern European countries.
The event concluded with a questionregarding the environment. President Lagosemphatically spoke about the need to generateappropriate policies on the environmental
challenges facing developed and less developedcountries alike. Dealing with these challengesrequires not only the establishment of appropriateenvironmental standards but also the institutionof an international body that would be able to
fenforce such standards and sanction violators ifnecessary. Lagos also emphasized that theworld’s most developed countries, the G-8, musttake a lead on this matter, since they are withoutdoubt the principal culprits and contributors tothe environmental degradation that we nowconfront. An optimistic note rang through hisresponse, though, as he repeatedly stated that, inhis view, “mankind is capable of sustainabledevelopment.”
President Ricardo Lagos spoke on “Challenges forLatin America” on September18, 2006.
Kirsten Sehnbruch is a senior visiting scholar andlecturer at CLAS.
16
L a g o s a t B e r k e l e y
Phot
o by
Dio
nici
a R
amos
.
President Lagosteaching during his
stay at Berkeley.
Expanding the Possiblecontinued from previous page
17
The Mexican Revolution of the early 20th
century created a Mexico where peasants
had nearly inalienable control over their
land; where large-scale industry was heavily
regulated; and where the country was ruled by a
single, corrupt, patronage-based party — the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). By the
late 1980s, it was clear that this was not a very
successful politico-economic framework
with which to support Mexican economic
development. Urban and industrial productivity
remained far below world standards with
little sign of catch-up or convergence. Rural
agriculture remained backward. Successful
development fueled by the transfer of labor
from the countryside to the cities had come
to an end in the late-1970s with the general
slowdown of growth in the industrial core, even
though oil-rich Mexico benefited enormously
from the OPEC-driven tripling of world oil
prices in that decade.
After stealing the presidency of Mexico from
the true choice of the voters — Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas — Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided
at the start of the 1990s to pursue policies of
“neoliberal reform.” He worked to open up the
economy to trade; encourage rather than punish
foreign investment; dismantle regulations and
special privileges; and generally to rely on the
market in the hope that any market failures that
emerged to slow development would be less
destructive and dangerous than the government
failures — stagnation, corruption, entrenched
interests — that many agreed were blocking
Mexican prosperity.
So, in the early 1990s, Salinas de Gortari
sought and won a free trade agreement with
the United States and Canada: NAFTA — the
Afta Thoughts on NAFTABy J. Bradford DeLong
Photo by AP W
ide World.
Anti-NAFTAprotestors at a1993 rally.
18
North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA
guaranteed Mexican producers tariff- and
quota-free access to the U.S. market, the largest
consumer market in the world. Once the United
States was committed to allowing quota- and
tariff-free imports from Mexico, the future
twists and turns of U.S. politics would be
unlikely to disrupt U.S.–Mexican trade.
Industrialists could build their factories in
Mexico to serve the American market without
fearing the consequences of a political retreat
from free trade by the United States.
More importantly, perhaps, NAFTA committed
Mexico to following the rules of the international
capitalist game in its domestic economic policies.
Overregulation, nationalization, confiscation —
all the ways that governments can take wealth,
especially wealth invested by foreigners, and
redistribute it — were to be ruled out, or at least
made more difficult, as a result of NAFTA.
The hope was that this two-fold binding of
national governments — the U.S. government
committing not to let a wave of protectionism
affect imports from Mexico and the Mexican
government committing not to let a wave of
populism affect the wealth that foreign investors
would place in Mexico — would set off a giant
investment and export-industrialization boom
in Mexico and so perhaps cut a generation
off the time it would take for full Mexican
economic development.
Indeed, six years ago I was ready to conclude
that NAFTA had been a major success. It looked
as if NAFTA had been the most, or at least a very
promising, road for Mexico. Given that the
United States has both a neighborly duty and a
selfish interest to do whatever it can to raise
the chances for Mexico to become democratic
and prosperous, it appeared that the pushing-
forward of NAFTA by the George H.W. Bush
and Bill Clinton administrations had been one
of the lamentably few good calls by the U.S.
government in its management of relations with
Mexico.
Six years ago I would have said that NAFTA
was a success because I would have looked at
Mexico’s exports and seen that they had
boomed. Indeed, they have continued to boom.
fMexico’s exports have gone from 10 percent of
GDP in 1990 to 17 percent in 1999 to 28 per-
cent today. In 2007, Mexico’s real exports —
overwhelmingly to the United States — will be
fully five times as great as they were at the
beginning of the 1990s. Here, in the rapid
development of export industries and the
dramatic rise in export volumes, it is clear that
NAFTA has made a big difference.
Without the dual guarantees of free imports
into the United States and respect for foreigners’
property in Mexico, fewer investments
would have been made in Mexico in capacity
to satisfy American demand. And to those of
us advocating NAFTA in the early 1990s, such
an expansion of exports as we have in fact
seen would have been confidently predicted to
generate enormous dividends for Mexico as a
whole. Increasing trade between the United
States and Mexico moves both countries toward
a greater degree of specialization and a finer
division of labor. Mexico and the United States
can both raise productivity in important sectors
like autos, where labor-intensive portions are
increasingly accomplished in Mexico, and
textiles, where high-tech spinning and weaving
is increasingly done in the United States, while
Mexico carries out lower-tech cutting and
sewing.
Such efficiency gains from increasing the extent
of the market and promoting specialization
should have produced rapid growth in Mexican
productivity. Likewise, greater efficiency should
have been reinforced by a boom in capital
formation, which should have accompanied the
guarantee that no future wave of protectionism
in the United States would close factories in
Mexico. This is the gospel of free trade and the
division of labor that we economists have
preached since Adam Smith. And we have
powerful evidence around the world and across
the past three centuries that this gospel is a
true one.
The key words here are “should have.”
Afta Thoughts on NAFTAcontinued from previous page
Today’s roughly 100 million Mexicans have
real incomes, at purchasing power parity, of
roughly $10,000 per year, a quarter of the
current U.S. level. They are investing perhaps a
fifth of GDP in gross fixed capital formation —
a healthy amount — and have greatly expanded
their integration into the world economy,
especially that of North America, since NAFTA.
Real GDP has grown at an average rate of 3.6
percent per year since the coming of NAFTA.
But this rate of growth, when coupled with
Mexico’s 2.2 percent per year rate of population
increase, means that Mexicans’ mean market
income from production in Mexico is barely 15
percent above that of pre-NAFTA days. That
means that the gap between their mean income
and that of the United States has widened. And
there is worse news: Because of rising inequality
the gap between mean and median incomes has
risen. The overwhelming majority of Mexicans
are no more productive in a domestic market
income sense than their counterparts of 15 years
ago, although some segments of the population
have benefited. Exporters (but not necessarily
workers in export industries) have gotten rich.
The north of Mexico has done relatively well.
And Mexican families with members in the
United States are living better because of a
greatly increased flow of remittances.
Intellectually, this is a great puzzle for us
economists. We believe in market forces. We
believe in the benefits of trade, specialization
and the international division of labor. We see
the enormous increase in Mexican exports to
the United States over the past decade. We see
great strengths in the Mexican economy:
macroeconomic stability, balanced budgets
and low inflation, low country risk, a flexible
labor force, a strengthened and solvent banking
system, successfully reformed poverty-reduction
programs, high earnings from oil and so on.
Yet success at what neoliberal policymakers
like me thought would be the key links for
Mexican development has had disappointing
results. Success at creating a stable, property-
respecting domestic environment has not
delivered the rapid increases in productivity and
working-class wages that neoliberals like me
would have confidently predicted when NAFTA
was ratified. Had we been told back in 1995 that
Mexican exports would multiply fivefold in the
next 12 years we would have had no doubts that
19
Photo by Jacqueline Sullivan.
Brad DeLong speaksat UC Berkeley.
20
NAFTA was going to be, and would be perceived
as, an extraordinary success. We would have
been convinced that Salinas de Gortari was right
to focus his energies on free trade and
NAFTA rather than on, say, education and
infrastructure.
To be sure, economic deficiencies still abound
in Mexico. According to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), these include a very low average
number of years of schooling, with young
workers having almost no more formal
education than their older counterparts; little
on-the-job training; heavy bureaucratic burdens
on firms; corrupt judges and police; high crime
rates; and a large, low-productivity informal
xsector that narrows the tax base and raises tax
rates on the rest of the economy. But these
deficiencies should not be enough to neutralize
Mexico’s powerful geographic advantages and
the potent benefits of neoliberal policies, should
they?
Apparently they are. The demographic burden
of a rapidly growing labor force appears to be
greatly increased when that labor force is not
very literate, especially when crime, official
corruption and inadequate infrastructure also
take their toll. Reinforcing these deficiencies is
fan important additional factor: the rise of
China. The extraordinary expansion of exports
from China over the past decade has meant
that it has been the worst time since the 1930s
to follow a strategy of export-led industrialization
(unless, of course, you are China). Mexico has
succeeded at exporting to the United States. But
because of the rising economic weight of China,
it has not succeeded in exporting at prices that
generate enough surplus to boost Mexican
development.
In addition, there is a great deal of anecdotal
evidence that attempts by businesses to locate
production for the U.S. market in Mexico are
running into labor shortages. It is not that
labor in Mexico is scarce, and it is not at all
expensive. But labor with the skills needed to
operate machines that could otherwise be
located in Kuala Lumpur or Lisbon or, indeed,
Cleveland, does seem to be hard to find. The
logic of comparative advantage and the division
of labor requires that the productive resources to
divide the labor be present. The low level — and
near stagnation over time — of education in
Mexico may be a critical deficiency.
And there is the problem of Iowa, a gigantic
gand heavily subsidized corn and pork producing
machine. The way NAFTA has worked out, the
biggest single change in cross-border shipments
whas been that Iowa’s agricultural produce is now
sold in Mexico City. The impact on standards
of living for Mexico’s near-subsistence, rural
Afta Thoughts on NAFTAcontinued from previous page
Phot
o by
AP
Wid
e W
orld
.
Corn flows from anIowa combine.
farmers is frightening to contemplate. Imports
from Iowa have been an extraordinary boon to
Mexico’s urban poor and urban working class.
But have they been a good thing for the country
as a whole?
We neoliberals point out that NAFTA did
not cause poor infrastructure, high crime and
official corruption. We thus implicitly suggest
that Mexicans would be far worse off today
without NAFTA and its effects weighing in on
the positive side of the scale. We neoliberals
point out that we could not have predicted the
rapid rise of China: from the perspective of
1991, China’s future looked likely to be riddled
with political turmoil, repression and perhaps
economic stagnation as the Communist Party
feared too-rapid change, rather than the greatest
economic miracle we have ever seen.
