Bolivia: Magical Realism

BOLIVIA

Magical Realism

One has to hand it to Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia for the past 13 years.

The country’s 2009 constitution, which Morales created in order to achieve his style of left-wing Latin American politics, states that presidents cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. The people even voted to retain those term limits in a 2016 referendum.

And yet, he’s still here.

That’s because in 2017, the country’s top court tossed the results of the referendum, a ruling that echoed its decision to allow Morales to run for a third term in 2014. Now Morales is on the ballot for a fourth term in October.

“Such imperial hubris, plus a host of other democracy-bending rules Morales forged on his watch, would leave less stolid supremos vulnerable,” wrote Bloomberg, referring to Brazilian, Ecuadoran, Venezuelan and other left-wing leaders in the region who have fallen from power or preside over instability.

Yet regional leaders appear eager to work with Morales, the first indigenous person to lead the country. He’s also predicted to win reelection handily.

The president of Paraguay recently visited La Paz to ink commercial deals and ballyhoo Bolivia’s growing role in the South American economy, reported MercoPress.

Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer lamented how Organization of American States chief Luis Almagro, who is seeking re-election as secretary-general next year, appeared to be currying favor with Morales despite the latter’s mixed human rights record. “He is propping up a dictatorship in Bolivia,” Oppenheimer wrote.

Human rights activists accused Morales of failing to prosecute the brutal military dictators who ran the South American country from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. A corrupt justice system, violence against women, harassment of human rights defenders and child labor are other violations that Morales has been unable to check.

“I’ve suffered discrimination since birth,” domestic abuse survivor Maria Luque told the Associated Press. “My mom was very poor and she escaped violence. For some, (violence) might be normal, but we want to show that it shouldn’t be that way.”

Unfortunately, Luque has little chance of finding redress in the courts. Judges are a big problem in Bolivia, argued Human Rights Watch. That’s because Morales and his Movement for Socialism political party exert inordinate control over them.

In other words, the same judges who won’t help Luque have rigged the election for the guy who owns them.

Authoritarians create their own realities.

The IMF In Argentina-It Has Not Been Toxic Or ZTriumphant

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Guyana: THe Polls And Tables

GUYANA

The Polls and the Table

The regional Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) ruled Tuesday that a December no-confidence vote in Guyana was valid, sending the South American country back to the polls within the next three months unless Parliament extends the deadline.

If the vote ushers in the opposition to the centrist administration of President David Granger, it could also send the country back to the negotiating table just as mammoth oil discoveries are poised to transform its economy, reported the energy and commodities news service Argus.

The opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) wants to renegotiate most of the present production sharing agreements, or PSAs, walking back deals that matched the “too generous” terms granted to Exxon Mobil following its initial discovery on the deepwater Stabroek block in May 2015.

Since then, Granger’s administration has inked pacts with US major Chevron, France’s Total, Spain’s Repsol, Italy’s Eni and Germany’s Dea, Argus noted. Exxon Mobil’s 13 oil discoveries off the coast are estimated to contain more than 5.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas.

The revenue sharing deal with Exxon Mobil alone is expected to increase Guyana’s gross domestic product from US$3.4 billion in 2016 to $13 billion by 2025.

Colombia: A Monumental Act of Mourning

COLOMBIA

A Monumental Act of Mourning

Drug lords, death squads and government soldiers used to fight for control of western Colombia. Today, the Telegraph wrote, the lush region has become a magnet for birdwatchers.

But memories of the South American country’s violent days remain vivid. That’s especially true after Colombian lawmakers recently opened a debate over whether to censure their defense minister after his top commander, Gen. Nicacio Martínez Espinel, ordered troops to double the numbers of kills, captures or surrenders of guerrillas, paramilitary groups and criminals.

A New York Times investigation reported that the new orders sent “chills” down the spines of officers because they harked back to the days when security forces killed thousands of innocent civilians in the decades-long civil war between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the communist rebels who financed their campaign with illegal drug revenue.

General Martínez’s orders were seen as a sign of frustration within the military over a lack of progress in achieving peace since the government signed a peace deal with FARC in 2016.

Some former FARC leaders, like newly elected Congressman Seuxis Hernandez, who is wanted in the United States on drug charges, appear committed to the peace plan, the Associated Press reported. But FARC offshoots, drug cartel thugs and other paramilitary groups are still fighting the central government or have seized control of remote regions where FARC once ruled.

Adding to the controversy, Martínez held a top post in a brigade that is under investigation for at least 283 alleged extrajudicial executions between 2004 and 2006. These cases allegedly included killings of innocent civilians who were made to look like rebels in the “false positives” scandal, reported El País, a Spanish newspaper.

Human Rights Watch also linked Martínez to the brigade’s abuses. He counters that he only served in an administrative role.

More recently, InSight Crime, which follows corruption in Latin America, noted that a Colombian soldier murdered a demobilized FARC member in a reintegration camp established under the peace deal.

