Venezuela: Its Gold Held In Britain's Vaults

Source: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-gold/venezuela-gold-holdings-in-bank-of-england-soar-on-deutsche-deal-sources-idUKKCN1PF1Z8

By: Om Nagle

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of people in Venezuela were already suffering the ravaging effects of armed violence caused by years of political and economic instability. Official statistics indicate that, to date, Venezuela has had just over 110,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and about 880 total deaths. However, these government provided statistics are more a reflection of the country’s testing capabilities than of the true number of cases. The Nicolás Maduro led regime has largely limited testing to a few government-operated institutions which have medical supplies imported from partner nations like Iran and China. It is therefore unsurprising that Venezuela ranks as having the worst testing capacity in Latin America, only being able to perform about 264 tests a week with significant errors and delays in obtaining the results. The pandemic has therefore only served to make matters worse for Venezuelans who already have scarce access to food, water, and healthcare.

Venezuela’s current problems have certainly not been caused solely by COVID-19. Rather, the pandemic has exacerbated an unprecedented humanitarian and economic crisis caused by years of corruption, mismanagement and failed government policies. Recurrent droughts and severe international sanctions have worsened pre-existing food security and fuel shortage problems, adding pressure on the crippling private sector and overburdened humanitarian NGOs. The Maduro government, in light of these stricter sanctions and a desperate need for funds to battle the pandemic, looked abroad to liquidate its assets stored with the Bank of England. Their attempt to secure the 31 tonnes of gold-bullion have been met with significant challenges. The Maduro-led government has claimed that proceeds from the gold will be used to contribute funds to the United Nations Development Fund to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. But his opponent, Juan Guaidó, believes there is very little merit to these claims and that the funds obtained would be used to further corruption. The litigation between the two highly contested Presidents of Venezuela has resulted in the money being held inside British Vaults far away from where it is truly needed: in Venezuela – to alleviate the suffering of the Venezuelan people. 

This article will aim to impartially highlight and analyse the controversial questions raised by the UK Courts in the case of “Maduro Board” of the Central Bank of Venezuela V. “Guaidó Board” of the Central Bank of Venezuela [2020]

Since April of 2013, Nicolás Maduro has held the office of the President of Venezuela. December 2015 saw the dispute over the election of the deputies to the National Assembly for the state of Amazonas. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela (STJ), the country’s utmost constitutional court, granted provisional relief suspending the implementation of the election of the four deputies. However, the victorious opposition decided to swear-in the deputies anyway. As a result, the STJ issued a judgement on the 1st of August 2016, declaring all decisions taken by the National Assembly “null and void for so long as it was constituted in breach of the judgments and orders of the STJ”. In May 2017, a rival legislature was established on Maduro’s initiative called the National Constituent Assembly (NCA).  

The presidential election of 2018 witnessed Maduro claiming victory again. A month later, he appointed Mr. C. José Ortega as the president of the NCA and of the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV). In retaliation, the National Assembly declared the appointment unconstitutional. The STJ, following its 2016 judgement, declared the National Assembly’s resolution unconstitutional. 

January 2019 saw Maduro being sworn-in for a second term as the President of Venezuela. However, the National Assembly and its President, Juan Guaidó, announced, relying upon Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution, that Maduro had usurped the office of the President and that Guaidó was the Interim President of Venezuela. Several countries, such as the United States, Colombia, Members of the EU and the UK gave the Maduro-led government 8 days to call elections. After failing to call elections, the Foreign Secretary to the UK reaffirmed the recognition of Juan Guaidó as an interim President “in charge of the transition back to democracy”. Furthermore, the Minister of State for Europe and the Americas justified the UK government’s recognition of Guaidó, based on the National Assembly’s consistency with following the rules set out in the Venezuelan Constitution. Additionally, he highlighted the exceptional nature of the refugee crisis whereby 3.6 million Venezuelans had fled the country in pursuit of a life away from a regime which was “holding onto power though electoral malpractice and harsh repression of dissent” and had been referred to the International Criminal Court by six countries for its human rights abuses. 

Meanwhile, the National Assembly passed the Transition Statute with the aim of “restoring the full force and effect of the Venezuelan Constitution”. It was signed bearing the seal of Guaidó as the President of Venezuela. Using the legal backing provided by the Transition Statute, Guaidó appointed a Special Attorney General, Mr. Jose I. Hernandez, and an ad hoc board of the BCV to defend the “interests of decentralized entities abroad”. The STJ passed judgements holding the Transition Statute, appointment of the special attorney general, andthe creation of the ad hoc board of the BCV as unconstitutional, null and void. 

The Bank of England holds gold reserves valued at about US $1.95 billion for the Banco Central De Venezuela (BCV). Consequently, a gold-swap contract with Deutsche Bank obligates them to pay the BCV a sum of about US $120 million. Currently, the sums are held by court appointed receivers. When the Maduro Board requested access to the gold, the Bank of England rejected their request owing to non-recognition of the Maduro-led government by the United Kingdom. This led to the current litigation at hand, wherein the courts have to decide upon two preliminary issues: firstly, which of the two boards is entitled to give instructions on behalf of the BCV concerning the assets held with the Bank of England and, secondly, who holds the office of the president of Venezuela. 

Initially, the Guaidó Board was successful in securing positive consideration through a judgement in its favour. Wherein the court held that, owing to the UK Foreign Ministry’s statements about the recognition of Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela, the Maduro Board of the BCV wouldn’t be entitled to give instructions in relation to the assets. This was appealed by the lawyers representing the Maduro-led government who argued that, although the UK recognised Guaidó as the interim-president, they in practice continued diplomatic relations with the Maduro-led government through the Ambassador of Venezuela to the UK in London and the UK’s Ambassador to Venezuela in Caracas. While considering this aspect of the appeal, the UK High Court passed its judgement that diplomatic relations were irrelevant considering the UK recognised Juan Guaidó as the President, and it is the President of Venezuela that appoints the board of the BCV. They reaffirmed that “there is no room for recognition of Mr Guaidó as de jure President and of Mr Maduro as de factoPresident”, the “one-voice” principle would dictate that the UK Government no longer recognises Maduro as President of Venezuela in any capacity. 

In reference to the second preliminary issue, the court took into consideration the arguments presented by the Maduro Board as well as the Guaidó Board but reaffirmed that, at this stage, it was not in the UK High Court’s jurisdiction or capacity to pass judgement on the issue of the office of the president of Venezuela. The court in its concluding statements directed the litigating parties to dispute the matter in the Commercial Court. The Special Attorney appointed by Guaidó formally informed the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to set aside any arbitration requests from the Maduro Board, as the Guaidó board is the sole controller of the BCV, thus limiting any chances of this dispute being resolved without judicial proceedings in the UK. Unfortunately, as the litigation between the two offices of presidents in Venezuela gets expensive, complicated and drawn-out, the people of Venezuela have to ultimately bear the cost. 

 Om Nagle is a second-year law student at SOAS, University of London. He is interested in the intersection of law, international affairs and public policy.

Works Cited

"Maduro Board" of the Central Bank of Venezuela v "Guaido Board" of the Central Bank of Venezuela [2020] EWCA Civ 1249.

"Maduro Board" of the Central Bank of Venezuela v "Guaido Board" of the Central Bank of Venezuela [2020] All ER (D) 24 (Oct)

 "Maduro Board" of the Central Bank of Venezuela v "Guaido Board" of the Central Bank of Venezuela [2020] [2020] 10 WLUK 9

Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-25/venezuela-has-hit-a-dead-end-with-juan-guaido.

14, October. “High Court Rules on Entitlement of Persons or Bodies to Give Instructions to UK Financial Institutions on Behalf of Venezuelan Central Bank.” Banking Litigation Notes, 9 Sept. 2020, hsfnotes.com/bankinglitigation/2020/09/07/high-court-rules-on-entitlement-of-persons-or-bodies-to-give-instructions-to-uk-financial-institutions-on-behalf-of-venezuelan-central-bank/.

Al Jazeera. “UK Court Denies Venezuela's Maduro Access to Gold in Bank Vault.” Latin America News | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 2 July 2020, www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/07/02/uk-court-denies-venezuelas-maduro-access-to-gold-in-bank-vault/.

Armas, Mayela, and Corina Pons. “Venezuela Gold Holdings in Bank of England Soar on Deutsche Deal: Sources.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 21 Jan. 2019, uk.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-gold/venezuela-gold-holdings-in-bank-of-england-soar-on-deutsche-deal-sources-idUKKCN1PF1Z8.

“Covid-19 in Venezuela: How the Pandemic Deepened a Humanitarian Crisis.” Covid-19 in Venezuela: How the Pandemic Deepened a Humanitarian Crisis | Center for Strategic and International Studies, 17 Nov. 2020, www.csis.org/analysis/covid-19-venezuela-how-pandemic-deepened-humanitarian-crisis.

G., Jose I. Hernandez. “As Special Attorney-General of Venezuela, I Notified @Icsid That It Should Not Recognize Any Instruction given by Lawyers Acting on Behalf of Nicolas Maduro in the Arbitrations before That Center Pic.twitter.com/9PZlEvjn09.” Twitter, Twitter, 27 Mar. 2019, twitter.com/ignandez/status/1110989446189645825?lang=en.

Jones, Marc. “UK Court Overturns Venezuela Judgment in $1 Billion Gold Tug-of-War.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 6 Oct. 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-gold-boe/uk-court-of-appeal-overturns-judgment-in-venezuela-gold-case-lawyers-idUSKBN26Q1IU.

Office, Foreign & Commonwealth. “UK Recognises Juan Guaido as Interim President of Venezuela.” GOV.UK, GOV.UK, 4 Feb. 2019, www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-recognises-juan-guaido-as-interim-president-of-venezuela.

Peltier, Elian. “Maduro Wins Chance of New Ruling Over Billions in Gold Held in U.K.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/world/europe/nicolas-maduro-venezuela-gold.html.

