Who is blowing these people up? And don’t tell me it’s methane.

27/01/2011

“This tragedy hurts us,” said President Álvaro Uribe back in February 2007.

The tragedy to which he was referring was an explosion in the La Preciosa mine that left thirty-one miners dead. There would be an investigation, he assured, to make sure the company had all the right permits and licenses as far security was concerned.

That, I imagine, would’ve been carried out by Ingeominas (the Colombian geology and mining institute—attached to the Ministry of Mines and Energy).

It’s their mandate to monitor “geological hazards.”

Was there a report?

I couldn’t find it.

But even I did, I couldn’t see it being of much use. Even if they had found fault or made recommendations, nothing has been done.

Hell, I couldn’t even find the name of the mining company.

This would become a trend…

So yesterday morning, when an explosion killed at least 20 in the very same mine in Sardinata, Colombia—I wasn’t surprised I had the same problem.

I asked people I thought would know—NGOs that monitor this kind of thing, for example; they couldn’t give me an answer either.

As El Tiempo revealed, it wasn’t “BHP Billiton, Anglo American, Xstrata, Drummond, or Glencore.”

No. It was “far” away from their operations.

It was “a mine producing coal for local consumption.”

Good. I was worried.

When two other recent mining accidents occurred in Colombia last November and June, Reuters was also clear there were no multinationals involved:

AMAGA, Colombia (Reuters) Thu Jun 17, 2010 5:13pm EDT

“The blast at the small underground San Fernando mine occurred far from the major operations run by companies such as Drummond and Glencore near the Caribbean coast of the world's No. 5 coal exporter, which has output of about 70 million tonnes a year and is enjoying a boom in investment.”

BOGOTA (Reuters)| Wed Nov 24, 2010 9:29am EST

“The accidents were far from key coal operations of Drummond, Cerrejon and Glencore's Prodeco...”

I, for one, slept a lot better last night knowing there were no multinationals involved. Not our corporations, not our problem. Besides, there is absolutely nothing heartwarming about this story. It’s not Copiapó, and no rescued miners will play soccer with President Santos and his cabinet. No book deal. No movie.

Just the same explanation: methane gas—like last time, and the time before that.

So this time around, whose fault is it? Anyone’s?

As a local municipal official explained yesterday, “All their papers are in order.”

To that, William Villamizar, the Governor of the North of Santander department added: “This type of mine is subject to rigorous control and extreme supervision by Ingeominas.”

Well, Mr. Villamizar, if that’s the case—someone isn’t doing a good job. Because all they seem to be supervising are miners being blown up…

I don’t mean to make light of this. There’s absolutely nothing funny about this tragedy. And nothing short of a tragedy it is. But June, November, January—when will methane stop being an acceptable answer?

Someone should take responsibility for this.

Even if it is a small company producing for domestic use…

Personally, I’d be satisfied with a name.

The Freedom to laugh

19/01/2011

Though almost universally recognized as a paragon of courage for having suffered through years of torment in a Siberian gulag, and equally respected for the role he played in bringing to an end the Soviet Union, Natan Sharansky is a much more polarizing figure when it comes to the influence his philosophy had on a receptive George W. Bush. Some even go as far as to argue that if it weren't for "The Case for Democracy", the Bush administration would never have got the United States entangled in foreign wars the likes of which make even the casual isolationist cringe.

I only got around to actually reading it a few months ago, so I was late getting to the party. Even so, the points he makes--whether you agree with him or not, will never lose their relevance. I thought about Sharansky again a few days ago when an announcement was made that the Colombian soap opera Chepe Fortuna would no longer be broadcast in Venezuela. According to President Chávez, the show's writers were guilty of disrespecting Venezuelans. I immediately thought of Sharansky's method of measuring freedom: "The Town Square Test".

"The Town Square Test" is simple: Anyone, anywhere, who can't go to a public place and express their views openly, isn't living in a free society. Graceful as it is in its clarity, his dialectic leaves no room to maneuver; and he's the first to admit it's Manichean, or black and white. But how do you apply that to humor--and especially to that which might be disrespectful if not excessively offensive?

