Brookings: Topics - Central America

Obama in Costa Rica: Seeking Consensus Among Central America’s Leaders

Diana Villiers Negroponte — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:20:00 -0400

Editor’s note: In the second of a three-part series on Obama’s trip to Mexico and Costa Rica, Diana Negroponte outlines the challenges President Obama will face in seeking consensus among Central America’s leaders. Negroponte reviewed what is at stake for the U.S.-Mexico trade relationship on May 1. She will preview Obama’s visit with Central American business leaders on May 3.

On May 3 and 4, President Obama has two meetings with Central American political and business leaders in San Jose, Costa Rica. The first meeting is with the seven Central American presidents plus President Danilo Medina of the Dominican Republic (DR). Developing consensus among the eight leaders on both the agenda and the desired goals is difficult and a watered down consensus document is likely to emerge, which will disappoint all participants.

The basis for skepticism regarding this meeting is the disparate objectives of the eight leaders. Although the overt purpose is for the Central American and DR leaders to engage with the U.S. president under the auspices of the Central American Integration System (Sistema de Integración Inter-Americana or SICA), that multilateral organization relies upon the political will of the member states to implement their far reaching plans. Despite its foundation in 1991, SICA faces a continual challenge to harmonize its regional plans. In the absence of a common Central American plan of action to which all nations have committed resources and political will, the individual presidents will seek to pursue their own national goals:

El Salvador will seek faster disbursement of U.S. government funds appropriated under the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI);
Guatemala will ask for additional numbers for permanent non-agricultural EB-3 workers;
Honduras seeks additional funds for addressing extreme poverty;
Belize seeks additional funds with which to combat emerging youth gangs, as well as assistance in monitoring its intricate coastline and dense forests;
Nicaragua will focus on investment in its major infrastructure projects;
The Dominican Republic will focus on immigration issues for its citizens within the 2013 Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act (S744)
Panama seeks further training in counteracting money laundering; and
Host Costa Rica will focus on strategic policies for the region, as well as investment in green energy.

All these countries seek to confirm their commercial and political ties with Washington in the face of growing instability in Venezuela. The task is to harmonize these distinct objectives into a single agenda; a most challenging enterprise.

President Obama does not come to this summit empty handed. His government has a successful track record since CARSI was founded in 2008. To date $496.5 million has been appropriated for security and violence prevention projects in Central America. (The Dominican Republic participates in a separate security program for the Caribbean nations.) In FY 2012, the State Department requested $100 million for CARSI, but succeeded in raising that sum to $135 million thanks to the recognition that Central Americas’ problems were serious and impacted the United States. This year, State requested $107.5 million but, after a full review of projects, expects that amount to rise to between $150 and $160 million. In addition, USAID has received $146 million between FY2008 to FY2013, and in FY2012 alone, USAID implemented projects worth $50 million.

The U.S. Congress has agreed with State that Central America is geographically caught in the transshipment corridor between cocaine producers in South America and the North American market. Until such time as the nations of Central American – in particular the three northern nations of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – strengthen their rule of law and law enforcement institutions, they will remain vulnerable to drug traffickers and international criminal organizations. Belize, a nation of 350,000 people is also affected by smugglers who use the coastal bays and forest tracks to transport drugs, people and wildlife to the U.S and European markets.

Beyond overall dollar figures, President Obama must demonstrate the impact of CARSI, as well as USAID projects. Since 2008, USAID has committed $132 million to support justice sector reform, municipal crime prevention and services for at-risk youth. In FY 2012, USAID implemented $46.5 million in projects to support social prevention and citizen security. These included working with local mayors and stakeholders in Central American municipalities to develop their own crime prevention plans. Also, outreach centers have emerged in high-risk communities to provide vocational training for at-risk youth. Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Guillermo Céspedes is working in El Salvador to adapt Los Angeles’ Youth Services Eligibility Tool (YSET) to the context of this and, in future, other countries of the region. The intent is to show a decrease in the number of youth joining the gangs and an increase in the number who stay in school, or join technical training programs. Measuring success can be subjective, but Vanderbilt University’s three-year impact evaluation study has demonstrated -- at its mid-point -- lower crime rates and improved public perception of security in communities receiving USAID programs.

In addition to sharing the positive news of U.S investments in law enforcement and socio-economic projects, Obama will have to listen to complaints. This is a tiresome exercise, but it fulfills the cultural need of national leaders in Central America to articulate their demands before the U.S. president. We must hope that the chair will limit the time allotted to each Central American leader, but Obama must recognize that each leader is writing the headline in his or her national media. Should the meeting be off the record, we can expect less public pontification, but equal quantity of gripe about unmet needs.

So how does President Obama emerge from the meeting with a constructive way forward? He has listened, he will digest and he will seek ways to accommodate through current legislative debate on immigration and maybe on gun control. He can seek to increase CARSI funds from the requested $107.5 million, but he should ask the recipients to share effectively in implementing the projects and measuring impact. He might also ask them to contribute a larger amount of tax revenue to education, skills training and housing programs. The United States can assist the Central American nations in responding to public security threats, but the prime responsibility for strengthening democratic institutions must lie with the nations themselves. The hegemonic age is over and the people of Central America and the DR have the capacity to strengthen the rule of law through regional and national efforts. SICA is the vehicle through which they constructed regional plans. With the roadmap in place, it is now up to each nation to implement the programs.

Authors

Diana Villiers Negroponte

Image Source: © Juan Carlos Ulate / Reuters

The Obama-Peña Nieto Meeting: Critical Issues in the Upcoming U.S.-Mexico Talks

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 11, 2013
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Next month, President Barack Obama will meet with Mexico’s newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto. While the two leaders met briefly last November, this meeting—Obama’s first in Latin America since his own re-election—will address major issues of concern to both nations including trade and investment, energy, border security and infrastructure, illicit drug trafficking and public safety. With significant political and economic consequences at stake, the Obama-Peña Nieto meeting will take place as both leaders face complex and contentious domestic challenges that have a direct impact on the bilateral relationship.

On April 11, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion on the critical issues that will dominate the Obama- Peña Nieto meeting. Arturo Sarukhan, Brookings distinguished affiliate and former ambassador of Mexico to the United States, provided opening remarks on the larger political context for the bilateral meeting. A panel discussion followed featuring contributors to the forthcoming book, The End of Nostalgia: Mexico Confronts the Challenges of Global Competition (Brookings, May 2013). Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Diana Villiers Negroponte moderated the discussion.

A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Japan Foreign Aid Policies for Disaster Reduction

Goshi Tsukamoto — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The international community faces a variety of challenges caused by population growth, environmental problems, and an increase in the frequency of natural disasters in the last half century. In many parts of the world, calamities such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, storm surges, and tsunamis have caused a number of tragedies by creating socio-economic disorder, sometimes leading to unprecedented physical and human disruption.

Relatively well-governed countries have sufficient capabilities for rapid reaction and long-term recovery efforts, and are able to build resilience against adverse situations in their societies. Unfortunately, however, in a number of developing countries adequate social institutions and infrastructure have not been established to deal with such situations due to political, economic or historical factors. These regions remain relatively vulnerable to natural catastrophes, and their people are outside the circle of prosperity. [1]

In the global context, as described in 2011 in the initial Policy Framework document from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), providing assistance in disaster-stricken areas is a fundamental expression of common humanity, representing a visible manifestation of a common belief that is both morally right and strategically sound. [2] While nation states must take the primary responsibility for dealing with their own catastrophes, it is essential for the international community to help others help themselves, based on partnerships.[3] Large-scale disasters in developing countries inevitably cause enormous damage with wide-ranging and long-lasting effects, often eventually resulting in the deterioration of society as a whole. In relation to disaster reduction efforts in developing countries, the significance of international technical and financial cooperation is now shared as a global consensus. In fact, emergency relief and disaster reduction, particularly in developing countries, have become a main focus of international cooperation.[4] Donors have committed themselves to lending life-saving humanitarian assistance through rapid response to emergencies in poorer countries and sharing lessons and technologies to support adequate preparation for disasters. These new techniques and practices are expected to be institutionalized in recipient societies over the long term.

[1] They are more likely to suffer from extremely serious damage from natural disasters and may even be displaced nationally and internationally in some cases. It should also be noted that people in these nations additionally tend to suffer from secondary effects such as a deterioration in sanitary conditions and food shortages, which may last a long time.

[2] United States Agency for International Development, USAID Policy Framework, 2011-2015, p. 2; accessed February 26, 2013, http://transition.usaid.gov/policy/USAID_PolicyFramework.PDF.

[3] Looking at past catastrophic natural disasters, the international community has recognized the importance of disaster reduction and promoted international cooperation in and with vulnerable countries.

[4] In fact, numerous countermeasures against natural phenomena have been designed and implemented.

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Authors

Goshi Tsukamoto

Image Source: © Kena Betancur / Reuters

Learning to ‘Coexist with Risk:’ The Essence of Japan’s Technical Cooperation with Central American Countries

Goshi Tsukamoto — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:24:00 -0500

The Japanese archipelago is one of a number of regions that has been vulnerable to frequent natural disasters. Through its history, tragic experiences have accumulated, and the modern Japanese society and each individual in the country have learned lessons from each of those occasions. Based on these experiences, the Government of Japan has globally disseminated the spirit of “BOSAI,” a Japanese word meaning disaster reduction efforts, in its foreign aid menu.

Central America is an important target area for Japan’s BOSAI assistance. Because of geographical and geological reasons, the region―located in the rim of the Pacific Ocean as Japan is―faces substantial risks of storms and floods, mudslides, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. The countries in this region have strived in the past decades to cope with these chronic problems not only at national level, but also at the regional level. One of the fruits of the efforts made by those countries is the establishment of the Coordination Center for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America (CEPREDENAC). However, they still need support from the international community. Upon request by Central American countries, Japan implemented a “Project on Capacity Development for Disaster Risk Management in Central America” (known in shorthand as Project BOSAI) from May 2007 until May 2012. This project brought a variety of know-how and experience for dealing with possible disasters caused by natural phenomena in Central American nations, aimed especially at enhancing capacity for disaster reduction at the local level.

“Aprendiendo a convivir con el riesgo”

Project BOSAI sought to introduce feasible practices for prevention and reduction of damage from inevitable natural disasters, as well as adequate treatments after events, at the community level. Following intensive consultation between the Government of Japan and CEPREDENAC, the project was implemented by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). It included some of the most vulnerable villages and communities as prioritized pilot sites in targeted countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. During the five year course of the project, JICA dispatched a number of experts in various fields, including prevention and reduction of damage caused by inundation, mudslide, volcanic eruption, and tsunami, to those pilot sites. They organized seminars and workshops collaborating with local governments and villages, sharing useful knowledge accumulated in Japanese history, providing materials, and trying to strengthen local institutions and inspire local people under the slogan “aprendiendo a convivir con el riesgo”: learning to coexist with risk. The concrete activities and the fruits of Project BOSAI can be summarized as follows.

Visualizing the risks

For a community to deal with disaster risks, a shared common knowledge in the community about the risks faced in daily life is indispensable. For example, in Atitlan, Guatemala, which frequently suffered from mudslides in the past, an expert from Japan organized a seminar and conducted “Town watching for BOSAI,” in which local people walk around with the expert to appreciate the potential risks and acquire the essential common knowledge by visualizing the risks which confront the community. The participants who joined this program constructed a visible risk map. In fact, they didn’t need to depend on satellite photos but they could understand the environment of the community by handwriting by themselves. Once a community creates a common risk map, it can share the visualized risks which enable people to take action for future prevention and reduction.

Introducing an early warning system

Project BOSAI introduced an early warning system which doesn’t rely on high-tech equipment. For example, in Saragoza, El Salvador, experts from Japan worked with local junior high-school students to make basic rain gauges, utilizing recycled bottles. When it rains, the villagers are asked to observe the amount of precipitation using the hand-made rain gauges and to record whatever happens around the community according to the amount of precipitation. If they steadily continue this, the villagers can obtain a “sustainable early warning system” built on meaningful data. The community can consult this data in subsequent rainstorms to know when the villagers as a whole should take action to prevent and reduce specific damage caused by storms and floods.

