The United States has seen an increasing number of leftist leaders elected to the head of Latin American countries in the past decade, many of whom openly reject the idea of a market economy along the lines of the Washington Consensus. In terms of foreign affairs, Latin American countries are forming strategic partnerships with external powers such as China and Iran, an open challenge to the increasingly irrelevant Monroe Doctrine.

The U.S. share of Latin American trade has dropped significantly in the past decade, a victim of intensive Chinese growth. Even if Chavez does not live out his self-proclaimed role as the soothsayer of a continent, his observation of the United States’ loss of dominance has significant merit. His assertion of an independent Latin American future is more questionable. The accusations of exploitation levied for decades at the United States are now drawing comparisons to the current relationship between Latin America and China, which has fueled much of Latin America’s sense of independence from the United States. From the acquisition of large quantities of Latin American commodities to investment into local resource-extraction companies, the trade practices of China illustrate that despite rhetoric claiming the contrary, Latin America’s goal of political nonalignment is impossible in light of its economic interests.

Feeding the Phoenix

In recent years, the rise of China has been seen in the United States as the harbinger of shuttered mom-and-pop stores and factory towns in decline. Economic competition between China and the U.S. is just as significant in Latin America, where China recently surpassed the United States in its volume of trade to both Brazil and Chile. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, the share of the United States in Latin American trade has dropped from 53% to 39%, the difference largely attributable to China. The vast majority of this trade has been in the form of commodities, a necessity given the rate of Chinese growth, ranging from raw materials to agricultural products, trade that has provided both parties tremendous returns from their partnership. For China, this involves significant strides in securing its energy future. For example, Bloomberg reports a $10 billion loan from China’s Development Bank to Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, in exchange for guaranteed access to Brazilian petroleum. Meanwhile, by feeding China’s insatiable growth, many of China’s most significant trading partners in Latin America have been able to fend off the negative effects and even grow during this global financial crisis. The UN reports that the GDP of Latin America grew at 4.3% in 2011, notable when compared to sluggish growth elsewhere.

Left Behind

Although the immediate effects of trade between Latin America and China show a win-win situation, the long term picture is not as rosy for the former continent. Trade with China has played an integral part in the current growth of many South American countries, yet this trade can also hinder the further development of diversified economies and regional networks. From a historical perspective, the exportation of commodities and importation of manufactured goods was frowned upon by policymakers in Latin American countries. Eric Farnsworth, the Vice President of the Council of the Americas, explained to the HPR that the theory held by Latin Americans claimed that “Latin America was poor because the United States and European countries exploited the commodities and didn’t allow the region to grow.” This mentality had pushed Latin America to focus on manufacturing and value-added production as a means of development during the late 20th century through Import Substitution Industrialization, a policy of macroeconomics that seeks to replace imports with domestic production, a policy that has seen mixed results in the region. This has changed dramatically through the increasing commodity trade to China—what was once seen as anathema to Latin America is now a driver of its growth.

In addition, by involving itself in the promotion of Chinese growth, Latin American states run the risk of damaging their own manufacturing sectors. John Maisto, former ambassador to Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the OAS, poses a dilemma for the HPR: “U.S. imperialism was defined as the imperial state sucking out raw materials and agricultural products, turning them into manufactured products and selling them back. What do you call it when China comes in and buys soy and minerals, takes them to China…and sells manufactured Chinese goods back to compete with Latin America’s own manufactured products?” Farnsworth extends his historical critique by drawing a distinction between sectors, noting that “commodities production is very capital intensive,” while “manufacturing is more labor intensive”. As a result, much of the job creation is actually going to China as opposed to Latin America, a perverse reflection of the imperialism demonized by Chavez and anti-West leaders before him. This new reality has not gone unnoticed. In the last year, Brazil and Argentina have enacted laws restricting foreign ownership of land, reflecting a fear of China and its neocolonial model. A Wikileaked memo from a Mexican official was much more direct, stating “We don’t want to be China’s next Africa.”

Searching for Independence

The growing role of China in Latin America over the past decade has strong ramifications for the United States, a country that long thought of the region as its exclusive backyard. While it is difficult to argue that China will stop growing, pushback within Latin America and rumors of an economic slowdown in China are signs of a slowing commodities trade between the two. Farnsworth extends this by explaining that “if countries depend on [the commodities trade] as their long term economic development strategy, they will be disappointed in the end, just like they were disappointed in previous waves of economic growth and investment.”

The perceived slowdown of China has once again reintroduced the United States into the discussion. Maisto claims that “Latin Americans feel much more comfortable dealing with us and the globalized community with Western standards than they do with the Chinese,” implying that its current relationship is driven primarily by an economic understanding. In terms of expanding this relationship, Farnsworth observes that “in Latin America, we don’t have a lot of tools we can use to promote U.S. interests…but trade is one of them, one that links economies together.” He suggests that Free Trade Agreements are being used to combat Chinese involvement in the region. This is corroborated by another Wikileaked statement from a Colombian diplomat, stating “Colombia is wary of Chinese motives and what it sees as lax Chinese environmental and labor standards. However, Colombia needs new economic partners, particularly given the lack of progress on a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade agreement (FTA).”

