• BrazilBrasilLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

“Dilma’s loss would be a loss for the world’s working class”: An Interview with Luis Gonzaga “Gegê” da Silva

October 24, 2014

24 Octubre 2014

The Central de Movimentos Populares (CMP) was founded in 1993, with support from liberation theology sectors of the Catholic Church, as a federation of poor people’s social movements representing the poor and working class, homeless people’s unions, Afro-Brazilian movements, working class women’s groups, housing movements, indigenous people’s organizations and the LGBT movement. Today, it has hundreds of thousands of members, acts in nearly every state in Brazil, and is an important actor on the Latin American left. The CMP's Luís “Gegê” Gonzaga da Silva is a former MR-8 Guerilla who was arrested and tortured during the military dictatorship and helped found the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) party in São Paulo in 1982. He has remained affiliated with the party ever since, and is one of the leaders of its internal Socialism or Barbarism Caucus. He never held public office, never benefited financially from his status as one of the party founders and has spent the last 30 years organizing mass occupations of homeless families in abandoned buildings in downtown São Paulo. In 2005, a corrupt local judge and São Paulo military police framed him for a murder that took place in an occupied building on a day when he was not in town. He eventually spent 54 days behind bars before Landless Peasants’ Movement (MST) lawyers got him out on habeas corpus. Declining an invitation by Hugo Chávez to move to Venezuela, at the age of 64 he decided to go underground and spent two years in hiding, as a group of Brazil’s best human rights lawyers worked pro-bono to clear his name. When the charges were thrown out, he returned to his public housing apartment in a former abandoned building in downtown São Paulo and picked up where he left off, leading a squatters movement called the Movimento de Moradia do Centro de São Paulo (MMC). I spoke with him by Skype recently to find out what he thinks about this Sunday’s presidential elections.(Photo by Brian Mier)

Read More Leer más

• BrazilBrasilLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

How Many Extra Votes Does Brazilian Opposition Candidate Aécio Neves Get from Media Bias?

By Dan BeetonDan Beeton

October 23, 2014

23 Octubre 2014

The second round of Brazil’s presidential elections, taking place Sunday, could be close according to polls showing President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT) favored by 52 percent over challenger Aécio Neves of the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) with 48 percent. As we noted with Mexico’s 2012 presidential elections, media coverage can have a strong impact on election turnout and voter preferences, and there is compelling research [doc] that Mexico’s TV duopoly was decisive in determining the outcome of Mexico’s 2006 election. While Brazil’s media is mostly opposed to the PT, it hasn’t been able to swing recent presidential elections – but it appears it’s not for a lack of trying. Manchetômetro (literal translation: “headline meter”), an independent project affiliated with the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, has analyzed major media coverage of the main candidates and parties in Brazil. Focusing on TV coverage on Brazil’s largest audience TV news program “Jornal Nacional,” and front-page coverage in Brazil’s three largest newspapers (Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo and O Estado de São Paulo), Manchetômetro has documented a pattern of lopsided coverage that has disproportionately put Dilma Rousseff and the PT in a negative light, while opposition candidate Aécio Neves of the PSDB (and first round challenger Marina Silva) have received much more positive treatment and much less negative coverage, proportionately. Manchetômetro’s analysis also reveals that this bias against the PT is not new; coverage favored Fernando Henrique Cardoso (of the PSDB) over Rousseff’s predecessor, Lula da Silva during the 1998 election, and there was also more favorable treatment of the economic situation under Cardoso than the current economic downturn under Dilma, though the former was significantly worse than the latter. TV Coverage: “Jornal Nacional” Globo’s decades-old “Jornal Nacional” is considered to be a leading news program on Brazilian television; with around 18 million viewers (in 2013) it has a total audience of about twice the combined viewers of the four leading U.S. Sunday morning news talk shows (“This Week,” “Face the Nation,” “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday”). The program’s influence may not be surprising considering Globo’s dominant position in Brazil’s media landscape. In a 2009 book, Giancarlo Summa (who did communications for Lula’s 2006 campaign) noted that Globo controlled 61.5 percent of UHF television stations, 31.8 percent of VHF TV, 40.7 percent of newspaper distribution, 30.1 percent of AM radio, 28 percent of FM radio and - through an association with Rupert Murdoch - 77 percent of the cable TV market. Manchetômetro found a strong bias against Dilma Rousseff in “Jornal Nacional” coverage. During the campaign period (beginning July 6, and up to October 22), 21 percent of the coverage of Rousseff was negative, the most of any candidate. The percentage of positive coverage that Rousseff received was just 1 percent, much less than any other candidate. (Rousseff also had 78 percent “neutral” treatment.)

