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.

W

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.