Building useful infrastructure from re-purposed waste materials

The coastal communities around the Cañas River in Costa Rica have suffered repeatedly from inundation. They require a large dike, strong enough to prevent flooding. This region is also home to sugar plant plantations that produce a lot of used tires as waste. Therefore, Project BOSAI, inspired by the initiative of local people, helped build a dike utilizing used tires as basic building materials. The community members learned the construction know-how, scientifically justified by Japanese experts, and can reproduce useful dikes as long as they can access used tires. Project BOSAI tries to share this know-how with other targeted countries as well.[1]

Strengthening institutions for disaster reduction

Hurricane Ida struck the Central American isthmus in November 2009. It caused considerable damage to the region. However, the village of Las Ojas, El Salvador, a Project BOSAI pilot site, recorded no fatalities. As the hurricane approached the country, the villagers of Las Ojas could access the updated information emitted by Committee for Disaster Reduction of San Pedro Masahuat, whose local government covered the village Las Ojas, through a radio provided by Project BOSAI. The fact that some of the members of Committee for Disaster Reduction of San Pedro Masahuat had participated in JICA training programs in the past helped facilitate smooth communication between Las Ojas and the municipality. Sirens placed around the community, also provided by Project BOSAI, sounded two hours before the main storm came too close so that people had enough time to prepare themselves.

These examples demonstrate that the spirit of “learning to coexist with risk” has taken root in Central America. It is worthwhile to mention that what Project BOSAI introduced to recipient communities depended neither on expensive high-tech equipment nor on mega infrastructure, but focused on promoting knowledge sharing and inspiring local people. The fruits of the project remain important in the targeted sites, and the positive impact is expected to expand from the pilot sites to other regions. This kind of technology transfer can eventually foster growth in institutional and even personal capacities for prevention and reduction of disaster damage in the region as a whole. In this way, Japan’s foreign aid activities―including those based on the spirit of “aprendiendo a convivir con el riesgo”―draw upon some of the many lessons that Japanese society has learned through its own experiences with natural disasters and applies them to global disaster reduction efforts. Because human beings cannot escape frequent natural disasters, we must prepare ourselves in all ways possible prior to the events for the purpose of reducing the scale of damage and suffering. Japan believes that its own experiences should be shared as a common asset of human society, and therefore it strives to inspire people to adopt damage reduction practices by disseminating thought-provoking experiences. Japan is expected to continue this sort of intellectual contribution in its foreign aid.

[1] The Spanish guidelines are accessible as follows: Guía de la Construcción del muro de contención, con llantas usadas, http://www.jica.go.jp/project/all_c_america/001/materials/pdf/manual_01.pdf; Guía para la Construcción del Dique, http://www.jica.go.jp/project/all_c_america/001/materials/pdf/manual_02.pdf.

Authors

Goshi Tsukamoto

Image Source: © Luis Galdamez / Reuters

Conversations with Experts on the Future of Central America

Diana Villiers Negroponte, Alma Caballero and Consuelo Amat — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Introduction:

Between May 2011 and March 2012, four public events took place at the Brookings Institution, thanks to a partnership with the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI, or BCIE in Spanish). They were on:

Experts from the region brought their perspective on challenging subjects and engaged in spirited discussions both with fellow panelists and the audience.

The most challenging issue is how to develop the physical and human infrastructure to enhance growing intra-regional trade and exports to the hemisphere, as well as the traditional U.S. market. Preferential export regimes and expanding maquiladoras have produced double-digit export growth in most Central American countries. But this growth is accompanied by increased criminal violence and gang warfare that depletes citizen’s trust in their respective governments and is estimated to cost 8-9 percent of GDP per year. If Central America can work as a region to stimulate trade, surely it can develop regional projects to counter trans-national criminal organizations and protect the young men and women whom they prey on.

Despite economic growth, the push to migrate northward remains. In 2010, 3 million Central Americans resided in the United States with widely different legal situations. They remitted a large portion of their salaries back home, providing 20.2 percent of GDP in Honduras and 17.5 percent in El Salvador. These remittances have provided major economic and social support for Central Americans, as well as a safety valve permitting the young to escape unemployment and underemployment in their own nations.

The economic potential of Central America will not be realized until infrastructure in ports, roads, electrical grids, and broadband connectivity is accomplished. Greater use of bond markets and means to access long-term capital finance is needed to pay for much needed infrastructure. Currently, less than 2 percent of GDP is dedicated to physical infrastructure. At 5 percent of GDP and with international financing from multilateral organizations and public private partnerships, prospects improve for accomplishing regional infrastructure projects with close oversight to ensure effective and transparent use of funds. The private sector is an indispensable player in this area, providing investment, technology, management, and training.

An electrical grid exists among six Central American nations, permitting the transmission, sale and purchase of electrical energy under the supervision of the Regional Operating Entity. This permits the sale of excess energy supply to areas with a deficit of electricity. Currently missing is the agreement of participating governments to enter into long-term contracts. In 2012, with the extension of the electrical grid to both Mexico and Panama, the private sector has greater incentive to participate in a more robust and larger market with economies of scale. This should benefit an effective regional energy market.

Finally, situated between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and volcanoes have led, in recent years, to more than 50,000 deaths and the displacement of over 10 million people in the seven Central American countries. Central America is not to blame for the rise of CO2 because it produces less than 5/1000 of green house gas emissions. However, it bears the brunt of climate change brought about by large industrialized emitters. Regionally, the intensity of climate change-related disasters has increased by 5 percent a year. To meet this challenge, a scientific and technical perspective is needed. Also, governments need to develop comprehensive strategies which take into account tourism, coastal projects, shelter management, and erosion. The creation of Early Warning Systems (EWS) in Guatemala are applauded to bring scientific and management skills to the problems of food shortages, hazardous materials and natural disasters. From national to regional, the EWS demonstrates the need to address the problems of the isthmus at a regional level with outreach to experts from around the world.

This report contains the principal points and conclusions from four events on the politics, and economic and social development of Central America held at the Brookings Institution in partnership with the CABEI in 2011 and 2012. The ideas contained here, although not attributed in the text to individual experts, came from the panelists, moderators and keynote speakers of these events. Their remarks are their own and do not reflect the opinions of CABEI. This report is organized by event and identifies three areas: general overview of the topic, main challenges, and policy recommendations.

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Authors

Diana Villiers Negroponte
Alma Caballero
Consuelo Amat

Image Source: © Edgard Garrido / Reuters

Would Another Peace Accord Help Central America?

Vanda Felbab-Brown — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published in the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin America Advisor on August 27, 2012.

Aug. 7 marked the 25th anniversary of the Esquipulas II Peace Accords, which helped provide the framework to end years of conflict in Central America. Speaking at the OAS, former Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo called for a new Esquipulas Accord to confront the issues that currently threaten the region's stability, arguing that violence, corruption and inequality can only be mitigated by a cohesive response from Central America's leaders. Would signing an "Esquipulas III" be a good idea? In what ways has Central America seen successes in recent years, and which are its most intractable problems? How should weak institutions be strengthened? What steps could leaders take to more effectively confront the region's crises?

Vanda Felbab-Brown: Regional coordination and sharing of intelligence and best practices can mitigate the dangers of illicit economies and organized crime being displaced to new locales and cushion some of their worst manifestations. Historic rivalries, however, have often hampered anti-crime coordination efforts in Central America.

Given the level of corruption within law enforcement agencies in Central America, governments there have also feared that sharing intelligence will augment the chances of it leaking out to criminals or—conversely—expose corruption in one's political and legal system. But there are limits to what even effective coordination can achieve. Absent a significant reduction in demand, drug supply and transshipment will inevitably relocate. As long as an area has weaker law enforcement and state presence, crime will move there. Such crime displacement takes place also within countries with strong governments and effective rule of law and law enforcement capacity: Anti-crime successes in New York City, for example, displaced crime into broader New York state and New Jersey.

Larger institutional reform to increase state capacity and social equity may well be critical for robust success of anti-crime measures in Central America. But governments there have found it difficult to implement such measures.

In the context of high corruption and weak state capacity, initial anticrime interventions should prioritize targeting street crime and the most violent criminal organizations. Model courts and model prisons can be a first step toward bolstering the effectiveness of judicial systems. Anti-crime efforts should also include well-conceived and evidence-based socio-economic programs designed to address root causes of crime. Civil society needs to play an active role in such anti-crime efforts, such as by encouraging community police exchanges and exposing corruption.

Authors

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Publication: Inter-American Dialogue's Latin America Advisor

Image Source: © STRINGER El SALVADOR / Reuters

A Better Strategy to Combat Organized Crime in Mexico and Central America

Vanda Felbab-Brown and Eric Olson — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:40:00 -0400

The Cartagena Summit of the Americas where heads of state will meet in middle April comes at a time of acute crime crisis in Latin America and growing opposition to U.S. counternarcotics policies. President Otto Perez Molina of Guatemala has called for legalizing the drug trade, following calls for drug policy reform of several former Latin American presidents. El Salvador has been reeling from allegations of a deal between criminal gangs and the government. Mexico has been overwhelmed by drug violence.

Organized crime exploits the “soft spots” along trafficking routes. Squeezed in one area, traffickers seek out regions with underdeveloped rule of law institutions, weak fiscal capacity, extensive corruption, and marginalized populations susceptible to participation in illicit economies. Today’s prime examples are Central America and West Africa.

In response, local governments and external partners, such as the United States, often adopt the wrong policies by defining the problem in absolute terms -- dismantling organized crime or stopping illegal drug flows. Such goals are mostly unattainable and guarantee costly failures. More attainable, but crucial objectives such as reducing the harms associated with the drug trade and other crime – the violence, corruption, and erosion of the social fabric - are largely ignored.

Reducing the violence around drug trafficking is particularly critical. Societies experiencing chronic and uncontrolled violence tend to have little faith in government and can transfer their loyalties to criminal groups that provide a modicum of safety, albeit perverse safety. Governments that effectively reduce violence often do not rid the country of organized crime but lessen its grip on society, thereby giving citizens greater confidence in government, encouraging citizen cooperation with law enforcement, and aiding the transformation of a national security threat into a public safety problem.

Yet those Central American countries – Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala – that have been hardest hit by the shift in trafficking routes have pursued the most counterproductive policies. Iron-fisted (mano dura) approaches that criminalize membership in youth gangs, on the assumption that this would discourage gang membership and crime, have backfired. The extensive imprisonment of even low-level criminals, some rounded up for their tattoos or idling on the streets, flooded ill-equipped corrections systems. Prisons became breeding grounds for hardened criminals. The sheer volume of crime has overwhelmed police forces -- often under-resourced, corrupt, and intermeshed with organized crime -- and resulted in their becoming apathetic and favorably-disposed to vigilante militias.

Nor is the solution merely to stand up specialized interdiction units (SIUs), a favorite U.S. recipe. In the context of weak state capacity and high corruption, SIUs are prime targets for corruption and can turn into powerful and technologically-savvy drug traffickers. The violent Zetas in Mexico and the Kaibiles in Guatemala originated as elite special forces before becoming criminals. If SIUs are stood up, not only must they be carefully vetted at the beginning, but external donors must also devise roll-back mechanisms if such units go rogue.

Moreover, SIUs mostly concentrate on crime kingpins. But such high-value targeting often intensifies violence, by stimulating internal succession fights and turf wars. Mexico is a prime example of where high-value-targeting increased violence, creating a more chaotic situation out-of-government control. Where violence has declined in Mexico, such as in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, it has been because one DTO came to dominate the criminal market in the area.