Political satire, in the North American context, is a developed medium; in the U.S., millions tune in to watch Saturday Night Live during the election season (though that's often the only time they'll watch it), just as many Canadians watch Ron Mercer every Tuesday night. These audiences have been and generally are the politically-aware--those well-informed and up-to-date with the national and international blunders of their politicians. As such, they've come to expect nuanced, clever, and subtler material.

Chepe Fortuna has the subtlety of a slap in the face.

In one episode, a main character by the name of Venezuela loses her little dog named Hugo, which causes her great distress.

The obese, unattractive Venezuela laments:

"What will I do without him?"

The man with whom she's talking replies:

"You'll be free, Venezuela, because lately little Hugo has been doing his business in everyone's houses and making you look bad."

Oh, and then there's the contrast with her virtuous sister, Colombia.

The authors were, as you might expect, dismayed by the National Telecommunications Commission's decision to ban their show. One of the censored authors responded:

"The only intention we ever had in writing this soap opera was to amuse people, to show that not only Colombians, but Venezuelans can reduce our conflicts through humor. At no moment did we want to offend them or harm them."

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Here we're raised to believe in the unalienable right to be as puerile and simplistic as you want to be. But what about a hypothetical American TV show with two characters named, I don't know--America and Canada. They're brothers, although the relationship is more paternal than fraternal. And Canada is the repulsively obsequious one who does everything he's told to do.

Would my patriotic sensibilities be insulted?

I doubt it.

But even if they were, that'd probably still be a good thing.

Because regardless of whether or not it's funny, there's no freedom of speech without the freedom to laugh.

The change game. Or whatever you want to call it.

12/01/2011

In almost any small business transaction— and for the sake of simplicity we can use a restaurant as an example, the expectation that the paying party won’t have the exact amount owed is usually fairly reasonable. That’s not to say it’s unreasonable for a juice vendor to balk at breaking a big bill for a glass of freshly squeezed OJ, but only that any restaurant doing a substantial amount of sales should probably only find themselves short of change under the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Apparently not everyone is of that opinion.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were given a tongue-lashing in Colombia by an Israeli traveler for suggesting that a server who takes more than half an hour to get you change doesn’t deserve a tip. But she wasn’t accusing us of being cheap; she was accusing us of being ignorant—a you’re-not- in-Kansas-anymore-Toto kind of thing. She said something along the lines of: ‘you’re imposing Western standards of service on the developing world.’

Our problem was that the place had all the trappings of an establishment trying to meet those so-called ‘Western’ standards: ambient lighting, an overpriced fusion menu, aesthetically-pleasing if not ergonomic furniture. So forgive us, we said, if the fact they were located in the ‘developing world’ didn’t give them carte blanche to suck when it came to providing the most basic and fundamental of services.

In the end it was simple.

It all boiled down to this Israeli not being bothered by the change game. She’d either played before and had the patience of Job, or hadn’t yet experienced the Coleridgian dilemma of yes—having money money everywhere but not a person who’d accept it.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

I’d refused to play the change game in Colombia, in Peru, in Bolivia; and on occasion I’d actually eat for heavily discounted prices—anything for them to avoid giving me change.

Did I feel like a prick?

Yeah, sometimes. Because in trying to buy something, I was made made to feel like a thief—but sometimes the customer is actually right.

The Argentine version of the change game, at least in my experience, was less ubiquitous. There was change aplenty. They just made up for it in scale. In truth, it was more of a reimbursement game, but that requires some explanation.

Buenos Aires, 2008—it went something like this: our landlord was a neurotic psychiatrist who looked like Billy Crystal after a month long crack binge, and who insisted we turn our living room into a third bedroom he could rent out. That this made absolutely no sense to anyone else, didn’t stop him from coming in unannounced with prospective tenants who always left quickly, embarrassed at having any association with the man I’ll call Fabian.

As you’d imagine, it quickly became intolerable.

We told him to give us the next month’s rent back and we’d leave as soon as possible.

The problem was he couldn’t.

He didn’t have the money. He supposedly owned three apartments and yet didn’t have enough cash in hand to reimburse us one month’s rent.

