The Silliness of Mainstream Punditry on Latin America

Matt Yglesias on what Obama should do now:

And Obama will have more time to spend on foreign policy. How are we going to extricate ourselves from Afghanistan? How can we continue the dialogue with China over trade and currency issues? How can we strengthen ties with India, Brazil, Indonesia and other large developing democracies? How can he work with Dilma Roussef to check the spread of authoritarian populism in the region?

I have little positive to say about Hugo Chávez, but this makes no sense, for a variety of reasons. First, there's been a coup and a half in the past eighteen months in Latin America, something that, if it spreads, poses a greater threat to the region than Chávez. In any event, authoritarian populism, such as it is, is a product of ongoing poverty and inequality along with the ham-handed implementation of free-market economic policies in the 1990s. Alleviating poverty and keeping a closer eye on the losers when implementing economic reform will do infinitely more to limit authoritarian populism than securing the participation of Brazil's president in an anti-Chávez scheme. (That may have been what Yglesias was referring to, but then why do we need Rousseff to do more to address poverty ourselves?)

Second, we tried this already. Rumsfeld went to Brazil in 2005 to try to convince Lula to reign Chávez in, and the gambit failed miserably. Even if Brazil had agreed with Rumsfeld, I don't imagine it would have, in turn, been successful in lowering the volume from Chávez a great deal. In any event, the move worked out quite well for Lula. He stayed on good terms with Chávez, had a less than chummy but not disastrous relationship with the Bush administration, and wound up a superstar. Had he aligned himself with Bush and stuck himself in the middle of an unwinnable ideological brawl, it's quite possible that his current level of prestige wouldn't exist. Rousseff was a huge part of Lula's administration, and presumably she saw how that worked out for her predecessor and mentor. Rousseff may wind up on Chávez's enemies list, but I can't imagine it will be because we asked to her to be meaner to him.

You hear people talk about putting Chávez in his box from time to time, and what Brazil can do or what we can do to see that happen. But Chávez already is in his box. It's called Venezuela. High oil prices or not, there is a limit to what he can do from his perch at the top of the continent. We do not need to spend large amounts of energy seeking to corner him, which perversely increases sympathy for him and prolongs his existence on the world stage.

Lastly, if we want a change of position from Brazil, it's not on Chávez, Correa, et al. It's on Iran. The stakes are much higher, the chances of a moderated Brazilian position much better.

A Rambling Post on Calderón, Polls, and Confusion

Greg Weeks has had an interesting couple of posts chewing on whether Calderón's messaging or his policies are to blame for perceptions of his failure on security. They are a bit hard to summarize, so here they are in their entirety:

From the NYT: when things go bad, just claim that your message is not being sent correctly. Felipe Calderón perhaps learned that from George W. Bush and now Barack Obama as well. It's not that people don't like your policies, it's that they don't understand them well enough:

The administration of President Felipe Calderón has not shown signs of shifting tactics. Rather, his aides believe the problem is that his message — that the violence is a sign that progress is being made — has not been delivered well. There has been a shake-up in his communication staff to improve it.

Shoot your messenger, and all will be well.

And:

In my post from Friday, Pablo from The Cross Culturalist pointed to this poll in Milenio to counter the argument that Felipe Calderón's anti-drug policies are unpopular. Here is the relevant question:

Aprueba o desaprueba la lucha contra el narcotráfico que se está dando ahora en el país?

My translation: Do you approve or disapprove of the fight against narcotrafficking that the country is currently undergoing?

With that question, 69.3 percent approve and 24.7 disapprove. So if 69.3 percent approve, why is the Calderón administration so concerned that no one approves? At least for this particular poll, I would argue that the question is too vague to tell us much. That an overwhelming percentage believe "the fight" is a good thing is not necessarily an indicator that "the specific measures of the Calderón administration" are equally popular.

Otherwise we have a situation where a president grossly underestimates the popularity of one of his major policies. That, as you might guess, is not very common.

That's definitely a vague question, but more specific questions regarding the use of the army against drug traffickers typically yield similar levels of support, so the confusion isn't all a function of the language. Virtually every security poll you see in Mexico contains at least one genuine head-scratcher.

Anyway, I take four basic points out of all this: one, Mexicans support an aggressive crime policy, even if they don't love Calderón's; two, while Calderón has been getting heat for insecurity, people blame the criminals first and foremost; three, while people don't think Calderón's policy is working, they don't see any alternative that will do a lot better; four, the worsening security situation in much of the nation is a significant political problem for Calderón, even if that hasn't translated into lower approval ratings (I'd guess that a lot of the people who say they support Calderón in the approval surveys would also be critical of him on security). Of course, those ideas don't fit particularly well together, and the end result of it is the jumble of conflicting opinions you see in polls.