Pons, Corina, and Mayela Armas. “Exclusive: Venezuela Asks Bank of England to Sell Its Gold to U.N. for Coronavirus Relief - Sources.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 29 Apr. 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-venezuela-gold-exc-idUSKBN22B30X.

Roache, Madeline. “Venezuela's Maduro Loses Battle Over Gold in London Bank.” Time, Time, 2 July 2020, time.com/5862539/venezuela-maduro-gold-london-bank/.

Smith, Scott. “Control of Venezuelan Gold Held in London Cast into Doubt.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 5 Oct. 2020, apnews.com/article/london-venezuela-archive-united-kingdom-8aed97a3890f7a2cd7ffe09a71b6b050.

Stott, Michael. “Venezuela's Maduro Wins Appeal over $1bn of Gold at Bank of England.” Subscribe to Read | Financial Times, Financial Times, 5 Oct. 2020, www.ft.com/content/d5e91ab8-f44f-437a-887e-7a5aa402976d.

“UK Court Reverses $1bn Venezuelan Gold Ruling.” Anadolu Ajansı, www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/uk-court-reverses-1bn-venezuelan-gold-ruling/1996739.

“UK Denying Maduro Access to Venezuelan Gold Is Not Only THEFT, It's MURDER of London's Reputation as Trusted Financial Center.” RT International, www.rt.com/op-ed/493718-uk-maduro-venezuela-gold/.

“Venezuela Gold: UK High Court Rules against Nicolás Maduro.” BBC News, BBC, 2 July 2020, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-53262767.

“Venezuela Launches London Appeal in Battle for $1 Billion in Gold.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 22 Sept. 2020, uk.reuters.com/article/uk-venezuela-britain-gold/venezuela-launches-london-appeal-in-battle-for-1-billion-in-gold-idUKKCN26D2SA.

“Venezuela: Drought, Mismanagement and Political Instability.” The Center for Climate & Security, 8 Feb. 2019, climateandsecurity.org/2019/02/drought-mismanagement-and-political-instability-in-venezuela/.

“Venezuela: Lives Turned Upside down by the COVID-19 Pandemic.” International Committee of the Red Cross, 15 Oct. 2020, www.icrc.org/en/document/venezuela-lives-turned-upside-down-covid-19-pandemic.

“Zaiwalla & Co's Statement on the Judgment Released in Banco Central De Venezuela's Claim against the Bank of England.” Zaiwalla, www.zaiwalla.co.uk/en/news/banco-central-de-venezuela-to-appeal-judgment.

Caracas: Land of Legends, of Great Warriors and My Home

Photo taken by the author: A Blurred Sunset in Caracas

By: Andrés Vargas Arévalo

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

On October 3rd, 2019, I decided to take a leap of faith; I would turn a short voyage to Caracas into a one-way trip. I had been living in Mexico City for the previous fourteen months and, as my mother used to say each time we vacationed outside Venezuela: “I would return with double the eagerness that I had had when I left”.

Mexico City and Caracas have much in common: they are chaotic and perhaps unfriendly. I see them as chiral, as though they were mirror images, yet different, and sinister. Mexico City was handed to me in the same way I was handed Caracas: without a choice. Each city came with its own implications, pains, and gains. Yet the only thing I wanted whilst living in Mexico City was to be back home, in my brutalist, concrete jungle. Now that I am living in Caracas, I sometimes miss Mexico City and the good memories I have of it, but I have always had one - and only one - place which I call home.

My memories started to resurface as the plane began its landing at Simon Bolivar International Airport. It was the first time in years that I was landing at night given that my mother thought it would be better to return using daylight flights for security reasons. To my delight, it wasn't the case this time and I would now be able to see lights that I could only recall as fragments of my childhood days when I’d go back and forth between Caracas and La Guaira on weekends. As my uncle drove up to Caracas, I was greeted by the magnific Caracas-La Guaira highway, a testament to the former glory years of the 1950s. On each side of the highway, the lights of the barrios took me back to my childhood since I used to fall asleep to them.

I was hungry, I had had a long layover in Bogota before departing for Caracas and the flight had not accepted international cards to pay for meals. My uncle took me to a hot dog stand called ‘Joao’ in Las Mercedes, where I used to eat every week with my high school and college friends after a night of partying. It was a sad moment because I haven't seen many of those friends in years, and I knew that life takes turns and perhaps I won’t see them in what remains of my life. Caracas has given me everything and has taken a lot from me, but I still love her.

Just after getting home, I decided to surprise one of my best friends, Mort. As he entered my house, I jumped on him and started to laugh. He took me on a ride to one of the most sacred places for a Venezuelan patriot: the house where El Libertador was born, which is now bordered by cafes. There was a certain joy in the streets that night, with lights which were strange to me. You had to be crazy to go out after sunset to the center of Caracas due to the fear of getting mugged, but I didn'tfeel any fear whilst drinking a frappuccino almost at midnight.

We drove back to Las Mercedes to eat arepas and get a couple of drinks. Pilsner beer was something I’d missed while in Mexico City; negritas, as we call them, have a unique taste (In Venezuela the word ‘negro’ isn’t racist, it is actually used as a synonym for friend and as an affectionate nickname). I was surprised to learn that a nation in which it used to be illegal to have dollars, or any other foreign currency, now uses them as its main currency and that foreign credit cards could now also be used. Even using a credit card seemed surprising; previously it had been a nightmare to use one because the card terminals never worked.

Caracas wasn't the ghost town that I had left behind on July 27th, 2018. Somehow, she had come back to life. I still had friends left, my first alma mater was still standing and there were still opportunities left to grow up in the former land of opportunities; opportunities to rejoice, to mourn, to go out and to face the world.

Some may argue that I'm short-sighted, which as a matter of fact I am. There is still an unimaginable misery in Venezuela that shocks everyone, with news of the elderly and the young dying alone of starvation. The witches - as we call the policemen - roam in the shadows waiting for an unlucky soul to snatch. This is still the capital of the Animal Farm, ruled with an iron fist by our very own Napoleon. But it would be an insult to me, to my family, and to all hardworking Venezuelans lie to you saying that we are hopeless. We have stood up to tyranny many times before and we have always won; from Carabobo to Boyaca, from Junin to Ayacucho, and to our very own streets, we have fought and won. It's only a matter of time before we win again. 

Even in the darkness of the pandemic and of the economic ruin, we still wake up to work for a better life, just like the millions of wartime refugees of long ago who spent weeks walking towards ports to board ships, seeing no daylight until they had reached the ports of a land of grace called Venezuela.

I see you, Venezuela, each day as I go out to work; I see your fear dwarfed by your immense ambition for a better life and your courageous struggle for happiness. I see you, delivery guy, I see you, entrepreneur; old and young, I see you all. You are the true lights that stand up to the darkness, and the guiding star to a new dawn.

You are the heart of Caracas. Soon the carcasses of the buildings that lay dormant will rise, and we will become again the city of the eternal spring, the branch of the heavens, the home that so many have missed.

Andres Vargas Arevalo is a second-year student of Chemical Engineering at Universidad Metropolitana. Born and raised in Caracas who has lived in Canada, Mexico and Spain. A passionate entrepreneur and founder of @TuMetroCondon.

Football: The Death of Diego Maradona

Source: https://bit.ly/3maZWvj

By: Sophie Rasmussen

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

On November 25, 2020, the devastating news broke of Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona’s death at the age of 60. Argentina, currently ravaged by the coronavirus, has officially gone into mourning, and millions around the world are mourning as well. The reverence many have for him is difficult to explain; he is widely regarded as the best soccer player ever to take to the pitch, and in Argentina he is almost a god. Who was he, and why has his death had such a profound impact worldwide?

Maradona was born in 1960 in a very poor area of Buenos Aires. He was gifted a soccer ball when he was three and became obsessed. He soon joined youth teams in Buenos Aires, and already at 12 he had fans of his “wizardry with the ball.” At 15, he became the youngest person to play in the Argentine Primera División, and as his career progressed he played for some of the best teams in the world. When his career ended he had won several major trophies, including that of the 1986 World Cup. Since retirement, he had coached several teams, collaborated with various charities, and begun his own talk show, among other things. In 2000, FIFA declared him one of the two “players of the century.’’

Immediately after his death, countless professional soccer players began to pay tribute on social media, sharing their pictures with him and telling heart-warming anecdotes, praising his skills, or professing that he had inspired them to play soccer in the first place. Even Pelé — his fierce rival and the other FIFA “player of the century” — laments, “I have lost a dear friend.” Professional soccer leagues are postponing games or holding minutes of silence before kick-off, and there is already talk of Italian club Napoli (for whom Maradona won several trophies in the 80s and 90s) renaming their stadium after him; a school in India did so two days after his death. Ordinary citizens are devastated as well; despite the pandemic, gatherings have formed worldwide to give people an opportunity to honor Maradona with flowers and artwork, and to grieve. 

His life was not without controversy; he struggled with cocaine addiction, was guilty of tax evasion, and held contentious (and strong) political views. He fathered several children outside his marriage and once shot at reporters who he felt were invading his privacy. And yet he remains an icon. His poor background, very public left-wing views, and tendency to express his opinions passionately and fearlessly made him a man of the people. Ignoring his personal qualities, his memorable plays and ball control have made generations of soccer players look up to him in awe.