A more effective law enforcement strategy would focus on four elements:

Developing violence-reduction policing and crime-prevention strategies. Such a strategy might entail prioritizing the most violent group or focusing efforts in a particular geographic location. Different criteria for focusing law-enforcement efforts come with different costs, benefits, and tradeoffs; but the goal is to get away from an unfocused round-‘em-up-lock-‘em-up approach that overwhelms criminal justice systems.

Building up the capacity of police and prosecutors to target the middle layer of criminal organizations – the lawyers, accountants, and lieutenants in waiting – that are the guts of their operations. By weakening this middle layer in a decisive blow, law enforcement undermines the group’s operational capacity and ability to regenerate leadership. If a turf war follows, it tends to be less violent because the DTO has a limited capacity to resist a takeover.
Prioritizing common crime such as theft, street brawls, kidnapping, and extortion by
developing effective local police forces and prosecutions. An effective response to street crime produces several key benefits: It satisfies a key demand of the public and strengthens the bonds and cooperation between the community and the state. It also removes white noise from the overall crime picture and allows law enforcement to develop better intelligence on organized crime.
Building up the entire law-enforcement pyramid from local respondents to street crime to
specialized serious-crime units and prosecutors, instead of merely parachuting SIUs on top of a crumbled and corrupt law-enforcement apparatus.

Ultimately, external assistance to combat organized crime can only be effective if there is a genuine commitment by recipient governments and sufficient buy-in from local communities. U.S. anti-crime policy abroad needs to take both far more seriously, even while steering other countries away from ineffective policies.

Authors

Vanda Felbab-Brown
Eric Olson

Image Source: © Ho New / Reuters

The Challenges of Climate Change and Natural Disasters in Central America

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

March 29, 2012
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

In recent years, Central America has suffered several large-scale natural disasters that have left behind a legacy of death and destruction. The disruption of economic activity and costly reconstruction efforts create a heavy burden of social exclusion and debt. Given the region’s propensity for natural disasters—which are likely to increase due to changing climate patterns— there is a need for better regional cooperation in risk management.

On March 29, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration hosted a discussion on the challenges and implications of climate change for the Central American isthmus and the role that the public and private sectors can play in mitigating and adapting to risks. A panel of experts examined these issues, followed by a keynote address by José María Figueres, former president of Costa Rica. Brookings Senior Fellow Katherine Sierra moderated the discussion.

After the program, panelists took audience questions.

Participants

Moderator

Panelists

José E. Deras

Interim Chief Economist
Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI)

The Honorable José María Figueres

Chief Executive Officer, Concordia21
Former President of Costa Rica

Juan José Daboub

Founding Chief Executive Officer
Global Adaptation Institute

Luis Alberto Ferraté

Senior Advisor
Instituto Privado de Investigación del Cambio Climático – Guatemala

Pascal Girot

Senior Climate Change Advisor, Latin America and the Caribbean
CARE International

Walter Wintzer

Coordinator, Preparedness and Response Program
Center for Natural Disaster Prevention in Central America

A Conversation on the Future of Central America: The Challenges and Opportunities of Infrastructure and Energy

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:00:00 -0500

Event Information

December 1, 2011
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM EST

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Central America is a region with great economic potential, but to improve productivity levels and achieve successful integration into the global economy, Central American countries must dramatically increase their investment in infrastructure. The isthmus could see further economic gain from investment in the power grid and the development of clean energy.

On December 1, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration hosted a discussion on the opportunities open to Central America and the role of the public and private sector in the development of infrastructure and energy projects. Two panels of experts examined these issues, followed by a keynote address by José W. Fernández, assistant secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

After each panel, speakers took audience questions.

Participants

Panelists

Pablo Rodas

Chief Economist
Central American Bank for Economic Integration

Hugo Beteta

Sub-regional Director
United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

Karla Hernández

Regional Manager, Central American Electrical Interconnection System
Empresa Propietaria de la Red

Maria Lorena López

Vice Minister of Public Works and Transportation
Republic of Costa Rica

Johanna Mendelson Forman

Senior Associate, Americas Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies

Pablo Rodas

Chief Economist
Central American Bank for Economic Integration

Álvaro Umaña

Senior Research Fellow, EfD-Central America Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center
Former Costa Rican Minister of Energy and Environment

José W. Fernández

Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Latin America Economic Perspectives: Innocent Bystanders in a Brave New World

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 17, 2011
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

In the midst of a lingering global financial crisis, Latin American countries are feeling the impact of the global slowdown. The prospect of a long period of modest economic growth, coupled with volatile capital markets, has enticed the creation of numerous regional initiatives aimed at making the region less sensitive to seasonal global swings. However, implementation of many of these initiatives has fallen well short of their intentions.

On November 17, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion of its biannual Brookings Latin America Economic Perspectives report. The report analyzes the economic resilience of Latin American countries while attempting to understand the obstacles which are hindering the development of a regional agenda. Leading international experts discussed the findings of the report, analyzed the region’s economic performance and set forth recommendations for governments and policymakers.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20111117_latin_america_perspectives

Participants

Panelists

José Antonio Ocampo

Professor and Director of Economic and Political Development Concentration, School of International and Public Affairs
Columbia University

Rodrigo Valdés

Senior Advisor, Western Hemisphere Department
The International Monetary Fund

Luis Bonell

Executive Vice President & CEO, Liberty International

Alberto Musalem

Managing Director
Tudor Investment Corporation

Arturo Porzecanski

Distinguished Economist in Residence
American University

Disaggregating Latin America: Diverse Trajectories, Emerging Clusters and their Implications

Abraham F. Lowenthal — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:56:00 -0400

From the time a 19th century French geographer labeled the countries south of the United States and Canada “Latin America,” the term has always seemed more of a reality from outside the Western Hemisphere than within it. From outside, and particularly from Europe, these nations often seem more closely related to each other than they appear to be up close. In fact, Latin American countries have long been divided by almost as much as that which unites them: different colonial heritages and histories, and radically different geographies, demographies, and ethnic compositions. They have different levels and types of economic and social development, political traditions and institutions, modes of insertion into the international economy, and international policies and relationships. Most of the countries of South and Central America and parts of the Caribbean do share common Iberian historical, religious, linguistic and cultural traditions; many have had broadly comparable relations most of the time with the industrial countries; and they all share the same hemisphere with the United States and Canada. But one should not lose sight of the many and important differences among the diverse countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The policy communities, both in the United States and in Europe, came in the 1990s to think of the Latin American countries as tending then toward convergence—mostly proceeding, at different paces, along the same presumably irreversible path of political and economic liberalization, with Chile blazing the trail. This perception is highly questionable now, as various countries pursue distinct goals with contrasting approaches and policies. Easy rhetoric about regional integration, and even such institutional steps in that direction as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), South America’s recently established diplomatic and security communities, are mainly wishful thinking or, at best, “thoughtful wishing.” Rhetorical expressions of Latin American (or at least South American) unity are often rudely contradicted in practice. Transnational integration is occurring in Latin America much more at the level of corporations and professional networks than at the level of governments and multilateral organizations. Intraregional trade agreements have not taken hold, for the most part, and intraregional trade has been declining over the past several years, in fact, both among the Mercosur countries and in the Andean Community.

Disaggregating Latin America

The countries of Latin America may best be understood and analyzed by focusing on where they fit along five distinct dimensions—three structural, and two historical and institutional—which have significant implications for how they work politically and economically, and for their international roles:

• Their levels of demographic and economic interdependence with the United States, or with other major regions including Europe and China

• Their resource endowments and their degree of openness to international competition, and the consequent nature of their insertion into the global economy

• The extent to which they face the challenge of incorporating traditionally excluded populations, including millions of marginalized and disadvantaged but increasingly mobilized indigenous people, as well as Afro-descendants and others in deep poverty who have not previously been fully integrated into the economy nor able to exercise effective citizenship

• The relative strength and capacity of the state and of civil and political institutions beyond the state, such as political parties, trade unions, religious organizations, the media and other non-governmental entities

• The vitality of such key aspects of democratic governance as separate branches of government, checks and balances, free and fair elections, independent media, accountability and the rule of law.

Where these countries are found along a spectrum with regard to each of these five dimensions—rather than familiar dichotomous categories such as left or right, authoritarian or democratic, free market or statist—captures the most important variations among these many countries.

Indeed, the very term Latin America is not very useful. It is more helpful to think of subcategories, including the countries of North America (Mexico and the various nations of Central America and the Caribbean), almost all—even Cuba in some important ways—ever more closely integrated with the United States; Brazil, a nation of continental scope that has never felt itself closely and exclusively tied with the countries of South America and is now even more than before linked with Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe as well as with Latin America and the United States; the Amer-Indian regions, mostly on the Andean ridge, but also in southern Mexico, parts of Central America, and Paraguay, which are ever more shaped by their indigenous populations; and the truly “Latin” (or European) countries of the Southern Cone, with ethnic compositions, social structures, political institutions and traditions broadly similar to the countries of continental Europe. The subcategories I have suggested are not geographically defined, nor are most candidates for subregional economic integration; they are conceptual groupings, highlighting salient characteristics that make the members of each subcategory behave similarly in some important respects.

Focusing on these important differences, more than on aspirations of regional integration, is necessary to understand diverse countries that have been and are on quite different paths, reflecting their distinct pasts and shaped by different political leaders and constituencies, available resources, opportunities and ideologies.

The Universal Challenge: Reconciling Equity and Markets

In their efforts to achieve economic growth, socioeconomic equity and social inclusion, Latin American countries have all moved in recent years, from different starting points, away from the extremes of unbridled capitalism on the one hand and state-run socialist economies on the other.

Even Cuba under the Castro brothers, who still proclaim themselves Socialist with a capital S, is radically reducing the number of state employees, authorizing private ownership of housing, encouraging private agricultural production and markets as well as small businesses of many types, and otherwise experimenting with the reintroduction of material incentives and other capitalist practices. Few well informed observers doubt that in the next decade Cuba’s economy, whether through gradual reforms or rupture, will be significantly transformed, and that domestic and international investment in private enterprises will sooner or later spur a burst of economic growth. Nationalism, not socialism, is likely to be the lasting contribution of the Castro period to Cuban history.

Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has proclaimed that it is building “21st Century socialism” (a goal that Chávez did not unveil until he had been in power for several years). The Chávez government has nationalized various important companies, strongly regulated and intimidated others, and undertaken social programs and provided social services through redistributive programs (the Misiones). But Venezuela has also preserved a well-rewarded private financial sector, permitted significant other private sector activity and the continuing accumulation of private wealth, and maintained a primary trade connection with the United States while also diversifying its international relationships by cultivating countries antagonistic to the United States. Recently, moreover, in the wake of his cancer surgery and in the run-up to the elections scheduled for 2012, President Chávez appears, at least at times, to be downplaying the “socialist” discourse and concentrating on encouraging the market-oriented middle class, giving some signs of recognizing how vital their confidence and participation could be for Venezuela’s national success.

In Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua—three other members of the Bolivarian Alternative (ALBA) that have employed “socialist” discourse in recent years—there are increased, if ambivalent, efforts to attract foreign investment, cooperate with international financial institutions, and coax national private investors to participate more actively. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa has explicitly downplayed the rhetoric of “21st Century socialism,” preferring the language of “buen vivir,” a concept of indigenous (Bolivian) origins connoting “living well,” in a normatively positive and sustainable way, privileging solidarity rather than competition. A similar though less clearly articulated discourse has emerged in plurinational Bolivia, where Evo Morales attempts to balance an appeal to indigenous peoples and ecological sustainability with occasional pragmatic efforts to attract foreign investment for major projects in natural resource extraction and development, a combination that sometimes leads to major contradictions and course corrections. Nicaragua under the Ortega couple, albeit in a cruder way, combines old-style “socialist” rhetoric with pragmatic policies to retain international markets, attract both official development assistance and private investment from the capitalist world, and coopt national business leaders by giving them opportunities to prosper.

