Saturday, March 09, 2024

Argentine writer Hernan Diaz’s novel “Trust”

Hernan Diaz, the Argentine writer settled in New York, was an invitee at the 2024 Jaipur Literature Festival held last month. He spoke about creativity and writing. I was impressed by his brilliant ideas, profound intellect, subversive thoughts and powerful articulation. After listening to him I read his novel “Trust”. The book has exceeded my expectations.


‘Trust’ is not a simple story for passive pleasure of reading. It is a complex and unconventional novel provoking the readers to think, detect, imagine and question. Within the book, there are four different books written by different fictional authors in disparate genres and styles. There are multiple characters at different time periods. The author describes ‘Trust’  as a polyphonic novel. The first section is a novel written by a fictional writer Harold Vanner about New York financier Benjamin Rask and his wife Helen who patronizes arts and culture. Although Harold Vanner is one of the central characters in the book he never appears in it. Vanner opens the book and triggers everything that happens in it: several people in “the real world” react to Vanner’s book, setting the whole plot in motion.
 
The second part is a memoir of Andrew Bevel, a Wall Street tycoon who wants people to believe that his pursuit of profit was always aligned to the social good. His wife Mildred is a connoisseur of music and a lover of literature. They live together physically but live apart mentally. They find that the living together improves by the vast distance between their minds of which one is obsessed with money and the other arts. At times, Mildred dabbles in stocks and gives valuable advice to her husband which he uses to make more money. 
 
The third part is about Ida Partenza a writer who becomes secretary to the tycoon and ghost-writes his autobiography. Her father is an anarchist and an immigrant from Italy. She is caught between the anti-capitalist rants of her father and working with the wealthy financier who wants her to help with his autobiography spinning a positive image of his business and the cultural activities of his wife who becomes mentally ill. Diaz says in an interview, “ I enjoyed particularly writing the character of Ida. She is like my hero—she’s fearless, effective, crafty, and very bold. I made her all the things that I wish I were. She’s also a very different writer from me, so I had to learn to write like her”. 
 
The fourth part is the personal diary of Mildred, the tycoon’s wife “that is also a sort of a prose poem and a love letter to modernism”, in the words of the author. Midred writes about music, art, philosophy, her illness, the stock market and Swiss mountain slopes among which she convalesces in a clinic.
 
The connecting themes in all the four books are the Wall Street money-making and the world of art and literature. The author has juxtaposed the two themes with provocative pronouncements challenging the conventional American narratives and myths about money. He has chosen the boom years of the Wall Street in the twenties and the bust in 1929 followed by the years of depression for context. 
 
Diaz says he wanted to write about the labyrinth of capital, how it works and distorts the reality around itself in the American value system. He is fascinated by the ‘transcendental and mythical place of money in the American culture’. He explores how wealth  creates isolation for the wealthy while  giving the person extraordinary outreach to the world of art, culture and politics. According to Diaz “money is also a fiction. It is just that we have all agreed on the terms and conditions and agreed to play it as a game. There is nothing that ties money to real value other than a narrative. Or the trust that we invest in that narrative”. 
 
In another interview, Diaz says, “Reading is always an act of trust. Whenever we read anything, from a novel to the label on a prescription bottle, trust is involved. That trust is based on tacit contracts whose clauses I wanted to encourage the reader to reconsider. As you read Trust and move forward from one section to the next, it becomes clear that the book is asking you to question the assumptions with which you walk into a text. I would even say that Trust aims, to an enormous extent, to question the boundaries between history and fiction”.
 
Here are some vignettes from the novel:
  
-He became fascinated by the contortions of money—how it could be made to bend back upon itself to be force-fed its own body. The isolated, self-sufficient nature of speculation spoke to his character and was a source of wonder and an end in itself, regardless of what his earnings. He viewed capital as an antiseptically living thing. It moves, eats, grows, breeds, falls ill, and may die. But it is clean. This became clearer to him in time. The larger the operation, the further removed he was from its concrete details. There was no need for him to touch a single banknote or engage with the things and people his transaction affected. All he had to do was think, speak, and, perhaps, write. And the living creature would be set in motion, drawing beautiful patterns on its way into realms of increasing abstraction, sometimes following appetites of its own that he never could have anticipated—and this gave him some additional pleasure, the creature trying to exercise its free will. He admired and understood it, even when it disappointed him.
 
-The root of all evil, the cause of every war—god and country.
 
- History itself is just a fiction—a fiction with an army.
 
-Every life is organized around a small number of events that either propel us or bring us to a grinding halt. We spend the years between these episodes benefiting or suffering from their consequences until the arrival of the next forceful moment. A man’s worth is established by the number of these defining circumstances he is able to create for himself. He need not always be successful, for there can be great honor in defeat. But he ought to be the main actor in the decisive scenes in his existence, Whatever the past may have handed on to us, it is up to each one of us to chisel our present out of the shapeless block of the future.
 