The goal of Latin America is to avoid dependency. In this regard, Maisto suggests that it is important for Latin American countries to develop markets among themselves as opposed to coalescing behind the rhetoric of leaders such as Chavez or becoming reliant on trade partners that are good for Latin America’s balance sheet, but not its development. Given a Latin American psyche that is bitterly imprinted with memories of imperialism and exploitation, it is easy to see history being repeated in this current relationship. How Latin America negotiates this relationship will be essential to its development into the 21st century.

Understanding this, Humala’s campaign premised on maintaining the macroeconomic policies that allowed the breathtaking economic growth, while implementing a social agenda focusing primarily on tackling poverty, expanding childcare, and reforming the pension system. Yet, this moderation was not from an evolution of beliefs; rather, Humala understands that he is constrained by various domestic and international factors, and must tackle the center in order to survive politically. As the newly elected president begins his term, applying this understanding will remain crucial to his success.

Domestic Awakening:

The differences between 2006’s candidate Humala and 2011’s President Humala appear startling. In 2006, Humala ran on a nationalist platform that mirrored Hugo Chavez’s reign in Venezuela. When running again this year, Humala adapted to the demand of a more moderate electorate, allowing him to win the presidency. The apparent radical change nonetheless springs from several domestic factors that shaped Humala’s promises and rhetoric towards the center of the Peruvian electorate.

At the forefront of his constraints is the economy. According to the U.S. State Department, Peru’s economy grew at around 9.8 percent in 2008, unmatched in the region. Humala’s victory unnerved foreign investors, major players in Peru’s economy, and prompted a 12 percent drop in the stock market. Eduardo Dargent, professor of political science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, told the HPR, “These early signs of economic distress gave [Humala] the last push he needed towards economic moderation. He realized the market laws were real and that he needed market-friendly policies to govern.” His initial reception proved the motivation that brought Humala to embrace centrist policies that he had half-heartedly advocated in the campaign.

With the private sector and foreign investors apparently at ease, Humala continues to face a source of pressure that could ultimately challenge him as a leader: the public. All of Humala’s moderation schemes aim to secure a base of public support. When asked if Humala would remain a moderate, Dargent pointed out that “it partly depends on his approval ratings, if there are signs that these ratings are hurt when he takes steps away from moderation….But if he is applauded by the public when he takes some more radical steps, he may return to some of his more radical agendas.” So far, the President’s approval ratings have risen since his election. However, Humala remains a moving target ideologically and might flip should his approval head south.

A Different World Around Him:

Although most analysts agree that domestic factors are the most important when understanding Humala’s policies, there undoubtedly exist linkages between Humala’s moderation and shifting global conditions, especially in Latin America. As Cynthia McClintock, professor of political science at George Washington University, expresses, “Peruvians know that the major investors in the country are foreign—the U.S., China, Europe, and other Latin American nations.” Investments have become a major incentive for President Humala to maintain strong relationships with these countries, and he has pressure from domestic public opinion so to do. For example, during Humala’s visit to Washington in the fall of 2010, “he presented himself as a social democrat and was calm, cool, and collected” says McClintock.  Had he pursued an extreme left agenda, Humala might have spooked investors even before the campaign, significantly weakening his electoral prospects.

Further, it is important to take into account how much Latin America has changed during the last five years. Steve Levitsky, professor of government at Harvard University, argues that in 2006, Hugo Chavez was at the height of his power. Joining Chavez represented the possibility of obtaining subsidies from his oil bonanza. Nevertheless, by 2011 Chavez’s domestic problems forced him to tone down his regional aspirations, while making other leaders more hesitant to follow his lead. Today, the Brazilian model, championed by former President Lula, has become the pre-eminent form for Latin American development. Brazil’s success may have led Humala to realize that he should follow a more moderate path, to gather domestic and international support. After the 2006 election, he hired advisors from the Lula administration, and by 2011 he had already redefined himself as a moderate.

However, Michael Shifter president of the Inter-American Dialogue told the HPR “I think the Chavez vs. Lula formulation contains false options.  He will be neither.” In Shifter’s view, Humala remains a work in progress. The President may have to strike a balance between economic moderation—reforming rather than retransforming the economic structure—and pushing social reforms, a problem which Humala has yet to tackle. Further, conditions vary broadly across Latin America, especially between Peru and Brazil or Venezuela. Peru lacks the energy resources of either country, and is still significantly poorer by any metric. Thus, Humala must juggle an entirely different set of concerns as he strives to shape the country from a center-left coalition.

Looking Towards the Future

After three months of Humala’s presidency, public opinion and private investors remain cautiously optimistic about the direction of Peru’s future more broadly. Humala has been able to overcome the first challenges of the presidency: to keep foreign investment secure and win the public’s approval. However, he has yet to attempt to fulfill his promises on social reform, which are bound to be more contentious and controversial. Despite all of this apparent success, it remains an open question whether a change in the domestic and international conditions might prompt a sharp turn to the left. Many people in Peru are still skeptical and fear an ultimate ideological reversal. Should Humala take such a step, foreign investment could flee, Peru’s hard-won economic gains reverse, and the President’s ability to implement long-term sustainable reforms could be thrown into jeopardy.

A cartographic portrait of the Mexico-California borderland and the Torovestimenta Project by Raúl Cárdenas Osuna

Raúl Cárdenas Osuna spoke Thursday October 28 in a conference hosted by DRCLAS, Cultural Agents, Cátedra Cultura de México and Conaculta Fonca. Cárdenas Osuna is an artist, activist and the founder of Torolab, a collective in Tijuana, Mexico that organizes urban and community interventions.