The state “socialist” ideological model, in short, is giving way in practice to an evolving attempt, different in each case, to combine the goals of social inclusion, community solidarity and the integration of disadvantaged sectors with the use of capitalist instruments to expand economic growth. In all these countries, popularly-oriented economic and redistributive policies are accompanied by severely weakened legislative and judicial restraints on executive power and personal aggrandizement, populist appeals to disadvantaged majorities, systematic attacks on privileged elites and on “neoliberalism” (and behind that, the United States), and appeals to anti-globalization advocates around the world. These regimes do not foster coalition-building across social sectors nor do they seek Western Hemisphere cooperation to confront shared challenges.

There are many differences among these ALBA cases. Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, operate in large measure as traditional Central American/Caribbean caudillos, manipulating personal ambitions and relationships with little regard for ideological coherence or legal constraints. Hugo Chávez brings a special combination of charisma, audacity, social resentment, military authority and tactical flexibility to his leadership, which is overwhelmingly personalistic, and therefore vulnerable if his health deteriorates. Rafael Correa is a U.S.-educated Ph.D. who is drawing on civil society activists to build technocratic bureaucracies, while continuing relentlessly to attack discredited elites and institutions. Evo Morales builds upon and exacerbates long-standing and deep-seated ethnic and regional cleavages within Bolivia and cultivates transnational support from NGOs, while striking out against real and imagined foreign enemies whenever he feels that domestic circumstances require an external foe.

Two Broad Groups

With all these and other variations, however, the “Bolivarian alternative” countries share deep suspicion of markets, free enterprise and globalization generally, and especially of the institutions of liberal representative democracy, where horizontal accountability is sought through separate and independent branches of government, checks and balances, and the rule of law. These Bolivarian experiments with “refoundation” and plebiscitary governance have been made possible by the thorough discrediting of previous regimes and, in most cases, have been financed directly or indirectly by windfall profits from natural resource endowments that allow immediate and broader distribution of expanded national income.

In the rest of Latin America, with the possible exception of Argentina, the ALBA approach has not lately been gaining further traction, and it is less likely to do so as the ALBA countries experience growing internal difficulties that will be further compounded if and when energy prices drop. But in many of the other Latin American countries there is emerging, to differing degrees, an amalgam of market-oriented, socially responsive and redistributive policies, combined, however, with an embrace (stronger in some cases than in others) of markets, capitalism and globalization. In these cases, moreover, there is a much more institutional approach to governance and accountability, combined with concerted efforts at consensus-building and international cooperation rather than polarization. Such attempts are evident in Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and now in Peru. Peru’s recently elected president, Ollanta Humala, originally aligned with the ALBA approach, was finally elected and thus far appears to be governing in ways much closer to the mainstream approach.

In these countries, highly diverse in many other respects, there is a shared tendency to give high priority to achieving macroeconomic stability; to demonstrating openness to foreign private investment, although often on improved terms, especially in the mining and petroleum sectors; and to achieving previsibilidad (i.e stability of expectations about the rules of the game and about agreed procedures for changing these). These countries, at least in their stated goals, are all emphasizing policies to reduce and alleviate poverty through economic growth and expanded employment, conditional cash transfers, higher minimum wages, social programs and, in some cases, progressive taxation. They all aim to diminish socio-economic inequities; make conditions safer for the private sector by reducing polarization; expand access to and improving the quality of education and infrastructure; and strengthen accountable political, judicial and law enforcement institutions.

Implementation of this broad program varies greatly from country to country, in part because state capacity differs so widely. It has been called a “global social democratic” path by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s scholar-statesman. It is being funded in some countries by windfall income from high commodity prices, and is also made possible in part by the relatively mild impact in South America of the international financial crisis. This was a silver lining that resulted from the fact that their financial institutions and fiscal policies had been greatly strengthened in response to recent debacles. But it is also made possible, as Cardoso argues, by structural and political preconditions, including the prior diversification of economic production and the development of effective, albeit imperfect and uneven, institutions and practices of democratic governance. In several countries—Mexico, the Central American and some Caribbean nations, and still to some extent in Colombia—these advantages are being undermined, however, by organized crime, much of it related to drug-trafficking organizations.

There are also important differences, of course, in leaders’ backgrounds, political coalitions and specific programs. The presidents range from former guerrillas and leftist insurgents to former military officers, business tycoons and an ex-bishop; from internationally educated cosmopolitans to highly provincial figures; from very experienced politicians to newly minted ones. The political coalitions are grounded in some countries in the most modern and economically advanced regions, while in others, their base of support comes primarily from the most impoverished provinces, sometimes of indigenous ethnic composition. The scope of state enterprises in these countries varies widely, with some of the largest and most powerful state enterprises (Petrobras in Brazil, PEMEX in Mexico, and CODELCO in Chile, for example), operating in the most market-friendly nations. In all these diverse countries, however, the shared central challenge is how to combine the dynamics of market capitalism with improved social inclusion. Nowhere has the perfect solution yet been fashioned. Even in Chile, which had seemed the poster child for social democracy, strong pressures are building to expand effective participation; to redress class privileges, embodied in the country’s secondary and higher educational systems; and to extend to the middle class rights previously exercised only by economic and social elites.

Latin America, in sum, is not a unified region. Its heterogeneous countries differ significantly in several ways. But despite their many differences, they cluster at present into two broad groups. One comprises the “Bolivarian alternative” countries: profoundly suspicious of globalization, markets, liberal representative democracy and cooperation with the well-established world powers, but all groping in different ways to attract resources and markets from the capitalist countries. The other is a highly diverse set of nations that are trying to adjust to globalization by seeking access to the dynamic energies and resources provided by capitalist enterprises, while counterbalancing capitalism’s negative effects on equity and social inclusion through redistributive policies and by strengthening the institutions of democratic governance. These two clusters are more fuzzy than distinct, more “works in progress” than ideological models, and are responding tactically both to domestic pressures and to international constraints and opportunities, rather than conforming to consistent templates.

What Shapes the International Relations of the Latin American and Caribbean Countries?

These broadly differing approaches have important international policy implications. This is most evident in the recurring tendency in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador to seek confrontation with the United States as one aspect of their domestic strategies for popular legitimacy. To the extent that these confrontational tactics are mostly symbolic, and often contradicted in practice by pragmatic cooperation, they have limited geopolitical importance as long as the U.S. government (and European governments when relevant) responds to provocations with the “rope-a-dope” technique made famous by Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring: letting the punches fall unanswered, without causing real damage, while the puncher tires. An interesting question is whether a more beleaguered Chávez, or perhaps another severely challenged ALBA leader, might eventually seek more concrete and genuinely threatening international cooperation with an extra-hemispheric power against the United States. This is an unlikely, but plausible, scenario.

The most important determinants of Latin America’s diverse international relationships are less ideological than structural and geoeconomic, however. First and foremost, there is an overwhelming distinction between the closest neighbors of the United States—Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean—and the nations of South America. During the past fifty years, the society and economy of the United States have become ever more intertwined with those of Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, primarily as a result of massive migration, authorized and unauthorized, to the United States and of growing functional economic integration, particularly of labor markets, finance and production processes. The frontier between the United States and its closest neighbors is extremely porous. People, goods, money, and ideas flow easily back and forth across formal boundaries. Sixty percent of Mexico’s population have relatives in the United States, where nearly a fifth of Mexico’s population is employed, and more than half a million U.S. retirees, in turn, reside in Mexico. Some fifteen percent of those born in the Caribbean and Central American countries alive today have also moved to the United States. In Mexico, remittances from the diaspora amount to some $25 billion a year (more or less, depending on the state of the US economy), almost as much as direct foreign investment. In Central America, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, remittances exceed foreign investment and international economic assistance combined. Campaign contributions and votes from the diaspora are crucially important in home country politics, while the votes of naturalized immigrants play an increasingly important role in U.S. elections. Juvenile gangs and criminal leaders socialized on U.S. streets and in U.S. jails are wreaking havoc in their countries of origin, in many cases after being deported from the United States, while Latino gangs contribute to violence in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and elsewhere. Historical notions of “sovereignty” have much less real meaning in such circumstances, even as they are still vociferously articulated on both sides.

The issues that flow directly from the growing mutual interpenetration between the United States and its closest neighbors—human, drug and arms trafficking, immigration, the environment and public health, medical tourism and portable health and pension benefits, natural disasters, law enforcement and border management—pose particularly complex challenges for policy on both sides. These “intermestic” issues, combining international and domestic facets, are difficult to handle because the democratic political process pushes policies, both in the United States and in the neighboring countries, in directions that are often diametrically opposed. That makes it difficult to secure the intimate and sustained international cooperation required to manage difficult problems that transcend borders. The difficulty is compounded in those countries—Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti, in particular—with very weak state capacity. All this in turn makes the international relations of these countries different in kind from those of South America’s nations.

Brazil is an increasingly influential country with a population of more than 190 million and the world’s seventh or eighth largest economy, likely to become the fifth largest (with the United States, China, India and Japan) by mid-century or sooner. It has largely opened itself to international economic competition, dramatically modernized its vast agricultural sector, developed industries with continental and even worldwide markets and expanded the global competitiveness of its engineering, financial and other services. Brazil has also slowly but steadily strengthened both its state and its nongovernmental institutions. And it has forged an increasingly firm centrist consensus on broad macroeconomic and social goals, including the urgent need to reduce gross inequities and alleviate extreme poverty; to continue to expand its large, expanding and influential middle class (now numbering some one hundred million persons); to improve the quality of and access to education; and to improve productivity, infrastructure, citizen security and efficiency. Achieving these gains will be far from easy, especially with the country’s fragmented parties and governance, but at least there is a high degree of national consensus about where Brazil should be headed.

Brazil is playing and will play a growing role in international negotiations on trade, climate change, the environment, public health, food security and intellectual property. It is an active leader of the Global South; works closely with China, India and South Africa on several issues; and is cultivating ties with the Muslim world and with Africa. It is also one of the influential and growing BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations, the darlings of international investors and geopolitical analysts. It is taking an ever more prominent leadership role in South America, a lead role in UN efforts to stabilize Haiti, and has been active (though not always effective) in the United Nations, the G20 group of the world’s most important economies and in other multilateral global and regional fora.

The fundamental challenge at this stage for relations between Brazil and the United States, as well as with the EU nations, is to overcome conflicting domestic political imperatives, vested interests and policy gridlock on both sides in order to build greater synergy on major global issues: by strengthening regimes for trade, finance and investment; developing and implementing measures to cope with climate change and to develop alternative renewable energy sources; preventing and responding to pandemics; curbing nuclear proliferation; and reforming international governance arrangements. All this will require conceptual clarity, constructive diplomacy, and consistent tact by all involved.

The countries of the Southern Cone are neither as connected to nor as integrated with the United States as its closest neighbors, nor are they as globally influential or as important for Europe as Brazil. Chile is the Latin American nation most fully engaged in the world economy, with strong political institutions and entrenched democratic practices, but it remains, after all, a small to medium-sized country. Chile’s international influence, based on its soft power, is considerably greater than its size, military power or economic strength alone would command. It presents issues and opportunities, both to the United States and to European nations, comparable to those posed by long-time allies, grounded upon broadly shared interests. Argentina, by contrast, has had great difficulty over the years in building broad consensus, fortifying institutions, opening up its full economy to international competition and achieving the stability of expectations that is so important to overcome short-termedness (cortoplacismo) and to facilitate economic development and consistent international engagement. For both European countries and the United States (equidistant from Buenos Aires), Argentina always seems like a natural partner, but almost always disappoints. Uruguay is in some ways an extension of Argentina, but it acts internationally much like Chile, largely because of its well-developed political institutions.

The Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) to differing degrees are plagued by severe problems of governance and with the challenge of integrating large numbers of historically excluded people, living in poverty or extreme poverty, and in many cases from indigenous or Afro-descendant backgrounds. Poverty, compound inequities, mass exclusion, rising ethnic and class consciousness, market economies and electoral politics have made all the Andean nations, in different ways, politically unstable. Colombia has long had democratically elected governments and constitutional governance, but it has also faced a prolonged insurgency and pervasive corruption, weakening its institutions. Peru has seemed politically stable through several consecutive presidential elections, but its political parties have weakened more each time; the prospects that an anti-system “outsider” will triumph has been high time after time, and has produced the election in the past twenty years of three such outsiders (Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala), all of who won because of their appeal in the most disadvantaged regions of Peru.

All these countries are mobilizing new participants in both politics and the economy, in many cases challenging established institutions and elites, and in some cases fostering efforts at “refoundation.” They tend, to differing degrees, to favor populist politicians who systematically weaken parties and other institutions, preferring to communicate directly with the public.

Implications for North America and Europe

First, the United States and Canada need to take more seriously the accelerating process of functional integration between them and their closest neighbors in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. New attitudes, approaches, policies and institutions are required to manage this increasingly complex but highly asymmetric interdependence.

Second, the countries of North America and Europe must adjust to Brazil’s new strength and stature by developing global cooperation with Brazil on a wide variety of issues, by no means confined to the Western Hemisphere.

Third the Andean countries present, especially to the United States but also to Europe, tough issues that include (in most cases) resource nationalism, narcotics trafficking, authoritarian governance and violations of human and labor rights, as well as international tensions arising from the ties some have been developing with global adversaries of the United States and Europe. For both the United States and Europe, a key aim in the Andean region, as also in Central America, is to help vulnerable countries strengthen their institutions in order to enable them to resist organized crime and drug trafficking organizations as well as resist the ALBA path. It is important for Washington and the members of the EU to distinguish carefully among the already aligned ALBA countries, looking in each case for common ground in order to confront shared problems. The thus-far promising beginnings by the governments of Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia, Ollanta Humala in Peru, and Mauricio Funes in El Salvador merit sympathetic attention and support, both from Europe and the United States. Both Washington and the EU countries should also seek case by case cooperation regarding shared concerns with Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua—and Cuba. How the international relations of all these countries unfold in the coming years will depend in each case not only on their internal evolution, but also on the willingness and capacity of international actors to relate to them individually and constructively.

Fourth, the United States, Canada and the European countries should think of Latin American and Caribbean nations not simply as sources of commodities, arenas for investment, export markets and suppliers of labor but as important potential partners in confronting the broad global agenda, from climate change to public health, nonproliferation to fighting organized crime. They should also focus on the synergistic energies that could be released by investing in Latin America’s infrastructure and its educational and technological capacity.

Fifth, the United States, Canada, and the countries of Europe should invite all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, whatever their political orientation, to join in dealing with the challenges that affect them all, and on which the former have as much to learn as to teach: improving research, opening up debate and undertaking concerted efforts to curb the violence and corruption that the drug trade produces; improving citizen security by focusing on what can be learned from experiences throughout the world on the relationships between citizen security and economic prosperity, social equity, political participation, community-based policing, and judicial and penal reform; and exploring and implementing feasible ways to understand and respond effectively to climate change and its consequences.

These global issues are not unique to the Americas, but they are all challenges for which the diverse countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are highly relevant.

Authors

Abraham F. Lowenthal

Image Source: Â© Luis Galdamez / Reuters

The Future of Central America: Challenges and Opportunities of Migration and Remittances

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:30:00 -0400

Event Information

September 29, 2011
8:30 AM - 1:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

More than three million Central Americans reside in the United States with widely differing legal situations, and this will likely continue as long as Central America remains a vulnerable region. For home countries prone to governance problems, widespread violence, natural disasters and economic stagnation, remittances sent by Central American migrants are a decisive factor driving economic dynamism and social change in their countries of origin. In El Salvador, for instance, remittances from abroad represent seventeen percent of GDP. The nature and evolution of the U.S. debate on immigration will likely have an outsize effect on Central America’s development prospects.

On September 29, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration hosted a discussion on the current and future prospects of Central American migration to the United States, the regional implications of the U.S. domestic debate on immigration, and the trends and impacts of remittances in the Central American isthmus. Two panels of experts examined these issues, followed by a keynote address by Julissa Reynoso, deputy assistant secretary of state for Central American and Caribbean Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.

Transcript

Event Materials

Participants

Panelists

Pablo Rodas

Chief Economist
Central American Bank for Economic Integration

Nestor Rodriguez

Professor, Latin American Studies
University of Texas at Austin

Aaron Terrazas

Policy Analyst and Project Manager for the Regional Migration Study Group
Migration Policy Institute

Moderator: Neil G. Ruiz

Senior Policy Anaylst, Metropolitan Policy Program

Juan José Garcia

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Salvadorans Living Abroad

Manuel Orozco

Senior Associate and Director of Remittances and Development
Inter-American Dialogue

Sonia Pellecer

Professor, Sociology and Migration Studies
Rafael Landívar University, Guatemala

Ricardo de Puerta

Professor of Sociology
Catholic University of Honduras

Julissa Reynoso

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central American and Caribbean Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Guatemala: Between A Rock and A Hard Place

Kevin Casas-Zamora — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:21:00 -0400

Elections were held in Guatemala on September 11. As has become customary since the country’s return to democratic rule in 1986, no candidate was close to reaching 50% of the vote to win outright. A second round run-off will now take place on November 6. Otto Pérez-Molina, leader of the Patriotic Party and a retired general, came out comfortably on top with 36% of the vote, and will now be joined in the ballotage by Manuel Baldizón, a businessman, former member of Congress and standard bearer of the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party (LIDER) party, who reaped 23% of the votes.

The crucible. Threatened by the pervasive presence of organized crime and the spillover effects of drug-related violence in Mexico, Guatemala is facing an existential crucible that may well have regional implications. The signs of Guatemala’s predicament are everywhere. They range from a homicide rate (52 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009) that counts among the world’s highest, to a proliferation of high profile murders that pose serious questions about the ability of the country’s law enforcement institutions to bring violence under control. The worst of the lot, by far, is the massacre of 27 peasants in the northern department of Petén by operatives of the Mexico-based Zetas drug trafficking organization (DTO) last May. This was an ominous sign of the country’s worst security threat: the state’s loss of effective control over vast swaths of the territory to criminal gangs. Some estimates put at 40% the proportion of national territory under the control of DTOs, notably the unforgiving forests of Petén, bordering Mexico and Belize.

Guatemala’s law enforcement apparatus is not merely ill-suited to the task of turning things around. In actual fact it is a major part of the problem. Aided by a long tradition of impunity –which the 36-year long civil war made worse—criminal syndicates have been able to penetrate police and judicial institutions to a degree probably unknown in the rest of Latin America, including Mexico and Colombia. Since 2008, the country has had five Ministers of the Interior and four Chief Police Officers, including several with alleged connections to criminal organizations. It is no mystery why, according to Latinobarometer 2010, a regional opinion poll, only 17% and 18% of the Guatemalan population claim to trust the judiciary and the police, respectively, the lowest figures in Central America by far. Haiti aside, no country in the Western Hemisphere has more severe problems to uphold the rule of law.

This state of affairs led the U.N. and the Guatemalan Government to establish in 2006 the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), with the aim of dismantling illegal groups operating within the country’s security institutions. Ominously, in June 2010, Carlos Castresana, the first head of CICIG tendered his resignation, citing the government’s reluctance to clamp down on law enforcement corruption and its lack of support for the Commission’s investigations on organized crime. After four years, the Commission can point to real successes in solving high-profile criminal cases, much as its efforts have been frequently undermined by rulings by the local judiciary. Ostensible limitations notwithstanding, CICIG remains a carefully vetted unit in a country in which the penetration of law enforcement institutions by crime syndicates is rampant.

A most flawed democracy. Against this backdrop the electoral process has provided no sign that Guatemala’s political system is up to the colossal tasks facing the country. The symptoms are myriad. The electoral process has rendered evident the frailty of the country’s party system, which, alongside Peru’s, is the most volatile in Latin America. Ever since the democratic transition no incumbent party has been able to win reelection and most parties, in fact, have disappeared after a few years. Guatemala is, for all intents and purposes, a party-less democracy. Indeed, only an environment in which political structures are thin as a shadow could have engendered the ill-starred candidacy of First Lady Sandra Torres, which poisoned political debates for most of the campaign. Torres’ decision to divorce President Alvaro Colom overtly to circumvent the constitutional norm that barred her from running (“I’m divorcing my husband so I can marry my people”, she announced), would be more than enough to give politics a bad name in any country. By means of a Constitutional Court ruling, Guatemala’s legal system was able to put an end to this undignified soap opera, giving a hint in the process that the rule of law is not yet a lost cause in Guatemala. The legal system, however, proved incapable of protecting political institutions from other more ominous threats. That the assassination of at least 35 candidates and activists throughout the electoral process is generally considered a progress says plenty about the state of Guatemala’s democratic institutions. To this we have to add the blatant disregard of the main candidates for campaign finance rules that cap private donations, forbid foreign contributions and require parties to reveal their income sources. In a country where organized crime reigns virtually unfettered the complete opacity of campaign finance poses ostensible dangers. That a consortium of local NGOs presented data suggesting that parties spent a minimum of $35 million during the first round compounds the legitimate concern for the integrity of the electoral process.

The candidates. And then there is the deeply problematic choice yielded by the election. Following his narrow electoral defeat in 2007, Pérez-Molina has somewhat softened his “iron-fisted” approach to crime, though he still embraces an expansive military participation in law enforcement duties. His policy platform is vaporous, but at least pays lip service to the notion of a national fiscal pact to raise revenue. The latter is a need of the highest order in Guatemala, where tax revenue barely reaches 10% of GDP, one of the world’s lowest figures and one of the root causes of the state’s structural weakness. The fiscal pact is also the Holy Grail of Guatemalan politics, which for decades has lived under the shadow of an all-powerful and, in many ways, pre-modern oligarchy hell-bent on blocking any attempt to increase its tax burden. Interestingly, despite his military past and conservative disposition, Pérez-Molina is generally distrusted by the local oligarchy, which embraced him reluctantly as the best way to stop the First Lady, whom they loathed. In his demeanor and rhetoric, Pérez-Molina gives the impression of being his own man, at least with regards to Guatemala’s traditional oligarchy. That ought to count in his favor.

More sensitive are the questions about his military past. He was head of military intelligence and army field commander in an area that saw the most atrocious human rights abuses during Guatemala’s civil war. It is fair to say that hard evidence implicating Pérez-Molina in the latter has not been forthcoming and, hence, he is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. However, any dispassionate observer would have to agree that such a past hardly amounts to a reassuring resume for a presidential candidate in a country whose paramount challenge is about ending impunity and bolstering the rule of law. What is most remarkable is that voters do not seem to care about any of this. This is partly because a large percentage of the electorate has no direct recollection of the tragedy of the civil war, which ended fifteen years ago, and also, and more ominously, because Pérez-Molina’s military background is actually welcome as a guarantee of resolve by a desperate population. His eventual electoral success could be a harbinger of things to come in Latin America. In a region where today the Armed Forces are vastly more trusted than civilian institutions (in 2009 the Armed Forces were trusted by 45% of Latin Americans; political parties by 24%, according to Latinobarometer), military officers –both active and retired—may well decide in a few countries that it is time for them to fill the void of credibility and solutions left by widely discredited politicians. Coups may be out of fashion in the region, but a military hand at the helm may not be.

That someone like Pérez-Molina has come to be seen as the most sensible and predictable, even responsible, political option in Guatemala is disturbing. Because none of the adjectives above befits Manuel Baldizón. Only a populist buffoon of the worst kind would be ready to serve voters a political platform whose main courses consist of applying the death penalty across the board (broadcasting executions live, for good measure), denouncing international Human Rights treaties, guaranteeing 15 months of salary to all workers by decree, slashing income tax rates to 5% while eliminating all other taxes, and, in a dazzling display of sorcery, promising Guatemala’s qualification to the next World Cup. That this farrago was taken seriously by nearly one fourth of the voters is a reminder that unjust and violent democracies are doomed to walking on the edge of a cliff. This smacks of desperation. Above all, it is an indication that a significant share of the citizenship has given up on a rotten political status quo, which they deem unable to solve their problems.