-Every single one of our acts is ruled by the laws of economy. When we first wake up in the morning we trade rest for profit. When we go to bed at night we give up potentially profitable hours to renew our strength. And throughout our day we engage in countless transactions. Each time we find a way to minimize our effort and increase our gain we are making a business deal, even if it is with ourselves. These negotiations are so ingrained in our routine that they are barely noticeable. But the truth is our existence revolves around profit.
 
Hernan Diaz’s cerebral perspectives, intriguing plots and unconventional literary tools reminds me of Jorge Borges the famous Argentine writer. Diaz says, “Borges has shaped me not only as a reader and as a writer but also as a person. His playfulness with genre, his joyful disregard for taxonomies of any kind and his obsession with framed narratives are some of the aspects of his work that have influenced me”. Diaz has written a book “Borges, between history and eternity”.
 
Diaz believes that "fiction has palpable effects on reality. A lot of the power constraints that we feel in our everyday lives are based on fiction. Think of something that is as inherent and powerful to you as your nationality. That is, at the end of the day, a collection of ideological fictions. There's nothing in it. Nothing. Think about it for a second. There's nothing that makes you American or Belgian or anything aside from what you ascribe to that identity, and that is a series of narratives”.
 
Diaz is a voracious reader. In interviews, he quotes so many writers and points out parts of his novel  which have styles similar to some of the writers. After having read 29 books of P G Wodehouse he says, “ I love Wodehouse. Ever-surprising in his repetitiousness, never failing to delight, always making us safe in his breezy world. It is paradoxical that Wodehouse should give me so much comfort when he also makes me feel how mean and shabby my life is each time I emerge from one of his novels”.
 
Some authors write well but not impressive in speeches and conversations. Diaz is spectacular and mesmerizing both in writing and talking with his spontaneous thoughts and reflections. I have read some of his interviews which are as fascinating and inspiring as his book. He revels in abstract concepts and subversive thoughts. He calls writing as a monstrous act because it implies a metamorphosis. 
 


Diaz says, “I write with a fountain pen (received as gift twenty years back) in large format notebooks. I enjoy the feeling of flowing ink and the rumor of the pen on the paper. With a pen, you create your own geography, with its islets of thoughts and streams of associations”. 
 
‘Trust’ has won the 2023 Pulitzer prize for fiction. It is the second novel of Diaz. I cannot wait  to read his first novel “In the Distance”. 
 
Hernan Diaz is a potential candidate for Nobel Prize.
 

Sunday, January 28, 2024

“Where there was fire” – Costa Rican novel

 "Where there was fire" is the first Costa Rican novel I have read. It is also the first novel written by John Manuel Arias, the Costa Rican author, published in 2023.



The novel brings out the life and situation in Costa Rica during the time of domination of American banana companies in the sixties. The companies exploit the workers and the country. Their use of chemicals to spray on the banana plants cause sterility among men. To hide this, the company's Gringo doctor falsifies medical records to show that the men were already sterile. He is foolish and arrogant enough to tell one of the worker Jose Maria that his two children might not be his own. The angry husband tries to kill his wife Teresa but murders his mother- in-law who fights back. Then he goes to the house of the Gringo doctor and sets it on fire. The doctor and the whole banana plantation as well as the arsonist are burnt and turned into ashes. 
 
Teresa runs away to US leaving her two kids Lyra and Carmen. The latter, who is traumatized after witnessing the murder of the grand mother and the burning of the plantation, commits suicide leaving her son as orphan. The boy is adopted by Lyra, the sister of Carmen. But she does not tell the kid about the tragedy till he becomes an adult. Lyra does not let her mother Teresa meet the grandson when she comes back from US. The boy comes to know just before Teresa dies of cancer.
 
The author has added many other fascinating typical Latino characters and sub plots in the novel. The three Marias, the spinster sisters who are involved in the life of Teresa family, are memorable with their quaint characteristics and playful dialogues. The author has added some magical realism which makes the novel more interesting and familiar for the fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.


Sunday, January 07, 2024

Latin America’s economic and political outlook in 2024

Latin America’s GDP growth in 2024 is projected at 1.8%, down from 2.1% in 2023, according to the annual December report of ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean). 

 

This lowering of growth is due to the general slow down of global growth and in particular the decline in Chinese growth and the fall in commodity prices exported by the region. The modest 4.2% of Chinese GDP growth in 2024 will impact particularly Chile, Panama, Peru, Brazil and Uruguay. China absorbs 39% of Chile’s goods exports, 32% of those of both Panama and Peru, and 27% of those of Brazil and Uruguay. Latin America’s exports of agro products and minerals and metals are projected to fetch less revenue in 2024 with the anticipated reduction in prices of these items by 4% and 2% respectively.




 

Brazil’s GDP is expected to grow by 1.6% (down from 3% in 2023), Mexico’s 2.5% (down from 3.6% in 2023), Colombia’s by 1.7% (up from 0.9% in 2023, Chile’s by 1.9% (up from 0.3% in 2023) and Peru’s by 2.4% (up from 0.1%). Central America’s GDP is expected to increase by 3.2%, down from 3.4% last year.

