Pope Francis Travels to Latin America

Two people have dominated the news during the summer of 2015: Pope Francis (inspiring) and Donald Trump (sometimes amusing, but usually depressing).

Last week, the Pope traveled to Latin America -- in particular, to Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. I gather that he chose these countries because they are three of the continent's poorest, and he is emphasizing the issue of global poverty.

In an article in yesterday's Times (here), Binyamin Applebaum compares Francis's focus on poverty (and its link to global warming) to Pope John Paul's challenge to communism in the 1980's. I like the way that Applebaum puts Francis in historical context, and I think the analogy to John Paul is accurate.

I think it's fantastic that Francis is so engaged on the issue of climate change. He is one of the few (only?) people in the world with the moral (as opposed to scientific) authority to speak on the topic, and I think his words could greatly influence (1) people's opinions and (2) government policy. I don't care if some of his prescriptions are not quite right; I'm just glad that he is focusing people's attention and efforts on the big picture of climate change and the urgent need to address it.

I love the photograph above, which accompanied yesterday's article and shows the pope with two children in Paraguay. It really emphasizes his humanity and ability to connect with people.

Jose Mujica

This picture is by Matilde Campodonico. I like the tea kettle: something about it mirrors Mujica's solidity and simplicity.

Simon Romero has an interesting profile of Jose Mujica, the president of Uruguay, in this morning's Times (here).

Mujica (age 77) is a former Cuban-revolution inspired urban guerilla who spent 14 years in prison. He entered politics in 2004 and became president in 2009.

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Mujica is a committed leftist, but Romero's piece focuses more on his personal choices: he lives in a simple house on the outskirts of Montevideo, farms chrysanthemums (I love this detail), and donates 90% of his salary to a program for expanding housing to the poor.

Mujica has raised the hackles of some of his countrymen for his lifestyle choices. His push to legalize marijuana has also been controversial.

I think Mom and Dad visited Montevideo on their trip last year, and I will have to ask them if they heard anything about Mujica or Uruguayan politics generally.

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Mujica has a nice quote (from Seneca) on wealth: "It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor."

George Will on Puerto Rican Statehood

George Will has a surprising editorial in today's Post (here) in which he argues that Republican support for Puerto Rican statehood could help change the party's fortunes among Hispanic voters.

Will focuses on Puerto Rico's 49-year-old Republican governor, Luis Fortuno, who says that most Puerto Ricans are culturally conservative. He seems to think that Puerto Ricans might actually vote in favor of statehood, notwithstanding a vote of 50-46 against it in a 1998 referendum.

Fortuno went to law school at UVa.

Will's article includes this funny description of the US's involvement in the Spanish-American War:

The United States acquired Puerto Rico 112 years ago in the testosterone spill called the Spanish-American War. Before another century passes, perhaps Puerto Ricans' ambivalence about their somewhat ambiguous status can be rectified to the advantage of Republicans.

I love the phrase "testosterone spill" - that is historically exactly right. And we continue to spill the testosterone (in other parts of the world) one hundred years later.

Yvrose Jean Baptiste

Today is William and Blaker's wedding! Tuck's in town, and he and Dad and I had a fun lunch yesterday at Wild Wing's. It sounds as though California is off to a great start.

The weather is beautiful today -- lots of sunshine, clean air, and spring's-coming-warmth. I went running around the neighborhood and listened to a Planet Money podcast about Haiti.

The story was very uplifting. It was about Yvrose Jean Baptiste, who is the woman in the picture. The Planet Money reporters met her, by chance, while doing a story on economic recovery efforts after the earthquake.

Yvrose was a determined woman who built up a thriving food wholesale business with periodic $600 microcredit loans that she used in order to purchase food on the Haiti/Dominican Republic border. She would then re-sell the food to about 10 retailers, extending it to them on credit and earning her living on the "credit arbitrage." The reporters were explaining that she was a one-person example of how a credit system grows an economy.

What I really liked about the story was how Yvrose seemed like a wonderful person -- inspired to work hard for her children and her community, and perservering in the face of the terrible devasation of the earthquake. This was also an excellent piece of journalism, as it gave me a deeper sense of a person's life/perspective/feelings/challenges, in what seems to me -- even moreso after the earthquake -- a place that is very removed from my own comfortable life.