That neoliberal story may be true, but,
then again, it may not. Having witnessed
Mexico’s slow growth over the past 15 years,
we can no longer repeat the old mantra that
the neoliberal road of NAFTA and associated
reforms is clearly and obviously the right one.
Would some other, alternative, non-neoliberal
development strategy have been better for
Mexico in the late 1990s and early 2000s? Would
it have been better to have urged President
Carlos Salinas de Gortari to focus his efforts on
investments in education and infrastructure and
on trying to clean up corruption rather than on
free trade? Perhaps.
The stakes are high. Our current systems of
politics and economics, around the world,
are legitimized not because they are just or
optimal but because they deliver a modicum
of peace coupled with rapid economic growth
and increases in living standards. Mexico’s
development problems are not large when
compared to those of many other countries. We
as a species ought to be able to help Mexico to
do much better than it has in the years since
1990.
J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics atUC Berkeley, Chair of the Political Economy ofIndustrial Societies major and a research associateat the National Bureau of Economic Research. Hespoke on October 16, 2006.
21
Photo by AP W
ide World.
A Mexican farmer inhis cornfield.
22
Six years and $10.6 billion later, PlanColombia has not eradicated coca; however,large areas of cultivation have moved from theguerrilla-controlled zones to paramilitary zones.
In 2000, the United States and Colombiaundertook a huge campaign to strengthenColombian institutions and fight drug trafficking.Plan Colombia, as the initiative was called, wasoriginally presented as the beginning of thereconstruction of a country hit hard by decades ofviolence caused in large part by drug traffickers.
The first goal of Plan Colombia was to supportthe peace process with the RevolutionaryArmed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, acommunist group created in 1964 that clearlydominated coca growing areas at the time. Thereactivation of the Colombian economy andsome institutional reforms to strengthen localjjustice were also part of the plan’s objectives.
However, it was one specific goal of the planthat allowed the Colombian government, ledby then-President Andrés Pastrana, to gainbipartisan support in the U.S. Congress. Thepromise was to reduce cocaine trafficking to theUnited States by 50 percent over five years. Thegoal was ambitious and the parameters for itsevaluation were clear: by 2006 the total area ofcoca cultivation in Colombia would be reducedby half and the price of cocaine on U.S. streetswould double.
Results and ExplanationsThis attractive equation — crops cut by half,
prices doubled — became the backbone of PlanColombia. In an effort to achieve this goal, $10.6billion — $3 billion more than initially planned— have been spent. Analysis shows that theresults are poor.
The areas of coca cultivation in Colombia areslightly larger today than before Plan Colombiawas instituted. In 1999, an estimated 122,500hectares were planted with coca. In 2005, thisnumber reached 144,000.
Several explanations have been offered toexplain this lack of progress. Colombian officials
h h h d h ddargue that they have done their part. In additionto contributing 60 percent of the total funds forPlan Colombia, the Colombian governmenthas conducted massive spraying in the areasindicated by the United States. They also insistthat American monies have not been received ina timely fashion, hindering Colombia’s efforts toextend fumigation and eradicate illegal crops.
The White House Office of National DrugControl Policy (ONDCP) has defined the resultsas “mixed.” According to the U.S. government,the growth in coca production could beexplained by the expansion of the sampling area
ywhere images are taken of the crops. Theyacknowledge that thousands of hectares havebeen conscientiously sprayed but point out thatcoca has reappeared in new areas or in areas thatwere not previously evaluated.
Aside from the expansion of cultivated areas,the other major indicator of Plan Colombia’sprogress is even more discouraging. The figuresgiven by the State Department and the ONDCP
findicate that the “retail” price of one gram ofcocaine was $135.51 in 1999 and $106.54 in 2003.
Instead of a dramatic increase in price, aspredicted in Plan Colombia, cocaine is cheaperthan ever on U.S. streets.
With results like these, there are good reasonsto think that the plan, six years and $10.6 billionlater, has not changed the coca market inColombia. Nonetheless, a detailed analysisdoes indicate that while, broadly speaking, thenumbers are the same, coca has shifted withinthe territory and has changed hands.
MovementIn 1999, just months before the implementation
of Plan Colombia, the Drug EnforcementAdministration (DEA) presented a map of illicitcultivation in Colombia. This map showed theexistence of two enormous coca growing areas inthe southern region of the country. The first wasin the department of Putumayo, near the borderwith Ecuador. The second ranged across thedepartments of Caquetá and Meta.
Plan Colombia:Coca Moves to the RightBy Daniel Coronell
23
It was also clear that there were othermedium-sized areas on the border withVenezuela: the first in Norte de Santander andthe second in the department of Arauca. Inaddition, the map showed a smaller coca-growingarea in the north of Colombia on the borderbetween the departments of Bolivar andSantander.
The map revealed another worrisome reality.The demilitarized zone, created by the Pastranagovernment in order to advance peace talks withthe FARC, was the epicenter of the two largestcoca-growing areas in the country.
Since the 1980s, the FARC had been financingits activities with the gramaje which they defineas a “revolutionary tax” on illicit growers. All theanalysts indicated that the financial and militarystrengthening of the FARC since that time hadits origins in the millions of dollars earned fromillicit crops, but in 1999 few had imagined howlarge the coca plantations had become in theareas controlled by the guerillas.
The peace process, which had been progressivelylosing support because of abuses by the guerrillasin the demilitarized zone, broke down in 2002.President Pastrana broke off talks after theFARC hijacked a commercial airliner and forcedit to land on a road in order to kidnap a senator
who was among the passengers.President Pastrana’s popularity reached its
lowest point in 2002, just before the presidentialelections. Álvaro Uribe, whose campaign focusedon the need for a military confrontation withthe guerillas, became the favorite to succeedhim. Meanwhile, U.S. priorities had changed.Following the September 11 attacks, the war ondrugs gave way to the war on terror.
Given the need to conserve American supportfor Plan Colombia, President Pastrana sought tohave the FARC declared a terrorist group by theUnited States and the European Union. Soonafter, military operations against the guerrillasand aerial spraying of illicit crops in their areasof influence multiplied.
Álvaro Uribe won the presidency and intensifiedthese operations. Within a few months, however,he announced his intention to initiate a newpeace process, this time with the right-wingparamilitaries and not the left-wing guerrillas.
These right-wing paramilitary death squads,who were responsible for massacring peasants,assassinating left-wing leaders and murderingordinary citizens, claimed to have formed as areaction to abuses by the guerrillas in variousregions in Colombia. There is a measure of truthto this claim. However, it is also true that many
Anti-narcotics policeguard the eradicationof a coca field in southern Colombia.
Photo by AP W
ide World.
were private armies serving the drug traffickers.When the possibility of a peace process with
the Colombian government opened up, somedrug lords not previously tied to paramilitaryactivity began to associate themselves with theseright-wing militias. According to a Colombianpolice report, some drug lords bought militiasfor sums ranging from $10 million to $50 millionin order to gain political status, avoid extraditionto the United States, dialogue with the governmentand disguise their drug-trafficking activities.
The New MapThe first thing the paramilitaries obtained in
their negotiations with the government was aguarantee that they would not be extradited tothe U.S., a deal Colombian drug traffickers hadbeen seeking for 23 years. They had never beenafraid of the weak Colombian justice system, butthey were afraid of U.S. prisons and the longsentences imposed by American judges.
With the slogan, “Better a grave inColombia than a prison in the U.S.,” a groupof drug traffickers led by Pablo Escobar hadunleashed a bloody campaign of attacks in the
d h k h l f1980s and 1990s that took the lives of morethan 3,000 people. Presidential candidates,government ministers, judges, policemen andjournalists died during the terrorist offensivecarried out by the so-called extraditables.
yToday, 24 paramilitary leaders are sought byU.S. courts on charges of drug trafficking. Thus,the “no extradition” promise accelerated thepeace process with the paramilitary squads. In
y2004 and 2005, 30,000 self-declared paramilitarymembers were demobilized.
In April 2006, the United States government,through the ONDCP, revealed the modest results
kof Plan Colombia. Subsequently, the New YorkTimes published an article that included a map,created using information from both the U.S.government and the United Nations, showinghow coca cultivation had changed.
Despite the spraying, the size of the areaunder illicit cultivation had not changed sincePlan Colombia was implemented. Instead, cocacultivation had moved from areas under
fguerrilla influence in the southern region ofthe country to areas under paramilitary control.
Today, coca is grown closer to Caribbean andPacific ports and to various urban centers. Theemergence and growth of these new cultivationzones occurred during the same years as themajor paramilitary demobilization.
The map suggests that, without exception, thenew areas of major cultivation are in zoneswhere the paramilitaries have strong influence.
The facts appear to support those who arguedthat continued spraying would not eradicatecoca but simply move it to unsprayed areas. In
yColombia, coca cultivation has moved, not onlygeographically, but also from one politicalextreme to the other: from left to right.
Colombian journalist Daniel Coronell is currentlyka senior visiting scholar at CLAS. He gave a talk
entitled “Plan Colombia: Auditing the Books” onOctober 23, 2006.
24
Daniel Coronellspeaks at Berkeley.
Coca Moves to the Rightcontinued from previous page
Phot
o by
Jacq
uelin
e Su
lliva
n.
This fall, the walls of CLAS havebeen covered with hauntingimages of political violence:
death squads, dumped bodies andthe sometimes terrified, sometimesindifferent faces of passers-by. On the30th anniversary of the military coupin Argentina that made terror, murderand disappearance official state policy,this photographic exhibit has been atimely reminder of the horrors that ablind embrace of national securitydoctrine brought to many countries.The exhibit’s powerful sequence ofimages, some well-known and manymore previously unseen, are theproduct of extensive research andcareful selection by photojournalistsAlejandro Reynoso and PabloCerolini. Curated by Ernesto Semánand brought to Berkeley with the helpof the Argentine government, theexhibit was inaugurated on August 30,2006, with a speech by AmbassadorHéctor Timerman, a long-standing humanrights activist who is now the consul general ofArgentina in New York.
As the son of Jacobo Timerman, one of thebest-known victims of the military regime, theambassador could offer an intimate perspectiveon where state terror came from and how itaffected Argentine society. Drawing on his ownmemories of the period, AmbassadorTimerman told of the shattering experienceof having his father taken away and of thenumbing series of meetings with maliciouslyindifferent bureaucrats as he tried to find outwhere his father was being held. He told ofcountless encounters with the lawless servantsof the law, with their doublespeak, their casualbrutality and their manipulative promises. Herecounted the sobering moment when he sawhis father again, wasting away from torture andmistreatment and the difficulty of holdingtogether a family when the possibility of even
seeing his father again could be arbitrarily takenaway at any time.