 

Surprisingly, Venezuela will have the highest growth among the major economies of the region with 4% (up from 3% in 2023). The country which had gone through historic economic crisis due to mismanagement and US sanctions in the last several years has now recovered. The US has recently loosened some sanctions on export of oil and investment of American and other foreign companies in Venezuelan oil production.

 

Unsurprisingly, Argentina will have a negative growth of 1% (better than the 2.5% contraction in 2023). It is the only country in the region to suffer economic contraction. All the other 18 countries will show positive growth. Poverty in Argentina increased from 21.5% in 2016 to 30.1% in 2022.The new President Javier Milei who took office in December 2023 has already started some reforms such as cutting down expenditure and privatization of public sector companies. He has postponed implementation of his radical proposals such as closure of the Central Bank and dollarization of the economy. In the coming months, there will be more economic and financial difficulties for the government and sufferings for the people. The country could recover next year.

 

Milei will cause some minor disruptions in the process of deepening of integration of Mercosur with his anti-Lula rhetoric. However he will not have accomplices for destabilization of the region as a whole with his anti-Left policies since all the other major powers such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Venezuela are ruled by Leftist governments.

 

Latin America’s sovereign risk reached the level of 410 basis points in October 2023, as measured by the J. P. Morgan EMBI Global Diversified Index (EMBIGD) of emerging markets. This indicator measures the spread between interest rates on a country’s debt obligations and those of the United States, which are considered risk-free. The countries with the lowest sovereign risk index are Uruguay (about 90 basis points since the second half of the year), followed by Chile and Peru (both below 200 basis points). At the other extreme are countries with the highest credit risk namely Venezuela (15867), Argentina(2576) and Ecuador(1755) followed by Bolivia (1599)

 

Average inflation of the region was 5.2% in September 2023, down from 8.2% in September 2022. It has remained in single digit for the last two decades. Exceptions are Venezuela with inflation of 318% ( down from 138000 percent in 2018), Argentina 140% and Cuba 37%. The only other country with double digit inflation is Colombia 11%.


The region's ratio of gross external debt to GDP was 42% in September 2023. The region has relatively comfortable position of foreign exchange reserves with 860 billion dollars. But Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba have acute shortage of forex reserves.

 

Average lending rate (Q3 of 2023) was the highest in Argentina at 108%, followed by Venezuela at 48.6%, Brazil (42%) and Mexico at 32%.

 

In 2024 there will be presidential elections in Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. However, these will not bring out any dangers such as Bolsonaro or drastic changes and challenges.

 

In the Mexican elections in June, the current president Lopez Obrador’s protégé Claudia Sheinbaum is leading in the opinion polls and expected to win and continue the policies of the current government with more pragmatism but without the eccentricities of Obrador. In El Salvador, the Cool Dictator Nayib Bukele is expected to win in the June elections. He has consistently high popularity ratings with his successful containment of crimes and murders. The popular incumbent President Luis Abinader of Dominican Republic is poised to get a second term in the June elections. The elections in Panama and Uruguay are open but there is no polarizing radicals among the leading candidates. President Maduro will ensure his reelection by hook or crook in the last quarter of the year. He and his top political and military leadership have no other option. They cannot afford to let power pass to the hands of the opposition. The US government has announced (in 2020) a bounty of 15 million dollars on the head of president Maduro and several million dollars on other political leaders of Venezuela on trumped charges of drug trafficking and other crimes. So Maduro and other top leaders will certainly be killed or deported to US prisons immediately.  If Maduro is reelected, the US will make some pro forma noises about rigged elections but will get on with its resumption of business with Venezuela. The US will not repeat its regime change policy, after having failed miserably in the last several years.

 

Latin America will continue to be a large market for India’s trade and investment in 2024 and in the coming years and decades. India’s exports to the region were 22.5 billion dollars in the financial year April 2022-March 2023. Indian companies have invested around 12 billion dollars in the region. The region is contributing to India’s energy and food security with supply of crude oil, edible oil, pulses and fresh fruits. India is exploring opportunities in the region for mining and production of Lithium, needed for electrification of vehicles. India will continue to source copper, gold and other minerals from Latin America which has abundant reserves of them.

 

In 2024, India will deepen its engagement with Latin America and work closely with Brazil, the current president of G-20. Argentine President Milei has switched teams. He will play for Team USA while his predecessors played in BRICS and Global South teams. But this will not make any difference to India or BRICS since Argentina is completely mired in the economic crisis from which it will take time to get out. 

   
                    

Sunday, December 17, 2023

Chile, an authentic laboratory for democratic experiments

In a referendum held yesterday, 56 percent of the Chilean voters defeated a draft centre-right constitution.
 
Last year, the voters defeated a leftist constitution, which was drafted by the constitutional assembly which was dominated by social activists and idealists. 
 
The Chileans decided in a referendum held in 2019 to go in for a new constitution to replace the existing constitution imposed by the military dictatorship of Pinochet. Although this has been amended many times, still it perpetuates inequality and social injustice. The students and masses had risen in violent protests in 2019 seeking reforms in education, health care and pensions. It was because of these protests that it was decided to change the current constitution.
 