Christopher Hitchens and Anne Applebaum on Earthquake Response and Preparation

A massive earthquake hit Chile over the weekend; the epicenter was near the city of Concepcion.

As of today the media is reporting about 1,000 people died, and stories are coming out about the enormous disparity between the number of casualties in Haiti (over 200,000) and Chile -- even though Chile's quake was stronger.

Now, Christopher Hitchens thinks ahead (on Slate, here) about the possibility of a major earthquake in Iran, and he predicts that the consequences could be particularly disastrous there:

What would happen to the secret nuclear facilities, both under the ground and above it? ... [The] outcome would be incomparably worse than the consequences of any intervention to arrest the Iranian nuclear program ... While the "negotiations" on Iran's weaponry are being artificially protracted by an irrational and corrupt regime, it should become part of our humanitarianism and our public diplomacy to warn the Iranian people of the man-made reasons that the results of a natural calamity would be hideously multiplied in their case. This, together with the offer of immediate help in earthquake-proofing, enhanced from our experiences in California, is nothing less than a moral responsibility.

It's very interesting that Hitchens frames this as a moral imperative. But I lose him on the sentence "worse than the consequences of any intervention to arrest the Iranian nuclear program" -- what kind of intervention does Hitchens want? Does he argue elsewhere for military action?

On the differences between Haiti and Chile, here's an excerpt from Anne Applebaum's piece (here) in today's Post:

Chile had regulations in place before the quake that required contractors of all new buildings to use earthquake-resistant standards. Not every structure met the standards, but many did. And residents of those that did not will have some recourse: In the city of Concepción, residents of a new building that collapsed are threatening to sue the builders, according to one report. The fact that they are even discussing this option implies that these apartment owners believe they have a court system that works, a legal system that could force builders to pay compensation, and a building regulatory system that is generally respected. Haiti has none of the above.

Applebaum points out that the response to natural disasters is inevitably politicized. This is so very true, as we've witnessed in our own small way in Charlottesville this winter with various criticisms of the way the snowstorms were handled by VDOT, City police (re: citations for sidewalk-shoveling), etc.

The Earthquake in Haiti; An Appeal for Squatters' Rights

The major news of the past week was the earthquake in Haiti, which occurred late afternoon on Tuesday, January 12.

The epicenter was quite close to Port au Prince, and the devastation in that city - and throughout the island - was immense. The current estimates are that 40,000 to 140,000 people were killed and that millions have been left homeless.

In this morning's Times there is a series of short essays with suggestions for rebuilding Haiti. Two in particular caught my attention:

** Robert Neuwirth, who is the author of a book called Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, says that Haiti's government should be lenient towards squatters as a means to rebuild communities and promote stability (his essay is here). Neuwirth says that worldwide there are approximately 1 billion squatters, and he says that we should do away with a framework in which squatting is a crime: "Squatting is not a crime. Rather than being put in refugee camps, people can seize the initiative and squat in their old communities, without aid groups clamping down on them. This doesn’t mean occupying unsafe houses, but erecting new shacks nearby. This way, families can share food, shelter and skills. And these nascent communities — self-organized and temporary at first — can serve as the building blocks of new neighborhoods."

** Steven Solomon focuses on building water distribution systems that are maintainable at the local level and then making access to them cheap (or completely free): "In rebuilding Haiti’s water systems, it is imperative to focus on simple and affordable local projects that communities can take responsibility for. The network of water and sewer pipes should be built with flexible materials that can be shallowly buried and easily repaired. Bulk sewer services and drinking water should be delivered at wholesale costs to distribution points in urban neighborhoods, where local leaders can handle payments for the service and maintain the local network."

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I really like Neuwirth's points about squatting. I am curious as to the general approaches towards squatting in developing countries. Neuwirth says that Mumbai's municipal government has a progressive approach by encouraging (or at least looking the other way with respect to) scavenging: "In Mumbai, India, squatters build and rebuild their homes one wall at a time using materials that they find on the side of the road. Billboards, fence posts, bricks picked up from construction sites, scarred wooden panels: these are all incredibly valuable resources."