Our unintentional bluff won us some peace and quiet, but the absurdity of it all stuck with me.

I revisited it again this week after reading about the current cash shortage disrupting the country. As El País reported two days ago, “hordes of angry customers at ATMs, and multiple protests across the country, these are the situations being lived in Argentina these last two weeks because of a cash shortage, especially of 100 Peso bills, some 20 Euros, which have made cashing paychecks difficult and forced a Buenos Aires railway line to allow passengers to travel for free as a result of being unable to give them change.”

I guess it’s kind of ironic in a country notorious for inflation, which the simplest of definitions reveal to be nothing more than the complete opposite—an excess of money. But as it’s been there in the past, everyone’s playing the game—it’s just that few know the rules.

When I wrote a few weeks ago about the IMF coming back to Argentina, my point was that it didn’t take an economist to smell a rat. The doubt was palpable. The National Statistics and Census Institute had been complicit in the government’s cover-up of the true inflation rate. And the truth, which would be unearthed at a snail’s place by an army of IMF experts, wouldn’t be pretty.

Almost a month later, with the presidential election still slowly approaching, the public hasn’t needed to wait for the diagnosis. The proof has been in the pudding.

The opposition has seized the moment; it’s time for a new denomination, they’re arguing. 100 pesos isn’t enough anymore.

As opportunistic as that suggestion might be, it’s hard to contest.

Ignorant or not, I’ve always refused to play the change game because my experience led me to believe the root of the problem was laziness or idle indifference. The last-second resourcefulness that would somehow consistently save the day would also consistently reaffirm that belief. Because if I’d thought someone was seriously losing out, I obviously would’ve played.

Because whatever it's called and wherever it's played, a game is only fun when all the participants know the rules.

Nothing lasts forever, except for maybe November rain in Venezuela

05/01/2011

Over the past few months I’ve seen firsthand the damage uncharacteristically torrential rains have inflicted on Colombia: mudslides that killed hundreds and displaced millions, massive road closures, declared states of emergency in 28 of the 32 departments, and a President who sought every tool at his disposal to help his people, democratically; in neighboring Venezuela, where flooding has also taken its toll, the emergency measures President Chávez has used to 'help' victims have been unmistakably…dictatorial.

You were right, Axl, even November (and let me add December) rain don’t last forever, but if you manipulate the weather enough, you truly don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows, or the rain falls.

The United States swore in its 112th Congress today, as did Venezuela. The difference is that Jim Boehner and the Republicans are proof of what happens in a democracy with a functioning opposition. In Venezuela on the other hand, where newly elected opposition members also took their seats on this 5th day of January, they’ve found themselves redundant. And all thanks to the rain...

Since Chavez’s gerrymandering led to the Venezuelan opposition winning only 67 seats in the September legislative elections (ok, technically 69 if you count the two won by the PPT) —much less than what they should’ve come away with, but enough to disrupt his ‘Bolivarian’ plan, the race has been on for him to secure as much dictatorial power in those final three months as possible.

Back in September I wrote, “The PSUV maintains its majority till January, which means they’ll be eager to make as much use of it as they can.”

It wasn’t a prescient observation; the writing was on the wall.

So yeah—God bless the rain.

A little review of what’s happened since—well, the most egregious developments, anyway:

Everything begins with the Enabling Law—a little tool Chávez has used before when he felt the need to rule by decree, though I’d argue never with such exuberance, such panache.

For one thing, those newly elected opposition members, and let’s just limit them to the MUD (la Mesa de la Unidad Democrática)—well, it doesn’t seem they’ll be working too much.

No more than 4 days a month, to be exact.

And I thought Canadian MPs had it easy.

They also won’t be able to switch parties thanks to changes to the Political Party Law, which now prevents it.

Some see this as an obvious attempt to corral discontent in the PSUV...

Ya think?

The appointment of Supreme Court Judges, which as you would expect is supposed to require a modicum of agreement with the opposition, well, that was expedited in order to avoid any pesky disagreements.