Both sides have now realized that they cannot impose their agenda on the other. So there is need for compromise and mutual give and take. 
 
The voters have also learnt that neither Left nor the Right has the exclusive solutions. So they have exercised smart choice in the presidential elections of the last two decades. They have voted the Left and the Right to power alternately in each of the last five elections since 2006. 
 
The current President Gabriel Boric, a Leftist, is the youngest to be elected at the age of 35. He was one of the student union leaders who lead the protests for equality and justice. He is trying his best to advance his leftist agenda but has only limited success due to the strong opposition of the conservative forces. He has also realized that he needs to be more pragmatic and realistic.
 



The Chilean constitutional experiment is a lesson for many other democracies of the world which are also struggling to balance the demands and interests of the haves and have-nots.
 

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Panama’s economy doing fine without a Central Bank in the last hundred years.

Panama’s economy doing fine without a Central Bank in the last hundred years.
 
Javier Milei, the President-elect of Argentina, has promised to close the central bank and dollarize the economy to get the country out of its crisis. Many people consider this as yet another crazy proposal of the Mad Milei. 
 
But there is a Latin American country whose economy is doing well without a Central Bank. It is Panama. It does not have a Central Bank since its independence in 1903. Panama is the only country in Latin America that has not experienced a financial collapse, high inflation or currency crisis in the last hundred years. On the other hand, the economy has experienced stable and resilient growth with low inflation and interest rates. This is even more amazing in view of the fact that the country has suffered with political crises and corruption cases. Panama’s unique economic management without a central bank is an intriguing case in global economics. 



The country does not print currency and has adopted US Dollar as de facto currency. The absence of a central bank has resulted in a completely market-driven money supply and interest rates. There are no capital controls despite the presence of a large number of foreign banks. There is no deposit insurance and no lender of last resort, so banks have to act responsibly at their own risk. No bail out or rescue by government. 
 
Of course, Panama is a small country of 5.5 million people with a special historical link to United States which built and controlled the Panama canal for a long time. Panama’s model may not work with large economies and it might be complicated for Argentina which has its own unique crisis with excessive external debt and severe shortage of foreign exchange.
 
More in the article… https://mises.org/library/panama-has-no-central-bank
 


Thursday, October 26, 2023

Argentine voters have made smart choices in the elections of 21 October

 Argentine voters have made smart choices in the elections of 21 October
 
Before the elections on 21 October, there was a hype by the anti-left western media that Argentina was going have its own Bolsonaro/Trump by electing Javier Milei, the far right radical anti-establishment candidate as President. But the Argentine voters proved to be smarter. They shocked Javier Milei and his choreographers by humbling him into the second position with 30% votes. Sergio Massa, the leftist candidate of the ruling coalition came first with 37% votes. The centre-right candidate Patricia Bullrich came third with 24%, She is out of contention for the second round of elections to be held on 19 November between Massa and Milei.
 


Argentina is going through yet another cycle of crisis with three digit (138%) inflation, steep currency depreciation, increased poverty and unemployment, shortage of foreign exchange reserves and huge unbearable burden of external debt. Part of the blame lies with the leftist Peronist governments in power for most part of the last two decades.  So, the voters elected the centre-right Mauricio Macri as President in 2015. However, his government also failed to arrest the deterioration of the economy. Macri made it worse by sinking the country in a huge debt trap by taking a 43 billion dollars IMF loan towards the end of his term. These billions were not used for any productive or revenue generating projects. The money simply disappeared, leaving the country with a severe burden of debt. During the Peronist rule between 2003 and 2014 the country was virtually debt free since the Wall Street cartels and their Washington DC accomplices kept Argentina isolated from the international capital markets. They wanted to punish Argentina for its audacious debt structuring on its own in 2002 ignoring IMF, the US Treasury Department and the Wall Street. President Nestor Kirchner pulled off a financial coup by making the creditors (over 93%) agree to receive 30 cents to a dollar. This way he reduced the debt from 90 billion to 30 billion dollars. He and his wife Cristina Fernandez, who succeeded him as President, refused to be blackmailed by the American vulture funds who did not accept the debt restructuring formula and insisted on full payments. So the Wall Street mafia blockaded Argentina from the western financial capital markets. This was a blessing in disguise. Argentina remained free from external debt since there was no one to extend credit except for the Chinese who came to the rescue occasionally with some credit and financial swaps. Argentina struggled but remained free from the curse of external debt, which had caused many crises in the past. But this situation was changed by the pro-US Macri who made a deal with the vulture funds and took the disastrous step of taking in 43 billion loan from IMF. This was irresponsible and unpardonable. This IMF debt of 43 billion dollars has become an unbearable burden for the country which has severe shortage of foreign exchange reserves. This has aggravated the economic crisis of the country. This is the reason why the voters punished Macri and defeated him in the 2019 elections when he sought reelection. His candidate Bullrich was given the same punishment in the 2023 elections. The electors are not yet ready to forgive the grave sin of Macri.
 