The real choice. And in this they may be onto something. The sad truth about Guatemala’s election is that its eventual result is highly unlikely to improve matters in the country. To put it shortly: the result is mostly irrelevant, except that some options can make things even worse than they are. Guatemala’s problems are deep and intractable as to appear way beyond the manifest abilities of the political leadership on offer. They are problems that concern the viability of the state, not the quality of any particular administration.

It is time to shed the pretence that Guatemala’s frail and corrupt institutions will be able to prevent the country from becoming a narco-state. In order to forestall this outcome, Guatemala needs not merely the abundant help but indeed the tutelage of the international community. U.N. involvement –so far limited to the investigation of a few high profile cases—must be expanded dramatically to encompass police and judicial powers, so that law enforcement institutions can be rebuilt wholesale. This means, in practice, that the Guatemalan government would have to consent to partly ceding essential attributes of sovereignty to some kind of U.N.-sanctioned body, to a much greater degree than allowed by CICIG’s current mandate and for a long, long time.

This is very unpleasant, not to mention riddled with risks. But it is no use assuming that Guatemala’s institutions in their current shape are up to the task or that ceding vital components of sovereignty is an affront to the country. Guatemala is already losing sovereignty every day, in every possible way, to some of the world’s most dangerous people. Guatemala’s next President will have to decide whether to relinquish vital prerogatives of the state to the international community in order to save his country, or to relinquish more territory to criminal gangs and doom his country to implosion.

Judging by the spectacle of the current electoral process, it would be delusional to expect from the leading presidential candidates the farsightedness and statesmanship that Guatemala sorely needs at this juncture. We can only hope. But we also need to start calling things for what they are and stop pretending that Guatemala is on the road to any kind of recovery.

Authors

Kevin Casas-Zamora

Image Source: © STR New / Reuters

Korea, Colombia, Panama: Pending Trade Accords Offer Economic and Strategic Gains for the United States

Mauricio Cárdenas and Joshua Meltzer — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 16:14:00 -0400

Editor's Note, Oct. 12, 2011: Congress has passed a trio of trade agreements negotiated during the George W. Bush administration and recently submitted by President Obama. The authors of this policy brief say the pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama will boost U.S. exports significantly, especially in the key automotive, agricultural and commercial services sectors.

Policy Brief #183

A trio of trade agreements now pending before Congress would benefit the United States both economically and strategically. Carefully developed accords with South Korea, Colombia and Panama will boost U.S. exports significantly, especially in the key automotive, agricultural and commercial services sectors.

Among the other benefits are:

increased U.S. competitiveness
enhancement of U.S. diplomatic and economic postures in East Asia and Latin America
new investment opportunities
better enforcement of labor regulation and
improved transparency in these trading partners’ regulatory systems.

The pacts are known as Free Trade Agreements, or FTAs. The Korean agreement (KORUS) was negotiated in 2006-2007 and revised in 2010. The Colombian agreement (COL-US, sometimes known as COL-US FTA) was signed in 2006. The agreement with Panama (PFTA, sometimes known as the Panama Trade Promotion Agreement) was signed in 2007. All have the support of the Obama administration.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The three FTAs will substantially reduce these trading partners’ tariffs on U.S. goods, opening large markets for U.S. commerce and professional services. In combination, they will increase the size of the U.S. economy by about $15 billion. Furthermore, they will help reverse a slide in U.S. market influence in two important and increasingly affluent regions of the globe.

Approval of all three agreements is in the national interest. To move forward, both Congress and the administration should take these appropriate steps:

Congress should approve the trade agreements with Korea (KORUS), Colombia (COL-US) and Panama (PFTA) without additional delays.
To maximize the trade and investment benefits of KORUS, the administration should actively engage in the KORUS working groups, such as the Professional Services Working Group.
Similarly, the U.S. Trade Representative should participate in the Joint Committee’s scheduled annual meetings, in order to maintain a highlevel focus on U.S.-Korea trade, drive further trade liberalization and enable the committee to serve as a forum for broader discussions on trade in East Asia.
The Colombia-U.S. Joint Committee should include representatives of Colombia’s Trade and Labor Ministers with their US counterparts. The presence of the Labor minister should facilitate progress under the FTA through strengthened labor standards and timely implementation of all elements of the agreed-upon action plan. This Committee and specialized working groups could increase the pace of bilateral interaction and help officials identify important areas for discussion, negotiation and agreement.
Panama has ratified the Tax Information and Exchange Agreement which entered into force on April 2011. Panama and the US should strengthen bilateral communication so that collaboration in the battle against money laundering is pushed even further with greater cooperation.

Economic Effects of the Korea Agreement

The economic benefits to the United States from KORUS are especially significant, as the agreement will provide preferential market access to the world’s 11th largest—and a fast-growing—economy. In 2010, U.S.-Korea trade was worth $88 billion, comprising U.S. exports of $39 billion and imports of $49 billion, making Korea the United States’ seventh largest trading partner. According to the independent, quasi-judicial U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), exports resulting from KORUS will increase the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by up to $12 billion. This constitutes a remarkable gain in both real and percentage terms.

To the United States, KORUS offers diverse economic advantages. Most strikingly, KORUS will open Korea’s service market to U.S. exports, allowing the United States to exploit its competitive advantages in financial services, education and information and communications technologies. The agreement also will lead to increased imports from Korea, which in turn will help the United States achieve greater economic specialization. The likely effects of more specialization—and of increased Korean investment in the United States—include greater U.S. efficiency, productivity, economic growth and job growth. Meanwhile, U.S. investors will gain new opportunities in the increasingly active Asia-Pacific region.

Lately, passage of KORUS has assumed enhanced importance with the impasse in the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round. No longer can the United States reasonably anticipate that Doha will lead to improved access to the Korean market. Moreover, an FTA between Korea and the European Union (EU) that took effect July 1st confers preferential access to European exporters, undermining the competitiveness of U.S. businesses in Korea. Even before the European FTA, the United States had been losing valuable ground in Korea. Between 2000 and 2010, the United States fell from first to third in the ranking of Korea’s trading partners (reversing positions with China), as U.S. products declined from 18 to only 9 percent of Korean imports. Failure to approve the agreement can be expected to lead to a further decline. These moves will strongly assist U.S. producers of electronic equipment, metals, agricultural products, autos and other consumer goods. For example, agricultural exports are expected to rise $1.8 billion per year.

On the services front, KORUS will increase U.S. businesses’ access to Korea’s $560 billion services market. Financial services providers, the insurance industry and transportation firms stand to benefit substantially. KORUS usefully builds on the link between investment and services by improving the ability of U.S. law firms to establish offices in Korea. In addition, the agreement establishes a Professional Services Working Group that will address the interests of U.S. providers of legal, accounting and engineering services, provided that U.S. representatives engage actively in the group. KORUS also requires that regulations affecting services be developed transparently and that the business community be informed of their development and have an opportunity to provide comments, which the Korean government must answer.

On the investment front, KORUS affords a chance to strengthen a bilateral investment relationship that probably is underdeveloped. In 2009, the U.S. foreign direct investment flow to Korea was $3.4 billion, while there was a net outflow of Korean foreign direct investment to the United States of $255 million. KORUS supports market access for U.S. investors with investment protection provisions, strong intellectual property protection, dispute settlement provisions, a requirement for transparently developed and implemented investment regulations and a similar requirement for open, fair and impartial judicial proceedings. All this should markedly improve the Korean investment climate for U.S. business. It will strengthen the rule of law, reducing uncertainty and the risk of investing in Korea.

On the governance side, KORUS establishes various committees to monitor implementation of the agreement. The most significant of these is the Joint Committee that is to meet annually at the level of the U.S. Trade Representative and Korea’s Trade Minister to discuss not only implementation but also ways to expand trade further. KORUS establishes committees to oversee the goods and financial services commitments, among others, and working groups that will seek to increase cooperation between U.S. and Korean agencies responsible for regulating the automotive sector and professional services. These committees and working groups, enriched through regular interaction between U.S. and Korean trade officials, should increase levels of trust and understanding of each county’s regulatory systems and help officials identify opportunities to deepen the bilateral economic relationship.

Strategic Effects of the Korea Agreement

Congressional passage of KORUS will send an important signal to all countries in the Asia-Pacific region that the United States intends to remain economically engaged with them, rather than retreat behind a wall of trade barriers, and is prepared to lead development of the rules and norms governing trade and investment in the region. KORUS will provide an important economic complement to the strong, historically rooted U.S. military alliance with Korea. It also will signal a renewed commitment by the United States in shaping Asia’s economic architecture.

The last decade has seen declining U.S. economic significance in Asia. Just as the United States has slipped from first to third in its ranking as a trading partner of Korea, similar drops are occurring with respect to Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and other Asia-Pacific economic powers. In all of Northeast and Southeast Asia, the United States has only one FTA in effect, an accord with the Republic of Singapore. Passage of KORUS now would be particularly timely, both as a sign of U.S. engagement with Asia and as a mechanism for ensuring robust growth in U.S.-Asia trade and investment.

To illustrate how KORUS might affect U.S. interests throughout the region, consider regulatory transparency. The KORUS transparency requirements could serve as a model for how countries can set and implement standards. They might for example, influence the unfolding Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, talks that could set the stage for a broader Asia-Pacific FTA. U.S. producers, investors and providers of commercial and professional services could only benefit from a regional trend toward greater transparency and the lifting of barriers that would ensue. Other KORUS provisions favorable to the United States could function as similar benchmarks in the development of U.S. relations with Asia-Pacific nations and organizations.

Effects of the Colombia Agreement

COL-US will also strengthen relations with a key regional ally and open a foreign market to a variety of U.S. products. Bilateral trade between Colombia and the United States was worth almost $28 billion in 2010. COL-US is expected to expand U.S. GDP by approximately $2.5 billion, which includes an increase in U.S. exports of $1.1 billion and an increase of imports from Colombia of $487 million.

COL-US offers four major advantages:

It redresses the current imbalance in tariffs. Ninety percent of goods from Colombia now enter the United States duty-free (under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act). COL-US will eliminate 77 percent of Colombia’s tariffs immediately and the remainder over the following 10 years.
It guarantees a more stable legal framework for doing business in Colombia. This should lead to bilateral investment growth, trade stimulation and job creation.
It supports U.S. goals of helping Colombia reduce cocaine production by creating alternative economic opportunities for farmers.
It addresses the loss of U.S. competitiveness in Colombia, in the wake of Colombian FTAs with Canada and the EU as well as Latin American sub-regional FTAs.

With respect to trade in goods, U.S. chemical, rubber and plastics producers will be key beneficiaries of COL-US, with an expected annual increase in exports in this combined sector of 23 percent, to $1.9 billion, relative to a 2007 baseline according to the ITC. The motor vehicles and parts sector is expected to see an increase of more than 40 percent. In the agriculture sector, rice exports are expected to increase from a 2007 baseline of $2 million to approximately $14 million (the corresponding increases would be 20 percent for cereal grains and 11 percent for wheat).

These and other gains will result from the gradual elimination of tariffs and from provisions that reduce non-tariff barriers as well. Among the latter, the most important changes would be increased transparency and efficiency in Colombia’s customs procedures and the removal of some sanitary and phytosanitary (or plant quarantine) restrictions. With respect to trade in services, Colombia has agreed to a number of so-called "WTO-plus" commitments that will expand U.S. firms’ access to Colombia’s $166 billion services market. For instance, the current requirement that U.S. firms hire Colombian nationals will be eliminated, and many restrictions on the financial sector will be removed.