Chile's Election Run-Off (Sebastián Piñera) and a List of Current Female Leaders

Last September I wrote (here) about Chilean President Michele Bachelet and the pending Presidential election in Chile.

At that time, Bachelet was getting positive reviews for her leadership of Chile, including her fiscal responsibility (in particular, she had passed a budget-balancing law which made me nostalgic for the days of Bill Clinton).

In today's Times, Alexei Barrionuevo reports (here) that Sebastián Piñera (he's the one in the picture) is expected to win the election run-off which occurs today. This is significant because Piñera is not the candidate of Bachelet's Concertacion party -- that would be Eduardo Frei.

In the first round of voting, Marco Enríquez-Ominami -- the young insurgent candidate -- only got about 20% of the votes. Evidently Ominami is tepidly endorsing Frei (who is, like Ominami, on the left side of the spectrum), and that's not helping Frei's cause.

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It sounds like Piñera (who also ran for President in 2006) is something of Silvio Berlusconi's doppelganger: a wealthy businessman with a large media stake:

The third-richest person in Chile, Mr. Piñera, 60, controls the country’s largest airline, a major television channel and a stake in Chile’s most popular soccer team.

410. If Bachelet was as popular as it seemed in September, then what's giving Piñera the momentum? Is it that Ominami split the left's vote and now the more radical people aren't coming around to vote for Frei? Or has Chile's economy worsened in the past few months?

411. Yesterday Bob McDonnell was inaugurated as Virginia's governor. He was wearing a really fancy tuxedo which looked a bit odd. Is this a Virginia inaugural tradition?

412. Who are the current female Presidents and prime ministers in the world?

1. Angela Merkel (Germany)
2. Michele Bachelet (Chile)
3. Mary McAleese (Ireland)
4. Tarja Halonen (Finland)
5. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (Philippines)
6. Micheline Calmy-Rey, Doris Leuthard, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf (Switzerland)
7. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Liberia)
8. Pratibha Patil (India)
9. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (Argentina)
10. Dalia Grybauskaitė (Lithuania)

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According to another article about Latin America (also reported by Alexei Barrionuevo ((! - two Sunday Times articles at once - that is legit), here), Rio de Janeiro is implementing a police "occupation" of a number of the city's largest slums in an attempt to re-take them from gang domination. Part of the impetus is that Brazil is hosting the World Cup in 2014 (in addition to the Olympics in Rio in 2016): "The campaign is an expansion of a police “pacification program” that began in late 2008. It comes as Brazilian officials are feeling the weight of international scrutiny."

413. Who's the current odds-favorite to win the World Cup in South Africa?

414. Are the Brazilians consulting with Mexico at all about anti-drug and anti-gang efforts? How much do different countries' and cities' police forces share and consult with each other about tactics and approaches?

I continue to always use "The Wire" as my mental reference when I read articles about policing.

Brazil: Lula da Silva and the 2010 Election to Succeed Him

I'm reading The Economist's World in 2010, which Tuck gave me for Christmas. What a treat!! (I'm having a hard time deciding whether to renew my subscription to The New Yorker or go to another magazine for a while - I'm considering The New Republic but I do love the variety of issues that TNY covers. I don't think I'll go back to The Economist for a while because there's just too much to read in it, but this annual issue rocks!)

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An article about Brazil says that the country is thriving. They were one of the last nations to enter the recession and one of the first to emerge from it. It sounds as though people (both Brazilians and international commentators) give Luiz Inacia Lula da Silva high marks for his leadership.

Lula was elected in 2002 and his second term ends in 2010. The race to succeed him will be contested by the opposition party (in fact, it promises to be a close election according to The Economist), notwithstanding his popularity.

One of the reasons for the general positivity in Brazil is that they discovered significant amounts of oil in their offshore waters. I had not heard about this. It's interesting: no matter how much Thomas Friedman writes about the importance of the emerging green economy, many of economics articles still focus on which countries have fossil fuels.