Nowhere is he worshipped as much as in Argentina. Citizens will always be proud when their athletes succeed, but there was something different about Maradona. At the height of his career, Argentina was in, and then recovering from, a dictatorship, dealing with the humiliation of losing the Malvinas/Falklands War to Britain in 1982, and suffering economic crises. One Argentine claims that for many of his countrymen during this period, Maradona was the only thing which brought them joy. There is one particular moment which best showcases Argentines’ pride in Maradona. Four years after losing the Malvinas/Falklands War, Argentina played England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup. Maradona scored two goals which sent Argentina to the semifinals, and later to win the tournament: one was illegal (though still counted), and one is widely referred to as “the Goal of the Century.” At the time weighed down by political and economic problems, Argentines went mad; in a recent interview, one man tearfully called it “the happiest moment of my life.” When the player died, Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, announced three days of national mourning, and Maradona’s coffin lay in state at the Casa Rosada, the executive mansion. The nation really is in mourning; dealing with economic problems and being one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic makes their hero’s death all the more devastating. Tens of thousands of citizens gathered for his wake in Buenos Aires, and photographs show stunned faces marred by tragedy.

As the Houston Chronicle writes: “To understand the gargantuan shadow Maradona casts over his football-mad homeland, one has to conjure up the athleticism of Michael Jordan, the power of Babe Ruth — and the human fallibility of Mike Tyson. Lump them together in a single barrel-chested man with shaggy black hair, you have El Diego, idol to the millions who call him D10S, a mash-up of his playing number and the Spanish word for God.” Reactions from around the world in the last few days show both the power of sports and the ability for one entity to do so much to unite people. The response to Maradona’s death might never have been seen before, and might not happen again — the world will have to see what happens when Pelé dies, but Maradona, as always, will be a hard act to follow

Sophie is a second year History student from the United States. Half Argentine, she is very interested in the country’s culture, politics, and history.

“Hemos vuelto a la normalidad”: Peru in Protest

Source: https://ibb.co/pzCrp8Y

By: Clarice Benney*

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

“Hemos vuelto a la normalidad,” (“we have gone back to normal”) was the response of one of Peru’s most famous poets of the 20th century, Martín Adán, when asked about the 1948 coup by Manuel Odría. Adán was well known for his eccentricities, but now, 70 years later, do these words appear more perceptive and far-reaching than he was perhaps given credit for at the time?

2020 has been a tough year for Peru: they have had one of the highest death rates from Covid-19 in the world, and are now watching their political system implode. In September, Peru’s president of the congress, Manuel Merino, was given “leaked” audio files which allegedly revealed a conversation with the then-president, Martín Vizcarra, in which his aides discuss how to cover up a misuse of public funds. 

This might appear, on the surface, to be a clear cut case of right and wrong, but the political context makes it much harder to make this distinction. Vizcarra ran as Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s running mate in the 2016 elections, when their party, Peruanos Por el Kambio (PPK, ‘Peruvians for Change’) narrowly defeated Keiko Fujimori, the Fuerza Popular party’s nominee. Kuczynski resigned in 2018 due to charges of corruption, and Vizcarra took his place.

Vizcarra enjoyed popular support with his anti-corruption agenda and vowed to not run for re-election at the end of his term in 2021, but he was consistently challenged by Congress, of which opposition parties made up the majority. In September 2019, Vizcarra dissolved the Peruvian Congress and issued a decree for a new election in January 2020, but the result of the new elections once again saw opposition-led parties making up the majority. When Vizcarra dissolved Congress, his popularity rating rose from 49 to 80%, and he was seen by many as being ‘thwarted’ by Congress in his attempts to fight corruption.

With this in mind, Congress voted on whether or not to impeach Vizcarra in September 2020, but the motion failed, with only 32 members voting in favour of impeachment. However, they voted again in November, and this time the result was 105 in favour, 19 against, and 4 abstentions. 

When Congress removed Vizcarra and replaced him with Manuel Merino, President of the Congress and a member of the opposition, Peruvians took to the streets to protest. And it is this detail, the national outcry and action, that challenges the idea of “[un] vuelto a la normalidad.”

This civil unrest shows that the idea of a ‘milagro peruano’ (‘Peruvian miracle’) had not just been put aside, but shattered. Alberto Fujimori’s time as president from 1990 to 2000 saw the introduction of neoliberal policies, as in many other Latin American countries. The impact on Peruvian life was that many informal sectors were legalized, and foreign investment saw China become the country’s largest trading partner. In this period, whilst Peru’s natural resources were exploited for foreign gain, the country experienced high growth rates and the national poverty rate was cut in half between 2002 and 2011.

But by focusing on the positive statistics, issues surrounding political corruption continued. Alberto Fujimori may have generated economic prosperity, but he is now in prison on the grounds of human rights abuses for his role in the Grupo Colina death squad during his battle with leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. Following him was Alejandro Toledo Manrique, who was credited with ‘opening up tourism’, but is currently under house-arrest for corruption charges; then Alan García Pérez who comitted suicide when prosecutors came to his couse to bring him to face corruption charges; and Ollantana Humala Tasso, awaiting a corruption trial.

What we are seeing now on the news is a harrowing awakening: politics in Peru has reached a point where it cannot be ignored. In an already fragile democracy, a president and Congress working against each other was the ultimate destabilizing blow, but at this point a new guiding force has come into play: the people.

On November 16th it was declared that during protests, a violent reaction from the police killed two people, injured 100 and led to the disappearances of other protesters. The hashtag, “Merino no es mi presidente” (“Merino is not my president” that had flooded social media following his appointment was swapped for “El Perú está de luto” (“Peru is in mourning”). Merino resigned the same day.

Peru was faced with the same question once more: ‘whose turn next?’ For the moment it seems that the answer is Francisco Sagasti, a member of Congress from the ‘Partido Morado’. Sagasti was selected, as he was one of the 17 members of Congress who voted against Vizcarra’s impeachment for a second time in November, which acknowledges the people’s unhappiness with Congress’ decision to hold the vote at all, and their discontent towards Congress’ self-indulgent agenda.

When thinking about protest culture and examples in Latin America you might think of students in Chile protesting, triggered by an increase in the subway fare, people in Bolivia challenging political fraud, or women in Argentina demanding the legalisation of abortion. Until now, protests in Peru rarely made headlines. Do they not face the same issues? Are citizens really more satisfied with public spending and government in their country than others in the region?

The answer is no. Protests and strikes in Peru are not uncommon; it’s national protesting that occurs much more rarely. 40% of the newly formed middle class in Peru are in an unstable position. Mining has been a great driver of economic growth in Peru, but it simultaneously endangers the wellbeing of the communities it purports to benefit by contaminating water supplies and destroying environmental balance. The at-risk rural communities that fall into this category report feelings of even higher uncertainty for the future. Combine this with a lack of political representation and ever-changing parties and people, and you create an environment where protests are so constant that they lose their weight: turning up becomes apathetic. In order to restore activism in protesting there needs to be organization, and a sense of purpose. It is this presence in the recent political protests that singles them out and contests the ideal that ‘hemos vuelto a la normalidad’. With elections due in 2021, this could be the beginning of a new political era in Peru.

Note:

Jack Brian Pintado Sánchez, 22, and Jordan Inti Sotelo Camargo, 24, are young men who were tragically killed when participating in protests — my thoughts are with their friends and family.

Clarice is a student studying Spanish at Cambridge University. She is currently on her ‘year abroad’ and working with the NGO Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF) as Communications Coordinator. LAFF operates in Cusco, Peru and so Clarice is particularly interested in Peruvian current affairs, as well as protest culture in Latin American and grassroots activism. 

*About LAFF:

Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF) is a UK registered charity operating in Cusco, Peru to increase access to quality education and personal development opportunities. LAFF believes that one of the best ways to create positive long term change is to support local grassroots organisations so that community leaders drive the change. To find out more about what we do, check out our website.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laffcharity/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/latin-american-foundation-for-the-future

Geography: Its Influence in the Development of South America

Source: https://bit.ly/36T3r5u

By: Jack Acrich

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

The territory where a country is located can affect the way in which it is able to build the necessary infrastructure to pave its way to development and prosperity. It is common for states to take advantage of their geographical location in the best way possible –some may even use it to have advantage over other countries. In the case of South America, a lot of this region’s countries have had problems to properly build the necessary infrastructure for development and communication –an important factor for this is their geographical context.

First of all, the presence of rainforests such as the Amazon–which covers great part of the northern part of the continent– is considered to be very difficult to access due to its climatic conditions and density. Because of this, agricultural practices have not been very developed, and in many cases militant or criminal groups take advantage of this conditions to hide from the authorities. This usually results in governments using and sending resources to try and combat them. In this way, even if Venezuela and Brazil have close borders, roads are almost inexistent making their terrestrial communication very difficult due to the thick jungle. Furthermore, the presence of the Tapón de Darien, that is located in the border between Panama and Colombia, serves as a natural barrier. In this sense, the presence of rainforest in the region has also impeded terrestrial communication between Central America and South America.

Secondly, to escape form the conditions of the tropic where diseases can be present, many populations have decided to move and establish cities in elevated areas. The building and maintenance of infrastructure in these areas is very expensive, as well as contributing to the isolation of communities. This can be the case for cities like Quito in Ecuador, La Paz in Bolivia and Caracas in Venezuela. The spaces where most of the population live tends to be small; a lack of space leads to greater density and a poorer urban planification.

In addition, the Andes Mountains – one of the largest continental mountain ranges in the world – complicates the development and construction of roads to communicate different parts of the region. The part of the Andes located between Chile and Argentina consists of very high mountain ranges where snowstorms are very common. The topographical terrain in the region complicate traffic flow and communication between these two countries. This situation is not only between the countries in the region. The South American continent is considered to be far away from other parts of the world. For instance, the southern part of the region where Argentina and Uruguay are located are very distant to Europe. Again, the geographical context of the South American region makes it very challenging and costly to build tunnels and safe transportation, resulting in difficult the communication within the region and the rest of the world. 