Obviously, the country needs a change from the leftist Peronists who have failed in economic management and the rightists who worsened the crisis by adding the the debt burden. It was in this context that the situation was ripe for an outsider. Javier Milei, the Libertarian candidate, was the natural choice at this time of anti-incumbency. Milei, a professional economist, promised a shock treatment and radical free-market reforms. His angry attacks against the political caste which got the country into the mess, resonated with the public. He got the most votes in the primaries held in August this year. This boosted the confidence of Milei who went overboard with extremist statements, crazy outbursts and attacks against those whom he did not like. He derided Pope Francis as “a malignant presence on earth,” “filthy leftist”, “a donkey”, “a jackass” and “a leftist sob”. This has not gone well in the catholic country which is proud of the first Argentine who has become Pope. 
 
Milei proposes to close down the Central Bank, dollarize the economy, shut down 10 of the 18 ministries and cut social expenditure. He has taken disturbing and unrealistic foreign policy positions. He attacks President Lula and admires the disgraced ex-president Bolsonaro. He is critical of Mercosur, the regional economic bloc as well as China, the most important economic partners of Argentina. He considers global warming as a “socialist lie”.
 
The masses struggling with poverty and economic difficulties realized that Milei has no agenda for them. Their situation would only worsen with Milei’s proposal to cut social expenditure. So they have ditched Milei and voted for the leftist candidate Massa, a known devil. In any case, Massa is a pragmatic and moderate leftist unlike the Kirchners who were extremists and confrontational.
 
Milei has got the message of the voters now and is toning down his rhetoric. He has realized the need for support of the moderate centre-right voters. 
 
I believe that Argentina needs a change from the traditional left and right.  An unconventional shock treatment by an outsider would be good at this time. So  Milei is a natural choice. But he needs to moderate himself and become more realistic and pragmatic. Only then he has a chance in the second round of elections on 19 November. 
 
In any case, even Milei gets elected as president he cannot impose his crazy proposals and become a monster like Bolsonaro or Trump.. His party does not have the legislative majority. In the Congressional elections held simultaneously  with the Presidential elections on 21 October, the leftist Peronist coalition has won the maximum seats. They got 34 seats in the House of deputies and 12 in the Senate. Milei’s party got 8 deputies and 8 senators while the centre-right coalition got 24 deputies and 2 senators. With these results, the new (Lower) House of Deputies will have 108 leftists, 38 Libertarians and 93 rightists out of a total of 257. In the Senate of 72 members, the leftists will number 34 while Libertarians will be 8 and rightists 24. So, Milei will need the support of the moderate rightists to pass his legislative reforms. He will have tough time in contending with the Leftist coalition which has the largest number of Deputies and Senators.
 
Milei would also have to live with another reality. The leftist incumbent candidate Axis Kicillof has been reelected as governor of Buenos Aires, the largest province with 17 million people out of the total country’s population of 45 million. There are also several other provinces with leftist governors. 
 
If Milei gets elected as president, the country would get a much-needed shock therapy. At the same time, he would not be allowed to become disastrous like Trump or Bolsonaro since the voters have built firewalls of opposition with their smart voting. It would not be bad either if the leftist Massa wins.  He is mature, balanced, pragmatic and has the much needed political experience of crisis management in recent times. 
 
 

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Ecuador elects a well-qualified and wealthy but millennial and moderate Daniel Noboa as President

 

Ecuador elected Daniel Noboa as President in the elections held on Sunday. 

At 35, he is the youngest to become the President of the country.  His wife Lavinia Valbonesi, age 25, will be the youngest First Lady. She is a Social Media Influencer with interests and investment in health food, fitness and fashion. The dashing young, athletic-looking, entrepreneurial and successful couple have attracted the votes of the youth.



Noboa has an MBA from Kellogg School, Masters in Public Administration from Harvard and another Masters in Political Communication and Strategic Governance from George Washington University. He started his own company at the age of 18, before joining his family business later. 

Noboa is born into one of the wealthiest families. His grandfather became a millionaire exporting bananas and other products. His father expanded the business and built a large group with dozens of companies in various areas including in exports, logistics, fertilisers, fishing and real estate.

In fact, his father Alvaro Noboa was a presidential candidate five times in the past but unsuccessfully. Even in this election he put up his candidature but withdrew it in favour of his son. 

Predictably, Daniel Noboa is pro-business, but not at the expense of inclusive development. He wants to increase social spending on poverty alleviation, employment, healthcare and education. His wife is in favour of allowances for single mothers. While his conservative father used to call his leftist opponent Rafael Correa as “communist devil”, the son avoided harsh words, confrontation and hate speech. His calm and responsible comportment and pragmatic approach during the TV debates endeared him to the voters. 

