The News Roundup is a regular section of the blog, featuring news articles from various sources around the web, with the goal of providing an overview of the weekly conversation about the countries where MCC works in the region. Quotes in italics are drawn directly from sources and do not necessarily reflect the position of MCC.
The cruel trade-off at your local produce aisle
The hands that pluck the fruits and vegetables — typically brown or black hands, which matters in the racialized calculus of food pricing where folks with darker skins often have to work harder for less — receive only a small fraction of the retail price. Some provinces, including Ontario —where over half the SAWP workers are employed — will not allow agricultural workers to unionize, either. Fairer access to rights, benefits and job protections, including employment insurance and open work permits, would not make much difference to the retail price, if any.
Champagne puts corporate abusers on notice with new human rights watchdog
While the CORE will have full discretion to undertake both joint, and independent, fact-finding missions and investigations, it’s unclear whether any of its recommendations will be actually be enforced. The ombudsperson will report on its findings every step of the way, Global Affairs Canada confirmed, but Champagne declined to say whether the new watchdog’s findings would translate into tangible action. The minister suggested that making “public recommendations” is the office’s primary responsibility, and said he hopes shareholders, investors and financial institutions will make their investment decisions accordingly.
Banging Pots for Peace: Strategies to Prevent Electoral Violence
It is especially important to amplify the voices of civil society leaders working to prevent election violence, and nonviolently address the exclusionary practices that gave rise to it in the first place. Elections are rarely perfect, and there are limits to internal involvement given the sensitivities about foreign meddling. The perception of picking sides can quickly backfire and limit future access. But, nonviolent action in support of an independent election commission, a professional police force, and a civil society capable of dialogue and disciplined collective action would go a long way to ensuring that elections are free, fair, and peaceful.
GameChangers 2017: What to Watch for in 2018
Not since the days of the Cold War have democracy and good governance been under such threat in Latin America. These conditions have in part been created by organized crime and the corruption it feeds. And organized crime will continue to profit from the chaos. Cooperation is also key to fighting transnational organized crime and for good or ill, the United States has often provided coherency and leadership in the war on drugs and organized crime. That leadership is gone along with much US credibility in the region. All this simply gives yet more room for criminals to maneuver.
A Perfect Marriage: Evangelicals and Conservatives in Latin America
There is a reason conservative politicians are embracing conservative evangelicalism. Evangelicals are solving the most serious political handicap that right-wing parties have in Latin America: their lack of ties with nonelites. As the political scientist Ed Gibson noted, parties of the right used to draw their core constituency from the upper strata. This made them electorally weak. Evangelicals are changing that. They are bringing in voters from all walks of life, but mostly the poor. They are turning right-wing parties into people’s parties.
Are Mexicans Imagining Their Corruption Problem?
In Mexico, where social networks have provided an outlet for unprecedented freedom of expression, what we observe is not that people perceive more corruption but rather that they dare to comment more about it, with more freedom and fewer restrictions. This is a good thing. With Mexico’s 2018 elections fast approaching, political elites would do well to accept that corruption has increased and that it has done so in a way that directly affects their constituents. The political debate should center on how to replicate the few successes that the country has already had in controlling corruption. The most notable of these, surprisingly, comes from the country’s police departments: While in 2012, three of every 30 federal police officers failed integrity tests, today only one in 100 fails.
Nobel Women’s Initiative Calls for Guatemalan Activist Release
Maria Choc is well known for her work defending communal lands from mining and mega-plantations. In a press release Thursday Nobel Women’s Initiative warned that local activists are “criminalized for exercising their basic right to protest and organize in response to threats posed by resource extraction to their communities.”
The best books on Guatemala: start your reading here
A literary tour of Guatemala includes a blistering satire about a tyrannical president, and two books based around the country’s long-running civil war.
The Good News About El Salvador
The job is far from finished. After all, 2017 homicide rates in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are still significantly higher than the Latin American average and almost seven times the global average. Prevention efforts are still too prone to political interference. Underlying challenges – structural inequality, concentrated disadvantage, systemic corruption and impunity, and a dangerous reliance on punitive approaches to public security – could just as easily wipe out recent gains. But there is reason to be optimistic. Though still too common, mano dura-style policing is losing its veneer as an effective solution to the region’s violence. If recent experience is a guide, policymakers throughout the region should take heart in the fact that committing to realistic plans with clear targets can eventually deliver results, even in the world’s most violent settings.
What explains Nicaragua’s surprisingly low murder rate?
Decades of experimental policies have kept the murder rate low, a mixture of leftist social policies, women’s empowerment, and community-minded policing. But now, some of the programs that originally helped knit together communities to keep the killing down have been cut. That’s raised a tricky question: Was the societal change that curbed crime permanent or temporary?
Why getting rid of Costa Rica’s army 70 years ago has been such a success
Costa Rica’s experiment without a military began in 1948, when Defense Minister Edgar Cardona proposed the idea to spend more for education and health, according to former Interior minister Alvaro Ramos. José Figueres, provisional president at the time, took the proposal to the constitutional assembly, which approved it. Instead of a permanent armed forces, the assembly created a new civil police force to defend the nation. Ramos, 62, said the change led to many advances for Costa Rica, especially in the 1950s and ’60s. “The standard of living of the sick, rural society went up, (and) we built big hospitals, but most importantly, there was a massive education boost,” he said.
Trump deals Haiti another blow, ending participation in guest worker program
As of Thursday, Haitian farmers and other laborers seeking to come to the United States as temporary, seasonal workers under the federal H-2A and H-2B guest worker program, will no longer be eligible. The temporary workers’ visa has for decades allowed hundreds of U.S. farmers, hoteliers and other business owners to hire thousands of foreign seasonal workers. But citing Haitians’ “extremely high rates of refusal… high levels of fraud and abuse and a high rate of overstaying the terms of their H-2 admission,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Haiti’s inclusion on the lists of eligible countries for 2018 “is no longer in the U.S. interest.” It also announced that the English-speaking Central American country of Belize will be banned, as well as Samoa in the central South Pacific Ocean.
The United States depends on Latin American gold to feed insatiable demand from its jewelry, bullion and electronics industries. But much of the metal comes from outlaw operations controlled by gangsters who use gold to launder their profits from cocaine sales. Located deep in the jungle, these mines use dangerous chemicals that poison the rainforest — and the miners who labor there. Once extracted, the dirty gold enters a pipeline that flows directly through Miami.
Architect Is Reinvigorating Bolivia with Colorful Architecture Inspired by Indigenous Cultures
With more than 60 projects in a little over 15 years, Mamani’s exuberant buildings are the work of someone not chained to blueprints, but tied to the heritage of his people. El Alto, in just a short time, has transformed from a slum adjacent to the country’s wealthy capital of La Paz into a thriving city of about 1 million. Most of the inhabitants are Aymara, an indigenous ethnic group that makes up about 25% of Bolivia’s population. As expert traders, they have engaged in an import business with China that has led to an explosion of wealth in the plateau of El Alto, which has an average altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, making it the world’s highest metropolis. Combined with the election of Aymara president Evo Morales and his work to pass a new constitution in 2009 that gave Bolivia’s 36 recognized indigenous communities comprehensive rights, Mamani’s architecture is a visual expression of this banner moment for the Aymara people.