Nonetheless, geographical conditions can be used for development advantages. For instance, the United States’developmental success has been in great part because of its geographical context –the presence of a great portion of land proper for agriculture, the existence of navigable rivers that promote the easy transportation of goods, and the availability of great ports. In addition, having coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans has allowed the U.S. to project its power outside of the American continent (Stratfor, 2016 ). Even if the landscape of South America seems to obstruct the possibility for progress and growth, there are other factors that are advantageous. First, the idea that the region does not have to worry about an external war due to the fact that other states outside of the continent could get the resources that the region offers in places that are closer to them or have safer sea routes. Moreover, the zone of Río de la Plata located in the southern part of the continent has arable land and rivers are optimal for navigation benefiting states like Argentina and Uruguay. Additionally, the proximity to the US can be positive to establish commercial ties in sense.  

Taking into account the geographical aspects of states, it is possible to have a better understanding of the challenges they have had to progress. Even if South America has struggled to establish stable economies, there can always be ways to take advantage of the situation, and in many cases the route to instability has been led by certain inefficient government policies. Corruption scandals are present all over the continent making it very difficult to advance and build a prosperous stateregardless of the geographical conditions that they have. Having a lot of obstacles for development can be a great challenge to build a stable and prosperous economy. Nevertheless, this should not be an excuse to drag behind in development and be consumed by corruption that is very present in the region.

Jack is a Venezuelan 3rd year student at the University of Navarra. Besides his deep interest for Latin America, he is passionate about geopolitics and how the dynamics in this field shape the world of International Relations.

Protests in Peru: A Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Source: https://www.clarin.com/fotogalerias/impactantes-fotos-protestas-nuevo-presidente-peru-destitucion-vizcarra_5_ndMABbPBj.html

By: Arianna Sanchez

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

The last piece I wrote for El Cortao’ regarded the socio-political consequences of Venezuelan immigration in Peru. It ended with hope that the 2021 elections would help unite Peruvians rather than separate us. Turns out that the government did help us unite –even prior than expected. However, it was not because of their good politics,  but because of an attempted coup. Our current interim President, Francisco Sagasti, seems to be setting a path towards fair and timely elections in April 2021–he, however, did not get into power effortlessly. It took two dead protesters, dozens missingand more than a hundred injured to reinstate democracy in Peru. These series of events signify, in my opinion, a paradigm shift in Peruvian politics. From the perspective of someone who experienced this from first-hand, this article will attempt to look into the events that drove us to a coup and how Peruvian people managed to take back the power Congress took from us.

Race to the bottom

The issue at hand is one of high complexity and nuance, however I will try my best to summarise the crucial events that led to this point. We could say that the series of events leading to the attempted coup started when Pedro Pablo Kuczinsky (PPK) renounced his presidency in 2017 after an attempted impeachment from Congress against him. Congress justified their move with a collection of allegations tying PPK with corrupt people and firms –Odebrecht being the most important amongst the group. PPK renounced presidency after a seemingly never-ending battle with his main political opposition, Fuerza Popular. Martín Vizcarra, PPK’s Vice-President, assumed presidency right after in 2018. This event was, as García-Marquez would put it, a chronicle of a death foretold.  

 Martin Vizcarra truly did not expect the level of political and economic turmoil he would face in the upcoming years. Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori’s political party and his main political opposition, was quick to use various events to develop antipathy towards Vizcarra amongst Congress and the general Peruvian population. The impeachment was based on the grounds that Vizcarra had been involved in different events concerning corruption, with allegations dating back to 2011. In the long run, however, it seems to me that Vizcarra’sdecision to dissolve Congress in 2019 and call for elections pushed these politicians to decide it was in their best interests to remove Vizcarra from presidency. Once he was gone, they were safe.

Peruvians strike back: The protests 

What the government did not seem to account for in their master plan was the level of protesting against them that would occur in the days following the impeachment. Neither did they expect the levels of police brutality these protests would bring with them. What would happen after Manuel Merino assumed de facto presidency acted as a strong wake up call for Peruvians, and these people in government were now the common enemy for us all. 

Peruvians started taking the streets to protest against Merino’s de facto presidency the day after it occurred –on the 10th of November. From the start, protesters were challenged by a repressive police force; tear gas asphyxiated protesters, whilst rubber bullets left several hurt. A source of anger, that further incentivised protesters to take the streets by the masses, was the lack of exposure of police brutality by the Peruvian media. Given the censoring by national media, Peruvians took the issue to social media, where platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook were flooded with evidence of the levels of police brutality faced during the protests.

However, the turning point had a very specific date: Saturday 14th of November 2020. The day started with tanks on the streets, police disguised as civilians and in every corner. This seemed to signal that Merino’s government was not willing to resign, but rather wanted to silence protesters through intimidation. What started as peaceful protests took an awfully dark turn towards the end of the day. The speed in which things took a turn for the worse led to information all over social media and the news. To say it was overwhelming would be completely undermining the speed and intensity in which events occurred on that night. The levels of police brutality protesters experienced that Saturday were astonishing. My own social media was full of either friends asking for help due to injuries or those documenting the actions of the police. 

Then the official news started flooding in. One protester had been killed. With no time for Peruvians to even attempt to process it, and with thousands still attempting to escape the repressive police on the streets, the second death was announced. Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado died at the hands of the Peruvian police that Saturday. Dozens more did not return home that day, with allegations of forceful disappearances carried out by the police. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Reinstating democracy

After the events of that Saturday, Ministers assigned by Merino started to quit their posts. It started with the Minister of Women and Vulnerable Populations shortly after the news reported the deaths of two protesters and the disappearance of dozens more. It was clear that they had finally realised the extent to which they had infuriated the general Peruvian population with their ‘constitutional’ impeachment in the middle of a sanitary crisis. The continued protests and massive social media movement indicated that Peruvians were not about to be silenced. Moreover, the deaths of two protesters implied potential judicial investigations to be opened against them –this was not political opportunism for them anymore, it was political suicide. After around twelve Ministers had resigned, large social media platforms and politicians, who had not said a word before, started to heavily criticise the government in an attempt to save themselves from our anger. 

By Sunday morning, it was clear Merino had to resign as soon as possible to avoid further deaths and violence. He did not even have a cabinet anymore –there was virtually no choice. As people took the streets to pay tribute to the victims of the previous night, Manuel Merino finally appeared on our television screens. After a convoluted speech that showed an inability to assume responsibility for those injured and killed by the police, he finally said it: he resigned. On that same day, 15th of November, the attorney general of the nation, Zoraida Ávalos, filed a lawsuit against Manuel Merino, Prime Minister Antero Flores-Aráoz and Minister of the Interior Gastón Rodriguez for violations against human rights.

 With no President and no ministerial cabinet, we found ourselves on a limbo. Congress had to choose a new executive branch –the same government which betrayed us. After one full day of complex political manoeuvres behind the scenes,and the surprising rejection of the first candidate list, Congress allegedly promised to bring some political stability. They finally chose the new members of the executive on the 16th of November. With the families of Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado present in the ceremony, new interim-President Francisco Sagasti assumed presidency, giving an emotional speech addressing our fight for democracy and promising justice to those affected. Some hope was restored. 

Concluding thoughts

I want to end this piece on one main note: Peruvians did not take the streets to reinstate ex-President Vizcarra into power. Peruvians did not fight against exceedingly repressive policefor him. Peruvians fought to reinstate democracy and fought the police for ourselves. It has been decades of normalising terrible, exclusionary politics. Of normalising the advantage taken by those who claim to represent us. Of normalising the uncertainty of whether next year we could have anotherpolitical crisis. We learn from our mistakes, yet we have a long road ahead. now that we have finally opened our eyes, I hope we do not close them again.

Arianna is a Peruvian 3rd Year Politics Student at King’s College London with a passion for Latin American politics and political risk-management.

Costa Rica: No military? But what about regional security?

Source: https://destinationsguide.copaair.com/en-ca/flights-to-costa-rica

By: Adriana Ibale Barajas

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

Since gaining independence, Latin American states have often experienced violence and political disruption in their domestic affairs; some scholars attribute such instability to the close connection between the political and military realm. The academic literature on the topic highlights the contestability of civil-military relations in Latin America due to historical evidence which suggests that a strong military force has been tied to a pitfall in social growth. The case of Costa Rica portrays that despite having neighbouring states as potential external threats, the abolition of its army has strengthened its political, social and economic development. Actually, Costa Rica’s demilitarisation in 1948 has instead enhanced its regional security in spite of prospective threats from Nicaragua for instance. 

From the years 1890 to 1948, Costa Rica had experienced “at least four unsuccessful coup attempts and eleven revolts against the government” alongside eight ammendments to the constitution due to internal disputes (Wilson, 1998). With the end of the 1948 Costa Rican Civil War, President José Figueres disbanded the army in order to prevent further challenges to his rule from Picado’s military-backed government. The military had in the past regularly been used as a tool by the elites to impose their authority and foster social inequality. The army had not been employed as brutally as in other countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador but the Picado administration had resorted to its use to maintain political power. Figueres’ decision on demilitarising Costa Rica was therefore not an economic goal but based on internal security which also managed to influence institutional development seeing as there has not been significant political violence in the country since then.

Turmoil in the country was also previously generated due to foreign powers’ interests entangling with military control. Latin American elites wanted to attract foreign investments to make their commercial land lucrative and even resorted to yielding control to a foreign power and indirectly promoting an externally instigated revolution. An example of “military facilitated bloodshed” was the Coffee Coup of 1917, the Costa Rican government tried to restructure the tax system and make the upper class contribute more (Benton, 2016). In response the elites led a military coup against the government installing military leader Federico Tinoco as the country’s dictator. This served as a lesson and demonstrated the dangers of conveying excessive power to the military, through the discreditation of the army Costa Rica eliminated this danger altogether. At a time where other Latin American countries were plagued with military dictatorships, Costa Rica was undergoing a period of positive social and economic development. Costa Rica’s demilitarisation aided in protecting its domestic security by generating a stable environment free from internal political threats and injustices propagated by the use of military force. The main threats to the state were either sourced from possible coups or instigated from an external power, Figueres’ decision on neutralising the military resolved both issues. 