The changes to the Law for the Defense of National Sovereignty and Self-Determination have made it so that all NGOs will be barred from receiving any foreign financing. I presume aid in-kind, like say, Cuban doctors, won’t be subject. So at least Mission Barrio Adentro continues.

The amendments to the University Education Law end the autonomy of the main universities by obliging them to be at the service of the “construction of the new socialist model”. What? Yeah, ok, I don’t really know what that means either. I imagine this semester’s term paper topics will be a bit more limited, though.

The Social Responsibility in Radio and Television Law is intended to limit criticism of the government, loosely modeled I presume, on the incredibly effective Chinese paradigm.

Finally, the Banking Institutions Law grants the President the authority to intervene in the financial system as he sees fit. Venezuela officially ended their two-tiered exchange rate yesterday, so it appears the games at the Central Bank have already begun.

As one MUD representative, María Corina Machado, observed: “In Venezuela there’s a coup d’état coming from the state itself.”

The heavy rain has stopped, but the Enabling Law will allow Chávez to rule by decree till June 2012.

Is it reasonable to believe the 2012 Presidential elections will even be close to as fair as this September’s legislative elections?

At the risk of sounding cynical, maybe November rain does last forever.

Sweet saccharine inflation

20/12/2010

I couldn’t have been more than 9, and like any 9-year-old on a hot summer day, I was waiting in the coldest part of my house for a phone call from the only friend I had with a pool. It was a reluctant friendship; at six he’d ordered me off his property and I’d never quite trusted him after that banishment. Ours was a relationship of convenience. We both knew it. And I never fooled myself into thinking I was anything more than a temporary cure for his boredom. And that was fine with me, because as I said, along with having more toys than he knew what to do with…the pool.

Despite being in the basement, I must’ve got to the phone by the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Meet me at the park in 10 minutes.”

Always dictatorial, he’d already hung up. It wasn’t the invitation I’d expected or wanted, but I was curious. I told my mom I was meeting him at the park and immediately ran out the front door.

He was sitting under a giant oak tree with a backpack in front of him and a smug look on his face.

He passed me the backpack.

“Look inside.”

There were more twenty dollar bills than I’d ever seen in my life, and since I was in the habit then of converting everything monetary into its equivalent value in penny candy, my underdeveloped accounting skills told me we had enough money to fill his pool with Swedish berries. And when he told me our next stop was 7-11, I started to think that was a distinct possibility.

As the spending spree came to an end that day—both of us sick from all the candy we’d eaten, I finally admitted to myself how unlikely it was that his grandfather had given him $700 in cash for his birthday. It all got cleared up later that day when his mom called to explain what had happened. The short-lived façade was over; he was grounded for a long time, and I didn’t get to swim there for the rest of the summer.

I guess we all delude ourselves from time to time, but the longer we do, the harder we fall. The stories my Argentine friends have told me about life before and after the 2001-2002 financial crisis often made me think of that indulgent day from my childhood. Former Minister of the Economy Domingo Cavallo had pegged the peso to the dollar at one-to-one, and though it was ostensibly implemented to fight hyperinflation, no one could deny they enjoyed the benefits that came with the façade.

One Argentine friend of mine told me he spent a significant amount of time in England as a teenager, learning the Queen’s and drinking like a proper Londoner; it was the time of his life, and he looked back on it fondly; but he’d always known something wasn’t right. He as a teenager, and I as a 9-year-old, could both smell rats; they just smelled too good to do anything about it.

So when the proverbial shit hit the fan in Buenos Aires and everyone woke up from the nightmare with their savings worth a third of what they had been, the first to feel the wrath of the Argentine populace was the government; the De la Rúa administration had to go. As did the three Peronists who took his place and left as quickly as they came. And when there was finally no one left to blame in government, the hunt for a scapegoat quickly led them to the IMF.

IFM loans and the requirements of neoliberalization were the roots of the problem; they’d been duped, tricked. If the IMF thought an Argentine default was a strong possibility, they shouldn’t have given them the money in the first place.

It was a variation of my friend’s 7-11 defense; his grandpa surely shouldn’t have left all the cash out if he didn’t want it spent on candy and comic books.