Define: “Molecular urbanism,” “Emergency architecture,” “Contested territory,” “Diagnostic portrait,” “Trans-border trousers,” “Farmlab,” “Artist interventionist.” For Raúl Cárdenas Osuna, who spoke Thursday evening to a filled room in CGIS, many of these concepts are his brainchildren and a natural part of his vocabulary. Cárdenas Osuna is the founder of Torolab and the creator of myriad projects in Mexico and abroad involving art, science, community, gastronomy, social activism, agriculture and identity.

Keeping up with Cárdenas Osuna requires you to postpone your awe and simply be swept up by the inertia and compass of his artistic concepts and projects. Practically vibrating with energy in his Ginsberg glasses and blue-laced sneakers, Cárdenas Osuna is in his early forties and designs some of the most exciting, innovative projects in the growing field of art intervention in Mexico. His presentation Thursday follows his award earlier this year handed out by the Harvard initiative Cultural Agents, Catédra Cultura de México and Conaculta Fonca (Fondo Nacional para la Cultural y las Artes) for the best Cultural and Artistic Intervention with a Community Impact.

“I think we’re seeing the formation of a new field that will bring us to new horizons in the twenty-first century,” Doris Sommer, professor in Romance Languages and Literatures and founder of Cultural Agents, said in her introduction.

The field, which comes with a new vocabulary and revolutionized interdisciplinary concepts, looks at the application and process of art in society.

“There is a history in Tijuana to be said about protest art and which is super important…. But it comes up to a point when it is maybe enough,” explained Cárdenas Osuna. “So what do you do with that information [art] that you’re portraying for everybody else? So I guess in our generation we started to do something with all this wonderful, incredible history of protest art. We started to do something with the things we were portraying that were our diagnostics.”

Cárdenas Osuna, who studied art and architecture, sees artistic expression as being only the first step. Art is a diagnostic, a portrait of a community and a problem that leads to designing “products” and interventions addressing these issues.

Torolab began in 1995. As a small collective headed by Cárdenas Osuna, one of Torolab’s first projects was Torovestimenta, a line of “trans-border trousers” designed for border crossing. The jeans had hidden pockets for visas, passports, cell phones and other necessities. The project was inspired by Tijuana and its status as a “contested territory,” a borderland whose migrant identity influences ideas of design and utility.

As Cárdenas Osuna said, “There is certain activity that allows you to understand that the boundaries, geopolitical boundaries, are not the only boundaries that there are: the economical, the linguistic. And the opportunities that arise from something you don’t see as a limit and then it becomes a point for something to arise.”

These jeans eventually served as models and provided research data for other projects. GPS trackers were installed with five pairs and tracked the migration patterns and expenditures (gas, calories) of the participants. These subsequent “portraits” revealed needs and wants of the participants and certain communities, which in turn allows Torolab to design artistic interventions.

Torolab works “to empower and impulse people who are agents of change,” said Cárdenas Osuna. In his work, Cárdenas Osuna recognizes artists as some of the greatest interventionists. As Professor Sommer pointed out, artists appeal to the aesthetic and the sensory and are thereby able to design effective political, economic, urban and spatial interventions.

Cárdenas Osuna’s interventions have included establishing organic farms for previously nomadic immigrants from the Chinese steppes whose oral traditions have cast them to the margins California society, addressing the overwhelming garbage waste problem in Mexico City, creating recycled, “auto-constructed,” transformable furniture, designing food and nutrition interventions in Tijuana and Mexico and measuring the impact of urban and environmental changes on individuals and communities.

The specific program for which he received the award is called “Transborder Farmlab Program” in Tijuana.

“We started to work in a way that was not only grassroots but it became a project of mediation and negotiation with the government,” Cárdenas Osuna elaborated. “And the project basically became what we call the Transborder Farmlab Program. And basically comes from two initiatives that we have now… one is the initiative of creative economics and the society of agents of change.”

The project works with issues of border identity, nutrition and creating sustainable communities in the growing city of Tijuana. Through farming, cookbooks, storytelling, movies, television shows and community products, Cárdenas Osuna and the Famlab Program seek impact some of the greatest problems facing Tijuana and border communities.

“When we’re dealing with the issue of border, we’re not only dealing with the geopolitical” says Cárdenas Osunas. “But we’re dealing with disciplines, and the trans-disciplinary things we can do. And when we’re dealing with farms, we’re not dealing with the issue of farming only food, which we will, but farming ideas and projects.”

As the revolt in Quito showed, despite the gains in democracy, Latin America appears to be as volatile as it was thirty years ago. All it took for an attempt to shutdown the democratic regime in Ecuador was an unpopular austerity measure that looked to cut benefits for public servants. Faced with social distress, mobilization into militant revolts still appears to be a viable option for dissidents, just as it was under the authoritarian regimes and corrupt democracies of the previous century. As Honduras demonstrated to the world in the summer of 2009, military overthrows of democracies still happen in the western hemisphere, right on the United States’ doorstep. With vested military allies in neighboring nations Peru and Columbia, the United States revealed its continued interest in the stability of its southern neighbors by voicing its support for the Correa administration (despite the Chavez-leaning tendencies of the aforementioned leftist president). And there is ample reason that the US should care.

President Correa of Ecuador being taken from hospital where he was held hostage by revolting police.