The lack of a military force not only marked a difference in terms of political and judicial security in the country, but also meant that the funds previously gone to military expenditure were now able to lay the foundations for positive growth through facilitating commerce, investment and employment rates (Sada, 2015). Abarca and Ramirez published the first study which linked the abolishment of the military with economic success; the scholars found that before 1948 Costa Rica was the fourth country with the slowest GDP rate in Latin America, yet after it became the second state with fastest growth just behind Brazil. General welfare also improved as for example when having an army, 21% of Costa Rica’s economically active population was covered by health care whereas in 1978 the figure rose to 66% (Abarca and Ramirez, 2018). 

One must acknowledge that even if Costa Rica was a politically and economically secure country taking into account its geographical location, it still underwent difficulties and its success cannot be compared to those of developed nations (Trejos, 2008). Issues such as the deterioration of regional trade and amounts of debt owed to lenders abroad cannot be ignored. Despite these domestic problems Costa Ricans still believed that their greatest threat in the 1980s was Nicaragua, Nicaragua’s increase in military strength as well as territorial disputes between the two states fostered a sense of mistrust in regards to Nicaraguan intentions. However, Costa Rica has an ally in the United States due to the fact that it serves as a successful example of Latin American democracy and is simultaneously compatible with the U.S’ system. In this sense, the United States has a ‘dual interest in the continuity of the system’ which thus acts in Costa Rica’s favour and protection (Furlong, 1987).

Ultimately, the absence of a Costa Rican military force has helped to maintain political and institutional stability and hence foster economic growth and widespread welfare in the country. Past attempts by social elites and foreign powers to use the military as a tool in their favour were no longer possible; at a time where other states in the region were suffering from dictatorships and social unrest, Costa Rica was free from this danger sourced from the use of military force. Furthermore, funds previously gone to military expenditure were now employed to fund economic projects raising general welfare and education levels. Nonetheless, regional threats were still a perceived problem amongst the population even if these disputes have not escalated into major concerns.

Adriana is a 3rd year International Relations student at KCL, who is particularly interested in the impact of identity politics and international development in Latin America.

Bibliography 

Abarca Garro, A. and Ramirez Varas, S. A. (2018) Adiós a las armas: los efectos en el desarrollo de largo plazo de la abolición del ejército de Costa Rica. Working paper: Observatorio del Desarrollo de la Universidad de Costa Rica

Benton, J. L. (2016) Eliminating war by eliminating warriors: a case study in Costa Rica. Postgraduate. Naval Postgraduate School. 

Buscone, P. (2017) The Demilitarization of Costa Rica. College Honours Program. 10 https://crossworks.holycross.edu/honors/10

Furlong, W. L. (1987) Costa Rica: Caught between Two Worlds. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. 29 (2) pp. 119-154

Kruijt, D. (1996) “Politicians in Uniform: Dilemmas about the Latin American Military. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 61 pp. 7-19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25675710?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Skidmore, T. and Smith, P. (2005) Modern Latin America 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press

Sada, M. (2015) The Curious Case of Costa Rica: Can an Outlier Sustain its Success? Harvard International Review 36 (4) pp. 11-12

Trejos, A. (2006) Country Role Models for Development Success: The case of Costa Rica. Country Role Models for Development. INCAE.

Vogt, M. (2019) Variance In Approach Toward A 'Sustainable' Coffee Industry In Costa Rica. London: Ubiquity Press.

Wilson, B. M. (1998) Costa Rica: Politics, Economics, and Democracy. Boulder: Lynne

Reinner Publishers.

From Tlatelolco to Ayotzinapa: The Continuity of Impunity in Mexico

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/world/americas/mexico-tlatelolco-massacre.html

By: Fernanda Álvarez Pineiro

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

Every 2nd of October, the streets of Mexico City reverberate with the echoing chants of indignation of students and alumni who march to commemorate those that were killed in 1968 in the Plaza of Tlatelolco at the hands of the state. The quintessential ‘No Se Olvida!’ is reproduced in a myriad of posters that aim to remind Mexican society of this chilling scar that has not yet scabbed as its perpetrators still have not been brought to justice. The 1968 Tlatelolco massacre was preceded by a summer of peaceful student protests, which saw demands for democratic rights that challenged a paternalistic quasi-dictatorship led by the Revolutionary Institutionalized Party (PRI). These protests worsened the anxiety of President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, whose jitteriness stemmed from the impending inauguration of the 1968 Olympics in October. In the midst of the Cold War, Ordaz wanted to not only convince his Northern neighbor that a communist revolution was not festering in the heart and veins of his country, but that Mexico was a modernizing powerhouse that would become an economic role model in Latin America. Demands for democracy, in this context, wrongly became equated with dreams of replicating the Cuban Revolution at home– with disastrous consequences. With the whole world watching, students were silenced with bullets. The next morning, newswires reported on the weather and the tangible euphoria of the upcoming Olympics. Impunity, to this day, continues to permeate the memory of the 2nd of October. 

​It was with this indignation towards impunity that, in September of 2014, students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in Iguala, Guerrero set out to raise funds to organize a trip to Mexico City in time for the 2nd of October marches. It had become a tradition; a means of not only preserving historic memory, but of reminding the incumbent government that impunity does not go unnoticed despite its prevalence in daily political life and discourse in Mexico. As students mounted the buses, they would subsequently be halted by the federal police, and 43 of them would be handed to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and forcefully disappeared. Despite the continuing investigations by the attorney general's office and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), there has been no conclusive official verdict. Perhaps the most convincing assessment is by investigative journalist Anabel Hernández who found that the 43 students chose a bus loaded with $2 million worth of heroin, thus becoming a target of the cartels. The chilling connection between Tlatelolco and Ayotzinapa –particularly the fact both instances featured students as victims– creates a sombre forecast of the continued entrenchment of impunity across all state structural levels. Despite both phenomena happening at different times and for different reasons, there is perhaps a deep and inescapable continuity between the two.

Disentangling Impunity in Mexico

​It certainly is disheartening and demoralizing to think about the continuity of impunity in Mexico– with resounding concern, the leading authorial figure of the 1968 Movement Elena Poniatowska asks “what is the future of a country that kills its students?”. However, this is not simply a question of an omnipotent, paternalistic, political force silencing the voices of students– this is directly disproven by the case of Ayotzinapa as the 43 had no affiliation with disruptive political activities. The continuity between the two is more nuanced than that– it is a two-fold phenomenon characterized by the stigmatization and disposability of the lives of lower socio-economic classes, and the loss of the state monopoly on violence.

​Youth killings are –as has been established by now– not isolated incidents in Mexico. Whether it is 1968, Ayotzinapa, or femicides in Ciudad Juárez it is clear that it is a systemic and frequent social phenomenon. According to Sylvia Meichsner of the Open University, this can be explained by enabling structures that are fundamentally grounded on the stigmatization of certain socio-economic groups, especially lower-class ones. Meichsner posits that simplistic and inaccurate stereotypes are constructed in mass media and cultural industries, essentially creating stigmas that are overtly and covertly reproduced across all levels of society. Due to their material vulnerability and stigmatization, these groups may be victims of a delay in paperwork or a reprehensible refusal to investigate and prosecute crimes of which they are victims. Consequently, when these groups engage in political activism or demand justice, they are automatically labelled as ‘troublemakers’. What this constructs is an idea that their lives are disposable and do not create a dent in the Mexican social fabric. 

 The perhaps co-dependent explanation is that in recent years the state has lost its monopoly over violence, with Tlatelolco becoming the watershed moment that created a snowball effect wherein the state gradually lost control over its force. Sergio Aguayo, professor and researcher at the Colegio de México, reminds us that the raison d’être of the state according to social contract theory is to guarantee the security of the population and hence why it has a legitimate use of force. In this regard, “Tlatelolco and Ayotzinaparepresent two expressions of the same phenomenon”. In 1968, the purposeful lack of coordination and confusion between the Battalion Olimpia and the police led to a massacre. In Ayotzinapa, the connections between the federal police, the state, and the cartels have created a parallel state of sorts where the central government has no means of halting violence. Aguayo concludes that there is a feeling of helplessness that is derived from this loss of monopoly over violence– “neither the State protects us against criminals, nor does it care for us as victims”. 

A Source of Hope

​Impunity between 1968 and 2014 has undoubtedly been a continuous trend. However, there have been substantial changes between Tlatelolco and Ayotzinapa. Changes that, perhaps, embody a spark of hope. In an increasingly interdependent, globalized, international system, legitimacy is no longer just a question determined by players housed within sovereign borders. Human rights violations no longer go unnoticed, as they largely did in 1968. The creation of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) by the IACHR and their investigation of Ayotzinapa in Mexico is something that certainly would not have happened back in 1968. Their refusal to accept the attorney general office’s verdict on the case of the 43 and to stand by their own assessment undermined the legitimacy of the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Unlike in 1968, the whole word is not just watching–it is judging. 

 Whilst Mexican channels of legal accountability are deficient and do not favor the needs of those that are most often victims of state and cartel violence (which could be considered interchangeable), another source of hope is the incredibly admirable resilience and endurance of activists who refuse to let memories of past, unpunished crimes fade into oblivion. Even though the generation that lived through 1968 is rapidly aging, the preservation of historical memory has ensured that the younger generations continue to chant ‘No Se Olvida!’ every 2nd of October and are empowered to take to the streets to demand justice for the 43. The constant protests and demands, alongside the access to international mechanisms of accountability, create a more hopeful forecast for justice.