Mexico: Cash and Drugs on the Border

We've just had a wonderful Christmas. Together and sharing and cozy. At church on Christmas Eve, Paul Walker spoke about welcoming others warmly, and how Jesus was not welcomed that way by the world. I want to work on warm welcomes in 2010.

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The big news over the past several days was that the Senate passed its health care bill, 60-39, on the morning of Christmas Eve. Tuck told me that Harry Reid accidentally voted no, giving Mitch McConnell a good laugh. I liked this personal, human anecdote.

390. How long will it take for the conference committee to generate a bill for both houses to vote on? Which will be a bigger sticking point: abortion or the taxation of "Cadillac plans"? My prediction is that a bill will be passed by the end of January.

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In this morning's Times, James C. McKinley, Jr. and Marc Lacey report (here) about the enormous amounts of cash flowing back and forth over the US/Mexico border, stemming from the drug trade. The article is well-reported. It reinforces my sense that every front page story about Mexico focuses on the drug issue.

The article makes it sounds as though the Mexican cartels operate similarly to the American mob in the 1950's and 1960's -- with a hand in various different industries and small-scale retailers being forced to pay bribes in order to remain in operation.

391. What portion of the world's economy operates through cash transactions, as opposed to checks and credit cards?

392. What's the largest amount of cash that non-criminals carry in their wallets/purses on a daily basis? Are there many people who carry more than $1,000 at a time?

393. What is Vicente Fox doing in his retirement? Do Mexicans give their ex-Presidents the same level of respect (ceremonial awe) as do Americans?

394. Will the Mexican drug trade increase of decrease in 2010? Are the efforts to decrease the flow of drugs having any discernible effect?

Chile: Michele Bachelet and Marco Enriquez-Ominami

Michele Bachelet is the President of Chile. Elected in 2006, she is a pediatrician, has three children, and has been separated twice. According to her profile on Wikipedia, she is a self-described agnostic.

Two articles in this week's Economist give Bachelet high marks for her leadership of Chile, particularly in terms of navigating the country through the recession. A specific example is a house-building program in Santiago, which has provided both jobs and low-cost housing. Also, Bachelet's administration saved a bunch of money when the price of copper (a major Chilean export) reached record levels early in her term, and it has used this money to pay for a stimulus package which is 2.8% of GDP.

The Economist reports that Bachelet's coalition (the Concertacion) has "written into law a fiscal rule requiring the government to balance the budget over the economic cycle."

300. What does "over the economic cycle" mean? That phrasing seems to give the government quite a bit of wiggle room.

301. Is there anyone in the US Congress pushing for a balanced budget amendment at the moment? Do any Democratic/progressive economists espouse such an amendment? Bill Clinton was the last of the budget-balancers, I think -- where does he stand in terms of the Obama Administration's approach to stimulating the economy?

302. Very interesting that Bachelet describes herself as an agnostic. I cannot recall another national leader who does not claim adherence to a particular faith -- are there others?

In the past twenty years, Chile's poverty rate has fallen from 45% to 13.7%.

303. Which is the "richest" South American nation? Which is the poorest?

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The Economist says that one of the candidates to succeed Bachelet is a 36 year old named Marco Enriquez-Ominami, who is described as "a dissident Socialist congressman."

According to the magazine, Ominami does not have much of a chance of actually winning, but he has shaken up the system to some extent:

"He, rather than his policies, is the message. His candidacy is a protest against the Concertacion's failure to hold a national primary election and against what he sees as the domination of aging and unaccountable party bosses. He wants a political reform, partly to sweep away the electoral system of two-member constituencies bequeathed by Pinochet. This is widely reckoned to cement the power of the party bosses, block minority parties and prevent political renewal. It has contributed to a worrying alienation from politics among younger Chileans."

Ominami sounds like a thorn in the establishment's side. I wonder if he'll have staying power to influence the Chilean system.

I love the way the Economist and other British publications use the term "reckon."

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I checked my old journals to see if I'd written about Bachelet's election. Here's an entry from March 12, 2006:

"Chile: Michele Bachelet was sworn in as President. She is the first woman to be elected a head of state in South America without replacing her husband. She supports a 50% quota for female hires throughout much of the public sector. She is an emphatic backer of globalization and free market policies. She replaces outgoing President Ricardo Lagos, who has 75% approval ratings."