On the investment front, the potential advantages to the United States also are substantial. In 2009, the U.S. flow of foreign direct investment into Colombia was $1.2 billion, which amounted to 32 percent of that nation’s total inflows. COL-US improves the investment climate in Colombia by providing investor protections, access to international arbitration and improved transparency in the country’s legislative and regulatory processes. These provisions will reduce investment risk and uncertainty.

COL-US presents significant improvements in the transparency of Colombia’s rule-making process, including opportunities for interested parties to have their views heard. COL-US also requires that Colombia’s judicial system conform with the rule of law for enforcing bilateral commitments, such as those relating to the protection of intellectual property. In addition to access to international arbitration for investors, COL-US includes dispute settlement mechanisms that the two governments can invoke to enforce each other’s commitments. Taken as a whole, these provisions offer an important benchmark for further developments in Colombia’s business environment. The transparency requirement alone could reduce corruption dramatically.

Labor rights have been a stumbling block to congressional approval of COL-US. The labor chapter of the agreement guarantees the enforcement of existing labor regulations, the protection of core internationally recognized labor rights, and clear access to labor tribunals or courts. In addition, in April 2011, Colombia agreed to an Action Plan strengthening labor rights and the protection of those who defend them. In the few months the plan has been in effect, Colombia has made important progress in implementation. It has reestablished a separate and fully equipped Labor Ministry to help protect labor rights and monitor employer-worker relations. It has enacted legislation authorizing criminal prosecutions of employers who undermine the right to organize or bargain collectively. It has partly eliminated a protection program backlog, involving risk assessments. And, it has hired more labor inspectors and judicial police investigators.

Besides economic benefits, COL-US offers sizable strategic benefits. It would fortify relations with an important ally in the region by renewing the commitment to the joint struggle against cocaine production and trade. Under the agreement, small and medium-sized enterprises in labor-intensive Colombian industries like textiles and apparel would gain permanent access to the U.S. consumer market. With considerable investments, Colombia would be able to compete with East Asia for these higher quality jobs, swaying people away from black markets and other illicit activities.

While Congress deliberates, the clock is ticking. Colombia is also looking at other countries as potential trade and investment partners in order to build its still underdeveloped infrastructure and reduce unemployment. Complementing its FTAs with Canada, the EU, and several countries in the region, Colombia has initiated formal trade negotiations with South Korea and Turkey and is moving toward negotiations with Japan. A perhaps more telling development is China’s interest in building an inter-oceanic railroad in Colombia as an alternative to the Panama Canal: on July 11th President Juan Manuel Santos signed a bilateral investment treaty with China (and the UK) and is expected to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao in the fall.

Effects of the Panama Agreement

Although Panama’s economy is far smaller than Korea’s or even Colombia’s, the PFTA will deliver important economic and strategic benefits to the United States. Considerable gains will take place in U.S. agriculture and auto manufacturing. Moreover, the PFTA will strengthen the U.S. presence in the region, allowing for the stronger promotion of democratic institutions and market-based economies.

U.S. merchandise exports to Panama topped $2.2 billion in 2009. The PFTA’s elimination of tariffs and reduction in non-tariff barriers will cause this figure to grow. For example, rice exports are expected to increase by 145 percent, pork exports by 96 percent and beef exports by 74 percent, according to the ITC. Exports of vehicles are expected to increase by 43 percent. The PFTA also guarantees access to Panama’s $21 billion services market for U.S. firms offering portfolio management, insurance, telecommunications, computer, distribution, express delivery, energy, environmental, legal and other professional services.

Panama’s trade-to-GDP ratio in 2009 was 1.39, highlighting the preponderance of trade in Panama’s economy and the international orientation of many of its sectors. Following passage of the PFTA, Panama will eliminate more than 87 percent of tariffs on U.S. exports immediately. The remaining tariffs will be removed within 10 years for U.S. manufactured goods and 15 years for agricultural and animal products.

PFTA protections to investors—similar to protections accorded under KORUS and COL-US—are especially valuable, as Panama receives substantial investments associated with sectors that will benefit from both from the expansion of the canal and from other infrastructure projects. A fair legal framework, investor protections and a dispute settlement mechanism, all features of the PFTA, are almost certain to increase U.S. investments in Panama. Panama’s Legislature also recently approved a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with the United States and amended current laws to foster tax transparency and strengthen intellectual property rights. These are crucial steps in preventing the use of Panamanian jurisdiction as a haven for money laundering activities.

Panamanian laws and regulations prohibiting strikes or collective bargaining were a concern that initially delayed implementation of the PFTA. But, these laws have been changed, with the exception of a requirement that 40 workers (not the recommended 20) are needed to form a union; the 40-worker requirement has been kept partly because labor groups in Panama support it. The PFTA’s labor chapter protects the rights and principles outlined in the International Labor Organization’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

Besides offering economic advantages to the United States, the PFTA is a strategic agreement. Strengthening economic links with Panama should bolster the U.S. capacity to address cocaine trafficking in the region, in light of Panama’s location as Colombia’s gateway to North America. The importance of the canal, now undergoing an expansion that will double its shipping capacity, further underscores the U.S. need to strengthen bilateral relations with Panama.

The time to act is now. Like Colombia, Panama has been negotiating with economic powerhouses other than the United States. It recently signed a trade agreement with Canada and an Association Agreement with the EU. Delaying passage of the PFTA would generate a loss of market share for a variety of sectors of the U.S. economy.

Conclusion

All three FTAs encourage trade by removing tariff and non-tariff barriers. All the agreements provide access to large services markets, foster transparency and offer significant strategic advantages to the United States. Congress should approve each of them now.

The authors would like to thank Juan Pablo Candela for his assistance with this project.

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The Security Summit in Central America: On the Modest Meaning of Shared Responsibility

Kevin Casas-Zamora — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:53:00 -0400

At last week’s international conference convened to support Central America’s regional security strategy, held in Guatemala City, all the talk was about the co-responsibility of drug-consuming countries, such as the United States and Europe’s own, in solving the region’s security crisis. But alas, the meeting in Guatemala yielded relatively little in the way of fresh funds to combat organized crime in the isthmus.

True, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank committed $1.5 billion for security projects over the next few years—but those resources took on the form of loans and the conditions and contours of these pledges remain unclear. For instance, it is not readily apparent whether a recent IDB $132 million security-oriented loan to Costa Rica would be included in that amount. Furthermore, non-reimbursable aid commitments were few and far between. The United States revised past offers of aid, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledging $300 million to the region, rather than the $200 million offered by President Obama while visiting El Salvador last March. How much of this is new funding and how much is simply a reiteration of undisbursed past pledges remains anybody’s guess. Given U.S. diplomats’ recent insistence on the unlikelihood of dramatic increases in counternarcotics assistance to the region, it can only be assumed that a horse which Central America had already bought was now given nicer ribbons, an extra carrot or two, and once again put on sale in Guatemala. Spain, Australia and a couple other countries followed suit with small financial pledges of their own.

Other governments made specific and valuable offers of technical security assistance. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ intervention merits special note. Speaking with the tone of someone who understands as well as anybody the isthmus’s current security plight, President Santos extended some very concrete offers to train Central American law enforcement bodies on tasks ranging from counterintelligence to complex financial investigations. His proposal to establish a regional center focused at countering money laundering is surely deserving of attention. Santos’s willingness to offer assistance contrasted with Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s deafening silence starkly. Ever so eloquent in providing an articulate defense of his government’s onslaught against drug trafficking organizations, Calderón was nonetheless supremely shy in pledging anything other than moral support to his Central American neighbors. If anything, the Mexican President “jumped the counter” and placed himself squarely beside his Central American peers in demanding abundant international support for his own endeavors.

The relatively modest pledges made in Guatemala suggest that the event’s real value lay in its political message, evidenced in the convergence of a remarkably broad group of nations and organizations all rallying in the name of an unprecedented regional effort to improve the isthmus’ dire security situation. The feat of organizing a summit attended by 9 heads of state or government from the region, as well as top officials from key regional and extra-regional partners, such as the United States, Spain, the Organization of American States, the IDB and many, many others, has to count as a significant achievement for the frequently underwhelming Central American integration institutions that coordinated it. The hitherto weak Central American Integration Secretariat (SICA) has carved a prominent role for itself. It now carries a major responsibility in this process. If crafting a regional approach against organized crime is a pressing necessity in Central America, then what emerged from Guatemala, with SICA at its helm, is now the only game in town.

From a substantive standpoint, however, what emerged remains little more than a blueprint with a vague strategic statement and a list of 22 mostly adequate concept papers for potential projects on four areas: law enforcement, crime prevention, rehabilitation and prisons, and institutional strengthening. The blueprint unveiled in Guatemala still requires a lot of technical work—not to mention sustained political will—if it is to result in concrete improvements. Perhaps the international community will step up its commitments once that strategy is fleshed out more clearly and turned into a coherent set of fundable proposals. So far, the international community seems willing to vouch for SICA’s leadership role, but SICA will need a lot more external support if it is to lead the process successfully. In this regard, Secretary Clinton’s unexpected announcement that the United States will seek observer status in SICA is reassuring.

If there is some skepticism about SICA’s ability to catalyze this process, there is even more doubt about Central American governments’ capacity to absorb and effectively use a heavy influx of external security aid. This is an argument that U.S. officials routinely note in justifying the presently low levels of counternarcotics assistance. While a valid concern, this argument should not be used as a reason to deny the region’s governments the support they badly need in their battle against extraordinarily well-funded enemies. Let me put it this way: when it comes to using external aid wisely, Central American countries are certainly not Sweden, but they are no worse than Mexico. If anything, in cases like Costa Rica and Panama they may even be considerably better. Yet, since 2008, Mexico has received five times more counternarcotics assistance from the Unites States than the six Central American countries combined. Moreover, this argument fails to explain why the international community is so oddly reluctant to provide secure funding to bodies such as Guatemala’s UN-sponsored International Commission against Impunity (CICIG) that can hardly be accused of wasting their resources. As I write, the CICIG, one of the few safeguards remaining to prevent the capture of the Guatemalan state by crime syndicates, is scrambling to find funding (approximately $20 million per year) to keep its doors open past August 2011. This argument thus carries more than a hint of disingenuousness. Central American governments certainly must step up to the plate, but their ability to improve their security performance ought not to be dismissed from the outset.

Improving governmental performance is a key part of Central America’s shared responsibility, but it is not the only one. Indeed, judging from the watchwords of the conference’s remarks— Secretary Clinton’s included (“True security cannot be funded on the backs of the poor”)—international donors will be paying close attention to regional efforts at improving tax collection among the wealthy to fund security policies. The signs on this front are not entirely discouraging. Just a few days ago, Honduras’s legislators approved a temporary tax hike, earmarked for security purposes, expected to yield $80 million per year for five years, while governments in El Salvador and Costa Rica are engaged in similar political battles. Unfortunately in Guatemala, where the threat of organized crime is by far the most pressing, President Alvaro Colom seems unable to break the age-old political jinx that has impeded any kind of tax reform in his country. The Guatemalan business elite—as recalcitrant and reactionary as any—seems unfazed by the collapse in public safety and has vowed to resist any security-oriented tax hike. In all likelihood they will prevail. Guatemala’s embarrassingly low tax burden—10.5 percent of GDP in 2010—will be left intact; and the country will continue to suffer for that.

In sum, the conference in Guatemala was a useful step towards reversing the tide of violence that is engulfing Central America. At this point, the world has taken notice. But the real job remains to be done, and real commitment to help Central America help itself remains to be shown.

Authors

Kevin Casas-Zamora

The Travails of Development and Democratic Governance in Central America

Kevin Casas-Zamora — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:16:00 -0400

Introduction: Even by Latin American standards, the past thirty years have been momentous in Central America. In the 1970s and 1980s, long-standing social inequalities and political vulnerabilities gave way to civil wars in much of the isthmus. The region became one of the frontlines of the Cold War and a major obsession in Washington’s foreign policy circles. Later, external pressures and successive feats of political courage by Central American leaders brought a negotiated end to those conflicts and a transition process in which democratically elected governments replaced authoritarian regimes, some of them unspeakably brutal. The result of these achievements was both optimism in the region’s development potential and a visible loss of interest on the part of external actors, particularly the United States. After being the Afghanistan of the 1980s, Central America essentially dropped off the U.S. radar screen for the past twenty years.