Read More Leer más

• BoliviaBoliviaLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

A Full Moon after Bolivia’s Elections?

By CEPRCEPR

October 10, 2014

10 Octubre 2014

Campaigning for the Bolivia’s presidential election officially ended on Wednesday, ahead of voting on Sunday. The election, which includes 272,058 voters living abroad in 33 countries, will be observed by a mission from the Organization of American States. While the final outcome is likely to be a first-round victory for the incumbent, Evo Morales, the most interesting results will come from the four departments of the media luna region. In the past, the Morales administration has faced significant opposition there, including a sometimes violent secessionist movement. This year, the president has a chance to win majority support in all four of the departments, which would mark a major turning point in Bolivian politics. Earlier this week, Morales expressed confidence that he will surpass his 2009 record of support, and that as much as 70 percent of the electorate will vote for him this year. Morales won previous elections handily, with 54 percent of the vote in 2005, and 64 percent in 2009. When his party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), celebrated the end of its campaign in what has been an opposition stronghold, Santa Cruz, on Tuesday, thousands of people came together to show their support, demonstrating changing dynamics in the relationship between the MAS and Santa Cruz. Then on Wednesday, Morales brought his campaign to an end in El Alto, where he claimed that he will win in all nine of Bolivia’s departments, saying: Bolivia is united, the “half-moon” is over, now it is a full moon. We have all united at the top the social forces and the youth, who have joined for two reasons: because of the patriotic agenda and stability and because of the economic growth that guarantees hope for future generations. The “half moon,” or “media luna,” is located in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia and is comprised of the departments of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija. According to an IPSOS poll the MAS could win in Santa Cruz with 50 percent of the votes. In the 2009 presidential elections, Morales lost in Santa Cruz, Beni, and Pando. Things have been changing, however, and Morales has been strategic in building and maintaining alliances in the media luna departments. Not only do polls show that Morales might win in Santa Cruz, but he might also win in Beni (44 percent), Pando (54 percent), and Tarija (43 percent).

Read More Leer más

• BoliviaBoliviaLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

Bolivia's Economy Under Evo in 10 Graphs

By Jake JohnstonJake Johnston

October 08, 2014

08 Octubre 2014

On October 12, Bolivians will go to the polls to choose their next president for a five-year term. Recent polling suggests that the incumbent, Evo Morales, will obtain a decisive first-round victory over his closest opponent, Samuel Doria Medina. Below are ten graphs on economic and social developments since Evo’s election in 2005 that help explain the strong support for his re-election. 1. Economic Growth: Bolivia has grown much faster over the last 8 years under President Evo Morales than in any period over the past three-and-a-half decades. Source: International Monetary Fund.

Read More Leer más

• BrazilBrasilEconomic GrowthEl DesarolloLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

Marina and Dilma: Different Visions for the Brazilian Economy

By CEPRCEPR

October 02, 2014

02 Octubre 2014

Marina Silva unexpectedly became a front-runner in the 2014 Brazilian general election when her presidential running mate, Eduardo Campos, died in a plane crash this August, catapulting her to the head of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) ticket. After this, Silva briefly took the lead in the polls, but in the last few weeks the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT), has recaptured the momentum and the lead in a potential second round match-up with Silva. In an opinion piece written for Al Jazeera, Zeynep Zileli Rabanea explains Silva’s appeal: With her background being quite different from the regular ruling elite - a woman of African descent from Amazonia - she has been portrayed favourably by the international media both as a disruptive force and as a welcome departure from the usual suspects running Brazil (Rousseff's workers' party [sic] has been in power for more than a decade). Silva has even been depicted as a kind of "green" heroine, all of a sudden popping up on the political field to save Brazil from corruption. The rest of the piece is dedicated to examining this reputation in light of Silva’s election platform. Silva advocates a rebalancing of foreign policy, bringing the country closer to the United States; she proposes signing trade deals with the U.S., Europe and some of the Asian country trading blocs; and she has embraced big agriculture in a series of policy changes, including dropping her opposition to genetically modified crops. In terms of macroeconomic policy she has focused on lowering the government budget deficit and raising interest rates to curb inflation. Could these policies be the appropriate response to a slowing economy?