It was the drift towards that way of thinking that made the 2005 decision of Néstor Kirchner’s government to pay the IMF debt back in its entirety, a hugely popular ‘up yours’ to the Fund that had abandoned them when they needed them most. No longer would Argentines be beholden to IMF “recommendations”. Given the choice, they chose the highway.

That is up until last week.

After a five year absence, the IMF is back in Buenos Aires—invited by none other than the wife of the man who distanced his government from the Fund. This time, though, they’re there to evaluate what appears to be a flawed Consumer Price Index. It’s believed that for the last 5 years the National Statistics and Census Institute has been underestimating the CPI in Buenos Aires, which is used to represent the nation as a whole. And since the IMF does annual revisions of all its members’ statistics, regardless of whether they’re a debtor nation or not, and the likelihood of a glaring difference in metrics appears to be strong—the Fund has threatened sanctions for non-compliance.

So off to Washington Minister of the Economy Amado Boudou flew, coming back with an announcement that a team of IMF academics and consultants were en route to Buenos Aires to find out what the real inflation rate is.

That answer will come in six months. And though no one is seriously thinking about 2001-2002, it’d be disingenuous to say there isn’t a slight suspicion they’ve again been caught with their hands in the candy (cookie) jar.

The endorsement of a rapist

10/12/2010

In July of ’91, Mike Tyson was still one of the best boxers in the world; aside from a slipup the year before against Buster Douglas, he remained a feared and respected opponent. While that fear wasn’t limited to the ring, however—respect most certainly was. By that point he’d already crashed several sports cars, beaten up a parking attendant, and been accused of domestic violence by his then wife, actress Robin Givens.

His reply to the domestic violence charge was classic Tyson:

“Anyone with a grain of sense would know that if I punched my wife I would rip her head off.”

Misogynistic quips like that that certainly didn’t help his cause when, in July ’91, he was formally charged with the rape of a beauty pageant contestant named Desiree Washington.

His subsequent conviction surprised few; another spoiled professional athlete who finally pushed the envelope as far as he could.

At the time of his sentencing in March of ’92, the Presidential election in the U.S. was still a ways off, and even if it hadn’t been, no GOP strategist in their right mind would’ve suggested calling in some favors to make sure Mike didn’t see jail time; even if he did contribute, say, all his winnings to the Republican Party; even if he did sport shorts with the Republican elephants on them and dedicate his next primetime fight to the President Bush reelection campaign.

The endorsement of a rapist isn’t usually sought after; that is unless you’re in Nicaragua.

One of the latest WikiLeaks gems to be released tells the story of Ricardo Moyorga. Like Tyson, Moyorga was also a boxer, and like Tyson, Moyorga was also an accused rapist. According to the release, Mayorga was facing charges in 2004 before he came to an agreement with the FSLN.

The deal was fairly simple: In exchange for diverting his winnings to Daniel Ortega and the FSLN, and advertising/campaigning on their behalf, an FSLN judge would make sure Mayorga never did any time.

A quid pro quo everyone could live with…

Mayorga fought in Chicago in 2005—in FSLN colors, dedicated the fight to Ortega, and that was that.

But I guess having a pugilist sex-offender stump for you isn’t really that serious when your former Interior Minister and his minions once helped Pablo Escobar load and unload cargo; when the profits of drug trafficking are regularly financing your party's campaigns in exchange for the dismissal of charges; when in more recent developments, members of your government return from Venezuela with suitcases full of money and no explanations.

In Ortega’s defense, it’s never exactly been a fair fight. Sleazy last minute Presidential pardons of the likes of Caspar Weinberger, Elliot Abrams and the rest of the Iran-Contra gang did nothing but remind Latin America how hypocritical American foreign policy in the region has been; yes, democracy. But only as long as the results are predetermined and the right person wins, be it Violetta Chamorro or really anyone who’s name isn’t Daniel Ortega.

True, if Ortega were an American politician he’d have resigned by now or be facing some sort of impeachment proceedings, but he’d probably also be a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

Mayorga, if he didn’t already have a show of his own, wouldn’t be far behind.