With newly appointed Colombian president and US ally Juan Manuel Santos on the verge of realizing the goal of the Plan Colombia legislation and finally ridding his nation of its FARC menace and making large gains in the war on illegal drug trafficking, there is little room for unrest in the region. Couple that with the United States’ large military presence in Colombia and Peru, and there is genuine reason for the US to take a general interest in the maintenance of stability in the region. With Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador all fronted by heads of state who are decidedly anti-America and marred by large disparities in wealth as well as exorbitant rates of subsistent poverty, the tension for a potential destabilizing event remains a very real fear.

With the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq underway, Washington does not want to have to deal with a refugee crisis in one of its southern allies or a failed state in the western hemisphere. The rise of popularly elected figures like Chavez and Correa who ran on anti-American platforms implies a general animosity towards continued American influence in Latin America, and whose to say that this anger could not be channeled into a militant organization a la Al Qaeda or Al-Shabaab. A failed state in the Latin America could spell disastrous for the US in a world as interconnected as our own. Whereas enemies from across the Atlantic are one thing, having terrorism emerge from a neighbor in the West would be both horrifying and a direct slap in the face of America’s movement towards world democracy.

While the chances of a terrorist cell gaining the widespread popularity that Al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim organizations have gained in their respective spheres is unlikely in Latin America, one can never say never. Thus the United States must at least loosely adhere to its antiquated Monroe Doctrine and oversee continued stability in the south. Latin America’s rise in the last decade, especially that of Brazil, has revealed the enormous economic potential of South and Central America. It should now be a priority of the United States to see that this trajectory is the only direction in which the continent moves. As for Ecuador, it is reassuring that the coup was completely unsuccessful and democracy came away unscathed, but still extremely telling that such a revolt could spring up out of nowhere. Latin America still has a long way to go it would seem.

Photo Credit: Dolores Ochoa, AP

The evidence of Shahzad’s mediocrity begins with a Spring 1998 transcript which, quoting the New York Times, “showed that he earned D’s in English composition and microeconomics, B’s in Introduction to Accounting and Introduction to Humanities, and a C in statistics.”  Peretz comments:

Let us give Shahzad the benefit of the doubt: He was a certified mediocrity. Nothing better. Why does America desire such certified mediocrities? … what conceivable national interest was served in giving such a dross of a young man a student visa?

I’m not sure what Peretz is suggesting; perhaps a GPA requirement for nationalization?  Not exactly — such an implied requirement would only apply to immigrants of certain races.

We do have anself-interested [sic] obligation to deal with Latin American would-be immigrants and sojourners, if for no other reason than that they are our neighbors, very close neighbors; and the prosperity of Mexico, the islands, and below Mexico to Central and South America is therefore our concern.

There are also countries (of which, by the way, Pakistan is one, like India and South Korea and others) from which talented men and women want to come to live and work in the United States. The emphasis should always be on talent, rigorously measured.

This pretty clearly, if accidentally, suggests that talented immigrants don’t come from Latin America.  So (a) all the talented people in Latin America want to stay put or (b) there are none to begin with.  Either way, Peretz creates a strange double standard: It’s okay for Mexican immigrants to be construction workers, but Indian immigrants better be doctors.  I don’t think that the proximity argument suffices because air travel makes even Pakistan only a day away.

Peretz finishes:

Frankly, we have enough of our own mediocrities not to go out of our way to welcome others. And we should especially scrutinize those from countries in which terror is now part of the national culture.

I don’t see how this is a useful prescription; should we scrutinize a Pakistani accountants with a couple of C’s more closely than a Pakistani engineer with straight A’s? Isn’t the latter more dangerous?

Underlying Peretz’ post are racism and intellectual snobbery rather than constructive ideas on the relation between immigration policy and terrorism.

Photo Credit: Flickr (pjern)

In case you aren’t sick of the subject, I have written a full-length take-down of the recent Harvard Salient article on Ethnic Studies. It originally appeared in today’s Harvard Independent. Check out my HPR blog post from last week if you want the pithier, more sarcastic version.

An Embarrassment to Harvard Conservatives

Harvard conservatives, those Aristotle-citing, modernity-bemoaning, Western canon-promoting Young Burkes, are generally an earnest and thought-provoking bunch. The seriousness and sincerity of their views help to maintain their reputation in this overwhelmingly liberal community. But in the March 15 issue of the Harvard Salient, the house organ of the Crimson Right, Patrick T. Brennan embarrassed his fellow conservatives by attacking in outrageous terms Harvard’s recent creation of an Ethnic Studies secondary field. His article represents a departure from the lovably idiosyncratic conservatism that many people, including many liberals, expect from the Salient. Brennan’s views are not idiosyncratic; they are ignorant.

To put it bluntly, Brennan’s case against Ethnic Studies is this: people of color just aren’t interesting or important, and they haven’t contributed much of value. If you assumed that this sentiment would be couched in much more subtle terms, you’d be wrong. Brennan doesn’t shy from stating outright that the experiences of non-white Americans are “not of paramount importance to a university education,” and that many cultures have been “underappreciated or marginalized, often for good reason.” Embracing the label of “Eurocentric,” he doesn’t flinch from calling Women and Gender Studies “useless” and concern for diversity “imaginary.” The possibility that there might be as much value in Latin American writers as in Latin ones is laughable to him.

