Argentina: Lights Out

ARGENTINA

Lights Out

A blackout struck Argentina in early June.

Almost 50 million people in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay lost power in an area four times as large as Texas. A month later, officials told the Associated Press that “improper reprogramming” in a major transmission line was to blame.

For years, Argentine utilities didn’t increase rates. Repairs, maintenance and new investments lagged as the grid wore out, the New York Times reported.

Electricity prices have increased under President Mauricio Macri, a business-oriented conservative who took office in 2015 and now is seeking re-election in October.

But the increases were unpopular. Argentina is in deep recession. Inflation is over 50 percent. Unemployment is 10 percent. Amid popular discontent earlier this year, Macri imposed a price freeze, Bloomberg wrote.

It’s ironic that the electricity grid failed. Macri has had plenty of ribbon cuttings on his schedule in the months leading up to the election, reported Al Jazeera. He’s been building new roads, bridges, subway extensions, rail lines, and other projects in a bid to boost the country’s flagging economy.

“There is obviously a government decision to increase expenditure in public works above what was budgeted, at least during this time of the year,” Argentine economist Rafael Flores told the Qatar-based news service.

In October, Macri faces Alberto Fernández, a center-left Peronist who wants to renegotiate the South American country’s deal with the International Monetary Fund for $57 billion to finance its economy, Reuters reported.

But Fernández has chosen former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as his running mate. The wife of the late former President Nestor Kirchner, she took office in 2007 and lost to Macri in 2015 amid corruption scandals – but then won a seat in the country’s senate.

“During those eight years, she nearly ran the country into the ground, in part by playing to voter frustration by declaring war on a group of foreign lenders,” opined foreign affairs pundit Ian Bremmer in Time magazine. “Her government manipulated economic statistics. Graft in politics and business was widespread. Cristina faces several ongoing corruption cases.”

Argentines face a choice in the upcoming election, Bremmer concluded: They could stick to the hard reforms that have yet to pay off but could yield a much better quality of life in the future. Or they could go back to an “ugly past.”

Corruption investigators face uphill battles in Argentina, wroteAmericas Quarterly. Hunger is a major problem, reported El País, a Spanish newspaper.

There are a lot of problems that need fixing. Many hope that whoever wins in October gets busy with solving them, not politics.

Brasil: Prison Wars

BRAZIL

Prison Wars

Fighting between rival gangs at the Altamira prison in northern Brazil left at least 52 prisoners dead on Monday – 16 of them decapitated.

The death toll could rise when authorities have searched all areas involved, state prisons chief Jarbas Vasconcelos said at a news conference, according to the Associated Press.

The fighting began around 7 a.m. Monday between two criminal gangs, Comando Vermelho and Comando Classe A, when members of Comando Classe A set fire to the pavilion that houses the rival gang, prison authorities said.

The fire spread rapidly and prevented police from entering the building for about five hours, during which carnage reigned.

Such violence is not uncommon in Brazil’s prison system. A similar series of riots killed 55 inmates in several prisons in the neighboring state of Amazonas in May, for instance, and in 2017 more than 120 inmates died in prisons across several northern states when rival gangs clashed over control of drug-trafficking routes, according to the Associated Press.

Brasi: Jair Is Giving Up his Anti Corruption Crusade.

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/07/25/jair-bolsonaro-has-given-up-on-his-anti-graft-crusade?cid1=cust/dailypicks1/n/bl/n/20190729n/owned/n/n/dailypicks1/n/n/na/285432/n

Brasil: Poking The Bear

BRAZIL

Poking the Bear

In a bid to inject as much as $11.2 billion into its slowing economy, Brazil unveiled a plan to allow workers to withdraw up to 500 reais ($133) from a severance fund they can normally only access when they lose their jobs, buy a house or retire.

Some cash will also be released from a social security fund, Agence France-Presse reported.

President Jair Bolsonaro called it an “emergency measure” to boost an economy that is “not doing well,” adding that it will help around 63 million people with “debts and overdue water, electricity and gas bills.”

The move is expected to add 2.5 percentage points to GDP per capita over 10 years as well as create 3 million jobs, the agency said. But in the short term, the country is on the brink of recession after a contraction of 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019. Economists forecast growth of less than 1 percent for the full year, and around 13 million people are unemployed.

The move comes shortly after the International Monetary Fund slashed its 2019 economic growth forecast for Latin America by more than half, Reuters noted.

Dominican Republic-Paradise Lost

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Paradise, Lost

Four Americans died in the Dominican Republic last year, according to CBS News. At least 10 more have died this year. Others have suffered injuries during violent attacks.

Bizarre sicknesses that cause heart attacks, septic shock and pneumonia have been involved in some of the deaths. “Vomiting. Stabbing stomach pains. Collapsing. Blacking out. And doctors telling him he might not live,” wrote the Detroit Free Press of local resident Alejandro “AJ” Jones. “This is what Jones said he experienced after a trip last month to the island paradise that he’s visited dozens of times before.”