Ultimately, of course, Jacobo Timerman wasreleased, thanks to the persistence of his familyand the lobbying efforts of many internationalgroups. He left the country to write PrisonerWithout a Name, Cell Without a Number, arrsearing exposé of the dictatorship that provedkey in further isolating the military regime andstrengthening international support forhuman rights.
Ambassador Timerman dwelt at length onthe important role the United States played inthis process, from high-ranking officials ofthe Carter administration like Pat Derian, tothe heroic efforts of diplomats like “Tex”Harris, who worked to document and stopthe disappearances, tortures and murders thatwere taking place. This U.S. support was crucialto weakening the dictatorship and keeping thehuman rights movement alive as well as laying
25
State Terrorism in Argentina:Images and MemoriesBy Mark Alan Healey
Photo by Pablo Lasansky.
The army violentlyquashes a demonstration,1982.
26
the groundwork for Argentines to return todemocracy and bring military leaders to justice.But as Ambassador Timerman also noted, theUnited States had encouraged the coup in thefirst place and, after Reagan took office, reversedcourse and embraced the worst violators ofhuman rights.
The struggle for human rights was key torestoring democracy in Argentina, but politicalinstability and military reaction led the first twodemocratic presidents, Alfonsín and Menem, tolimit the prosecution of human rights violatorsin the name of securing democracy. Since theArgentine Supreme Court voided amnestiesgiven to human rights violators, the Kirchneradministration has made a priority of bringingthe perpetrators of state terror to trial. Whilesome have worried about the instabilitythese trials might bring, AmbassadorTimerman emphasized that the only path tolasting stability requires justice for the victimsand memory of the crimes. Underscoring theimportance of a robust defense of human rightsand a full reckoning with the past, his speechand the exhibit it inaugurated clearly showed
how “Never Again” has become a foundationalprinciple of Argentine democracy.
“En Negro y Blanco: Images of State Terrorism inArgentina (1976–1983)” is on display at CLASuntil January 3, 2007. The photos on pages 25–31are part of the exhibit.
Mark Alan Healey is Assistant Professor of Historyat UC Berkeley.
State Terrorism in Argentinacontinued from previous page
Phot
o co
urte
sy o
f Med
aglia
and
Am
eri,
p A
rchi
vo C
róni
ca.
Jacobo Timerman isplaced under house
arrest, 1978.
Photo by David R
.Léon Lara.
Right: AmbassadorTimerman points
to the photo of hisfather.
27
When I viewed the exhibit “En Negro y
Blanco: Images of State Terrorism in
Argentina (1976–1983),” when I
actually saw the photographs hanging on the
walls, I was amazed at how the state-sponsored
terror that engulfed my country for more than
seven years, the violence that preceded it and the
hopes that came afterward could be described
in just 40 photos. It would take several books
to express in words what is chronicled in
these images. Along with the aesthetic and
professional value of the display, it is this
ability to communicate history that does credit to
the photographers who researched and selected
the material.
Although every picture brings back memories
of people I knew or scenes where I was present,
there is one photograph that saddens me the
most: the burial of my childhood friend,
Eduardo Beckerman, who was killed by the
secret police when he was 19 years old. He was
the first of my friends to die.
One of the distinctive features of state terrorism
is how easily and efficiently it spreads terror
throughout a nation. By using the armed forces
to pressure specific so-called dangerous groups
(whether they are called communists, terrorists,
bourgeoisie or Jews does not matter), terror is
used to discipline an entire social body. The
nightmare of Argentina is as vividly noticeable
in the actions perpetrated by the death squads as
in the images of ordinary people going on with
their daily lives in the middle of that ordeal.
The most accurate complement to these
images has left no visual record; it lies in the
testimony of survivors, the conscience of the
continued on page 30
The Screams Behind thePhotographsBy Ambassador Héctor Timerman
A mother and herchild protest at the1982 March forLife.
Photo by Adriana Lestido.
28
The banality of evil:Argentine junta leaders at the World Cup, 1978.
Phot
o by
Hig
inio
Gon
zále
z.
perpetrators and the memory of relatives.
Torture is the weapon of state terrorism whose
effects go far beyond the tortured body out into
the entire society and whose lasting memories
are as hard to forget as these pictures.
I, personally, remember what my family went
through during those years. In 1971, my father,
Jacobo Timerman, founded the newspaper La
Opinión. By the mid-1970s it had become the
most respected liberal paper in Argentina.
When the most brutal dictatorship in
Argentina’s history came to power in 1976, my
father’s battles with the regime became a part of
our family life, and I was proud, though scared,
of his willingness to publish the names of the
victims of the junta’s repression.
In the early morning of April 15, 1977, the
army broke into our home and kidnapped my
father. That night was the beginning of a new,
surreal existence for my family.
We went 40 days without knowing whether my
father was alive or dead. Finally, the telephone
rang. My father was on the line. He told us he
was now officially recognized as a government
prisoner and that we could visit him. If thinking
about someone being tortured is painful, it
is not as terrible as seeing the results of that
torture. My mother and I waited for two hours
in the Central Police Department. We were
allowed only three minutes with my father.
He was a man destroyed, both physically and
mentally. Saying goodbye as if for the last time,
he told us he would never be set free and to
reorganize our lives on that basis. My mother
sobbed uncontrollably as she saw what had
become of him. She stroked him as if he were a
child and kept asking, “What did they do to you?
What did they do? Why are you so ill?”
For the next two months we were allowed
to see him for a few minutes every day and,
slowly, he told us about the long sessions of
torture when the interrogators pressed him
for information on his Zionist background and
his relationships with other prominent Jewish
figures. Among the torturers were people who
were very knowledgeable about Israel and
Judaism.
yFor the relatives of the tortured, it was very
yhard to go on living a normal life. Our reality
was a kind of hell. When the media reported on
the struggle against terrorism or the international
kcampaign against Argentina, when people took
to the streets to celebrate sports triumphs or
entered a restaurant, laughing and kissing, it
was impossible not to feel confusion, anger and
emotional isolation. Watching normal people
doing normal things we felt a bottomless sense
of solitude and loneliness.
A few weeks after that first visit, a police officer
approached us as we were waiting in line to enter
the prison. He told us that my father had been
transferred to an unknown location. He had
vanished from police headquarters, again
becoming a desaparecido.
yFor 30 days we lived in terror, our anxiety
sharpened by the knowledge of the mistreatment
he had suffered during the first kidnapping.
Then a call came from the police. I would be
allowed to visit my father for three minutes
every Friday. Each week it was a different police
station, generally far from the center of Buenos
Aires. I was allowed to speak; my father was not.
One of those Fridays, my little brother Javier
broke down in tears and demanded to see our
father. I was not authorized to bring him along.
wFinally, I decided to take a chance. When we saw
my father, pale and skeletal and handcuffed as
always, Javier took out his report card and said,
“Look Papa, I got the best grades in my class.”
My father wept. With the little flexibility allowed
by the handcuffs, he signed Javier’s report card.
In the midst of all the horror, doing something
so banal seemed like a huge victory.
In April 1978, due to health problems and
world pressure, my father was released from a
military prison and placed under house arrest.
The apartment became the realm of the two
dozen police officers who guarded my father 24
hours a day.
wThat September, just before the Jewish New
Year, the American ambassador called me for
one of our regular meetings. This time, I was the
subject of his concern. He asked me, for my own
safety, to leave the country. The armed forces
30
The Screams Behind the Photographscontinued from page 27
were furious about my contacts with human
rights organizations and especially with the
American Jewish community. Since I didn’t have
a valid passport, I went illegally to Saõ Paulo
where I contacted the Jewish Agency. Once
through the Brazilian checkpoint I felt beyond
the reach of the regime’s henchmen for the first
time in more than three years.
It would be another 15 months before we
were all reunited in Tel Aviv. Bowing to intense
international pressure, the Argentine junta
finally expelled my father in September 1979.
In 1981, my father wrote Prisoner Without a
Name, Cell Without a Number. Its publication inrr
the United States unveiled for millions abroad
what was happening in Argentina, and it became
a powerful tool for the international community
to build pressure against the dictatorship. There,
he wrote:
Of all the dramatic situations I have
witnessed in clandestine prisons, nothing
can compare to those family groups who
were tortured often together, sometimes
separately but in view of one another, or in
different cells while one was aware of the
other being tortured. The entire world of
affection, built up over the years with
utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in
the father’s genitals, a smack on the
mother’s face, an obscene insult to the
sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter.
Suddenly an entire culture based on familial
love, devotion, and the capacity for mutual
sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in
such a universe, and that is precisely what
the torturers know.
Today, his book stands as a reminder of what
a country gives up when it consents to torture,
what is condoned by a society whose people
agree to compromise their freedoms in the
name of a superior national interest. His work
represents the memories of those years and the
intangible terror that the images exhibited at
CLAS so clearly reveal.
Ambassador Héctor Timerman is Consul Generalof Argentina in New York. He spoke at CLAS onAugust 30, 2006.
31
The funeral ofEduardoBeckerman, 1974.
Photo courtesy of Archivo C
rónica.
32
Mexico today is a house divided againstitself. A place where, months after thepresidential election, a daily battle is
still taking place between those who supportedAndrés Manuel López Obrador and those whosupported Felipe Calderón. And even thoughCalderón has been declared the official winner,confrontations persist among Mexicans whothink the election was absolutely clean andMexicans who talk of monumental fraud;among people who insist that the country’sinstitutions are perfect and people who insistthey must be completely overhauled. Theseare the mental maps of two entrenchedarmies; the inflexible views of two differenttribes; the confrontational stances of a countrythat continues to be at war with itself. Acountry inhabited by the millions who hateLópez Obrador and the millions who would beready to give their life for him. A country whererecent polls show that half the populationsupports Felipe Calderón and that a third willnever accept him as president. There they are,two different Mexico’s: fighting, marching,denouncing each other, unconditional supportersof the causes they espouse so passionately.
The 2006 election and the post-electoralconflict it produced have revealed a splitelectorate. In its ranks, many continue toendorse market-led reform while others arecalling for a return to state intervention. Manysupport the economic model of the past 20 yearswhile others, who voted for AMLO, reject it.Many believe in the guiding principles of theMexican Revolution, and others think they needto take into account a globalized world. There isno clear consensus in Mexico today with respectto the path the country should follow. Theelectorate is genuinely at odds, and the closeelection underscored that fact. Thirty-fivepercent of voters chose change while 35 percentchose continuity. Felipe Calderón did not manageto impose his vision nor did Andrés ManuelLópez Obrador manage to broaden his own baseof support. The National Action Party (PAN)appealed to constituencies which had benefitedunder the Fox government, and the Party of the
Democratic Revolution (PRD) appealed tothose who felt disappointed by it. But neithercandidate nor his party received overwhelmingsupport, and that fact in itself is quite revealing.In a polarized election, each party held onto its piece of the country, its portion of theelectorate. While northern Mexico sees itselfrepresented by Felipe Calderón, parts ofsouthern and central Mexico believe he is anillegitimate president.