You might think that such prejudice is the result of simple unawareness of the world outside the Harvard Classics department. If Brennan would only read some Frederick Douglass or Gabriel García Márquez, he’d come around, right? But Brennan makes a point of showing that he actually knows some things about people of color, which makes his dismissal of their importance all the more offensive. He makes ostentatious reference to the Abbasid Caliphate, which he says was an exception to the rule of non-white ignorance, and to Martianus Capella, a Berber man who was, according to Brennan, “the first man to delineate officially the seven liberal arts.” You’d think that kind of accomplishment would spark Brennan’s curiosity: perhaps people of color have made other important contributions? The thought doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.

But politically correct liberals, Brennan and others say, value subjects like Ethnic Studies just because of their racial provenance, not their “actual” importance. If you really think about it, they imply, that makes liberals the true racists. But they disregard the possibility that “how people of color in the United States have historically experienced social and political institutions” might be a genuinely valuable subject of inquiry. For Brennan and his ilk, nothing that wasn’t considered important a hundred or a thousand years ago could possibly make the grade now. And they always neglect the fact that racial ideology influenced those long-ago determinations of importance.

The arrogance of Brennan’s point of view is startling. Conservatives like him see creeping totalitarianism in the academy’s cultural relativism, but they are the only ones policing the boundaries of respectability, ruling some people in and others out. They see themselves as victims of a dominant liberal culture but can’t point to anybody who says white people are unimportant or that Shakespeare and Cicero can’t be worth studying. Their beef is not that they’re being marginalized; it’s that they’re not being allowed to do the marginalizing. Brennan once told the Salient, for instance, that Virgil’s Aeneid is more brilliant “than every literary work produced in the Southern Hemisphere.” If he had said “in the history of the world,” it would have been understandable favoritism; when he decided to single out darker-skinned races for particular disapproval, it became something much worse.

At bottom, this sort of attitude stems from concern about the breakdown of authority. Yearning for clarity and simplicity, many Harvard conservatives gravitate towards traditionalism in the arts, authoritarianism in religion, and essentialism in philosophy. They came to Harvard and were dismayed to find that nobody here will tell them what to learn, nobody will dictate what they have to consider important. The Core Curriculum and General Education, as most recognize, are pale homages to the idea that there are things every smart person ought to know.

And on one point I agree with them: Harvard should get some spine and figure out what it really wants us to know and to do. But, as former Salient editor and current New York Times columnist Ross Douthat ‘02 pointed out at a recent Salient-hosted event, the idea that we need a stronger core curriculum doesn’t entail that it should be exclusively composed of dead white males. The canon can and should be broadened. The most important ideas in the world were not all written on papyrus — an invention of the Egyptians, by the way.

Brennan’s article represents the logical end point of the deliberately anachronistic philosophy of many campus conservatives. “Curricula,” Brennan says, “should be essentially conservative and permanent.” In his view, contra Douthat, the canon cannot change. It has always been the same and will always be the same, for if nothing in the last 2,000 years of world history has made change necessary, nothing will. In the mind of this type of conservative, we know nothing now that wasn’t known during the Age of Pericles or the Pax Romana. The only interesting academic debate is between those who prefer the former and those who prefer the latter.

What a shame to look at two thousand years of human history and conclude that it’s been one long decline. No sophisticated progressive thinks we’ve been marching uninterrupted towards heaven on Earth, but no serious conservative can compare the modern world to ancient times, or today’s America to that of the 1950s, and honestly long for a restoration. There might be some good traditions that we ought to bring back, some worthwhile values that modern society does not recognize. But an argument has to be made for each individual tradition and value. Nothing is good just because it’s old.

Brennan and his defenders ought to heed Douthat, whose conservative, traditionalist bona fides are unimpeachable. Asked what courses he would recommend for a conservative Harvard student, Douthat suggested finding the most left-wing professor on the faculty. He said that Harvard conservatives can get the best education of anyone here, because they can constantly be challenged, forced to discard preconceived notions and to defend what is actually worth defending. I wish Brennan could have heard this advice before he wrote his article. Maybe he would have stopped wondering why no one appreciates Virgil as much as he does, and started wondering why he can’t think of anyone interesting or important when he thinks about people of color. If this brouhaha leads him to begin that self-examination, I promise I’ll finally get around to finishing the Aeneid.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of TravelingMan

The only way to appreciate this article is to quote some of the choicest sections. For example:

Americans of color have undoubtedly done some things of note, but their “encounters” and “experiences” are not of paramount importance to a university education. The ethnic studies movement is motivated by an attempt to direct more attention to a topic that deserves no more attention than it already gets, and probably a good deal less.

Sorry, Frederick Douglass, but you’re just not of paramount importance, not when there are lots of 2,000 year-old white guys we could be studying instead.

The necessary elements of an educated man’s curriculum have not changed much over two thousand years of Western education—the Trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the scientific Quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy should still be the basic foundations of education.

If Brennan had his way, we’d still be studying the stars by cupping our hands over our eyes and squinting really hard. And practicing oratory by putting pebbles in our mouths. And we can have none of those so-called pianos! Real musicians play lyres!

Ironically, the first man to delineate officially the seven liberal arts, Martianus Capella, was from Roman Africa; he apparently did not feel his contributions to the world should be more or less important because of his Berber provenance.