Lately, it has made a comeback into the headlines but for all the wrong reasons. Today, Central America seems to be reverting to its bad old ways. Three Central American countries—Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala—are facing serious political challenges that render the frailty of their democratic institutions all too apparent. In 2009, Honduras saw the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya, a democratically elected leader—a very erratic one too—and a near democratic breakdown, which in some ways was a throwback to a dark age of Latin American political history. Despite the swearing in of a new democratically elected president, Porfirio Lobo, over one year ago, the structural drivers of the Honduran debacle remain untouched to this day.

In so far as they are related to the persistence of old and unmet development challenges, as well as to the emergence of some very complex new ones, the political travails seen today in some Central American countries are here to stay. As has happened before, Central America, too close to the United States to be ignored, may yet find a way into the crowded radar of the White House, as suggested by President Obama’s visit to El Salvador in March of 2011.

These pages will examine three sets of issues that remain crucial to Central America’s development and will continue to make the region prone to political crises and democratic reversals. The first issue is the weakness of the state and, more generally, of political power; the second is the region’s uncertain path towards integration with the world economy; and the third, and arguably most pressing, is crime and violence. All of them need to be dealt with in a consistent manner and with the help, in some cases, of external actors. Before addressing them, two caveats are in order. The first is that making generalizations about Central America is risky because the region is surprisingly heterogeneous.

Meanwhile, Nicaragua is witnessing the demise of the democratic institutions that, with all their imperfections, were the tangible legacy of not one but two different civil wars and more than 100,000 deaths. The re-election of former Sandinista strongman Daniel Ortega in 2006 has brought an onslaught on checks and balances and basic civil liberties, most visible in the fraud perpetrated in the 2008 local elections and in the president’s blatant unconstitutional efforts to remain in power beyond the end of his current term in 2012. Like the 2009 events in Honduras, the Nicaraguan slide into authoritarianism is also a sign of the troubling effects that President Hugo Chávez’s experiment in Venezuela— to which Ortega is closely aligned—is having throughout the region. Guatemala, in turn, faces a deeper problem that goes beyond the nature of the current government to encompass the very ability of its state to exert authority over its territory. Severely challenged by organized crime, Guatemala faces an existential crucible, whose result will have regional implications.

There is a clear divide between a more developed south—comprised of Panama and Costa Rica—and a far less developed center and north, i.e., Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and, to a lesser extent, El Salvador. Panama’s Human Development Index is at roughly the same level as Croatia’s, whereas in terms of human development Guatemala is at a similar stage as Equatorial Guinea. Similarly, the region’s richest country is more than five times as wealthy in per capita terms as the poorest one. The second caveat is about optimism and pessimism. This paper will dwell on challenges and pending issues, which will give a somber flavor to these pages.

Yet, when discussing Central America’s challenges we must never forget where the region hails from. Little more than two decades ago civil wars were raging in three countries in the region and a narco-dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, was ruling another one. As will become evident below, the problems that nations in the isthmus face are huge, but they have come a long way. Despite everything, the glass in Central America is half full, not half empty. This is particularly true if some of the region’s positive structural traits are brought into the picture.

The first and most obvious is its geographical location, which gives it easy access to the largest and richest economy in the world, an extraordinary biodiversity, and a huge potential for the development of alternative energy sources, such as hydropower, geothermal energy, and solar energy. Further, Central America is in the middle of a demographic transition that provides it with a significant bonus. The current generation will have the advantage of having a lower dependency burden, i.e., more people in the labor force and fewer children and elderly people, than any previous or future generation. This imposes the burden of creating jobs at an accelerated pace, but it also means that should Central America make the necessary investments to increase the current cohort’s productivity, it could see a major leap in its human development level.

With those two qualifications out of the way, let us probe three crucial development challenges faced by the isthmus.

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Kevin Casas-Zamora

Central America's Drug Trafficking

Kevin Casas-Zamora — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

During Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's trip to Guatemala this week, the governments of Central America will unveil their strategy for fighting entrenched organized crime in the region. The meeting is meant to raise the profile of the isthmus' severely deteriorated security situation and marshal international resources to the task of improving it.

The stakes are high. Central America's drug-related security plight is as grave as Mexico's. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have violence rates second only to those of active war zones. Honduras' murder rate (77 per 100,000 people in 2010) is 15 times that of the United States and more than four times that of Mexico. Moreover, in the last decade, murder rates have gone up in every country in the region, in some cases dramatically.

The narcotics maelstrom engulfing Central America is a big part of the problem. Whereas in 2006 close to one-fourth of U.S.-bound cocaine shipments traveled through the region, in 2010 the figure was higher than two-thirds, according to radar tracking from the U.S. government. Organized crime has flourished in Central America alongside the drug trade, in part because of structural conditions that have long doomed the isthmus to violence and underdevelopment, and that can be addressed only by Central Americans themselves. The region is plagued by weak states, poor law enforcement institutions and a lack of opportunities for the region's youth.

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Kevin Casas-Zamora

Publication: LA Times

A Conversation on the Future of Central America: The Challenges of Insecurity and Trade, Keynote Address by Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla

Fri, 20 May 2011 08:30:00 -0400

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May 20, 2011
8:30 AM - 1:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

Looking toward the future, Central America faces many challenges. Escalating waves of insecurity and a tide of questions regarding the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement continue to grip the region, at times in ways that threaten its long-term viability.

On May 20, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration hosted a discussion on the current and future prospects of Central America, featuring a keynote address by Laura Chinchilla, president of the Republic of Costa Rica. Panelists discussed reducing criminal violence levels in the region, trade and deepening Central America’s economic integration in the world. This is the first in a series of events focusing on the current and future prospects of Central America.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.

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Nick Rischbieth

President
Central American Bank for Economic Integration

Carlos Castresana

Attorney General, Supreme Court of Spain
Former Head, UN International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala

Brian Nichols

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Albert Ramdin

Assistant Secretary General
Organization of American States

Laura Chinchilla

President
Republic of Costa Rica

Latin America’s Economic Future: Shifting Gears in the Age of Heightened Expectations

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:30:00 -0400

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April 15, 2011
9:30 AM - 12:30 PM EDT

Stein Room
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

In the wake of the most severe financial crisis in recent times, Latin America is witnessing unprecedented economic challenges and opportunities that are shaping the region’s growth and development prospects.

On April 15, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted the launch of its biannual Latin America Economic Perspectives report. This year’s report, "Shifting Gears in the Age of Heightened Expectations," examines the scope and effectiveness of the policies and strategies that different Latin American countries are implementing—or should implement—to address the challenges of today’s global economy. Leading international experts discussed the findings of the report, analyzing the region’s economic performance and setting forth recommendations for governments and policymakers.

After each panel, participants took audience questions.

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20110415_latin_america

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Alexandre Tombini

Governor, Central Bank of Brazil

José Luis Escrivá

Head of Global Public Finance, BBVA

Piero Ghezzi

Managing Director and Head of Economics and Emerging Markets Research, Barclays Capital

Juan Carlos Echeverry

Minister of Finance, Colombia

José de Gregorio

Governor, Central Bank of Chile

Curbing Success in Latin America

Mauricio Cárdenas and Eduardo Levy-Yeyati — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:57:00 -0400

There are two Latin Americas and one is thriving. While Central America and the Caribbean are still struggling with the effects of the 2008 economic crisis and may grow below 2 percent this year, the stellar seven (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay) passed with flying colors the test of the global slowdown. These seven countries are expected to grow at an average rate of 5 percent in the near future, fueled by apt domestic policies, favorable terms of trade and considerable amounts of foreign capital inflows.

However, success has come at a price. These seven countries are facing overvaluations in their currencies. Many worry that the region is catching a mild case of Dutch disease — a term coined by The Economist in 1973 to refer to the decline of the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands after the discovery of a large natural gas field in 1959. Dutch disease is an illness that kills jobs and competitiveness (sometimes permanently) in industrial sectors that are adversely affected by the appreciation of the currency.

Traditional Dutch disease has been linked primarily to the effects of high commodity export prices or volumes in one sector at the expense of other sectors. The symptoms are already apparent in commodity exporting countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia, where the volumes of non-primary net exports have been falling rapidly and industrial output and employment are starting to dwindle despite solid GDP growth figures.

But the Latin American seven (with the notable exception of Argentina) are also suffering from a new strain of the disease, the so-called “financial-Dutch disease”, which is driven by capital flows that exacerbate exchange rate appreciation pressures, making many of these countries too expensive for their own good. Initially dominated by foreign direct investment, capital flows are increasingly supplemented by portfolio flows.

In other words, if the traditional Dutch disease is linked to China, this new variety has its source in U.S. monetary policy.

Brazil deserves a special note in this regard. Its diversified manufacturing exports account for the country’s trade surplus. Thus, it is hard to argue that the country’s competitiveness is at stake due to a traditional case of Dutch disease triggered by booming metals and soybean prices. On the contrary, Brazil appears to epitomize financial Dutch disease, losing competitiveness at the hands of enthusiastic global speculators.

Understanding the nature of the disease is critical in order to prescribe a medicine that can cure the ailment. Traditional-Dutch disease from commodity booms calls for sector–specific interventions, such as a mix of taxes and subsidies designed to mitigate its impact on the relative competitiveness of the industry or sector stabilization funds to save the dollars from the external surplus abroad to limit its effect on the exchange rate.

But these measures are ineffective when it comes to a financial-Dutch disease, which requires a macroeconomic dam to keep away the dollar flood; for example, through sterilized exchange rate interventions or capital controls.

Sterilized interventions have become a permanent guest of the macroeconomic policy framework in the seven Latin jaguars (with the exception of Mexico). Capital controls that put sand-in-the-wheels of international finance are less pervasive. But Tobin taxes or unremunerated reserve requirements on selected foreign inflows, although admittedly more controversial, are also becoming part of the standard toolkit.

Micro-prudential measures, such as limits to banks´ foreign exchange positions and lifting of capital restrictions on outflows, are in the same category. An innovative addition to the policies under the macro-prudential umbrella is the use of standard commercial bank reserve requirements (as is the case in Turkey) or taxes on short-term lending (as is the case in Brazil) to widen the wedge between the deposit interest rate that determines the currency carry and the lending rate that governs the transmission of monetary policy.

These seven economies are increasingly attracted to these policy options, but two caveats are in order. First, as we argue in a recent Brookings report, both sterilized interventions and sand-in-the-wheel capital controls are effective, but only marginally and possibly decreasingly so over time.

Precisely because of this, neither the standard inflation-targeting framework nor its extended and expanded version (inflation targeting 2.0, which keep an eye on the potential deleterious influence of the global financial cycle) will be capable alone of delivering macroeconomic stability. In addition, these seven economies have been slow to unwind the fiscal stimulus implemented during the recent economic crisis, for reasons that have to do with elections in Argentina and Peru, natural disasters in Chile and Colombia, or more broadly the political cost of adjustment in an age of heightened expectations in Brazil.

At any rate, it is clear that these policies are not substitutes. A clever combination of exchange rate, monetary and fiscal policies is needed to prevent overvaluation and overheating, and to avoid a hard landing once the global financial cycle makes the inevitable turn.

Brookings: Topics - Central America

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Effects of the Colombia Agreement

Effects of the Panama Agreement

Conclusion

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The Security Summit in Central America: On the Modest Meaning of Shared Responsibility

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The Travails of Development and Democratic Governance in Central America

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Central America's Drug Trafficking

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A Conversation on the Future of Central America: The Challenges of Insecurity and Trade, Keynote Address by Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla

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Latin America’s Economic Future: Shifting Gears in the Age of Heightened Expectations

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Curbing Success in Latin America

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