I do think Calderón's team is right to recognize that their communication efforts have been a failure. They have never seemed to have a consistent PR strategy, operating with priorities that change dramatically from week to week, with little regard for the victims nor reassurance for those who lived in unsafe towns, and with a constant drumbeat of unsupported assertions like, The violence means we're winning, and bellicose rhetoric, i.e. Not a single step back and the like. With some exceptions, the administration has largely let the media set the security agenda, a reflection of the absence of a guiding doctrine. With 30,000 dead, I'm not sure a better PR strategy would have made a huge difference in the nation's mood regarding security, which I take to be Greg's main point. Nor, for that matter, am I particularly convinced that this new communications effort will be markedly better (one worries that Calderón's team mentions convincing people that the violence being a sign that they are winning, something that has been said quite a lot over the past four years, and to little good effect). Furthermore, a more effective communications approach wouldn't have mattered much in terms of his approval rating, what with his super-resistant personal popularity. But the perceptions of failure are a political problem in that they have turned Calderón into a defensive target for his political adversaries, and his team is right to be addressing it.

Larger Cash Flows

FDI in Mexico is bouncing back, Eclac says in a new report, showing the largest increase in the first half of this year of any nation in Latin America with 27 percent. Of course, one of the reasons such a huge increase is possible was the even larger decline in 2009 (50.7 percent), which means that Mexico is still not up to where it was in 2008. There has also been a sharp increase in Mexican investment abroad, which doesn't strike me as a bad thing (in tandem with the first story, it would seem to indicate more investment opportunities and cash flows everywhere), but Excélsior nonetheless wrote a worrying note about that fact.

Little Pea in the Big City*

A goalless game against the Spurs wasn't enough to dampen enthusiasm for Chicharito among Man Utd. followers:

Those with a sunnier disposition have been rejoicing the antics of Chicharito. It’s truly good news that the young lad is turning into a dead-eyed killer in front of goal. His humility is darn refreshing too in a world of £200 cigarettes. Look a little closer though and you’ll see that Berbatov hasn’t hit the back of the net for a while now.

One can only assume the sentiment remains only somewhat diminished after another goalless game yesterday in Turkey (the piece is from Sunday). I also second the notion from author Mark Payne that the recent efforts from Man Utd. have been less than thrilling from an entertainment perspective.

*Manchester is actually much smaller than Guadalajara, but accuracy has to be sacrificed at times to make a post a bit more lyrical.

More Drugs in Tijuana

Yesterday, police tracked down another 13 tons of marijuana in Tijuana, bring the total in recent days to just under 150 tons. Which is to say, a lot. There's understandably some speculation that this is Mexican gangsters hoping to push some big loads across before California legalizes the stuff. I'm not sure if that's true, but there's some logic to it.

Random Yet Interesting Demographic Data

From 2009 to 2005, the number of weddings in Mexico declined by 39 percent, while the number of divorces increased by 60 percent. The authors of the study also say that there has been a corresponding increase in the number of cohabitating couples, as well as, we can only presume, wealthy divorce lawyers being chased by extortionists.

Also, a report from May indicated that the number female drinkers in Mexico has tripled in the past 20 years, with the number of excessive drinkers going from 6.6 percent of the population to more than 20 percent. I wonder if the second stat has anything to do with the first.

If You Wake Up Every Morning Asking Why Can't Will Ferrell and Manny Pacquiao Collaborate on Some Classic Pop Songs*, Then Today's Your Day

*I know that's my first thought each morning. Or at least it used to be.

Escalation?

This line from a Post piece on Patricia González's brother's kidnapping and videotaped confession jumps out:

Gonzalez's kidnapping and his forced video "confession," with its similarities to the propaganda produced by terrorists, represent a stark escalation in a drug war that has left 30,000 dead over the past four years. The warring cartels often accuse government officials of corruption but rarely in such al-Qaeda-style videos.

The second sentence refutes the first. The only thing even marginally new about this was the fact that the guys are dressed up in fatigues and holding assault rifles. Everything else you see has been going on for years. An anti-kidnapping cop in Torreón was taped crying, beaten, and confessing every illicit relationship and smuggling maneuver in the region back in 2007, and though jarring, it was nothing new even then. La Barbie videotaped the execution of a bunch of Zetas and uploaded to Youtube in 2005. Nothing in this most recent video outstrips that.

