In 2012, a congressional coup brought down Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo over allegations that he had mishandled the conflict between rural workers and the family of the late businessman and ex-senator Blas Riquelme over a 2,000 hectare territory named Marina Cué located in Curuguaty in the department of Canindeyú. In June of 2012, the conflict that had been escalating for years erupted in a violent land eviction effort that ended with the deaths of 11 farmers and 6 policemen. Federico Franco, the Vice-President, replaced Lugo and ruled until Horacio Cartes, from the Colorado Party, won elections in April 2013 and took office in August. Today the conflict remains unresolved and the drama is being played out in a scenario that reflects the vast and historic injustices for rural workers, an alarming concentration of land, and a nation with inadequate public institutions to serve and protect its citizens.

Dean Baker
TruthOut, November 24, 2014

Stephan Lefebvre and Jeanette Bonifaz
Open Democracy, November 24, 2014

Dean Baker
November 24, 2014, Al Jazeera America

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article covering Wednesday’s protests in Ecuador against President Rafael Correa, but key facts were missing and the article contained several misleading statements.

First, it is curious that the WSJ chose to focus on a protest of reportedly “around 3,000 protesters,” when a much larger demonstration took place on Saturday in favor of the government’s labor reform policy. The pro-government rally had participation from 100,000 people, according to organizers, and news outlets such as EFE reported participation of “tens of thousands of workers.” Perhaps an argument can be made that protests are more interesting than rallies supporting measures championed by the government, but the WSJ used the same word, “thousands,” to describe the number of attendees at both events.

The piece also includes a line that reads, “Mr. Correa took office in early 2007 and promptly engineered a new constitution that allowed for his re-election.” In reality, a constitutional convention (i.e. adopting a new constitution) was one of Rafael Correa’s campaign promises the year he was first elected (with 56.7 percent of the vote). Further, the old 1998 constitution allowed for indefinite re-election, though not consecutively, for the presidency, while the 2008 constitution set a limit of two-terms for the presidency, which could be served consecutively. Neither of these basic facts was mentioned in the article.

According to documents from USAID, 750 houses built by USAID near the new Caracol industrial park, were found to be of poor quality and will take millions of dollars to repair.  The houses are part of USAID’s “New Settlement Program,” which was the subject of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in October 2013 as well as a USAID Inspector General (IG) audit in April 2014.

The GAO report found that USAID had initially planned on building 15,000 houses but that the number had been reduced to just 2,600. At the same time costs skyrocketed, from $53 million to over $90 million. At the time of the report, just 900 houses had been built across Haiti. (For more on the housing project, and how these estimates changed, see “Outsourcing Haiti” from earlier this year in Boston Review.)

Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in October 2013, Beth Hogan, an Assistant Administrator at USAID, explained how those cost increases occurred:

Again, it's because of the requirements that we put into our solicitation document that it meet international building codes, that it comply with federal building standards, that these materials would be disaster- and hurricane-proof.

Hogan went on to say that she was “very happy with the quality” with which the contractors were building the houses. David Gootnick, the author of the GAO report and the Director of International Affairs and Trade at the agency, echoed Hogan’s remarks, telling Congress that, “they are excellent homes that are built to a very high standard.”

However, last month, USAID quietly awarded a contract worth up to $4.5 million to an American-based firm, Tetra Tech, to provide a remediation plan for the Caracol houses. The seriousness of the deficiencies was great enough for USAID to bypass normal contracting procedures and award the contract without receiving other bids. The justification document, required when normal procedures are not followed, explains that an independent assessment was performed in August 2014, which “revealed numerous deficiencies” including “missing roof fasteners, sub-specification roof materials and concrete reinforcement, and other structural and drainage issues.”

Dean Baker
November 20, 2014, The New York Times

UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti recently released a report detailing the impact of the recession on children in rich countries in the EU and OECD. As might be expected, countries like Greece and Italy performed poorly across a variety of indicators, including child poverty, youth unemployment, and severe child material deprivation. One interesting comparison is that of France, which tends to be lumped among those whose workers are sometimes portrayed as lazy by outsiders. The French youth unemployment rates for those aged 15 to 24 in 2008 and 2013 were in fact higher than those of the U.S., though not as high as that of countries like Greece and Italy.

Dean Baker
November 18, 2014, Politico