The fear is that the military has no interest in peace – a concern that was amplified recently when Colombia’s Senate promoted Martínez to a four-star general. To some, that suggested that Colombian leaders might share the military’s supposed misgivings about peace.

Martínez has tried to allay those fears, insisting that officers are trained to respect human rights and international humanitarian law, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported. “We have no intention of returning to the ‘false positives,’” he said.

Recently, a Colombian artist produced an installation in the capital, Bogotá, called Quebrantos – or Shattered, a word that in Spanish also means sorrow or loss, Al Jazeera reported. In the work, folks used broken glass to spell out the names of community leaders who had been killed – often by criminal gangs, paramilitaries and dissident rebels fighting over territories once controlled by FARC – after they spoke out against illegal mining, deforestation or drug trafficking.

The artist says the glass, like life, is fragile and that once broken, it can’t be mended. It’s no different for communities. The collaborative installation, she added, is leading to reflection on why this is happening in the country.

But more importantly, it’s “a monumental act of mourning.”

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South America: In The Dark

SOUTH AMERICA

In the Dark

A massive power failure left millions of people without electricity across all of Argentina and Uruguay, and parts of Paraguay, Chile, and Southern Brazil on Sunday.

Argentina’s power system collapsed around 7 a.m. local time, bringing down Uruguay’s system with it, Quartz reported. By evening, Argentina had restored power to 98 percent of the country, according to the Associated Press.

It was not yet clear what caused the system failure, though heavy rains pounding Buenos Aires and the surrounding area are suspected to have played a role. But the sheer numbers of people affected were staggering – including 44 million people in Argentina alone.

Voters in several Argentine provinces that were holding elections for governor had to cast their ballots by the light of their phone screens.

The outages are blamed on generous subsidies and other policies that have left the utilities with losses and distribution infrastructure in disrepair.

That’s an ill President Mauricio Macri has targeted with gradual austerity measures. The subsidies originated with former president and rival Cristina Fernández – who is running for vice president on the opposing ticket in the October elections.

LBGT Quito

ECUADOR

LBGTQuito

Ecuador’s highest court ruled in favor of recognizing same-sex marriage in a landmark decision for the strongly Catholic South American country.

Quito’s constitutional court ruled five-to-four in favor of revising the country’s current marriage legislation, arguing that it was discriminatory and unconstitutional, and that same-sex couples should be allowed equal rights, CNN reported.

The four dissenting judges said the court should leave enacting changes to the country’s constitution to the government.

The country’s National Assembly must still change the laws that govern marriages, but a constitutional lawyer told CNN that the court’s verdict is binding and will allow same-sex couples to marry as soon as the decision is formally communicated to local government offices.

The court will do that within 10 days, after which the National Assembly is duty bound to pass a bill revising the current law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

“The judges decided to be on the right side of history,” said activist Pamela Troya, who had been denied a license to marry her partner, Gaby Correa, in 2013.

Brasil: Scent Intelligence

Scent Intelligence

On June 12, Brazilians will celebrate their own version of Valentine’s Day, known as “Dia dos Namorados.”

Perfumes are often one of the gifts couples exchange. This year, New York-based fragrance manufacturer Symrise has something special for millennial couples, Deutsche Welle reported.

For the first time, young couples will experience a perfume created entirely by a computer program.

Philyra, an artificial intelligence program developed in a cooperation between Symrise and IBM Research, has created its own unique fragrance, using the power of data.

The developers equipped Philyra with information on almost 1.7 million perfumes and trained her – they see the program as female – to determine which scent is popular among different demographics.

“Between all these creations, she finds space – possibilities that no one has yet exhausted,” explained perfumer David Apel of Symrise.

Perfumers can now simply press a button to come up with a new perfume, which Apel believes will help professionals refine their formulas.

“I get the chance to see perfume formulas that I would never have thought of myself,” he told the news agency.

Despite the prospect of losing his job to a program, he sees the development as a collaboration between man and machine.

“I trained her and now she’s training me,” he said.

Venezuela: Opening The Flood Gates

VENEZUELA

Opening the Floodgates

Venezuela reopened its border with Colombia over the weekend after a hiatus of four months, resulting in long lines at checkpoints as thousands of people queued up to cross over to buy food and medicines.

President Nicolas Maduro had ordered the border closed in February to thwart the delivery of US aid he characterized as an infringement on his country’s sovereignty. The US is backing opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has declared himself the rightful president due to questions about the legitimacy of Maduro’s recent re-election.

Even before the US aid mission, thousands of Venezuelans regularly crossed the border to buy food and medicines that are not available at home due to the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, Al Jazeera reported. And after the closure of the border, many continued to cross it illegally, though that put them at the mercy of criminal gangs.

But the relief for desperate Venezuelans is a worry for Bogota, which fears huge numbers may seek to join the million-plus Venezuelan refugees and migrants who already live in Colombia.

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