Not to make too much of what is essentially a small point, but this isn't an escalation in any real sense of the word, and to say that it is strikes me as misleading and alarmist. Two frustrating things about the coverage of Mexico in the American media is the relentless focus on crime at the expense of everything else going on in the nation, and the need to constantly describe things as unprecedentedly bad. Things may be bad, but it's not every episode is the worst thing to ever befall Mexico and Mexicans. I recognize that reporters want to find a new way to tell a rather repetitive story, but the proper way to deal with this isn't to make things seem ever worse.

Unsatisfied

Using info from an OECD report, El Universal tells us that 12 million Mexicans ages 15-29, or about a third of the total of that age group, are unsatisfied with their jobs. That number actually seems low to me; I didn't think anyone under 35 was satisfied with work anywhere in the world. The report also says that close to 7 million youths neither work nor study, which constitutes the worrisome group known the "ni-nis". I'm not sure what age group they are referring to, but El Universal tells us it's about 35 percent of the total, so I imagine it's something like 15-23 years old. Anyway, this group is often held up as fertile recruiting ground for organized crime, which makes the goal of getting them studying and working all the more imperative. Even if the link to a future in crime is exaggerated (and I suspect that it may be), it's still a worthy goal.

The Newest Market for Organized Crime

Excélsior reports that criminal gangs are making hay selling stolen American yachts in the Yucatán, where they are sold for roughly one quarter or one half of their regular retail price. According to the report, some 300 yachts were stolen from American docks in August alone, although the fact that there's no credible estimate of how many stolen yachts have been sold in Mexico kind of reduces the story's impact.

A Somewhat More Serious Example of the Lack of Professionalism in Mexico's Educational System

An NGO called Mexicanos Primero issued a report saying that there are 17,000 public school teachers, all of them drawing paychecks paid by taxpayers, who are not actually teaching, but are actually assigned to administrative posts inside the teacher's union, the SNTE. Some of these teachers are actually collecting checks for up to four different posts, say the authors. This kind of thing, while alarming, is not unusual in Mexico. However, what is slightly more worrying is that the SEP reported to Congress that the number of such teachers was just over 10,000. In fact, it seems to be 70 percent higher, so either the SEP is lying, or no one has a good sense of who is where, nor, consequently, how much the confusion is costing the Mexican state.

A Minor Example of the Lack of Professionalism in Mexico's Educational System

The Secretariat of Public Education announced yesterday that there will be a four-day weekend for the Day of the Dead, which is Tuesday. Needless to say, parents, teachers, and anyone else invested in educational quality would prefer to have a little more of a heads-up than zero school days. You had a long review today for a test to be taken on Monday? Sorry, Teach, you're outta luck.

When I was teaching in Mexico, this kind of thing would happen at least three or four times a year. I once was advised with about 12 hours of notice that I had to go to a day-long seminar on the day that my students were taking a semestral exam. The seminar would invariably involve listening to meaningless platitudes from a self-important veteran of the SNTE, or someone younger leading workshops and just kind of moving things along, in case that the resident veteran decided to stop by. It would just make you want to shake the people responsible.

Never a Dull Moment

A pair of women dressed only in their underwear burst into the Mexico City legislative session yesterday, demanding "housing" (Milenio's characterization) and the resignation of the delegation chief in Gustavo A. Madero. Subsequent reports have indicated that Víctor Hugo Lobo Román remains in office, despite the demands.

Out of the Textbooks and into Real Life: Deadweight Loss

I've enjoyed Matt Yglesias' reincarnation as a microeconomics professor:

What about the case of unauthorized downloading of music files. Consider Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”. This tune costs $1.29 on iTunes. At that price, some people will buy it. Others will refuse. You might refuse because you hate Katy Perry and hate the idea of owning one of her songs. But say you’re not a hater. You’re just a skeptic and a cheapskate. You’d gladly pay a dime for the song were that an option, and since the marginal cost of distribution is basically zero it would be profitable to sell you the song for a dime. But it’s not an option, since the overal profit-maximizing price is $1.29. And say there are a million people like you out there. That adds up to $100,000 in deadweight loss—the value of the transactions blocked by copyright protection.