Noboa’s opponent, the leftist Luisa Gonzalez got more votes than him in the first round with 34% as against his 23%. But in the second round she got 48% while he had secured 52%. She took the defeat gracefully and issued the following statement, “To those who did not vote for us, also our congratulations, because the candidate they chose has won and as Ecuadoreans we also embrace them. And of course to the candidate, now President-elect Daniel Noboa, our deepest congratulations because it is democracy. We have never called to set fire to a city nor have we ever gone out shouting fraud. Enough of hatred, enough of polarization, Ecuador needs to heal. And count on us for a common agreement for our country,”.  

What a graceful gesture in comparison to the ugly and undemocratic shenanigans of the defeated candidates of Brazil and US in their recent elections. Even during the campaign and election debates, the two candidates did not indulge in hate speeches, indecent comments or or lies like those of Trump/Bolsonaro. The discourses of the two candidates were civilized and proper.  

This kind of democratic maturity should be a lesson for the rest of Latin America and the US

Noboa will assume office in November 2023 and govern until May 2025, completing the shortened term of President Guillermo Lasso who resigned as President in a confrontation with the National Assembly which proposed to impeach him on corruption charges. He dissolved the Assembly and his presidency as provided in the constitution. 

Noboa’s top priority is to tackle the unprecedented high level of violence and crime unleashed by the drug cartels which use Ecuador as a hub to ship drugs to Europe and US. Two weeks before the first round of elections in August, the gangs  assassinated  a presidential candidate Fernando Villavicenio who promised tough action against them. They went on to murder five more politicians. Later they killed all the seven who were in jail accused of involvement in  Vicenzio’s murder. Noboa was wearing bullet-proof vest during his campaign.

His second priority is to revive the economy which has not yet recovered from the pandemic hit. The main income of the country is oil exports but part of the oil shipment goes to service the Chinese debt. Ecuador is a dollarized economy since 2000. After the severe economic crisis of 2000, the country abandoned its national currency 'Sucre' to deal with hyper inflation, fall in exchange rate and capital outflow. Even the extreme leftist anti-US Correa did not try to change the system of using US dollars as the national currency. This means that Ecuador does not print its own bank notes. Panama and El Salvador are the other two Latin American countries which are also dollarised. 

 

Noboa’s main challenge would be lack of legislative support. His party has only 11 members in the 137 strong unicameral National Assembly. The leftist party of Gonzalez, Revolución Ciudadana (RC), is the largest with 42 members. The party is controlled by ex-President Rafael Correa who ruled from 2007 to 2017. He is in exile in Belgium with his Belgian wife. He has been convicted to prison on corruption charges. He calls the charges as politically motivated and wants a Presidential pardon to get back to the country. It was he who was responsible for the downfall of the centre-right President Guillermo Lasso. He will continue to cause instability until  he is rehabilitated. This will be the biggest challenge for the young President Noboa who has political experience of just two years as member of the Assembly in 2021-22. Rafael Correa turned around the country during his ten-year rule with his successful Inclusive development policies and programmes. But he was a polarizing figure within and outside the country. 

 

Noboa would be the toast of Washington DC which is desperately looking for centre-right leaders in Latin America which is dominated at present by leftist Presidents. In 2009, President Rafael Correa kicked out the Americans from the Ecuadorian military base in Manta, in the Pacific Coast. The Americans used the base for drug interdiction and surveillance of the region. But Correa’s successor signed an Agreement with US for resumption of American airforce activities in Ecuador. The US started cultivating Ecuadorian armed forces with supply of equipments and training. The US will push Noboa to open more doors. 

Although Ecuador is a relatively small market of 17 million people, India’s bilateral trade was substantial at 1.4 billion dollars in 2022-23. Crude oil is the main item of imports out of a total of 1016 million from Ecuador. India’s exports were 400 million dollars and there is good potential to increase the exports. Given the high level of trade, there is a need for India to open an embassy in Quito. Ecuador has one in New Delhi. 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, September 01, 2023

Mexican choice for President between two admirable women; one a scientist and the other an engineer

Mexico has two leading candidates for the presidential elections to be held in June 2024. Both are women.  Claudia Sheinbaum is from the ruling Morena party and Xochitl Galvez is from the opposition coalition.
 
Sheinbaum is a scientist. She has a PhD in energy engineering and is the author of two books and over one hundred articles on the subjects of energy, environment and sustainable development. She is from a family of scientists. Her father is a chemical engineer, mother a biologist and brother a physicist. She has proved her competence in governance as mayor of Mexico city and as secretary of the environment in the federal government.



 
Galvez is an engineer and entrepreneur. She has a degree in computer engineering and founded two tech firms. She is a senator and was head of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples during the administration of Vicente Fox (2000–2006). Ideologically she is a free-spirited independent with a mix of conservative and progressive policies.



 
She is an indigenous Mexican from a poor family. She used to sell tamales in the streets as a kid.  Her father was an Indigenous Otomi schoolteacher. She learned to speak her native ñähñu language as a child. She rides E-bikes in Mexican streets wearing the loose embroidered indigenous blouse known as a huipil. She has a sense of humour and enjoys engaging with the public.

According to opinion polls, Sheinbaum has better chances than Galvez.
 