Deforestation

Elisabeth Rosenthal has a piece in yesterday's New York Times (here) about programs to pay Brazilian landowners not to cut down forestland.

This article is part of an ongoing series in the Times about different approaches to combating climate change. Rosenthal reports that deforestation accounts for 20% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions; Brazil and Indonesia are the two countries where forests are currently being cut down the most.

Rosenthal cites to an example of a farmer being offered $12 per acre not to cut down his forest to turn it into soy fields. The farmer is skeptical that this price is enough to convince him to save the forest, and much of the article addresses the difficulty of coming up with a price that all sides will deem fair.

Neldo Egon Weirich is the secretary of agriculture of Mato Grasso (a region that is Brazil's leading producer of soy, corn and cattle), and he points out the inconsistent messages given to Brazilian farmers over time: thirty/forty years ago they were encouraged to move into the area and clear "useless" forest in order to enable crop production, and now they're being given the exact opposite message.

The article makes an interesting point about property law in remote parts of Brazil: oftentimes, clearning the forest is a way to establish one's ownership; if left unclear, the owner is much more likely to face the possibility of squatters.

The photographs are from the article and were taken by Damon Winter.

Carlos Slim, Telmex, and The New York Times

Lawrence Wright, in this week's New Yorker, profiles Mexico's Carlos Slim. Slim is the third-richest person in the world (behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett), and some of the best parts of the article discuss his relatively plain lifestyle: he drives his own car, is the only Mexican among the two hundred richest without a home in the US, and wears clothes with holes in them (now this I love!).

From childhood, Slim was fascinated with compound interests and investments, and it sounds like he steadily built a diverse portfolio of business/real estate investments (including Sanborns (a Wal-Mart type chain in Mexico), Seguros de Mexico (an insurance company), Reynolds Aluminum, etc.) -- he and timed certain buy/sell decisions perfectly (further evidence for my theory that a significant portion of business success can depend on one's sense of timing).

His key investment -- the one that took him from rich to super rich -- is/was his take in Telmex, Mexico's national phone company which was privatized in the early 1990's.

Slim's (and his wife's) parents were immigrants from Lebanon, and the article points out that Mexico has a large number of immigrants from the Middle East.

239. So many fortunes have been made, during the past twenty years, in the phone // cell phone // telecommunications industry. What's the current industry that's similarly positioned, today, to take off? I assume it's some subcategory within health care technology, and I imagine that there's tremendous energy within the investment world devoted to identifying the particular subcategory.

240. The article points out that Slim has acquired large debt and equity stakes in the New York Times Company. Thomas Friedman speaks glowingingly about the Sulzberger family's stewardship of the Times, but other sources say they are not good business managers. Does Slim view the Times as a fun hobby-investment for the retirement stage of his life, or does he genuinely think there's money to be made in it?

GDP Declines Significantly in Mexico (and in Germany and Japan)

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the following annualized declines in first quarter GDP have been reported in the past two weeks:

• Mexico: Minus 21.5%
• Japan: Minus 15.2%
• Germany: Minus 14.4%

The article points out that all three countries depend on exports to the US -- and US consumer demand has decreased significantly.

Mexico has a $47 billion credit line set up with the IMF.

228. Does Mexico's credit line mean that it is in danger of defaulting on its loans (ie, the Mexican equivalent of US Treasuries)?

Tourism in Mexico is taking (and is expected to continue to take) a major hit from the swine flu outbreak. Hotels in Cancun are running at 29% occupancy for the month of May.

229. Of all US consumer purchases, which one is taking the biggest hit during the recession? Flat screen TV's? SUV's? Granite countertops?

Swine Flu Outbreak

Within the past several days, there has been an outbreak of swine flu, starting in Mexico and spreading to the US, Canada, Spain, Scotland, and Israel.

152 people have died from the flu in Mexico (the photo on the left is of Mexico City).

The World Health Organization raised the pandemic threat alert level yesterday, but the WHO also recommended against the closing of borders or imposition of travel bans. Certain European countries, however, have recommended against traveling to North America, and a number of countries are checking incoming travelers for the flu.