This is the bitter political reality that Calderónwill have to deal with by calling for negotiation,by advocating consensus, by understandingthat he did not receive a broad mandate andthat he needs to build one. In order to governsuccessfully, Calderón will have to construct abroad, multifaceted political coalition, withenough room for the ideas of even his worstadversary. It must be a roof capable of providingeconomic and political shelter for all Mexicans,especially for those who did not vote for him.
A Contentious ElectionDuring the campaign, both Felipe Calderón
and Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke totheir hard-core bases of support in the hope ofgetting them out to the polls. Each candidateaddressed his particular part of the countrywithout trying to reach out to those whodidn’t form part of it. They both gambled onpolarization and, as a result, were not able togarner the votes of centrist voters. In an electiondefined by polarized leaders, partisan voters andcentrist citizens, there was no overwhelmingwinner. Calderón and López Obrador reachedelection day constrained by the limits of thepolitical model they chose to run with.
Calderón did everything he was told to do inorder to win. He set up a “war room,” hiredforeign campaign consultants, ran focus groupsand devised a highly negative, yet effective,campaign. Throughout the race, he behaved asthe more professional politician: disciplined,prepared, hard-hitting. He was advised toconduct a campaign of contrasts, and he sethimself to that task. He focused on why he wasnot Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he
Divided MexicoBy Denise Dresser
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
33
portrayed as an irresponsible populist. Hepromised to brandish a “strong hand” in order toestablish the rule of law and offered continuityto those who would benefit from it. Calderónpositioned himself as the candidate of stability,common sense and comfortable, gradualchange.
Calderón’s campaign slogan: “López Obrador:A danger for Mexico,” undoubtedly turned theelection in his favor because fear transcendedclass divisions. It became a kind of universalcorrosive that cut through different groups anddifferent regions. Many voters — including thepoor — remembered the years of instability anddidn’t want to relive them. Many rememberedthe times of crisis and didn’t want to resurrectthem. Fairly or not, Calderón’s message had theresonance and impact it sought. However, hisstrategy was not enough to win the election bymore than half a percentage point, according toofficial results. Calderón won by sowing fear ofhis adversary instead of addressing the causesthat explain AMLO’s existence.
Paradoxically, something similar happened toAndrés Manuel López Obrador. The plan for thenation that he put forward during his campaignwas just as exclusionary, just as monochromatic.It seemed as though the country he wanted to
govern only had room for the poor. He behavedas a polarizing candidate who never once saidwhat he would do for the middle class or how hewould foster its growth. He constantly offered torelieve poverty but did not put forth proposalson how to create wealth. He behaved as a socialleader not as a professional politician in atight race whose outcome would be defined bycentrist, independent voters. As a result, LópezObrador never understood the need to movetoward the center of the political spectrum andlead a modern left from there. He nevergrasped that this renewal of the left is what ledpoliticians such as Tony Blair, Ricardo Lagos andFelipe González to power.
López Obrador couldn’t, or didn’t want to, actthis way. He insisted on making history whenhe should have been practicing politics. Heinsisted on talking about his Alternative Planfor the Nation but did not articulate credibleand viable proposals to achieve it. He insistedon addressing only those at the bottom,alienating those at the top and ignoring thosein the middle of the class spectrum. He thoughtit would be enough to offer what he did: fightcorruption, penalize the privileged, eliminateinfluence-peddling, help out those who hadbeen left behind. López Obrador believed he
Andrés ManuelLópez Obradorspeaks at acampaign rally.
Photo by AP W
ide World.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
34
could win given the justice of his cause andtherefore never focused on the practical publicpolicies needed to achieve it. He never thoughtthat he needed to convince; he assumed it wasenough to exist.
AMLO in His LabyrinthThe undeniable fact that the Mexican left
must contend with — independently of whathappened on election day — is that AndrésManuel López Obrador had a lead for overthree years that he ended up squandering.AMLO’s world view convinced some segmentsof the electorate but alienated others, mainlystake-holders in the system who felt they hadsomething to lose. The fear campaign provokeda national epidemic because López Obradorhad not vaccinated himself against it. On thecontrary, he fed the closing of the ranks againsthim by espousing the incessant rhetoric ofclass division. He also stoked the animosity ofmoderate voters through a series of campaignmistakes: not attending the first presidential
debate; referring to President Vicente Fox as a“chachalaca” (chattering bird); and refusing tocarry out a media campaign when he was getting
wslaughtered by the media. He did not knowhow to counter-attack with a modern electoralcampaign in a tight race, and this weakenedhim. And it’s true that Vicente Fox campaignedin favor of Felipe Calderón, as did most of thebusiness class. And the Federal ElectoralInstitute undoubtedly made mistakes onelection day and in the weeks prior to it. ButLópez Obrador’s own failings contributed tothe outcome he now shuns.
Given his behavior since July 2nd, many inMexico have come to believe that López
yObrador has simply gone mad. His fieryspeeches, his increasingly anti-institutionalstance, his decision to create a “parallelgovernment” and name himself the president
fof it, all seem to suggest a man who has gone offthe deep end, dragging the country behind him.Yet there is method to the apparent madness.López Obrador has chosen the path of unabated
Divided Mexicocontinued from previous page
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
Phot
o by
AP
Wid
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orld
.
Felipe Calderón holdsup a newspaper
proclaiming his victory.
35
confrontation because he wants to bring thegovernment of incoming president FelipeCalderón down, or at least make it very difficultfor him to govern. López Obrador doesn’t wantto be the Al Gore of Mexico; he’d much rather beits John Brown.
The slash and burn approach López Obradorhas taken since the election suggests that he hasrenounced his presidential ambitions and isnot positioning himself for the next race in2012. Quite the contrary: All of his decisionsunderscore that instead of governing Mexico hewants to make sure nobody else can. From thisperspective, his increasing radicalism makessense. The takeover of Mexico’s main avenue andthe massive sit-in there. The parallels LópezObrador constantly draws between the currentsituation and the tension that preceded theRevolution of 1910. The call for a NationalDemocratic Convention that will draw up a newconstitution. The refusal to accept the FederalElectoral Tribunal’s ruling against him. The callsfor peaceful, civil resistance accompanied by theveiled threats of ensuing violence. The speech inwhich he yelled, “To hell with your institutions.”
All this points to a man who doesn’t want to
work within the existing institutional framework
but instead burn it down. He doesn’t want to
win elections but become the combative, critical,
radical conscience of a country that is changing,
but not fast enough for his taste. He doesn’t want
to ever reach the National Palace but to confront
its occupants from the public square. And,
unmoored by the constraints of conventional
politics, he can do what he knows how to do
best: fight, denounce, mobilize. Become a
permanent thorn in the political system’s
side. Go down in history not as just another
president, but as a revolutionary icon like the
ones he so admires.The problem is that López Obrador is calling
for the destruction of a political system in whichthe left just achieved its largest gains ever. He isshunning the very institutions that his partyhelped build and are an integral part of. LópezObrador’s maximalist, scorched-earth stanceruns counter to the kind of modern, tolerant,institutionalized left that Mexican democracyneeds. A left that seeks to do more than block,sabotage and bring down the government, butrather works to make it increasingly accountable.A left willing to renounce the easy immediacy
of confrontation for the difficult, long-termcommitment of changing Mexico law by law,institution by institution. A left willing tofight for a better cause than Felipe Calderón’spolitical demise. Because the kind of deeptransformations that will benefit the poor and
ystrengthen Mexican democracy will not occur byymerely fueling legitimate grievances but by
addressing them. And Mexico will not end upin a better place if hatred of a flawed politicalsystem precludes the possibility of reforming it.
What Next?Unfortunately many members of the country’s
political and economic establishment do notknow exactly how to deal with López Obrador.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u mPhoto by A
P Wide W
orld.
Supporters ofAndrés ManuelLópez Obrador fillthe Zócalo todemand a recount.
36
They think that it’s enough to simply despisehim. They think that by presenting the electionas a done deal, they have weakened the positionof AMLO enough so that he will self-destruct.But what many members of the political classand the business elite fail to comprehend isthat López Obrador is a symptom of the deepproblems that Mexico needs to address. Incitinghatred towards a man who is perceived as beingclose to the dispossessed won’t eliminate theirlegitimate grievances. And that’s the real dangerfor Mexico in the aftermath of the election: thatin their efforts to disavow López Obrador,Mexico’s ruling elites disregard the conditionsthat produced him.
López Obrador is a product of Mexico’sfailed efforts to modernize using half-heartedneoliberal reforms for the past 20 years. Mexicofollowed the path mapped out by the“Washington Consensus” but did it badly, withbotched privatizations that transferred publicmonopolies into private hands, with economicreforms that benefited a handful of businessmenbut few consumers and with poor results: an
economy that doesn’t grow enough, a businesselite that doesn’t compete enough, an economicmodel that concentrates wealth and doesn’tredistribute enough of it. As a result, 50 millionMexicans live on less than $4 a day. For toomany, the continuity offered by the National
yAction Party’s Felipe Calderón means merelymore of the same.
Therefore, it’s no wonder that LópezObrador continues to receive the support hedoes among 25–30 percent of the population.He is a providential politician created by adysfunctional economic system. He existsbecause of everything that Mexico’s businessand political classes should have done a long
ytime ago: create real opportunities for ordinarypeople by reforming Mexico’s crony capitalism.
wThey didn’t do so, and the privileges for the fewat the expense of the many explain why LópezObrador’s message resonates. It’s as if he held upa mirror and forced the country to look at thereflection of the inequalities many refuse toacknowledge.
And that divide is what Mexico’s elites shouldyfear the most. More than hating the man, they
should hate the conditions that created him.There are too many Mexicans for whom thestatus quo simply doesn’t work. There are toomany people who seek a profound transformationof a country that historically has excluded them
for forced them to cross the border in search ofthe social mobility they can’t aspire to at home.The election was a wake-up call, and those whoignore it do so at their own peril.