Both the Mexican candidates  are mature, cultured and competent. They talk sense, use proper language and respect opponents. Both the candidates have similar agenda such as poverty alleviation, employment, women’s empowerment, clean energy and sustainable development. 

The Mexican choice is agreeable and pleasant in contrast to the ugly choice faced by the Gringos between the obnoxious Donald Trump and the senile Joe Biden. The Mexican political discourse is serious, polite and civilized unlike the American campaign smeared with lies, hate speech and fake news. 
 

 

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Guatemala’s election result is a good sign of the health of democracy

In the elections held on Sunday, the Guatemalan voters elected Bernardo Arevalo as president with 58% of the votes. This is significant for three fundamental reasons in the context of the Guatemalan and regional political history.


 
Firstly, this clear and decisive election of an anti-establishment outsider is a victory for democracy. The current ruling establishment of President Giammattei had tried a lot of dirty tricks and prevented some candidates from contesting in the elections. They even went after the Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement) party of Arevalo with accusations of irregularities. Sandra Torres, the rival of Arevalo was favoured by the incumbent administration. This situation lead to fears that the elections might be derailed or Arevalo himself might be prevented from contesting in the second round. These concerns went beyond the borders of the country to regional and international levels. The Organization of American States and the US State Department as well as the Congress members had  issued statements. It is against this backdrop that Arevalo’s election with a convincing margin of 16% (against 37% of Sandra Torres) has given a clear message that democracy in Guatemala is safe, healthy and resilient. The elections were held peacefully without any major incidents. President Giammattei has already congratulated the winner and has invited him for talks for a smooth transition. 

More importantly, there has been no violent attacks against the electoral system or outcome as done by Trump and Bolsonaro and their thuggish followers in US and Brazil, the largest democracies in the hemisphere. 
 
Secondly, Arevalo is a centre-left progressive leader. He has promised to give priority for elimination of poverty and inequality. He proposes reforms in education and health care to make them more accessible and affordable for the poor. This is essential since a large part of the population is poor. Most of these are the indigenous people. The country has still not recovered from the 36-year civil war which ended in 1996. Several hundred thousand people were killed by the security forces of military dictatorship in the name of fighting left-wing guerillas. Criminal gangs have taken over many slums and indulge in murders, extortions and crimes. Poverty, insecurity and lack of economic opportunities are the main drivers of illegal migration of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans to to the United States. Although Sandra Torres is also left-of-centre candidate, she had started moving to the right aligning more with the ruling oligarchy. 
 
Thirdly, Arevalo’s election is a boost to the anticorruption movement.  Corruption and impunity have been the major issues after povery and insecurity. The common people accuse the elites of having a "Pact of the Corrupt".  In 2015, the Guatemalan justice had sent a sitting president Otto Perez Molina directly from the Presidential palace to jail on corruption charges, In December 2022, Molina and his Vice president President Baldetti were sentenced to 16 years in prison.
 
Arevalo has an excellent resume for the job. He has a cosmopolitan background of studies and living. He was born in Uruguay where his father and ex-president Juan Jose Arevalo lived in exile after the 1954 military coup in Guatemala. His father was the first democratically elected president of the country in 1945. His family moved later to Venezuela, Mexico and Chile. He was in Guatemala for the first time at the age of fifteen. He went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel for his graduation in sociology. His father was ambassador to Israel at that time. He got his doctorate in philosophy and social anthropology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He became a diplomat in the Guatemalan foreign ministry and had served as ambassador in Spain. He left the diplomatic career to work with regional and international organisations.  He has written a number of books on history, politics, sociology and diplomacy. He joined a group of intellectuals to form Semilla, a think tank which became a political party. He was elected to the Congress in which he served from 2020 to 2022. When he started his presidential campaign in 2023 his polling rate was in single digit. But he succeeded in getting the second position in the first round of elections and became eligible to run in the seond round on 20 August. 
 
In foreign policy, Arevalo is pragmatic. Although he is left-of centre, he has condemned the leftist regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as authoritarian. He seeks more business with China while maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
 
The clean election process and the clear outcome in Guatemala should be an inspiration to other countries in Central and South America some of which also face similar political situations. Anti-establishment outside candidates would feel encouraged to take on established and entrenched political parties which control political power.
 
While Arevalo has a serious agenda for reforms of governance and socio-economic development, he does not have enough votes in the Congress to pass progressive legislations. His party has only 23 seats in the 160 member Congress. President Giammattei’s conservative party Vamos has 39 members and the UNE party of Sandra Torres has 28.
 
Sandra Russo, who has lost the presidential race for the third time, has an interesting history. She was the wife of Alvaro Colom when he was President in the period 2008-12. She manipulated and intervened in the administration to raise her profile and image. She was seen as the real power in the presidential palace. She acted like Evita of Argentina. She became head of a charity organization and got plenty of government funds to distribute to poor people, as Evita did. Sandra wanted to be seen as protector of the poor with her leftist agenda.
 