 The final, and possibly most politically contentious, source of hope is the diminishing power of the PRI. Both Tlatelolco and Ayotzinapa happened under the administration of the party and, in both periods, the incumbent refused to accept his responsibility and fault in state crimes. Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s anti-establishment agenda against graft and corruption might succeed in freezing the resources that fuel violence and impunity. He has also promised that “our back will never be turned towards young people anymore”. Perhaps as evidence of that promise is the recent reinstallation of the GIEI on the 6th of May 2020 after ceasing their investigation in 2016 due to substantial obstacles like the refusal of local and federal authorities to cooperate. As promising as this may sound, however, his leftist populism might just mean these are empty words. Regardless of whether he fulfils those promises, the ousting of the PRI in the 2018 election is a stark reminder that democracy has improved since 1968 and that the electorate can and will condemn impunity at the polls.

It would be naïve to say that impunity can be corrected in Mexico in the near future. It certainly will take more than one president’s anti-establishment administration to change that. However, the refusal of Mexican activists to cease protesting, demand justice, and take to the streets proves that these crimes do not go unnoticed. As the chants of ‘No Se Olvida!’are now followed by ‘Todos Somos Ayotzinapa’ there is a sense that grievances are connected, joined, and reinforced, creating powerful social resistance.

Fernanda is a second-year student of Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Originally Mexican, she is passionate about the political history of Latin America, particularly that of her home country.

Bibliography

Diario Oficial de la Federación. “DOF - Diario Oficial de La Federación.” Www.Dof.Gob.Mx, 25 June 2019, www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5564187&fecha=26/06/2019. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.

García Navarro, Lulu. “What Happened To Mexico’s Missing 43 Students In ‘A Massacre In Mexico.’” NPR.org, 21 Oct. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/10/21/658900014/what-happened-to-mexicos-missing-43-students-in-a-massacre-in-mexico.

Malkin, Elisabeth. “50 Years After a Student Massacre, Mexico Reflects on Democracy.” The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/world/americas/mexico-tlatelolco-massacre.html.

Meichsner, Sylvia. “Ayotzinapa Shows How Killings and Disappearances of the Young in Mexico Are Enabled by Precarity, Prejudice, and Impunity | LSE Latin America and Caribbean.” LSE Latin America and Caribbean Blog, 26 Sept. 2019, blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2019/09/26/ayotzinapa-shows-how-killings-and-disappearances-of-the-young-in-mexico-are-enabled-by-precarity-prejudice-and-impunity/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.

OEA. “CIDH Saluda Avances En La Investigación En El Caso Ayotzinapa.” Www.Oas.org, 1 Aug. 2009, www.oas.org/es/cidh/prensa/comunicados/2020/158.asp. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.

Poniatowska, Elena, and Helen R Lane. Massacre in Mexico. New York, Viking Press, 1975.

The 43. Directed by Paco Ignacio Taibo, Netflix, 2019.

Wright, Melissa W. “Visualizing a Country without a Future: Posters for Ayotzinapa, Mexico and Struggles against State Terror.” Geoforum, vol. 102, June 2019, pp. 235–241, 10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.10.009. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.

Zepeda, José. “Mexico in Helplessness, from Tlatelolco to Ayotzinapa.” OpenDemocracy, 16 Nov. 2016, www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/mexico-in-helplessness-from-tlatelolco-to-ayotzinapa/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.

The Balkans from Latin America: The Troublesome Mexican Federation

By: Luis Bosques

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

The political structure of Mexico is in danger. The pandemic and the crisis derived from it has triggered a series of political movements and alliances which seek to defy the status quo. Historically, the Center of Mexico has been the axis which the economic, political and social system of the country revolves around. However, states – mostly in the North – have prompted its political machinery to rebel against the government and push their agenda.

The crisis is mostly based on identity issues rather than political ones, and Mexico has been facing this question since soon after its independence. The construction of a national identity and thus a cohesive State in the newly independent Mexico faced several problems; while a homogeneous sense of place was established within central and southern Mexico, the North was developing its own identity. Despite sharing general cultural characteristics such as religion or language, the Northern region of Mexico had been co-opted by American culture. Naturally, borderlands are supposed to behave like this. 

However the political crisis in the 1840’s caused by the collision of two ideological poles – the almost-extinguished federalism and the centralism in consolidation within the State power – granted a safe haven for several secessionist or far-federalist rebellions and movements in the North to dismember the endangered territorial integrity of the country. Secessionist leaders were inspired and seduced by the consolidated American federalism to proclaim wishful thoughts of a sort-of Republic of Río Grande in the Northeast trying to capture the essence of the secessionist northern society. Other rebellions were triggered in the North as well looking for the establishment of stable proto-States aligned to U.S.-Texan interests.

Central and Southern Mexican, or non-Northern, identity are based on common values, history and socio-political structure founded under the mestiza tradition. The society of the North, however, was founded (not long ago) on the basis of a monopolistic and oligarchic business tradition, and its geographical position, separated from the Center, has created a legitimate sense of alienation; however this is compensated with its character as a borderland. These elements have effectively shaped a new identity, cosmovision and thus a nation for the Northern society: the Mexamerican.

Nowadays, Mexamerica still preserves its industrial and business bases and has adapted them as part of its identity, considering themselves the backbone of the whole (or almost) Mexican economy. The Mexamerican society considers the wrongfully named South as a worthless and expensive burden that they allegedly sustain through their profits. The mistaken geographical imagination of Mexamericans towards Mexico has in fact contributed to the crisis. While the South is hugely unequal in terms of socio-economic indicators, the geographical South has been acknowledged as the most lagging region in the country. The neoliberal features of  Mexamerica have shaped a dangerous North-South dichotomy that could justify present and future balkanization movements. To make things worse, the current left-wing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO) is from South-state Tabasco. 

At this point it should not be a coincidence that opposition movements were born in the North as a response to national crises like in 1840. AMLO failed at, or ignored, including the business ambitions of Mexamericans into his political agenda while he recognized and widely supported Afromexicans, indigenous people, people in poverty and other vulnerable sectors of the population. His government based on the slogan: “Por el bien de todos, primeros los pobres” (in English, “For the good of all, first the poor”), his constant refusal to sympathize and grant privileges to the private sector and his leftist political base have led to him being wrongfully labeled as a “communist”. Two years and one pandemic after he assumed office, movements such as #Nortexit, Frente Nacional Anti-AMLO (FRENAAA), Sí por México and Alianza Federalista began to appear and even gain more force than the actual opposition. The common denominator? All are Northern-based movements, with the exception of the latter which has included non-Northern states in its agenda. 

The illiberal and oligarchic North has revindicated and channeled its identity through these movements to mark its distance from the Federal Government, and even though it would be unconstitutional to secede from the Federation, the notion of a separate entity is tangible and popular amongst local politicians and people in the region. 

What follows depends on the evolution of the crisis, and if those movements continue to gain force in their states capitalizing on the Mexamerican identity. Midterm elections could be decisive for them, and political parties are sympathizing more with them. A gradual shift in Mexican politics is not coming from the center, but from the periphery.

Luis is a Mexican student at Universidad de Monterrey and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in International Relations and Political Science & Public Administration. He enjoys writing about Mexican foreign policy, international politics, identity and government

When Human Rights, the Environment and Young People Intersect: the Case of the Colombian Amazon

Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/VWy5dM2DsB17MDby6

By: Valeria Sinisi García

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

People often underestimate young people and by consequence, the latter can feel disenfranchised and powerless to be the change they want to see in the world. However, some decide to reject and contradict this notion and despite the, occasionally, overly bureaucratic systems in place around them, they manage to inspire, make and demand change. The young Swedish climate-activist Greta Thunberg is a very obvious example, while William Kamkwamba, a Malawian boy that at 13 saved his town from famine by building windmills that provided water and electricity, is another equally as impressive one. An instance which is not as well-known is the lawsuit filed by a group of 25 young people in 2018 against several Colombian governmental bodies and agencies for violating their constitutional rights to a healthy environment. A lawsuit which went on to rule in their favour. 

The group consisted of children, teenagers and young adults, from ages 7 to 26. They were motivated to act because of their critical view of the agenda that the Colombian government had adopted towards climate change and deforestation. Their dissent was directed especially towards the lack of regulation protecting the Colombian Amazon, which extended on a territory roughly the size of Germany and England combined. This continued disregard of the Amazon’s ecosystem was also cited in the lawsuit as already threatening the food and water security of the young plaintiffs as well as many other Colombians. Hence, they constructed their argument around their constitutional right to a healthy environment, claiming that the Presidency of the Republic - among other entities - was violating this right by not protecting the Amazon rainforest. Furthermore, they cited Colombia’s numerous international commitments, such as their obligation to “reduce the net rate of deforestation to zero in the Colombian Amazon by 2020,” present in the Paris Agreement and which they weren’t on track to achieve. Deforestation rates actually increased by 44% from 2015 to 2016, showing that the government of Colombia had not been dormant towards their environmental pledges: it had been actively going against them. 

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favour of the Amazon, making it the first time that a lawsuit of this kind had ruled favourably for the environment in Latin America. The court even succeeded in recognising the Amazon as an entity subject to the same rights as a human being. One of the plaintiffs, Camilla Bustos, said that “the ruling states the importance of protecting the rights of future generations,” a concept which has already emerged as a new and possibly more effective approach to environmental law. While this case and its verdict signalled a historic precedent in terms of climate change litigation, it isn’t the only time that individuals have tried to fight for climate justice through legal means. Reports clearly show that this branch of legal action has been growing both in importance and as a means to counter climate change in recent decades. Furthermore, the human rights argument is also being increasingly used. In 2015, the Dutch supreme court was presented with a similar case, in which the right to life proclaimed in the European convention on human rights was recognised to rule that the government of the Netherlands had a responsibility to fight climate change with greater efforts. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes an article which also states “the right to life,” which suggests that the ruling that the environment must be protected and that climate justice must be achieved could be adopted globally. 