So, the question now becomes how to constructpost-electoral consensus in a polarized Mexico.For healing to occur, those who abhor López
tObrador need to understand the factors thatexplain the persistence of his political movement.
fLópez Obrador’s rootedness is symptomatic ofharsh realities some Mexicans simply do notwant to face. The country of privileges thatLópez Obrador has denounced is real. Itexists. It is evident in every contract assignedin a discretionary manner; in every corruptpolitician and the impunity he takes advantage
yof; in the “Chapultepec Accord” promoted bybillionaire Carlos Slim, that doesn’t even contain
Denise Dresser atUC Berkeley.
Divided Mexicocontinued from previous page
Phot
o by
D
ioni
cia
Ram
os.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
37
the word “competition” among its proposals tomodernize the Mexican economy. LópezObrador doesn’t have the best solutions for theseproblems, but he should be commended forshowing that they exist.
Meanwhile, Calderón deserves recognitionfor his emphasis on policies that have worked:fiscal responsibility, trade liberalization,macroeconomic stability. Calderón seems tounderstand the unavoidable challenge ofglobalization and how to contend with it. Heseems to grasp the issues that explain Mexico’sconnection with the world: everything thatfosters competitiveness in an internationalenvironment where countries pay the price ofignoring it; everything that Mexico needs to do ifit wants to change the parameters of its politicaleconomy. He has focused on the challengesMexico faces if it wants to tread down thepath that countries such as Ireland, SouthKorea, Chile and Spain are on today.Successful countries that have made the dualdecision to grow and share, compete andeducate, create wealth and distribute it moreequitably. These are hard decisions that Mexicomust make in order to become a more moderneconomy, a more representative democracy, amore equal place.
Given this reality, in which both contenders ina bitter feud are partially right, it becomes anobligation for those whose heart is tied toMexico to remind them of the common groundthey can traverse together. Mexican citizens mustremind López Obrador, and those who supporthim unconditionally, that it is not enough tofight for a just cause: the PRD must do so withthe proper tools and without destroying thecountry’s institutions. And Mexicans must alsoremind Felipe Calderón, and those who defendhim so anxiously, that continuity alone is notenough; a more equitable country must be builtupon what has been gained. In the aftermathof a divisive election, both sides have theresponsibility to focus on the many things thatcan bring Mexicans together instead of tearingthem apart.
Denise Dresser is Professor of Political Scienceat the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo deMéxico and writes a political column for the
yMexican newspaper Reforma and the weeklyProceso. She spoke on “Where is MexicoHeaded?” on September 5, 2006.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u mPhoto by A
P Wide W
orld.
Andrés ManuelLópez Obrador issworn in as Mexico’s“legitimate president”on November 20.
38
Despite having an officially-electedpresident, Mexico continues to besubmerged in a post-election conflict
that has revealed serious deficiencies in Mexicandemocracy. The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE)was not the supreme, impartial and infallibleelectoral machine that the rest of the worldassumed it to be. We also now know that, despitethe exorbitant costs of the Mexican electoralprocess, an equitable electoral system is notyet in place. Access to the media, especially totelevision, continues to be unbalanced, to say theleast. The private financing of campaigns showsevidence of irregularities, which means thatMexico has the worst of both worlds: campaignswhich are very costly for taxpayers and yetare influenced, perhaps decisively, by privatecontributions. Thirdly, an attempt has noteven been made to regulate the influence ofthe outgoing president on the electoral process.Why wouldn’t Vicente Fox get involved in theelectoral process if, for the last 70 years, his
predecessors have done so to the point wherethey chose their own successors?
Beyond the institutional and proceduralchanges that are urgently needed for Mexicandemocracy to flourish, there is something elsethat has been practically ignored and has aprofound effect on the situation: Mexicans donot have a political culture of plurality andtolerance. There is neither a political languagenor the forms and practices needed to fosterit. Why would there be if the PRI imposed a“perfect dictatorship” for several decades? Whywould there be if the existence of social fissuresand racial, cultural and sexual discriminationhas been denied?
The lack of an adequate and correct politicallanguage has shown up time and again in thepost-electoral conflict. For example, mere weeksafter the elections, when the Electoral Tribunalwas still deliberating over the results of the vote,President Fox insisted on calling FelipeCalderón the “president-elect.” This only added
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
Civil Government?By Rafael Fernández de Castro
Mexican legislatorsbrawl in the
Congress buildingjust days before the
inauguration ofFelipe Calderón.
Phot
o by
AP
Wid
e W
orld
.
39
fuel to the fire. The same opinion was voiced byacademics, university professors and even myown students: “Since Calderón is going to winanyway, we might as well call him the ‘president-elect.’” Given this, all chances for dialogue werewiped out, and there was no further talk ofconciliation with Andrés Manuel LópezObrador’s team.
During the past two months, the crisis oflegitimacy that surrounded Felipe Calderón hasdissipated, but the environment in Mexico is stilltense. Calderón, for his part, initiated his foreignpolicy with three important trips abroad: toCentral America, Canada and the United States.With these visits, he has begun his official dutiesas president-elect. However, López Obrador hasset out an action plan as the “legitimate”president and in clear opposition to the man heconsiders a “false” president. In fact, he declaredhimself president and “took office” onNovember 20th in Mexico City’s central squarebefore a large group of his followers.
Moreover, ungovernability and the conflictin Oaxaca have turned into catalysts for socialdiscontent in Mexico. The lack of a solution tothe situation is, to all intents and purposes, atime bomb for the incumbent governmentand, as is often the case, the politicians seem
fdetermined to politicize the problem instead ofseeking a solution to the conflict. The recentattacks on IFE offices and on a bank aredeplorable and should be a wake-up call forpoliticians to assume the responsibility fororganizing a dialogue as soon as possible.
Without a political culture that makes a pointof using language that includes rather thanoffends and the experience of using politicaldebate rather than force, the discussions tend tobecome personal and the conflicts more serious.
yTwenty years ago, near the beginning of mypostgraduate studies in the United States, I hadthe opportunity to do an internship in the heartof American democracy, the Capitol. I foundmyself taken aback at a hearing on the CentralAmerican conflict. The Republican witness wasadvising invasion; the Democratic speaker, onthe other hand, said that intervention by theNicaraguan “Contra” forces was so serious as tolegitimate the participation of Cuba and the
yformer Soviet Union in the region. To mysurprise, the speakers battled it out in a heateddebate, but, at the end, came down from the
fpodium and shook hands with each other as ifnothing had happened. The same situation, inMexico, would have ended in blows, not ahandshake.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
Federal police guardOaxaca’s centralplaza.
Photo by Michele G
ibbs.
40
Paradoxically, political tolerance in the UnitedStates has been decreasing while in Mexico it hasbeen increasing, although the goal is still a longway off. Over the past decade, and especiallyunder the government of George W. Bush, theUnited States has seen the disappearance of apolicy that was known by the slogan, “politicsends at the water’s edge.” That is, when dealingwith foreign policy outside U.S. territory one didnot brandish the party line but rather supportedthe national interest. This is no longer thecase. In the era of Al Qaeda terrorism, theBush administration calls those who criticize thegovernment “traitors” and labels opponents oftheir policies as “soft on terrorism.”
Nonetheless, despite this closing of ranks,Americans continue to preserve some culturalpractices that we would do well to emulate.For example, in the eighties a practice knownas political correctness arose that was fosteredby liberals as a legacy of the civil rightsmovement. This tendency seeks to eradicate thediscriminatory connotations that are implicit in
daily language. For example, one should not usethe terms “colored people” or “Negro,” butrather, “African American.” One should also notrefer to undocumented immigrants as “illegals”but rather as “undocumented” persons, since
fbeing illegal has pejorative connotations. Ofcourse, this tendency quickly became excessivein the United States. Today, there are no longerany fat or obese people, only people who are
yoverweight, and there are no more midgets, onlypersons of short stature.
Mexico should borrow the positive elementsof political correctness. We demand that ourpoliticians watch their language and practices tofacilitate a respectful, inclusive, open and maturedialogue about our differences.
yRafael Fernández de Castro is Head of the Facultyfof International Studies at ITAM and Director of
the Spanish edition of Foreign Affairs. He co-chairsthe U.S.–Mexico Futures Forum.
Civil Government?continued from previous page
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
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Wid
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Stopping to watchthe presidential
debate.
41
In the aftermath of the contested presidentialelection, Mexico faces a crisis of legitimacythat will test the capacity of its institutions.
So argued Manuel Camacho Solís in hisBerkeley talk. Speaking just a few weeks after theElectoral Tribunal formally declared FelipeCalderón of the National Action Party (PAN)president-elect, Camacho Solís — who served asthe primary political strategist for the Party ofthe Democratic Revolution (PRD) candidate,Andrés Manuel López Obrador — repeatedlyemphasized the need to move forward to solvethe crisis rather than to rehash who was at fault.
Given that Mexico is so closely divided —the election was decided by .5 percent of theelectorate with both the PAN and the PRDreceiving roughly 35 percent of the vote —the ruling party must take into account theconcerns of the people represented by LópezObrador. Camacho Solís presented two alternatefutures for Mexico. In the first, the institutionsof government fail to cope with the conflict,resulting in a descent into “confrontation,
instability, institutional paralysis, lack ofeconomic growth, anarchy…” In the second,more hopeful, scenario the political crisisprompts real reform. This reform, according toCamacho Solís, would need to occur in fourareas: democracy, economic growth, socialjustice and honesty in government.
DemocracyCamacho Solís presented several concrete
ideas as to how Mexican democracy should bereformed. To start with, he argued that theprocess by which people are appointed to theElectoral Tribunal must be changed if that bodyis to have legitimacy. Under the current system,two parties are able to join forces to create a
fmajority and successfully nominate members ofthe Tribunal without the participation of thethird party. In this case, the PAN and theInstitutional Revolution Party (PRI) were ableto push through their nominees, and the PRDhad no representatives on the Tribunal.Camacho Solís insisted that in a close election
The wrestler“Little Ray ofHope” raises hisfist in support ofAMLO.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
Not a Game for AngelsBy Jean Spencer
Photo by AP W
ide World.
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a Tribunal created without the input of thecountry’s second largest party cannot hope to beseen as legitimate.
Election funding is another issue that must beaddressed. This year’s election was awash inmoney of dubious provenance which, accordingto Camacho Solís, mostly benefited the PAN.More money was spent per capita than in theUnited States, and this in a country with aneconomy only 5 percent the size of that ofthe U.S. Camacho Solís suggested that usingpublic funds for the elections in imitation ofthe European model was a way to avoid thecorruption that big money brings.
Media concentration was repeatedly criticizedby Camacho Solís as incompatible with truedemocracy. In Mexico, two companiesmonopolize television, and both depend on thegovernment for lucrative contracts, giving theincumbent a huge advantage. Camacho Solísasserted that his candidate was not seen on TVand couldn’t get air time to respond to attacksagainst him. He excoriated the current systemsaying, “Soviet-type television in a country thatpresumes to be democratic does not help tolegitimize politics.”