I wonder… if a Berber was capable of doing that, is it possible that other Africans have made other significant contributions? Is it possible that we don’t know about them because of the dare-I-say-ancient prejudice that Africans were unsophisticated, ignorant, and primitive? Is it possible that the Ethnic Studies field might be designed to study the contributions of Africans (among others) precisely because they’re important, not because they’re African?

[S]tudying literature is not better than studying accounting if one is allowed, or even encouraged, to allot as much time to Latin American writers as to Latin ones.

No matter how much classicists like Brennan hate the professional disciplines, their true scorn is ever reserved for those who think that a brown person could have had anything interesting to say.

The standard work of ethics for nearly two millennia was Cicero’s De Officiis. The world has not changed enough in the past hundred years to justify its replacement with whatever pablum Michael Sandel wants to feed PBS viewers.

Good to see that Brennan is capable of snobbishness towards white people too. Funny how Michael Sandel’s philosophy could be aptly summarized by quoting Cicero himself: “we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.” What pablum!

On the most sympathetic reading, Brennan’s article could be understood as the cri de coeur of someone who wishes people didn’t give him funny looks when he says he studies Classics. Nobody deserves funny looks, and Classics is a wonderful field of study. I’ve taken a couple classes in it myself. But it’s not the only field of study, and it gives Brennan no special insight into the worthiness of other disciplines. If Brennan wants to resurrect the classics, it would be better done by showing how much modern philosophers like Sandel owe to ancients like Cicero, rather than scorning moderns for being born 2,000 years too late.

Photo credit: Wikipedia.

On Jan. 17, the Chilean presidential run-off election concluded with the victory of a former Harvard economics teaching fellow, Sebastian Piñera. The Conservative Piñera, the third-richest Chilean and the holder of a Harvard Ph.D in economics, ended two decades of uninterrupted rule by the center-left Concert of Parties for Democracy with his defeat of Eduardo Frei, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Piñera’s victory may seem an anomaly in an increasingly leftist Latin America and in a country still harboring memories of right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet. But Piñera’s ascension is not a sign of a fundamental conservative shift in Chilean politics. It is rather a testament to the long reign of the incumbent coalition, commonly known as the Concertación, and the desire for change after two decades of this coalition’s dominance. Frei’s personal weakness as a candidate and Piñera’s personal popularity were also major contributing factors to the upset. The future of Chilean politics will not be warring coalitions and divergent platforms, nor a lurch to the right, but an era of greater electoral competition and centrist two-party politics.
Change is Constant

“It had to happen,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor, told the HPR. “No matter how well the incumbent party does, electorates tire, and they want a change. It’s no big surprise.” And Frei was a particularly weak representative for the ruling party. As former president of Chile from 1994 to 2000, Frei governed unremarkably, allowing his term to be dominated by high unemployment rates. Many voters were also torn by the entrance of third-party Socialist candidate Marco Enriquez-Ominami, who broke off from the Concertación and won support from those dissatisfied with the ruling party but unwilling to support the right. He drew a strong 20 percent in the initial election and meekly endorsed Frei a week prior to the run-off. At the same time, Frei lacked the smooth, well-financed campaign effort of the billionaire Piñera, who owns the national Chilean airline LAN.
The defeat of the Concertación was also a function of Chile’s particular set of electoral rules, which restricts incumbents from pursuing immediate reelection. Were it not for these rules, the Concertación might have been able to capitalize on the strength of its incumbent, Michelle Bachelet, who has been President since 2006 and has accumulated an 80 percent approval rating. As Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the HPR, “Her background, her life story, and her efforts to encourage consensus politics have made her exceedingly popular.” Bachelet’s strong response to the Chilean economic downturn in 2006 also bolstered her reputation. José Raúl Perales, an expert on Latin America at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told the HPR, “She was effective at keeping the pain of adjustment as far from the Chilean people as possible. The ability of the government to respond effectively was the result of [her] specific efforts to save funds from commodity exports, especially copper.”
However, DeShazo reiterated, Bachelet’s popularity did not translate into enthusiasm for Frei. “Michelle Bachelet was key in that she injected more energy into the Concertación and that helped her popularity. But with Frei, it looked like a repeat of the past and the Chileans felt that they were ready for change, for new ideas.” Memories of Pinochet’s harsh dictatorship had long prevented party change, but “real democracies turn over,” Levitsky quipped. Chile, after twenty years, has finally turned over.

Center Consensus
Despite this turnover, Bachelet’s tenure will have a lasting impact on Chilean politics. Under Bachelet, Chile experienced remarkable economic, social, and political success; she revitalized the copper industry, completed the institutionalization of universal healthcare, and legitimized the place of women in politics.
Indeed, Frei and Piñera agreed on most major campaign issues. Aside from minor discrepancies in economic policy, the only sticking point was their commitment to human rights. Frei’s attacks on that score were powerful and poignant, but ultimately ineffective. His father, the president of Chile from 1964 to 1970 and a staunch critic of Pinochet, was mysteriously poisoned in 1982. Bachelet, a victim of torture during Pinochet’s reign, had supported judicial efforts to prosecute the Pinochet government’s crimes against humanity. As such, the two tried to exploit Piñera’s support for an amnesty bill that would have halted the investigation into numerous Pinochet-related deaths, including that of Frei’s father. Piñera’s position on allowing Pinochet supporters into his cabinet and party was also controversial; only after intense political and media pressure did he come to reject their inclusion in his coalition.
Nevertheless, concerns over Piñera’s dedication to human rights failed to have a significant impact on Chilean voters. As Levitsky argued, “certainly he’s got support from the left and he will not want to be perceived as leaning too far to the right, particularly on human rights.” DeShazo agreed that human rights had become a consensus issue in Chile. “Those issues have been widely dealt with over the last twenty years. … [Human rights are] not an issue at stake.”