While the right to life is recognised by international law, the right to a healthy environment still isn’t. Indeed, the intersection and interdependence between human rights and environmental protection has often been underlined by scholars, politicians and lawyers, but a clear link still hasn’t been presented in the form of a proclamation of a human right by the UN, which is arguably the most important international governing body in the world. The relationship between the two has, besides, been recognised at every level of the world’s legal systems, in both domestic cases and multilateral treaties. Furthermore, over 100 constitutions over the world, such as the Colombian one, recognise their citizens’ right to a healthy environment. In fact, the UN Environmental Programme states that human rights and a healthy environment go hand in hand, and that one does not exist without the other. Even the Paris Agreement states the undeniable interconnectivity between the two. Therefore, this poses the question as to why the UN still hesitates to globally recognise the human right to a healthy and liveable environment. 

The case brought forth by the group of 25 young people in Colombia not only succeeded in determining this crucial link, but it also served to show that age doesn’t matter when one wishes to bring about change, especially in the context of climate change. This is due to the fact that it’s the youngest generations which will start to experience some of its direst effects. The lawsuit further demanded public participation in the creation of an intergenerational plan to halt deforestation and ensure a liveable planet for Colombian citizens of the future. To fulfil this, the Supreme Court ordered the government to participate with the plaintiffs, as well as other affected communities and scientific experts, to come up with said plan together and within four months of the ruling. 

Although the court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favour, and although some efforts to uphold its ruling were initiated shortly after the ruling, the government has overall failed to deliver. After requesting a ten-month extension to deliver the plan, the proposed plan did not include any details regarding dates, persons nor agencies in charge of implementing these. Moreover, the deforestation proposal, which the Ministry of the Environment was responsible for, clearly showed its disinterest in curbing it as the only action defined was directed towards ensuring the rates did not increase. This means that according to this plan, which was also ineffective as deforestation actually rose since the ruling, it would be within regulations to cut 219,973 hectares of forests per year. The Ministry also did not allow participation from other actors, contrary to what was mandated by the Supreme Court. 

Despite the ultimate failure in its execution, this lawsuit is extremely significant in the history of environmental law and in the fight for climate justice. It recognises both the Amazon forest, one of the most important parts in the fight against climate change, as an entity with rights, as well as future Colombian generations, in what was described as “one of the most robust environmental court rulings in the world.” One of the most impressive parts of this case is the fact that it was brought forward by a group of young people, with members as young as 7 years old. They actively defied their assumed powerlessness towards the system which they believed was failing them, showing youths across the world that their voices are not always unheard. This lawsuit has undoubtedly also aided to inspire more arguments and cases of a similar nature to emerge, in what has been, and will be, a very long fight towards complete climate justice

Valeria Sinisi García is a Spanish and Italian student, in her last year of a BA in International Relations. She is a regular contributor for El Cortao' and the Regional Editor for Latin America in the student-led magazine ‘Dialogue.’ Her main research interests include climate change and its intersection with human rights, as well as issues regarding Latin America, international law, feminism, and current affairs.

Bibliography

Bryner, Nicholas. “Colombian Supreme Court Recognizes Rights of the Amazon River Ecosystem.” IUCN, May 15, 2018. https://www.iucn.org/news/world-commission-environmental-law/201804/colombian-supreme-court-r ecognizes-rights-amazon-river-ecosystem. 

DeJusticia. “Climate Change and Future Generations Lawsuit in Colombia: Key Excerpts from the Supreme Court's Decision.” Dejusticia, April 17, 2018. https://www.dejusticia.org/en/climate-change-and-future-generations-lawsuit-in-colombia-key-excerp ts-from-the-supreme-courts-decision/. 

DeJusticia.“The Colombian Government Has Failed to Fulfill the Supreme Court's Landmark Order to Protect the Amazon.” Dejusticia, April 5, 2019. https://www.dejusticia.org/en/the-colombian-government-has-failed-to-fulfill-the-supreme-courts-lan dmark-order-to-protect-the-amazon/. 

Kaminski, Isabella. “Dutch Supreme Court Upholds Landmark Ruling Demanding Climate Action.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, December 20, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/20/dutch-supreme-court-upholds-landmark-ruling-dem anding-climate-action. 

Knox, John H., and Ramin Pejan. “Introduction.” Chapter. In The Human Right to a Healthy Environment, edited by John H. Knox and Ramin Pejan, 1–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. doi:10.1017/9781108367530.001. 

Moloney, Anastasia. “Colombia's Top Court Orders Government to Protect Amazon Forest in Landmark Case.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, April 6, 2018.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-deforestation-amazon-idUSKCN1HD21Y. 

Parker, Larissa. “Make a Healthy Climate a Legal Right That Extends to Future Generations.” The Economist, 2019. https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/09/17/make-a-healthy-climate-a-legal-right-that-extend s-to-future-generations. 

Setzer, Joana, and Rebecca Byrnes. Rep. Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2020 Snapshot. Grantham Research Institute, July 2020.https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Global-trends-in-climate-change -litigation_2020-snapshot.pdf. 

Tenreyro, Tatiana. “What's William Kamkwamba Doing In 2019? 'The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind' Inventor Is Making A Difference Globally.” Bustle. Bustle, March 1, 2019. https://www.bustle.com/p/whats-william-kamkwamba-doing-in-2019-the-boy-who-harnessed-the-win d-inventor-is-making-a-difference-globally-16103209. 

UNEP. “What Are Environmental Rights?” UNEP - UN Environment Programme. Accessed November 13, 2020.https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/environmental-rights-and-governance/what-we-do/adv ancing-environmental-rights/what. 

UN. “#YouthStats: Environment and Climate Change - Office of the Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth.” United Nations. United Nations. Accessed November 15, 2020. https://www.un.org/youthenvoy/environment-climate-change/. 

UN. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations. United Nations. Accessed November 13, 2020. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

US-Mexico Relations: An Evaluation

Source: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2017/01/30/297187/preserving-and-strengthening-the-u-s-mexico-relationship/

By: Marco García

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

The Mexico-US bilateral relationship is one filled with complex multiculturalism, ever-changing challenges, and an occasionally violent history. It can be tempting to judge the content of this history based on films, documentaries, or perhaps what Hollywood deems suitable for the public to see. In Mexico however, one quickly finds a particular take on this bilateral relationship: the United States is a difficult, overbearing, and rarely cooperative neighbour. Nonetheless, Mexico’s unrecognized yet historic diplomatic drive with its northern neighbour has raised the question of whether the US owes its southern neighbour some reconsideration. To answer this question, it is imperative to explore the historical and economic ties that bind these two great nations.

Firstly, to understand the complex dynamics between these countries, it is worth considering the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. It has left a traumatic wound amongst Mexicans that has managed to scar after almost 200 years of bilateral relationship building – a wound that the outgoing American President Donald Trump has torn wide open again. Donald Trump has successfully deranged the United States’ bond with Mexico with unsparing rhetoric to the point where the popularity of his lies seems to supersede the fact that there have been 200 years of relative peace between the two countries – a span that very few countries that share a border can claim. These historical damages are certainly not minor: Mexico lost more than half its territory in a war waged by the United States upon a new, and weaker, nation. It is important to remember that Mexico was arguably the first victim of an American imperialism that many nations would later claim to have fallen victim to.  Indeed, the conflict between Mexico and the United States had all the characteristics of a war fuelled by imperialistic idiosyncrasies and propaganda. The United States, tied to the idea of “Manifest Destiny”, carried out an attack against Mexico when the latter refused to sell or cede what, at that time, were Mexico's northernmost territories.  

Portrayals of an extremely unbalanced bilateral relationship with Mexico – with the United States as the injured party – are fuelled by President Trump and his supporters who passionately decry the damages performed by Mexico upon their nation. In the eyes of much of the wider political community, however, these simply contradict history and political reality. It is important to "reclaim” the facts to demonstrate the political magnitude and contemporary impact of the Mexican-American War, a war launched and promoted by an American President who deemed Mexicans to be “inferior”. Such ideals have unfortunately continued into the present day, represented in Trump’s frequent attacks on Mexican immigrants in the United States.  Over 13,000 American soldiers died in the war while the Mexican government estimates around 25,000 killed and wounded on their side.  To add insult to injury, Mexico – with its capital, customs stations and ports occupied by American soldiers – was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 giving up over half its territory.  The size of this lost territory should not be underestimated: the current Mexican state already occupies almost two million square kilometres - about five Germanies or eight United Kingdoms - but the Northern territories would have made it almost twice as big as this. The war was so traumatic that it became the basis of the Mexican national anthem and launched a firm sentiment of nationalism across the republic which affects the present US-Mexico relationship. Interestingly, upon closer observation it is evident that it is not only Mexicans who hold some degree of indignation over the Mexican American War. It is surprising to observe American historical figures condemning the incident as well. It was Ulysses S. Grant, then a young army officer during the war, who wrote in his memoirs, ‘I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than the one waged by the United States on Mexico.’  He maintained that the bitterness and bloodshed that came with the Civil War was God’s punishment for America’s sins.

It is also worth noting that subsequent American interests in the region arguably postponed democracy in Mexico for about 90 years. Mexico was remarkably conciliatory however, welcoming American investment and supporting the Union in the American Civil War. In 1911, Mexico elected Francisco Madero President in a landmark for democracy in the country. Nonetheless, this democratic experiment would be nipped in the bud by the US as its Ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, orchestrated a coup against Madero only two years later. Indeed, one official in Washington wrote apropos Wilson’s conduct; ‘Dearing Mexico needs a good punch and so I think it’s right to soak in a good dose.’ This led to Madero's assassination and plunged Mexico into what would come to be known as the Mexican Revolution.

The flourishing of democracy in Mexico became a dream ever more distant.