Read More Leer más

• BrazilBrasilLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

Police Violence and Forced Evictions in São Paulo: An Interview with Benedito “Dito” Barbosa

By CEPRCEPR

September 25, 2014

25 Septiembre 2014

Brazil has a housing shortage of around 5.8 million units, while there are around 6 million vacant units in empty houses and buildings located mainly in the downtown areas of its large cities. Urban social movements have historically tried to resolve this problem by coordinating squatters’ occupations of empty buildings, and they have successfully pressured the government to legalize these activities, resulting in some of the world’s most progressive property rights. Articles 182 and 183 of Brazil’s 1988 Constitution guarantee that the social function of property overrides the profit motive. After a decade of protests and advocacy, in 2001, these amendments were further defined through the complimentary Statute of the City legislation. According to Brazilian law, buildings that do not fulfill their “social function,” that are left vacant and owing property taxes can, after a certain period of time, be taken over by people who don’t own any property of their own and converted to low income housing at the government’s expense. Unfortunately this law, like many other progressive laws of its kind in Brazil, is ignored by many local governments. According to Evaniza Rodriques, from the União Nacional de Moradia Popular (National People’s Housing Union, or UNMP) there are around 35,000 people squatting in 60 abandoned buildings in São Paulo’s downtown region, trying to pressure the government for ownership. Currently, 30 of these buildings are undergoing legal processes to be returned to their former owners. As the violent eviction of hundreds of people from a building on São João Avenue in downtown São Paulo last week shows, military police violence against squatters groups is increasing. Benedito “Dito” Barbosa is a lawyer and founding member of the Central de Movimentos Populares (People’s Movements Central, or CMP). Earlier this year, while trying to communicate with his clients during a technically-unconstitutional mass forced eviction in downtown São Paulo, Dito, a man of humble origins in his 50s, was beaten, choked and dragged down the sidewalk by Sâo Paulo military police. It was not an isolated incident. There have been seven cases of lawyers beaten by police while trying to perform their duties during mass evictions in São Paulo this year.

Read More Leer más

• BoliviaBoliviaLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeVenezuelaVenezuelaWorldEl Mundo

Connectivity and Mobility through Bolivia's Cable Cars

By CEPRCEPR

September 19, 2014

19 Septiembre 2014

The government of Bolivia has built a cable car that connects the cities of La Paz and El Alto, giving commuters a much better alternative to the long and congested path they would otherwise have to take in buses and road transportation. Together, these neighboring cities are home to about 2 million people. The cable car, which cost $234 million, was built by the Austrian company Doppelmayr and will have considerable benefits for workers and the environment, and will reduce poverty, if we can judge from precedents with cable car projects in Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. The World Bank notes that: Urban poverty may be reduced through the contribution which transport makes to the efficiency of the urban economy and so to the overall growth of incomes. Urban transport policies can also be focused more specifically on meeting the needs of the poor. Inability to access jobs and services is an important element of the social exclusion which defines urban poverty. Accessibility is important not only for its role in facilitating regular and stable income-earning employment, but also as a part of the social capital which maintains the social relations forming the safety net of poor people in many societies. This is very important in a country where the national poverty rate is still 43.4 percent and extreme poverty is 21.6 percent (2012). Traffic congestion for commuters traveling between these two cities has been a real obstacle. As the World Bank asserts, “Inadequate and congested urban transport is damaging to the city economy and harms both rich and poor.” The relationship between lacking transport and poverty has also been demonstrated and explored in academic research. In addition, as the Bolivian Agency for Information (ABI) points out, Bolivia’s new cable car will conserve energy and time as well as reduce car accidents. Some critics in Bolivia, like Rolando Carvajal, point out that the cable car will make only a small difference because it will serve (together with other new transportation initiatives) less than 20 percent of commuters. Carvajal also claims that the government has been using the cable car as a palliative in an election year, even moving the inauguration of the red line closer to the elections. But President Evo Morales has no serious challenge to his re-election, and did not need to build a $234 million cable car to assure that he would win. Polls have shown that Morales enjoys considerable support; according to a recent poll carried out by the company Equipos-Mori, Morales is leading with 54 percent and his opponent, Samuel Doria Medina, follows with only 14 percent.

Read More Leer más

• ArgentinaArgentinaGlobalization and TradeGlobalización y comercioLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeUS Foreign PolicyPolítica exterior de EE. UU.WorldEl Mundo

On Government Funding of Think Tanks

By Dan BeetonDan Beeton

September 10, 2014

10 Septiembre 2014

A New York Times investigative article found that "More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years..."