It’s the Economy
Piñera’s strongest campaign plank was economic reform, and on this issue bipartisan consensus was especially evident. Piñera promised to create a million jobs, increase annual economic growth by six percent, and privatize part of Chile’s national copper industry. But no matter how much change Piñera may want, his policies cannot stray too far from the center. “He’s going to have to worry about having both his big legislative support and the support of the center voters who are not voting left for the first time,” said Levitsky. “He will be very sensitive to the electorate and I don’t think you will see him move dramatically to the right.” Indeed, Perales argued, “Piñera is very aware of the fact that he cannot rule Chile without the input of the Concertación. With a country so highly entrenched in the system of two major governing coalitions, it is impossible to rule without their input.” To do so would jeopardize the conservatives’ prospects in future Chilean elections.
While there is no possibility of direct reelection of presidents, Bachelet would be free to run again in 2014. Competition will likely be tougher then; Piñera has finally proven that Chilean conservatives can win national elections, opening the door to an entire new slate of presidential candidates. Given the voters’ current trust in Piñera’s business savvy, the winner of the next election will probably be determined to a large degree by the success of his economic policies. As for the immediate future, change will be less revolutionary than might seem likely. There will be no great shift rightward, but the election of Piñera represents a step in a broader trend towards greater electoral accountability and political consensus-building in Chile. ♦

Casey Thomson ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credit: Flickr stream of Sebastian Pinera

Why the politics of immigration must be reconciled with reality

Immigration always seems to be a hot-button topic, but despite President Bush’s second-term attempts at comprehensive reform and President Obama’s campaign promises to address the issue, the past two decades have seen little meaningful immigration legislation. While it is convenient to point to the economic recession and to Obama’s health care proposal as roadblocks to immigration reform, those explanations only scratch the surface. When it comes to immigration, politicians have shied away from asking the relevant questions. In order to enact meaningful reform, policymakers must shift the emphasis from border security to the underlying economic cause of illegal immigration, and they must evaluate undocumented workers’ true impact on the job market. Without concrete strategies for addressing those issues, immigration reform will continue to languish in political limbo.

BORDER BUILDUP?

Politicians have historically tackled the immigration issue by emphasizing border security, but this approach obscures the larger questions underlying the debate. As Kim Williams, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, explained, “What you find is that we’ve had this balance struck between employer sanctions and border security. Since we haven’t been able to deal with employer sanctions … it’s much easier to talk about cracking down on border enforcement.” But this security-focused approach cannot successfully address the flow of immigrants across the Mexican border, a complex pattern of movements based on economic conditions and even seasonal changes. Douglas Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton and the author of Beyond Smoke and Mirrors, told the HPR that “the paradoxical effect of the border fence … is to make people who are already here not go back because it is so hard to come in.” For immigration reform to go forward, then, policymakers must turn their focus to the economic incentives that bring people to this country in the first place. Poverty in Latin America is at least as important as border insecurity in explaining the influx of immigrants from our south.

Business concerns also factor prominently in the immigration debate. Perhaps the most immediately effective measure for reducing illegal immigration would be to impose a hefty fine on businesses for every undocumented worker they hire. Yet, Williams explained, “Since we have this laissez faire business attitude … at the end of the day what happens is we ratchet up border security.” Employment-related proposals are likely to be poorly received compared with “tough” crackdown measures on the borders. Furthermore, according to Massey, practices like subcontracting have made it harder to hold business accountable and discipline them when they employ illegal immigrants. Katherine Vargas, press secretary of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant-rights organization, told the HPR that she expects any reform bill “will have an employment verification system, an electronic system matching Social Security numbers with records.” Such a system may be both more effective and more humane than border security.

JOBS AVAILABLE

To enact effective immigration legislation, policymakers must also evaluate the true impact of illegal immigrants on the American jobs market.  Some politicians claim that—especially given our high unemployment rate—undocumented workers are taking up Americans’ jobs. “There are an estimated eight million jobs done by illegal immigrants. … We’ve seen in the past that when they started to do some enforcement, you saw American workers lining up to apply for the jobs,” Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told the HPR. Others, however, contend that migrant workers and American citizens occupy fundamentally different job markets.  According to Vargas, “The reality is that [unemployed Americans] are not in direct competition for jobs immigrants are doing. … You can’t expect a middle-class worker in Michigan to move and pick cherries or tomatoes in the California desert.”

At the end of the day, meaningful immigration reform will need to address the economic incentives that motivate hundreds of thousands of people to cross the border illegally each year. Politicians must look past politically palatable measures like border security; they must focus on long-term solutions and ask difficult questions about why immigrants come here, and what effect they have on American workers.

Jimmy Wu ’13 is the Circulation Manager.

Photo Credit: laverrue (Flickr)

Can Latin America’s largest country rise above the hurdles?

As cannons blasted confetti down upon a roaring crowd in Rio de Janeiro in October, Latin America’s largest nation celebrated its arrival on the world stage. Like China before the 2008 Olympic Games, Brazil greeted the announcement that it would host the Games in 2016 as a rite of passage into the developed world.