A move from a strictly presidential to a semi-parliamentary system of government was alsosuggested by the speaker. In a three-partycountry as evenly divided as Mexico, it is almosta given that the president’s party will be unableto form a majority in congress. The president isthen “obliged by the structure of the institutionsto use illegal means to maintain control of thecountry.” Among the “illegal means” decried byCamacho Solís are the use of budget funds tocontrol the media and the giving of concessionsto various groups to get crucial support onimportant votes. A semi-parliamentary systemwould mitigate these evils by facilitating thecreation of coalitions which would be able toform a majority in congress.
Economic GrowthIf Mexico is to extricate itself from its current
crisis, economic development is key. Theeconomy has stagnated for the last 25 years,and even now, when international economic
conditions are in Mexico’s favor, jobs remainscarce. If Mexico isn’t soaring when oil is at threetimes its average historic price, interest rates arelow and remittances totaling $20 billion arepouring in, what can be done? Camacho Solíscontended that growth could be achieved byincreasing competition, reducing monopoliesand improving the quality of government. Healso pointed to the lack of available credit as aproblem hindering development and stressedthat the government should invest in education,science and technology in order to take part inthe knowledge economy.
Social JusticeLópez Obrador rose to prominence because
he articulated the needs of the poor and themarginalized. Camacho Solís urged the PAN notto let their narrow electoral victory blindthem to the needs of the people that the PRDcandidate represented. He advocated a systembased on the Chilean model where soundmacroeconomic policies are balanced withsocial investment in areas such as health andeducation. While acknowledging that Mexicocannot afford a social welfare system like that ofthe EU, he insisted that there must be a “floor”or minimum level of welfare that is ensured by“some kind of scheme of social justice.” He didnot elaborate on what that scheme would entail.
Honesty in GovernmentRampant corruption impedes the development
of democracy in Mexico. There are norestrictions on conflict of interest or influencepeddling, and members of congress openly workfor private interests instead of the public good,he maintained. Government needs to “recovera sense of austerity and honorability andethics” before it will be viewed as legitimate byits citizens.
While acknowledging that the current crisis isthe worst he has experienced in many years ingovernment, Camacho Solís maintained thatreform in these four key areas would beenough to convince the public that theinstitutions of government can still function.The campaign and the post-electoral crisis have
Not a Game for Angelscontinued from previous page
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
43
had a polarizing effect on Mexico. However,Camacho Solís pointed to an MIT study whichfound that voters were less influenced by theirmembership in a particular social class than bythe political history of their state as evidencethat the country is not as divided as politicalspeechmakers would have it. These divisionscould become deeply entrenched, he warned, ifthe crisis is not solved, or if the government usesrepression to contain dissent.
During the question and answer session,Camacho Solís underlined his support for apeaceful resolution to the crisis wherein reformwould be enacted through the institutions ofgovernment. The PRD is currently dividedbetween those who believe that institutionalreform is possible and those who believe thesystem is too corrupt to be reformed. If thePAN does not respond to calls for reform or ifit stoops to repression, then moderates likehimself will be discredited, and those who favormore radical means will gain the upper hand, hecautioned.
Camacho Solís was also asked pointedquestions about his years as a PRI operative andhis role in the widely disputed 1988 presidentialelection. In response, he portrayed himself as a
man who has pushed for the opening ofMexican politics from the inside, workingwithin the existing system to create institutions,like the Electoral Tribunal, that allowed forever-increasing levels of democracy. Whenasked point-blank how progressives could trustformer priístas or “chameleon politicians,”Camacho Solís responded, “Politics is not agame for angels; it is a game for human beings…If you want only pure symbols, you will becompletely ineffective.”
One can only hope that the human beingsinvolved in Mexico’s current political crisiswill find a way out of the labyrinth they havecreated.
Manuel Camacho Solís is the primary strategistfor former presidential candidate Andrés ManuelLópez Obrador. He has been the mayor of MexicoCity, a congressman and president of the PRI. Hespoke at CLAS on October 18th.
Jean Spencer is the Outreach and PublicationsCoordinator at CLAS.
U . S . – M e x i c o F u t u r e s F o r u m
Manuel CamachoSolís speaks withstudents after hisBerkeley talk.
Photo by David R
.Léon Lara.
44
“Ihaven’t much to complain about.”Gadalya “Gaddy” Tauber did indeedlook more fit and relaxed than he had
during my first encounter with him at theHenrique Dias military police brigs in 2005.Then, he was still recovering from the shock ofhis conviction the previous year on charges oforganized crime, racketeering, human traffickingand commerce in human organs and hissubsequent imprisonment in Recife, Brazil.
On this visit, in July of 2006, I was accompaniedby Brazilian journalist Julio Ludimir who, likeme, was investigating the international organstrafficking ring that had operated out of Recifeduring 2002–03. Truly global in its scope, themultimillion dollar scheme originated in Israeland was active in several sites in Eastern Europe,Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and the UnitedStates. Ludimir and I were both fascinated by
Tauber, the hyper-intelligent, complex and wilyTauber, the hyper-intelligent, complex and wily70-year-old former officer in the Israeli DefenseForce (IDF) who was widely rumored in Brazilto be a spy, a drug trafficker, an arms dealer and
ya member of Mosad, Israel’s ultra-elite militaryforce.
As we settled into a corner of the prison yard,Gaddy made a confession: “Last time I told youthat I never killed a man. That was untrue. Thistime I will tell you the truth, all of it.” This wasGaddy as Scheherazade, luring visitors back foranother installment in a story that seemed tohave no end. At the start of every prison visithe would correct a detail from the previousmeeting, and he would end with a promise:“Next time I’ll tell you about ‘the boss’ of theorgans trafficking ring.” Or: “Next Sunday comeagain when Terezinha, my wife, is here [for a bi-monthly conjugal visit from Bom Pastor, thewomen’s prison].”
y“I should have died 70 years ago,” Gaddybegan. When he was three years old, his parentsfled the Nazi invasion of Poland; they went toRussia, sending Gaddy to live with a Catholicpeasant in the Ukraine who hid the little boy andseveral other Jewish children in his cellar.
Although Tauber was not mistreated, neitherwas he protected. When the German policearrived, the boy was handed over, but he wasdescribed as an orphan. “Luckily,” he said, “I wasvery fair and had Aryan features. I was broughtto a camp for war-displaced children somewhere
yin the Ukraine where we were to be adopted byGerman families.” Nonetheless, Gaddy, who wasfive years old at the time, says he remembershunger, sickness and many deaths in the camp.He eventually managed to escape and, after thewar, was reunited with his parents.
In 1947 the family relocated to Israel whereTauber finished school and did his requiredmilitary service. As a young man he showedproficiency in science and math but was neverencouraged to continue his studies. He became aprofessional soldier, “the only job for which Iwas well suited.”
Portrait of Gaddy Tauber:Organs Trafficker, Holocaust SurvivorBy Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Gaddy Tauberrelaxes in prison.
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After retiring from the military, Tauber begantraveling the world, selling his skills in police andsecurity training. He met Captain Ivan Bonifacioda Silva, a retired Brazilian military policeofficer, in 1997 at a SWAT training class inMiami. They got along well, and da Silva invitedTauber to Brazil where they set up a consultingfirm specializing in security training. They alsotried to break into the legal weapons trade —selling arms to the military and police inPernambuco — and were awarded an $8.5million contract by the governor, MiguelArrais. But that deal collapsed when Arrais andhis party lost the next election.
During this time Gaddy fell in love with Braziland with Terezinha Medeiros, an attractive andsophisticated lawyer in her fifties. When thearms deal fell through, Gaddy had no way ofmaking a living in Brazil and was forced toreturn to Israel. There, in 1999, he wasapproached by Ilan Perry, a businessman with abackground in medical insurance who wasinvolved in setting up a global transplantscheme. Perry offered Tauber a way to return toRecife as a local agent for his “company.” AllTauber had to do was to find someone in Recifewho could recruit people willing to travelabroad and sell a kidney to Israeli transplantpatients. “I refused outright,” Gaddy said. “I hadno idea that such things were possible, and Ifound it distasteful.”
Three years later, in 2002, Tauber wasapproached again, this time by the wife of an oldfriend. Her description of the pressing need ofJewish transplant patients who were dying ondialysis machines while waiting for transplantscaused Tauber to change his mind. Now he wasprepared “to do something to save the world’sJews, even if it meant finding kidneys for them inthe slums of Brazil.”
This time Gaddy returned to Brazil on amission. Once again he teamed up with da Silva,and in no time at all, a new criminal networkhad formed. It was a pyramid structure with IlanPerry at the top, and everyone got a cut. Gaddy,who was in charge of financial operations inRecife, made $10,000 on each successfultransplant. Captain da Silva, who recruiteddonors though local “kidney hunters,” received$5,000 for every kidney procured. SilvioBourdoux, a military police doctor and colonelwho handled medical screening and bloodmatching, was paid $500 for every donor
d d l ’ f lscreened. Captain da Silva’s wife was alsoinvolved; she traveled with the donors to SouthAfrica where they were taken to a safe house toawait their operation. A parallel structureexisted in both Durban and Johannesburg.
Gaddy received the money needed to organizethe trips directly from Perry and deposited itunder the name of his Brazilian wife, Terezinha,who served as the “accountant” for the scheme.Together, Gaddy and his team rounded up morethan 50 donors to send to South Africa where 38of them were relieved of a “spare” kidney.
The meninos (or “boys” as the kidney sellerswere called) were easy prey. As soon as the firsttwo or three returned safely from Durban andbegan flashing wads of hundred dollar bills, theword was out, and the kidney hunters didn’t
—have to do anything but take down names —more than a hundred of them. The meninos hadspent their lives in Recife’s rundown, working-class neighborhoods, in concrete slab houseswhose roof tiles shook every few minutes asplanes roared overhead. They wanted to travel,too, to see the world and to come back, theirpockets bulging. It was a buyers’ market, and the
yprice for a “fresh” kidney fell almost immediatelyfrom $10,000 to $6,000 and then down to$3,000. Even so, there was no lack of enthusiasmamong the unemployed and indebted.
When several transplants were derailedbecause the donors did not pass the Durbanteam’s medical screening, Perry urged Tauberto set up a transplant center in Recife. Flying
yIsraeli patients to Brazil, where a steady supplyof kidney donors was close at hand, would bemore convenient and less expensive than flyingboth patients and donors to South Africa.