Read More Leer más

• ArgentinaArgentinaGlobalization and TradeGlobalización y comercioLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

Window Dressing for the Vulture Funds

By CEPRCEPR

August 14, 2014

14 Agosto 2014

The American Task Force Argentina (ATFA) is Elliott Management’s main public relations and lobbying arm supporting its long-running legal fight against Argentina in U.S. courts to collect on debt purchased in the aftermath of the country’s 2001 default. Although it markets itself as a coalition, ATFA has in the past had to remove several groups from its list of supporters after the Wall Street Journal found that they had never heard of the organization, much less supported it. Over the years, ATFA has gone to creative lengths both to lobby the hedge funds’ case and to generally defame Argentina, by alleging nefarious ties with Iran, for example. One of ATFA’s main goals has been to divert attention away from the fact that the fight over Argentina’s debt fundamentally hinges on the heavy-handed tactics of large hedge fund owners, like Elliott’s Paul Singer, to collect a lot of money on distressed sovereign debt. These tactics are not pretty, and these hedge funds rightly earned the name “vulture funds” long before the Argentina case, as CEPR Co-Director Dean Baker has pointed out. So one of ATFA’s strategies has been to highlight how Argentina’s actions have supposedly hurt the “little guys” and how the vulture funds’ case somehow represents a fight for these underdogs. ATFA has not been great at coalition building, however. To date, perhaps their most successful lobbying push was their attempt to portray Argentina as cheating retired educators. Before 2010’s bond restructuring, one of the holdout creditors was TIAA-CREF, which had a relatively small stake in the defaulted bonds. Jumping on this fact, ATFA alleged that Argentina seriously harmed the pensions of retired academics, hosting an event [PDF] on the default’s effect on teachers, coordinating [PDF] letters [PDF] to members of Congress, and launching an ad campaign [PDF]. ATFA’s ad lists the members of the “American Task Force Argentina Educator Coalition” who support the vulture fund’s case: the Alabama, Georgia, and Colorado conferences of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the Nebraska Community College Association, and lastly, the Nebraska Retired Teacher Association. That’s it. There was no participation from the national AAUP or TIAA-CREF in this campaign; in the case of the Georgia conference of the AAUP, it’s unclear if the collaboration with ATFA involved the participation of anyone but the group’s then-executive secretary. When Congressman Eric Massa later pushed ATFA-backed legislation to punish Argentina over the debt issue, ATFA’s efforts may have helped the bill to garner some extra co-sponsors. But Massa’s ATFA legislation died, just like all of its later versions.

Read More Leer más

• ArgentinaArgentinaGlobalization and TradeGlobalización y comercioLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo

Do the Holdout Hedge Funds Hold Argentine Credit Default Swaps?

By CEPRCEPR

August 13, 2014

13 Agosto 2014

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), the body that governs credit derivatives, recently declared a “failure to pay” credit event that triggers payment of credit default swaps (CDS) on Argentina’s debt. Bloomberg and others have raised the question of whether Paul Singer’s Elliott Associates or other hedge funds involved in the case against Argentina hold any of these CDS—and may be forcing a default and profiting from their CDS positions. Elliott’s lawyers have denied that the firm owns CDS on Argentina’s debt, and a December, 2012 Reuters report cites an anonymous source saying the firm did have some, but no longer does. When asked by Judge Rosemary Pooler in a February 27th hearing in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals if Elliott’s NML owned any of the CDS, Elliott’s lawyer, Ted Olson, gave an evasive answer: “I don’t know that that’s true,” Olson said. “I’m informed it isn’t true. But if it was true, it would be utterly irrelevant.” Bloomberg pointed out that it was unclear if the denial applied to just NML Capital the Elliott subsidiary represented in the case, or to all of Paul Singer’s firms. ISDA Decision On June 20th, the law firm Schulte Roth & Zaber (SRZ) sent a memo on behalf of an anonymous holder of Argentine CDS to the ISDA Credit Derivatives Determination Committee (DC) asking them to decide whether Argentina had defaulted on its debt, and also arguing that Argentina’s public statements were tantamount to a repudiation of its restructured bond payments, urging them to rule that Argentina had triggered a “repudiation/moratorium” credit event. SRZ wrote that their client’s CDS were set to expire on the 20th of June, and that if the ISDA DC ruled that “repudiation/moratorium” had occurred, this would extend the life of the CDS. The ISDA DC did rule that Argentina had defaulted through a “failure to pay” credit event, which is different than a “repudiation/moratorium” credit event in that it apparently doesn’t extend the life of expired CDS, though it does trigger payment of non-expired CDS. ISDA DC later confirmed that Argentina’s public statements did not constitute a “repudiation” credit event. The ‘no’ vote was unanimous among the DC’s 15 members, including Elliott Management, which is a non-dealer voting member.

Read More Leer más