But just two weeks later, a gang of drug traffickers in one of Rio’s notorious slums shot down a police helicopter in a brazen attack that killed three officers. More than 100 policemen poured into the shantytown to regain control in the ensuing gun battle, which took place only a mile from the stadium in which the Games are scheduled to be held.

Even as Brazil assumes increasing international prominence, the country’s political, social, and economic development remains hampered by fundamental problems of rule of law and severe inequality. Brazil’s economic growth in the past decade has been impressive, but the country will have to to overcome hurdles of stark social inequality, violent crime, and rampant corruption to establish itself as a rising superpower and role model in Latin America.

The “B” in “BRIC”

Brazil appears to have left behind the high inflation of inconsistent growth of the 1980s and 1990s, bolstered by a new currency and an economic stabilization plan developed in the past two decades. Goldman Sachs famously classified Brazil along with Russia, India, and China as one of the “BRIC” countries in 2003, ranking it among the largest and fastest-emerging markets in the world.

Jim O’Neill, the head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs who coined the term, told the HPR that Brazil has shown new promise. “Its ability to bounce back post-crisis, the decline in real interest rates, low and stable inflation, the amount of [foreign direct investment] building up in the ‘new’ Brazil, and its commodity richness” set the stage for sustained long-term growth, O’Neill explained. Brazil has experienced an average annual growth rate of nearly 5 percent in the past three years, and according to O’ Neill, is expected to be “stronger in the next decade than the last.”

Other experts echoed O’Neill’s optimism, citing Brazil’s stable government as an indicator of continued economic success. In an interview with the HPR, Filipe Campante, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, attributed Brazil’s economic expansion to “institutional maturity” and “a consolidated democracy that has created more political stability.” Kevin Casas-Zamora, a Latin America expert at the Brookings Institution told the HPR that over the past fifteen years, the government – led by two strong presidents in a row  – has instituted important reforms to ensure “well-functioning political parties and an effective Congress.” These institutions provide Brazil with a solid foundation to sustain future growth.

Crime, Slums and Corruption

Despite this foundation, while Brazil has developed a strong, commodity-driven economy, such improvements have not translated into a broad distribution of wealth. Those living in the northeast region, for instance, have a per capita income that amounts to less than half the national average. Casas-Zamora noted that “regional imbalances in Brazil are huge because while the northeast of the country is at the level of development of sub-Saharan Africa, the Southern part is comparable to Southern Europe.” Campante noted that many “have no access to basic goods, services, and education.”  These troubles are hardly the mark of a highly developed economic powerhouse.

The problems of crime, violence and corruption in the slums, or favellas, dominate headlines about the breakdown of social order within Brazil’s major cities. There is a total lack of state control in many of the favellas, and the poorest neighborhoods are easily overrun by drug lords and mafias. Corrupt local police often fight gangs for the right to exploit the slum dwellers. James Roberts, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the HPR that Rio in particular “is a dangerous city that certainly needs improvement and investments” before the Olympics arrives. David Samuels, professor of comparative politics at the University of Minnesota, told the HPR that most Brazilians point to crime as the biggest problem, followed closely by corruption. With a “dysfunctional” judicial system in which criminals can “buy their way out of charges,” Samuels said, Brazil is a long way from untangling this web of crime and corruption and strengthening rule of law.

A Way Forward: Education, Reform, and Transparency

Brazil may, however, be able to find a way forward through greater investment in education and the creation of a social safety net. “The faster Brazil grows and the richer it becomes, the more glaring becomes the fact that there are people who are extremely poor,” Campante explained. Unlike Mexico, said Samuels, Brazil has “a first world tax system.” But like Mexico, it offers only “third world [social] services.”

Spending on education may be particularly crucial, both as an investment in the country’s economic future and a viable alternative for youth to the illicit drug economy. Barry Ames, professor of Latin American politics at the University of Pittsburgh, told the HPR that Brazil must strengthen its limited social safety net. The bolsa familia or “family stipend” programs, Ames said, have been successful in keeping kids in school and reducing the malnutrition problem. Roberts suggested that Brazil use the Olympics as “a rallying point for the country” and invest in social welfare to “reduce socioeconomic pressures and give people opportunities to be productively employed.”

In addition, the government will need to wrest power away from the drug lords and reform the police and security forces from the top down.  Experts generally agree that a multi-pronged approach must be used to address corruption and violence.  Roberts argued that “having clear systems and procedures, transparency, not too many laws and the right incentives” would be steps in the right direction.

The rise of the press in Brazil is a critical part of increasing this transparency.  “Brazilian tolerance of corruption has decreased because a lot of corruption scandals are being revealed by the press, which indicates people are not willing to overlook it,” Campante explained. Ames agreed, noting that “democratic competition has led to an improvement in bureaucratic competence” as people vote corrupt politicians out of office. Samuels suggested that change will be a long-term process and that “Brazil will live under global scrutiny for another five to 10 years,” which may solidify the trend toward greater freedom for the press and open democratic competition.

Ultimately, rather than marking Brazil’s ascent as a done deal, the Olympic Games may galvanize political will to reduce inequality and buttress the rule of law in the country’s poorest regions. Having addressed the problems of violent crime and corruption, Brazil may be able to resume its exuberant samba on the world stage with a more confident step in 2016.

Image Credit: Mike Vondran