It was a risky business, but da Silva assuredGaddy they could get away with it. Brazilianlaws against organ selling were weak, and da
ySilva’s connections to the police and judiciarywere strong. All they needed was a “five starhospital” and a competent surgical staff. Bothwere located. But just a few weeks before thefirst “transplant tours” were to arrive in Recife,federal police arrested 11 members of the organstrafficking ring. Several of the principal figureswere convicted and given jail sentences rangingfrom one to 11 years, with Gaddy and da Silvareceiving the stiffest penalties.
On our next visit, Gaddy’s jailers did notbring him out as usual but invited us to pass theday with the prisoner in his cell. The visit
46
would be private and only cursorily supervisedby a military guard who might pass by to checkon us from time to time.
I balked, remembering the warning given meby the undercover agent who had nabbedGaddy, Federal Police Chief Karla Gomes MatosMaia. “Don’t be fooled by Tauber,” she had said.“He is a trickster, a liar and a dangeroussociopath. He will play with you, charm you,even amuse you, but he is totally capable ofkilling you.” While awaiting trial, Tauber hadsent “feelers” from his prison cell at the statepenitentiary, Aníbal Bruno, into the slums ofRecife looking for a hit man to knock off Gomesand the judge, Amanda Torres de Lucena. Whenan informant told police about Gaddy’s searchfor a pistoleiro, the prisoner was removed toHenrique Dias, a higher security prison atmilitary headquarters.
Ludimir, a tough investigative reporter, didnot hesitate for a second, and when he eagerlyentered Gaddy’s locked cell, I followed suit.Energized by having his visitors entirely tohimself, Gaddy launched into the story of hisarrest and the abuses he had endured. Above all,he was furious about his portrayal in the localmedia as a “monster, an Israeli Mengele” and theanti-Semitic slurs he suffered from police.“Everyone hates Jews; even Brazilians are anti-
Semites,” Gaddy said bitterly. He seemed startledwhen I asked him why, then, had he participatedin a scheme that had done such great damage toIsrael.
He evaded my question, instead seeking toportray himself not only as a victim of theHolocaust and the savior of sick Jews but also asthe patron saint of the impoverished kidneysellers. He challenged me to consider the povertyof the meninos, their willingness, indeed theireagerness to sell, and their right to dispose oftheir bodies as they saw fit. No one was forcingthem to do anything, he charged. In fact, theywere begging to be part of the group. “I wassaving lives in both countries, in Israel and inBrazil,” he argued. It was a defense I had heardmany times before from body brokers in thePhilippines, Turkey and Moldova. But it wasonly in Brazil where many of the sellers agreedwith their brokers.
As Gaddy prepared lunch for us on a littlecamp stove — homemade soup made fromskinny chicken wings, wilted celery, onions,cilantro and a single, dirt-encrusted carrot — hespoke heatedly about his rescue of my own fieldassistant, Geremias (“Gere”) Belarmino, one ofthe kidney sellers. Out of a job and unable to payhis rent, Gere was facing homelessness. He wasabout to take his wife and three small children tolive in a cardboard shanty when Gaddy offeredhim the “opportunity” to travel to Durban.
“I tried to protect the boy at first; I told him hewas too smart to sell himself this way; I felt likea father toward him, and so I turned him away,”Gaddy claimed. Geremias was insistent, and heoffered to do anything at all for the “company,”including cleaning Gaddy’s apartment, shininghis shoes, translating and interpretingPortuguese, whatever was needed. Gaddyrelented, and Geremias got to sell his kidney.When he returned, Gere agreed to work forTauber as a part-time interpreter, and he hopedto be included as an official guide and translatorfor the new Recife transplant tour scheme.
Gaddy’s version of the story coincided withwhat Geremias himself had told me. And Irecalled the transcript of Gere’s deposition toJudge Torres de Lucena: “What father, seeing abullet headed straight for his children’s heads,
Gaddy andGeremias.
Portrait of Gaddy Taubercontinued from previous page
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wouldn’t throw his own body in front of the gunto defend them?” When the judge countered thatGeremias’ children were not facing a deaththreat, Gere responded: “No, you are right. Butthey were facing something even worse, a lifethreat. And to save them, your honor, I wouldhave sold not only a kidney, but an eye, a liver, oreven my heart, and I would have died happy tosee them safely housed.” Geremias had come toTauber’s defense during his trial, saying thatGaddy was the only person to help him whenevery social agency in Recife had turned himdown in his time of dire need. “GaddyTauber may have been a crook who was takingadvantage of the desperation of the poor, buteven so, we all gained something out of it as well.I don’t regret anything.”
Despite the open, foul-smelling toilet located afew feet from the camp stove, despite the dirtyvegetables and the grey-looking chickenwings, the savory aroma coming from thecooking pot made my empty stomach rumble.As he carefully spooned soup into two littleplastic containers, one for me and one for Julio,but none for himself, I protested: “Oh please,Gaddy, you first.”
Tauber demurred, grinning like a Cheshirecat: “I’ll eat later, after you leave.” Pouring a littlewhiskey into his coffee mug [how did he ever getthat, I wondered?], he lit another cigarette.
“Oye, Julio,” I said, “I think this is a test.” ButJulio had already dug in and was slurpingloudly. Hunger, as they say, is the best sauce, andwe both ate greedily, even taking seconds.
As we ate, Gaddy asked me how I had come toBrazil. Since he had revealed his secrets to me, Itold him briefly about my years living in a ruralshantytown as a Peace Corps volunteer in themid-1960s and my return in the 1980s as ananthropologist studying mother love and childdeath. Gaddy listened intently, and he askedintelligent questions. When I described the waysome infants, lacking what shantytown motherscalled “a knack for life” were let go, not onlyallowed to die but helped to die, Gaddy noddedhis head knowingly.
“Do you know what they were?” Gaddy asked.“No, what?”“Those babies were little Musselmen.”I was taken aback. A few years after the
publication of Death without Weeping, I hadggthought of that same analogy while re-readingPrimo Levi’s description of the living dead, the
Musselmen, the sub-population of camp victimswhose exhaustion was so great, whose despairwas so palpable that they looked and behavedlike walking mummies. These men and womenwere avoided and stigmatized as havingsuccumbed, as having “given up” all hope andwith it, their humanity. Thus, were they also“given up on” by those around them.
“Yes, those angel-babies were littleMusselman.”
yBefore we left his cell, for what was to be mykfinal visit to the prison on this trip, Gaddy took
my hand and kissed it and, without giving it asecond thought, I reciprocated. I asked if therewas anything he needed that I could provide.He had only one request: “Whatever you do,promise not to turn me into a monster.”
“I promise; and you take care of yourself,” Isaid.
“I survived Hitler, I survived Stalin. I cancertainly survive this.”
fNancy Scheper-Hughes is Professor ofAnthropology at UC Berkeley.This article is basedon a chapter, “Schindler’s Other List,” in herforthcoming book cParts Unknown:The Global Trafficin Organs (University of California Press).
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Gaddyin his cell.
Photo by Nancy Scheper-H
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48
“D“Disjunctive democracy” and its
spatial manifestations form
the overarching themes in
anthropologist Teresa Caldeira’s work. In her
talk, Professor Caldeira outlined three separate
“narratives” that describe ways in which
urban space — particularly public space — is
produced, organized and contested in São Paulo.
The first narrative is one of self-segregation by
elites (and increasingly, the middle class), who
live, shop and work in fortified enclaves with
walls that separate them from the rest of the city.
The next two narratives both come from São
Paulo’s hip-hop movement and re-appropriate
the walls built by the elites as a vehicle for self-
expression and contestation. Graffiti adorns
the city’s walls with sophisticated artwork,
while pichação tags São Paulo’s buildings with
elaborate calligraphy.
The first narrative described by Caldeira is one
that she developed at length in her seminal book
City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship
in São Paulo. The city’s elites have increasingly
segregated themselves by building enclosed
residential and commercial spaces, protected
by walls, armed guards, and state-of-the-art
security systems. The author argues that these
fortified areas reproduce the inequality and
violence that precipitated them. In fact, inequality
is a distinct value used to market such enclaves
to an ever more frightened population.
The segregation of the elites has occurred
alongside two other phenomena, the
democratization of Brazil and a sharp increase
in the incidence of urban violence. As traditional
forms of social organization, such as labor
unions, have decreased in their importance,
other vehicles for fighting social inequalities
have emerged, such as NGOs and cultural and
artistic movements. Professor Caldeira’s more
recent research deals with São Paulo’s hip-hop
movement and the ways in which young, mostly
black males have asserted their identities as
peripheral members of society. In São Paulo,
hip-hop is an agglomeration of different cultural
expressions such as rap, break dancing, graffiti
and pichação.
Rap groups such as Racionais MC’s offer a
devastating class-based critique of Brazilian
society. In the song “Fim de Semana no Parque““ ””
(“Weekend in the Park”), for example, a poor
black boy can only dream of the life inside the
walls where upper class children enjoy their
heated swimming pools and go-karts. Caldeira
notes, however, that rappers such as Racionais
MC’s Mano Brown do not try to negotiate social
inclusion, but rather locate their identities in the
periferia (periphery), in a realm wholly distinct
from that of the denizens of elite neighborhoods
and gated condominiums.
In contrast, graffiti and pichação do venture
outside the periferia and usurp the ultimate
symbols of segregation and exclusion: São Paulo’s
walls. In Caldeira’s words, they appropriate
“whatever surface that is turned outwards as
public.” Graffiti art, with its colorfully surrealist
designs, has turned large portions of walls and
buildings into murals. The complexity and
beauty of the designs have even attracted the
attention of the municipal government, which,
under control of the Workers Party (PT), began
to sponsor graffiti artists as a way to revitalize
certain public spaces. Graffiti has been further
mainstreamed and commoditized by corporate
sponsorships, as in the example of BankBoston,
fwhich created a glossy coffee table book of
fgraffiti art for its VIP clients as an example of
its socially responsible practices.
Pichação, on the other hand, has remained a
clandestine movement. Its practitioners,
known as pichadores, have developed their
cultural expression as an urban sport akin
to skateboarding. Those who practice this
“sport,” mostly young males, are often related to
other groups such as organized soccer fan gangs.
They outdo each other with ever more difficult
feats, placing their pichações on the highest parts
of tall buildings. They use their signatures as a
way of asserting their “brand” upon the city.
yCaldeira described their elaborate, vertically
The Writing on the WallBy Pedro Peterson
49
oriented markings as reflections of the city’s
tall skyline. Like skateboarders, pichadores
read the city’s architecture in their own ways
and appropriate public and private spaces for
their own uses.
Professor Caldeira finished her talk with a
gender analysis of these three narratives
that contest public spaces in São Paulo.