I think he gets this wrong, though. While price should always equal marginal cost in a competitive industry, I'm not sure iTunes would be able to stay in business if it was charging only 10 cents per song, because presumably the fixed costs would be too great. Therefore, when it comes to digital music vendors, we might have to choose between paying far more than the marginal cost per song or vendors not staying in the market.

Anger on the Left

In a column about how a constant stream of bitterness undermines AMLO's political prospects, René Avilés closes with the following paragraph:

Without a doubt AMLO will run, and although Ebrard has won some support among the party leadership, it's impossible to hide the support the activists have for Obrador. At some point the work he has methodically put in every municipality will manifest itself. Then there will be another modification: the PRD will cede political space and it will be take by the PT, that strange creature of the Salinas de Gortari brothers. We will then have a new left further left and more violent than the old one. Above all because it will be the "armed" wing for López Obrador. Despite these underhanded maneuvers, it will be defeated in the coming presidential cycle.

I foresee something pretty similar. The only question mark for this election is if Ebrard can actually catch up to AMLO in the polls and build a claim to being the candidate, but even if he does, AMLO is still going to run. The long-term question is if and when if Ortega and the like can definitively marginalize AMLO and his ilk.

Unfortunately, Avilés also compares the former DF mayor to Adolfo López Mateos, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (about here he lost me), and Hitler. That is an authoritarian too far for me, as Nazis tend to be with any comparison not involving a genocidal regime. But the point about the political anger of the Mexican left is still a good one, despite the ridiculous analogy. This week's prime example came from Gerardo Fernández Noroña (H/T), whose diatribes are reliably insane, when he accused Calderón of being a drunk and a murderer. It's hard to win over the 300,000 votes AMLO was lacking in 2006, much less the support of the several million necessary to build a durable coalition, if major figures from the Mexican left are tossing around that kind of nonsense.

Warden Arrested

The director of the Puente Grande prison in Jalisco, one of the common destinations for the nation's most dangerous criminals, has been arrested by Interpol in Mexico City for suspected links to organized crime. Stories like this are painfully common (here's another one from last week), and a reminder that while revamping prisons won't win a whole lot of plaudits for lawmakers (compared to, say, a strict new kidnapping law), it's a fairly pressing need.

Support for Calderón's Crime Policy

Nothing particularly shocking comes out of this new poll from Milenio, which says that around 70 percent are either completely or somewhat against various forms of legalization (i.e. in Mexico, California, or the US), with the majority of that number choosing "completely" as their modifier. Seventy percent also favor the anti-crime policy as Calderón is presently conducting it, which is roughly in line with what we've seen from other surveys, and another reminder that calling off the dogs will be a tricky proposition should the next president be of a mind to do so. Interestingly, close to 60 percent agreed with Calderón's recent assertion that Fox was slow in reacting the surge in drug trafficking as a danger to the nation.

New Gig

I'm doing some writing at FutureChallenges.org, and you can read my first effort for them here.

Tobacco Companies: International Villains

In the wake of the tobacco companies' harsh opposition to a 7-peso tax on each box of cigarettes, it was interesting to see a report from Cide on Big Tobacco's influence in Mexican politics score front-page attention from El Universal earlier this week.

Another Mass Killing

Either 15 or 16 car-washers were gunned down in Tepic, a semi-coastal city that has been relatively free of organized crime. It makes you wonder if this episode could be the realization of the threatened retaliation --one death for each ton, plus one more-- for the seizure of 134 tons of marijuana last week in Tijuana.

Addicted Cons

According to Milenio, an undersecretary of health said that 80 percent of Mexico's prisoners are addicted to one drug or another. Quite a number, but I'm not sure about that stat; 80 percent of the convict population is addicted, in a country where drug use is not particularly prevalent? Not likely. However, the idea that addicted criminals should be treated in a public health context rather than sent to prison is certainly something worth considering.

Not sure how directly this comment reflects the views of José Ángel Córdova (though the comment was made in his home state of Guanajuato, where he's been rumored as a possible gubernatorial candidate), but I second Aguachile's comments here.

Corrupt Mexico Growing More So

Mexico sits at number 98 in the most recent Transparency International corruption rankings, with a rating of 3.1 out of 10, even with Egypt and Burkina Faso. That reflects a drop from 3.3 last year and 3.6 two years ago. The 98 ranking is also a nine-spot drop from last year. Chile remains the top scorer from Latin America, clocking in at 21 this year.

More Goals

Another nice one from Chicharito in the 90th minute to win it for Man U in the Carling Cup, starting at about 5:10. Another sign of his emerging stardom: he's dating an actress.