A number of students at a private high school in Queens have come down with the flu, and it turns out that a group of seniors there had gone to Cancun for spring break.

David Brooks writes, this morning, that this episode is testing whether the best response to global, decentralized crises is via central bureaucracies (like the WHO) or via decentralized response centers. He favors the decentralized approach:

"The decentralized approach is more credible. It is a fact of human nature that in times of crisis, people like to feel protected by one of their own. They will only trust people who share their historical experience, who understand their cultural assumptions about disease and the threat of outsiders and who have the legitimacy to make brutal choices. If some authority is going to restrict freedom, it should be somebody elected by the people, not a stranger."

217. The Times reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is lacking in senior staff because a number of Obama appointees have not yet been confirmed. Why is it taking the Senate so long to confirm people?

Obama at the Summit of the Americas

Obama has been in Trinidad and Tobago for the past several days for the "Summit of the Americas" meeting of North, Central and South American leaders.

On the first day, the media coverage of the Summit focused on criticism - by Hugo Chavez and others - of the US embargo on Cuba (notwithstanding the Obama administration's loosening of travel restrictions for Cuban emigrants). Chavez et al. pointed out the inconsistency of our willingness to engage in North Korea Iran versus continued intransigence when it comes to Cuba. Raul Castro also made some comments that were interpreted as emphasizing the ongoing disagreements between the US and Cuba, as opposed to talking about improvements in the relationship.

Today's Post has a very interesting article about Obama having talked, during the course of this Summit, considerably more about his race than he did during the recent European trip:

In talking about his race and the backgrounds of his counterparts, Obama is associating himself more closely than his predecessors did with Latin America's indigenous, black and mixed-race underclass, which has long identified the United States with economic policies that benefit the elite of European descent far more than them.

The approach has helped to reduce, though not eliminate, the expected political strife between Obama and such populist leaders as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of his country.

Mexico: The Merida Initiative

An article in today's Washington Post (here) says that the US is not living up to the promises made in the 2007 Merida Initiative.

Merida (which was named for the capital of Yucatan, where the relevant meetings were held) was an agreement between Bush and Felipe Calderon for an increased US commitment to fighting Mexico's drug trade.

The US committed $1.4 billion through Merida, but so far we've only actually spent $7 million. One of the specific items that we promised but have so far not delivered is attack helicopters.

More than 10,000 Mexicans have died from drug violence during the past three years.

According to the article, the four countries which receive the most US money for military programs are:

1. Israel
2. Egypt
3. Jordan
4. Pakistan

179. Why on earth would the State and/or Defense Departments be delaying this money? I know my sense of dollar amounts has gotten all screwed up by the size of the bailout and stimulus packages, but $1.4 billion seems like a drop in the bucket. Why wouldn't Janet Napolitano have made a big deal about Merida, and the US's living up to its promises thereunder, when she talked about border security a few weeks back?

60 Minutes Story on Mexico's Drug War

On 60 Minutes tonight, Anderson Cooper reports on Mexico's drug war.

When he became President of Mexico two years ago, Felipe Calderon declared war against the country's five major drug cartels. The cartels have responded with increased violent attacks against Mexican police. In 2008, 6,300 people were killed in Mexico's drug wars. 90% of the guns used in Mexican drug violence come from the US.

Cooper interviews Janet Napolitano, who is the head of the Department of Homeland Security. There is a concern that drug violence could spill across the border into the US. Very interesting (and helpful) that Napolitano appears to be focusing on this issue. Cooper also interviews Sandra Beltran, a jailed high-level female drug lord.

107. Do the drugs that Mexican cartels control/traffic originate in Columbia and other parts of Latin America? Or do they actually originate in Mexico?

108. Are the Mexican drug wars mainly about cocaine? Do they involve marijuana, or is marijuana "small beans" for big-time drug lords?

109. Does the stimulus package include any money for "fighting" drugs, either by way of assistance to Mexico or rehab/treatment programs for drug users and addicts?

110. Will the Democratic Congress move forward on better gun control laws (I have not heard any reports about Obama focusing on gun control as a priority)?