One prominent feature of the city’s enclave
architecture is the use of walls for placing
advertisements which often depicting women
in highly sexualized contexts. Likewise, the hip-
hop contestation of the walls tends to be
male-dominated and — particularly with rap
lyrics — tends to either ignore or antagonize
women. Thus, Caldeira argued, while these
narratives contest class inequalities, they
frequently reinforce gender inequalities.
Fittingly, Caldeira’s discussion of the competing
interpretations of public space in São Paulo came
on the day after Brazil’s presidential elections.
Corruption scandals aside, the transparency and
efficiency of the electoral process was celebrated
by national and foreign media as a further step
in solidifying democracy in Brazil. As Caldeira
showed, however, the deep social cleavages in
Brazilian society have profound effects on the
production of urban space in cities like São
Paulo, where elites continue to undermine the
public nature of the city at the same time that
peripheral voices such as those in the hip-hop
movement open new spaces of participation in
public life.
Teresa Caldeira is Professor of Anthropology atUC Irvine. She gave a talk entitled “A ContestedPublic: Walls, Graffiti, and Pichações in São Paulo”on October 2, 2006.
Pedro Peterson is a graduate student in City andRegional Planning and International and AreaStudies.
Photo courtesy of Teresa Caldeira.
São Paulo graffiti.
I f you reside in one of Rio de Janeiro’s
hillside shantytowns there is no need to look
for violence, it will find you. The question
most residents have to ponder is from which
direction the bullet will come.
Movies and television have tended to
sensationalize life in the favelas where the
poverty-stricken, predominately black population
is threatened by both drug traffickers and Rio’s
corrupt police force. Fernando Meirelles
brought international attention to Brazil’s
shantytowns in “City of God.” Now they serve as
the backdrop to American crime shows when
domestic street violence no longer seems exotic
enough. First-time directors Jeff Zimbalist and
Matt Mochary change the formula, however, in
the documentary, “Favela Rising.” Instead of
promoting their own assumptions about their
subjects — the members of AfroReggae — they
abdicate control, allowing the group to shoot
many of the documentary’s scenes.
Unlike showier big-budget offerings, “Favela
fRising” is technically simple. With no feats of
cinematography to dazzle the audience, it relies
on scenes of every day life that only a local would
notice — chats on the corner, a woman washing
her child with a bucket of water — to grab the
viewer’s attention. Already it has garnered a
“Best New Documentary Filmmaker” award at
the 2005 TriBeCa Film Festival and was named
film of the year by the International
Documentary Association. It screened to a full
audience at UC Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive.
In interviews, Zimbalist has said that when he
was looking for ideas for a documentary, he
hoped to find a story not commonly seen on the
big screen: a community working together to
overcome its issues without outside interference.
Co-director Mochary had that in mind when he
stumbled upon the story of Grupo Cultural50
A New Spin on Rio’s FavelasBy Stephanie Beasley
A stylized photo ofAfroReggae in
concert.
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AfroReggae, an organization formed in 1993 by
José Junior and Anderson Sá in Vigário Geral,
then one of the most dangerous favelas in Rio.
Originally, AfroReggae served as the staff of
AfroReggae News, a newspaper aimed at young
people interested in reggae, soul and hip-hop.
As its members increased, AfroReggae began
performing as a musical group throughout the
favela and expanded its services to include
dance and theater workshops and a literacy
program for neighborhood children. “Favela
Rising” follows Sá, a former accessory to drug
trafficking and now the band’s front man, as he
tirelessly strives to draw young people away
from the lure of guns and fast money while
trying to keep his own head above water.
_______________
Many of Sá’s early memories are of the
violence that he witnessed as a child growing up
in Vigário Geral. In one of several scenes where
he is alone, facing the camera, he talks about
seeing a man gunned down in the street at the
age of 10. When his mother tried to shield his
eyes with her hand, he peeked through so that he
could watch the man’s brain splatter against the
pavement. “I just calmly watched,” he recalls. “I
was thinking ‘I’m not afraid of dying.’” Despite
this proclamation, he admits that murder and
gunfire became less appealing when they hit
closer to home.
In 1993, one of Vigário Geral’s local drug
lords ambushed a police patrol car, killing
four officers. Enraged by the assault, the
police retaliated by massacring 21 Vigário
Geral residents at random. Sá’s brother was
among the victims, none of whom had any
involvement with drug trafficking. It was then
that Sá began to think about how he could
prevent such atrocities from recurring.
_______________
Police brutality within the favelas is not
unusual. “They Come in Shooting,” a 2005
Amnesty International report documenting
nearly a year’s worth of data and interviews
with favela residents, highlights several
incidents of police violence in Rio’s marginalized
communities, including a mass killing of
29 people in the Baixada Fluminense district in
March 2005. Amnesty International believes
that this kind of police terrorism stems from low
salaries and insufficient training. The Rio police
often serve as watchdogs for the upper classes
but are as excluded from the city’s wealth as
those they patrol. Many officers take second jobs
to make ends meet.
The drug lords risk their lives for a much
higher paycheck. The film places the salary for
drug trafficking at $650 a day, compared to the
$13 a day that the average black Brazilian earns.
It is easy to see how the lifestyle would appeal
to many young boys in the neighborhood
who look at the drug traffickers’ nice clothes,
fast motorcycles and beautiful girlfriends and
fantasize about being in their place. Sá
A young boy playsthe guitar in “FavelaRising.”
Photo courtesy of Jeff Zim
balist.
52
understands the mentality but nevertheless tries
to dissuade youngsters by pointing out how
short-term the benefits are. Most drug traffickers
don’t live long enough to truly enjoy these perks.
Surprisingly, Vigário Geral’s drug lords don’t see
AfroReggae’s anti-trafficking message as a
threat. The group is well-respected and thus
shielded from many of the favela’s dangers.
_______________
AfroReggae’s efforts to transform its
community have drawn praise both nationally
and internationally. Before the group’s emergence
in 1993, there were 150 drug lords in Vigário
Geral. As of 2004, that number had dwindled
to less than 25. By spreading its message
through concert performances — usually
packed by thousands of screaming fans — the
movement has grown to include several favelas
and boasts a membership of 2,000 participants.
AfroReggae has also received a grant from the
Ford Foundation and a music contract with
Universal Records which provide resources to
reach even larger numbers of Brazilian youth.
On the film’s Web site, Zimbalist expresses the
hope that AfroReggae’s story will “inspire
action.” At its UC Berkeley screening the film
inspired hoots of laughter, empathetic tears and
raucous cheers. Whether “Favela Rising” lit a fire
for change in the audience remains to be seen,
but it definitely created a spark. No one dashed
away after the film’s conclusion; audience
members milled around the front of the theater
discussing the issues and characters. Instead of
the disbelief that films about the favelas usually
evoke — that so much violence could exist in a
community — what was incredible for most of
the audience was that such a unique story of
unity and redemption could be true. With this
in mind, one can only hope that just as “Favela
Rising” has moved audiences, it will also prompt
the movie industry to transform how favelas are
represented in films.
The Center for Latin American Studies screened“Favela Rising” at the Pacific Film Archive onSeptember 11.
Stephanie Beasley is a double-degree graduatestudent in the School of Journalism and LatinAmerican Studies at UC Berkeley.
New Spin on Favelascontinued from previous page
Phot
o co
urte
sy o
f Jef
f Zim
balis
t.
Anderson Sá (right) during an
AfroReggae showin “Favela Rising.”
53
Doug Tompkins, creator of ParquePumalín, explains his involvement inenvironmentalism rather simply. His
transformation from clothing magnate toenvironmental philanthropist had its roots inthe realization that he had spent much of his life“producing things people really didn’t need” andcontributing to an unsustainable consumeristmodel. In the late 80s and early 90s, Doug andhis wife, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, sold theirshares in Esprit and Patagonia and used themoney to fund their environmental activism.
Parque Pumalín, their largest and best-knownproject, is a privately endowed public park insouthern Chile. During the 1990s, the Tompkinsamassed over 700,000 acres of private land inorder to conserve and protect some of Chile’smost beautiful landscapes. Today, this land —which bisects the country and is roughly thesize of Yosemite National Park — is open tothe public.
Tompkins chose to focus his energies on theSouthern Cone because of his long-standingconnection to the region. As a young man,Tompkins traveled to Chile to ski. Over theyears, he returned to Patagonia, repeatedlyreestablishing his relationship with thelandscape and developing lasting friendshipswith people in this region.
“Seven Projects in the Southern Cone” — afilm based on his environmental endeavors —tells the story of the vision he shares with hiswife, a vision of environmental conservation,rehabilitation and economically sustainable,locally-based agro-ecology. “Seven Projects”focuses on their work, beginning with theTompkins’ home, Reñihue Farm, which theyhave restored from an abandoned, dilapidatedand overgrown plot into a sustainable andproductive landscape that is preparing for whatTompkins likes to call the “post-petroleum era.”The remaining six projects range from farms tonational parks. All were designed to encourage amove away from high-power urban lifestylesand toward low-energy agricultural ones,foregrounding local materials and culture,ecological recovery and sustainability.
Tompkins’ model is not without its critics. Theharshest among them accuse him of being animperialist and a colonizer. He has also had run-ins with national governments. Recently, hehas been in the Chilean news for opposing agovernment-funded construction plan thatthreatens to cut across Parque Pumalín. InArgentina, his efforts to build a similar preserveare under fire from the government which hasbegun to consider large-scale foreign ownershipof Argentine territory a national security risk.
It remains to be seen whether Doug Tompkinsis able to translate his vision of entrepreneurialenvironmentalism across cultural and geographicspace to become an enduring force in the globalenvironmental movement. However, therecan be no question as to the beauty of thelandscapes he has worked to preserve, as thefollowing photos will attest.
Doug Tompkins, American entrepreneur andphilanthropist, is the president of the Foundationfor Deep Ecology in San Francisco and presidentof the Conservation Land Trust in Puerto Montt,Chile. His presentation, “Toward Eco-localism,”was held at UC Berkeley, on October 13, 2006
Anna Browne Ribeiro is a graduate student in theDepartment of Anthropology.
Environmental EntrepreneursBy Anna Browne Ribeiro
Photo by David R
.Léon Lara.
Doug Tompkinsat UC Berkeley.
Overleaf:Scenes fromParque Pumalín.
Center for Latin American StudiesUniversity of California, Berkeley2334 Bowditch StreetBerkeley, CA [email protected]: 510-642-2088Fax: 510-642-3260
clas.berkeley.edu
Parque Pumalín, Chile.
Please visit our Web site for analyses of all CLAS events.
Photo courtesy of the Foundation for Deep Ecology.