There was a constitutional obstacle to Sandra’s dream to become President after her husband. The Guatemalan constitution prohibits immediate family members of sitting president from contesting presidential elections. So what did Sandra do? She tried Magical Realism. She divorced her husband a few months before the election and proclaimed that she was “the first woman in history to divorce husband to marry the country”. Hmm..she was already divorced before marrying Colom for whom she became the third wife.
But some judges in the constitutional court had the courage to reject her claim saying that her candidature was a violation of the spirit of the constituition even if she was technically correct. After the disqualification of her candidature in 2011, Sandra waited four years and contested against the comedian Jimmy Morales in 2015. . His promise to the voters was, “I have made you laugh for so many years. I promise I will not make you cry as President.” But his government had some corruption scandals and he left the office crying. He beat her to presidency with his jokes and promise. Later Colom was arrested on corruption charges in 2018. 
 
Guatemala was the first country in Latin America to be destabilized by US in the so called war against Communism during the Cold War. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected leftist president Jacob Arbanz and installed a military dictatorship. While the coup was carried out in the name of the war on Communism, the real reason was to protect the interests of United Fruit Company which owned  hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land. The company was likely to lose some land to the land reforms initiated by Arbanz government. It had absolute monopoly in banana plantation and trade and pursued exploitative labour policies with impunity. Its revenue was bigger than that of the government of Guatemala. John Foster Dulles, the CIA chief, had close business ties with the company. When the rightist military dictatorship was resisted by the leftist political movements, the regime unleashed a wave of terror, with the support and encouragement of US. The civil war continued till 1996 in which over two hundred thousand people were killed. In March 1999, President Clinton made a formal apology for the sufferings inflicted on the people of Guatemala by the US-backed military dictatorship. But those who got US weapons to fight communism took to gangsterism and criminality after the end of the civil war. To escape this US-supported violence and crime, Guatemalans started emigrating to US, which has a moral responsibility to give asylum to the victims of its past sins.
It was in Guatemala that Che Guevara got to see first-hand the excesses of the empire and became an anti-imperial leftist guerrilla crusader. Thereafter he joined Fidel Castro and succeeded in liberating Cuba from another military dictatorship supported by US.
 
Guatemala is the largest and most important market in Central America. In 2022-23, India’s exports to Guatemala were 465 million dollars, The exports were 552 million dollars in 2021-22. This more than India's exports to some neighboring countries such as Cambodia or Kazhakstan. Motorcycles, cars, generic medicines are the leading items of India’s exports. India is the #2 supplier of medicines to Guatemala. Some Indian IT, pharma and motorcycle companies have established successful operations in the country. There is good scope for increasing India’s business with this country of 18 million people. 

Thursday, July 06, 2023

Venezuelan novel “It Would Be Night in Caracas”

  
 
                   Venezuelan novel “It Would Be Night in Caracas”
 
This is the first novel by a new Venezuelan author Karina Sainz Borgo, who has escaped from the misery of Venezuela and has settled in Madrid for the last several years. While the Latin American writers who were in exile from their countries during the sixties wrote Magical Realism novels, Karina Sainz has written a realistic account of the difficult life of Venezuelans under the Chavista regime.



 
The author has given a graphic account of the ongoing political, economic and social crisis in Venezuela. She has narrated the struggle of ordinary people amidst the shortage of food, medicines and other necessities. The Chavista gangs do a roaring business of selling goods in the black-market. The militias control the streets and unleash violence at will. The author calls the gangs as " Sons of the Revolution". The security forces and intelligence services harass, detain and torture the opponents of the regime. 
 
The protagonist Adelaida Falcon has no other option but to go to the black market to buy medicines at exorbitant prices for her mother undergoing cancer treatment in a clinic. Since the Clinic has perpetual shortage of essential items, she has to buy from the black market everything from syringes and saline bags to gases and cotton buds. Her apartment is taken over by a Chavista female gang, who throw  her out brutally. They beat her up and threaten to kill her if she returns to her apartment. Her friend’s brother is kidnapped during an anti-government protest march, detained, tortured and eventually killed by the Intelligence Services.
 
After losing her apartment, Adelco moves into another apartment which becomes vacant after its owner dies unexpectedly. She takes over the Spanish identity of  the owner and escapes from Venezuela to Spain. 
 
The author brings out an important part of the Venezuelan character which attaches too much importance to appearances. She says, “Nobody wants to grow old or appear poor. It is important to conceal, to make over. Those are the national pastimes: keeping up appearances. It does not matter if there is no money, or if the country is falling to pieces: the important thing is to be beautiful, to aspire to a crown, to be the queen of something … of Carnaval, of the town, of the country. To be the tallest, the prettiest”
 
Venezuela, which has the potential to be one of the richest countries in the world, is in a deep political and economic crisis in the last two decades. The crisis has got aggravated by the US sanctions and attempts for regime change. More than four million Venezuelans have gone out of the countries as refugees. Although the economy seems to be turning a corner, it will take some time for the country to return to democracy and normality. Till then, there will be a boom in the novels of Venezuelan exiles like Karina Sainz.