Investigations have yet to yield answers for victims’ families, but Dominican Tourism Minister Francisco Javier García insisted the island was not holding anything back. “There is no mystery whatsoever regarding any of these deaths,” García told the New York Times.

Three Americans died after they underwent inexpensive plastic surgeries at a now-closed clinic in Santo Domingo, the capital, the New York Daily News wrote.

Other visitors to the island have been victims of violence, pure and simple.

Americans complained in June that they were beaten by robbers in the Caribbean country, WPXI reported. Another woman saidsomeone wearing a staff uniform tried to strangle her at her hotel. The hotel disputes her account.

A Staten Island woman recently said she was raped and thrown from a second-story balcony while on vacation in the country, WABC wrote.

Public health and crime are serious issues that could hurt the Dominican Republic’s vital tourism industry, explained the Washington Post, noting that the country of less than 11 million has 80,200 hotel rooms that cater to more than 6 million visitors annually. The shooting of former Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz couldn’t be good for business even if Big Papi survived with aplomb.

The recent spate of deaths in the Dominican Republic is a rare case of Americans feeling the effects of state collapse, the National Interest suggested. The authorities no longer control the country, one could argue. A robbery occurs every 10 minutes.

“The Dominican Republic has become the ideal place for domestic and transnational criminals to operate with impunity,” wrote the conservative online magazine. “The criminal activities that transpire in the Dominican Republic range from armed robberies and improvised laboratories that specialize in counterfeiting booze and medications to drug trafficking, political corruption, contract killings, illegal arms trade and human trafficking.”

Perhaps when Tourism Minister García said there was no mystery to the deaths, he meant it was obvious that such events might transpire amid the country’s current conditions.

Peru-Another Arrest

PERU

Another Arrest

US authorities in California arrested former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo after receiving an extradition request in connection with corruption charges he faces at home related to the Odebrecht scandal.

Toledo, Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006, is alleged to have taken $20 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company, the Associated Press reported. He maintains he is not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Caught in connection with Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash”investigation into wrongdoing at the state-owned oil giant Petrobras, Odebrecht has admitted to paying as much as $800 million to various Latin American officials in exchange for government contracts.

The scandal has brought down various top leaders, including former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former vice president of Ecuador, and many other luminaries. It has also implicated former Peruvian presidents Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned in 2018, and Alan García, who killed himself when officers came to arrest him at his home in April as part of an investigation linked to the Odebrecht case.

Argentina's Main Presidential Candidates Are Ignoring The Big Problems

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In Praise Of Joao Gilberto

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El Salvador; Blame And Responsibility

EL SALVADOR

Blame and Responsibility

The new president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, took an extraordinary step recently. Upon his inauguration in late June, he immediately took the blame for the ills in his impoverished, corruption-ridden Central American country that have led so many of his fellow citizens to trek more than 2,000 miles to the American border.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to,” Bukele said during a news conference in San Salvador, the capital, according to the New York Times. “They flee their homes because they feel they have to. They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault.”

As the BBC explained, Bukele spoke as photos of a Salvadoran migrant and his young daughter lying dead in the Rio Grande rocked the world, documenting the humanitarian tragedy occurring on the border every day.

Óscar Martinez and his daughter Valeria, who was not yet two years old, drowned while trying to reach the United States. Their bodies were returned to El Salvador and buried in a municipal cemetery in the capital called La Bermeja. Mauricio Cabrera, a vice minister for Salvadorans abroad, gave a speech at the airport when Martinez’s wife, Tania Avalos, arrived back in the country, reported USA Today.

“Do not risk your lives or those of your children,” said Cabrera. “Don’t trust human traffickers who do not keep their promises.”

Meanwhile, Bukele received praise in Washington for his brave stance. But he isn’t soft. He also called on American officials not to block migrants at the border because, he told Sky News, that policy is not deterring anyone.

Elected in February after campaigning against corruption and pledging to boost education and create jobs, the new president is from neither of El Salvador’s two mainstream political parties, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.

He’s got a lot of work to do. El Salvadoran prosecutors are working with American counterparts to fight gangs like MS-13, whose criminal enterprises straddle borders, wrote the Washington Post.

In his own country, gangs have infiltrated nearly every institution. Imprisoned gang members use hospitals to give their comrades orders to attack rivals, for instance, reported InSight Crime, which covers illegal activity in Latin America.

One of Bukele’s first actions in office was firing officials linked to his predecessor, President Sánchez Cerén, who installed family members and other allies in government positions. “Do not hire a replacement,” he wrote when firing Cerén’s daughter from El Salvador’s hydroelectric commission via Twitter, for example, Reuters reported.

It will take a lot of change to prevent more tragedies among migrants desperate to leave El Salvador. But it’s a start.

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