A mayor in the capital leads, but will the rest follow?

26/10/2010

“Everybody talks about drug trafficking, but it’s an effect, not a cause. The origin of the problem is that there are too many young people and too many families without prospects. If more than half of the young people in Juárez don’t go to school, what do you expect?”

- Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, Mayor of Mexico City

I wanted to write about Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón. The man behind the new Mexico City—a now socially liberal bastion in a sea of social conservatism—the only place in the country where two men or women can get married, a woman can have an abortion, and where school dropout rates have decreased from 23% to 6%, in great part because of educational reforms in the Distrito Federal that have made 230,000 scholarships available.

I wanted to write about him because he reminded me of Antanas Mockus (http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/opinion/story.html?id=b2dc0a93-7c8e-42b5-9156-b096dbd413e1), the former mayor of Bogota whose successful but unconventional tactics there turned him into a legitimate Presidential candidate.

“Fight the drug trafficking? That’s necessary. It has to be done, but that doesn’t excite anyone. That has to be a prosecutor’s agenda not a country’s…”

As Mockus did, Ebrard refuses to be intimidated by both the traditional and contemporary sources of Mexican power. But while I admire and support his philosophy of fighting the “cause” instead of the “effect”, I wish I could believe he’ll be given the opportunity to implement it at the national level.

People are willing to experiment with innovators like Mockus or Ebrard in a city—and metropolises at that; a country, for obvious reasons, is a different animal. And assuming, which I think is fair, that this battle with the cartels will at the very least continue at its current bloody pace, it’s unlikely the majority of the Mexican electorate will be open to the suggestion of fighting them with increased budget allocations to health and education.

I wish I didn’t, but I see Ebrard fading into obscurity like Mockus, politicians with ideas for which their countries aren’t ready.

When FARC reemerged following the Santos election, only to be put down swiftly by the new administration, I admit I wondered if the mathematician-philosopher would have dealt with the terrorist threat as effectively; but when another thirteen minors are gunned down in Tijuana, in of all places, a rehabilitation center—I don’t see how the security situation in Mexico can improve under the current strategy.

I instinctively cringed when I read about the authorities’ massive seizure of marijuana in Tijuana last week; the requisite photo-op and the gloating—as if the victory were free—as if there wouldn’t be retribution.

15 innocent teenagers shot at a party in Juárez, then 13 more at the rehabilitation center in Tijuana last night, followed by a message that took over the airwaves: “this is just getting started.” The police have been warned: these 28 will be followed by 107 more, apparently 1 for each ton of marijuana seized.

The guns used to commit these crimes are American—to the tune of 90%, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Californians are debating the legalization of marijuana with Proposition 19, and the Merída Initiative is looking a lot more like poor man’s Plan Colombia.

It’s almost too frustrating to be tragic—because the only people without any say in what approach should be taken are predictably those suffering the most.

But they will have a say in 2012.

The pessimist in me sees Ebrard as another Mockus; the optimist sees Ebrard replacing a truculent and manipulative Obrador on the PRD ticket in 2012, defeating a tired incumbent in PAN, and a PRI most expect would return the country to the days of even more widespread mordidas (bribes) and— of course—la vista gorda (looking the other way).

Marisol Valles García, a twenty-year old criminology student became new police chief in Práxedis G. Guerrero (a small town of 3400 next to Ciudad Juárez) last week and was almost immediately described as the bravest woman in Mexico; it’s time to have the courage at the national level to at least try something different.

It's hard to imagine a failure worse than the status quo.

A new port, and just in time for coca to become the new rosemary

22/10/2010

Back in 2007, Oxford economist Paul Collier wrote a book touted by former Presidents and the brightest financial minds as an innovative analysis of and policy prescription for the numerous challenges faced by the developing world.

Of the challenges Collier indentified in “the Bottom Billion”, one to which I would constantly return was the geopolitical misfortune of being landlocked; though hardly a reinvention of the wheel, it’s hard to dispute. Of the 47 landlocked countries in the world, the minority that defy the theory really only consists of European countries with high-quality transportation infrastructures and trade agreements that make up for their maritime deficiencies.

In the Latin American context, up until this past Tuesday anyway, the list was limited to Bolivia and Paraguay—two countries often grouped together as regional laggards. But on Tuesday, Bolivian President Evo Morales and his Peruvian counterpart Alan García signed a deal giving Bolivia a 99 year lease on a 3.6 square kilometer piece of Peruvian shoreline, 15 kilometers from the Peruvian port of Ilo.

Ever since their devastating loss in the War of Pacific (1879-1884), Bolivians have been landlocked and bitter about it—with their long, pencil-shaped neighbor and former enemy’s vast coastline constantly reminding them of what could’ve been. They weren’t a sub-Saharan African country suffering the consequences of arbitrary colonial division; this was a sovereign nation that fought a war and lost badly.

But with an agreement that now allows them to “build a dock, moor naval vessels and operate a free trade zone”, they’ll no longer need to ship their legal commodities through Chile. I say legal, because Evo Morales made another statement this week which surprisingly garnered less attention:

“Friends,” he told a meeting of coca farmers in the Chapare region, “you know that part of our coca is being diverted to the illegal problem.”

The timing is…strange... Morales was reelected in June as union leader of the six coca growing federations in Chapare, and has long emphasized the difference between the shrub and the alkaloid.

“Coca sí, Cocaína no” has been the slogan, but he admits the deal he secured with former President Mesa to allow for additional plantations of coca for legal consumption is only as useful as the cap it established.

Because there is only so much winking and nudging the rest of the world will accept.

Yes, they say, we know chewing the leaf and drinking the tea are part of the Andean cultural and spiritual heritage; yes, we know it cures el soroche (altitude sickness); it improves digestion, acts as an aphrodisiac…

But how much of the stuff do you need?

When even Evo is reluctantly telling the foundation of his support there’s excess supply, it can be assumed the 20,000 hectares the Bolivian government allocated for legal cultivation is being taken as more of a suggestion than a decree. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, for example, suggests it was more like 30,900 hectares—or 1% more than in 2008.

It hasn’t exactly surprised anyone that coca production has increased under the watch of a President who maintains his position as a coca growers union leader, but Morales’ statement shows he’s now trying to reconcile his historical and current allegiance with the obligations of a head of state.

In 2006, a recently elected Alan García compared coca to rosemary and suggested it could even be put in roast dinners.

I’m honestly not sure if he was being facetious.

Back in Bolivia, with a hectare here, and a hectare there, and a brand new port to bring it to the world—I don’t know—I just can see it taking its place anytime soon in between parsley and sage on the spice rack.