It can be quite remarkable to observe the lack of resentment from Mexico after these two serious grievances. Mexico cooperated with Roosevelt on his Good Neighbour Policy, declared war on the Axis powers during the Second World War, and attracted many American artists, writers, and businessmen.  However, many experts still question how directly Mexico should respond when dealing with the United States. Historian Enrique Krauze raises an interesting questionworth discussing: ‘how much of the historic prosperity of the United States of America stems from the development of territories originally inhabited by Mexicans and ripped away from Mexico through an invasion and a war of territorial conquest?’ 

By contrast, Mexico and the United States are now intertwined in virtually every sense. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force, the bilateral trade has increased 556 percent (over a billion dollars’ worth of trade every day).  The largest population of Americans living abroad reside in Mexico – and vice versa – and the day to day relationship with Mexico creates over 6 million jobs in the United States.  Unfortunately, the Trump Administration appears discontent with the current balance of relations with Mexico. While perhaps not directly equal, Mexico’s economic and diplomatic position has grown far beyond its vulnerabilities of 1846. Simply put, what Trump fails to see is that Mexico is not the defenceless country it was in 1846.

How about immigration? Infamously, Trump claimed that when Mexico sends its people, that they are not sending their best – they are bringing crime, they are rapists, and so on. US data shows that this could not be further from the truth. According to the United States Department of Commerce Projections, Mexico became the number one origin of visitors to the United States in 2016, with over 20 million Mexican tourists visiting the US every year and spending over 20 billion USD in the US’s economy.  To signify the importance of this: in 2014 the USA welcomed more Mexican tourists than British, Brazilian, Chinese, German, and French tourists combined.  It is undeniable that there has been a significant amount of Mexican immigration towards the United States – there are over 35 million Mexican-Americans today.  But it is also important to remember that, out of every five Mexicans in the United States, four are legal residents. 

If Trump fears immigration from Mexico, then his fears are arguably groundless, irrational, and contested at best. In 2009, more Mexicans left the United States than entered the country.  Between 2009 and 2014, over one million Mexican immigrants moved back to Mexico from the US voluntarily.  And in present times, out of every two Mexicans that immigrate to the US, one comes back voluntarily.  It is interesting to see the argument from another perspective, and to observe the willingness of the United States to throw their neighbour under the bus for political point-scoring.

In present times, Biden’s recent election is a unique opportunity for a "détente", the establishment of a bilateral relationship that appreciates and understands the historical wounds between the countries. Hollywood and US media could perhaps take a leading role in shaping American historical consciousness on this issue. They should, at the very least, portray an honest reconsideration of the US’s first imperial war. Mexicans seek an atonement for past wrongs - wrongs triggered by racial prejudices and an aggressive approach to territory on the part of the United States.  

Who is the victim of the US-Mexico bilateral relationship? Although it has in many ways been a relatively inequitable relationship, no one necessarily has to be the “victim”. The Mexican-American War taught Mexico a valuable lesson and gave it a strong sense of nationalism, but the country never rose back from that war like Japan or Germany did after WWII. In many senses, Mexico still has not risen from that war. It can be quite tempting to conclude that Mexico has more than enough grounds to turn on its northern neighbour – but the current political landscape shows a more conciliatory Mexican foreign policy approach towards its neighbour. Puzzled American and Mexican thinkers alike have struggled for generations to answer this question, with Walt Whitman addressing it nicely: ‘Mexico, the only one to whom we have ever really done wrong, are now the only one who prays for us and for our triumph, with genuine prayer. Is it not indeed strange?’

Marco is a 3rd Year International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Originally from Mexico, he has a keen interest in multilateral organisations, trade, and Latin American affairs.

Dia de la Hispanidad, Columbus Day and Indigenous Resistance Day: The cultural battle over October 12th in Latin America

Source: https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/junior-report/20181008/452177539852/12-octubre-dia-hispanidad-fiesta-nacional-espana.html

By: Mathilde Aupetit

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

“In Spain, October 12th is called the discovery of America. In Mexico, we call it the bleeding of America” (Chiapas Support Committee, 2019). October 12th is the day that Christopher Columbus’ caravels sighted American land in 1492. However, it was not until the middle of the 20th century that this date began to stand out on the calendar. What many in Spain called ‘Dia de la Hispanidad’, or ‘Dia de la Raza’ has been questioned for years in Latin America, where the day is about seeking a new meaning that highlights the struggle of the indigenous peoples who survived the conquest, and who form a significant part of Latin America’s population and history. 

In this respect, an important number of Latin American countries changed the name of ‘Dia de la Raza’ by denominations in favor of cultural diversity (Vincent, 2018). A former mayor of Madrid made the decision to celebrate October 12th in Spain, and this day was turned into a national day both for Spain and Latin America by the president of the Ibero-American Union, Faustino Rodríguez San Pedro. He christened it ‘Columbus Day’ in an attempt ‘externalize the spiritual bond existing between the discovering and civilizing Nation and those formed on American soil’ (“Fiesta de la Raza | Día de la Raza,” n.d.). 

The origin of the controversy

In recent decades, there has been a stirring controversy surrounding this celebration. On the one hand, the concept of ‘discovery of America’ has been questioned, since, in the opinion of its detractors, it can be considered that America was discovered at the time when its first settlers, that is to say, indigenous people (Josephy and Hoxie, 1993) or Africans (Van Sertima, 1976), arrived on the continent, approximately 14,000 years ago, much earlier than Columbus himself. 

On the other hand, although the arrival of Europeans in America is frequently seen as a moment of cultural knowledge and exchange, it also means the beginning of the colonization of the continent, of a war against the original indigenous people from the region, of the imposition of the Christian religion on the autochthonous ones and, to a great extent, a subjugation of the identity traits of the original inhabitants compared to those imported from Europe (Bigelow and Peterson, 1998; Stevenson, 1992). The detractors of the celebration of this day even point out that it was the arrival of Europeans to America that caused the demographic collapse that occurred among indigenous people and that wiped out around 90% of the population, as authors such as Crosby, Dobyns, Larsen and Merbs (Crosby, 1976; Dobyns, 1993; Larsen, 1994; Merbs, 1992) have written. Among the causes of this humanitarian disaster would be the epidemics carried by the conquerors, against which the indigenous peoples had not developed biological defences, as well as massacres led by the settlers against indigenous people (Ibidem). This is why several American countries have been replacing this festival with others more in line with their indigenous cultural identity. 

Historical perspective

After some attempts in the Second Spanish Republic, it was not until almost the sixties when the dictatorship changed its name to ‘Día de la Hispanidad’. “It is the traditional desire of the Spanish people to see the anniversary of the discovery of America annually and solemnly commemorated. No other feat reaches such greatness”, reads the decree of the Franco regime dated January 10th 1958 (García Sebastiani and Marcilhacy, 2017). In 1981, the Government of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo approved the name ‘Dia de la Raza’. Still, in 1987, during the government of Felipe González, a law established October 12th as the Day of the National Holiday of Spain (Ibidem). In Latin America, however, ‘Columbus Day’ was maintained until the next century. In the wave of leftist governments, with the rise of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, the questioning over the power and Western-centrism associated with the name of this celebration started to grow.

Thus, for some communities and political parties, October 12th was turned into a celebration in favour of those who survived the conquest that began that day. As a result, some Latin American countries began to change the name of this celebration, in order to decolonize its meaning, and a decolonization of the language was employed to characterize October 12th and turn it into their day, instead of remaining a celebration which was imposed on them. 

From Argentina to Nicaragua: several meanings for plural postcolonial realities

In Argentina, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner changed the ‘Day of the Race’ to the ‘Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity’. Former president Rafael Correa decreed that in Ecuador, the day would be renamed ‘Day of Interculturality and Plurinationality’. The governments of Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called it ‘Day of Indigenous Resistance’, and Morales in Bolivia renamed it ‘Day of Decolonisation’. In Peru, they celebrate the ‘Day of Indigenous Peoples and Intercultural Dialogue’. In 1994, Costa Rica had already begun to commemorate October 12th as ‘Day of Cultures’, “alluding to its multi-ethnic social and cultural composition” of the country, explains Contreras. In Chile, a law passed in the year 2000 modified the name to ‘Day of Meeting of Two Worlds’. These different names emphasize the lead taken by Latin American nations and indigenous people from Latin America to bring their own colonial heritage back into their hands, and cut their colonial ties from Spain, still without forgetting about their colonial past. This reappropriation, from a language to a cultural appropriation, clearly places Latin America on the path to become a postcolonial nation and to detach itself from dependency from European colonization. 

However, not all of Latin America has joined in this change. Colombia, Panama and El Salvador maintain the name ‘Race Day’. However, dozens of states and cities are eliminating this celebration and replacing it with names that honor the native peoples. For its part, Brazil does celebrate its national holiday on October 12th, but under the name Day of Our Lady Aparecida, patron saint of the country, or Children’s Day. It is the only country in Latin America that celebrates a religious festival on this date, which has nothing to do with the arrival of Columbus. Indeed, the colonization left significant wounds in the indigenous population, who, if they did not convert to their religion, would be killed by the Portuguese (del Carmen Alanís Figueroa et al., 2020; Iglesias, 2012).

Language as a powerful tool for modern colonialism?

Colonization, says Mignolo, persists in language, in social relations, in the hierarchies and subordinations that control the continent and that are governed by a certain ‘pigmentocracy’, that is a social stratification based on skin colour, by Eurocentrism (Mignolo, 1992). Even if language seems to be an abstraction, it does influence perception. It contributes to diffuse Eurocentric knowledge and ideas and also have the power to invisible other ‘subaltern’ realities through censorship. In this sense, the October 12th celebration lends itself to the same rhetoric of winning a war and perpetuating, as Spain does, by calling it Hispanic Day, this model of pride denying reality. 

In this respect, the example of the ‘Dia de la Raza’ or ‘Dia de la Hispanidad’ is an illustration of how the use of language contributes to conveying and perpetuating an idea of domination, even though colonization in the meaning it had in the 15th century, when Christopher Colombus discovered the Americas, is no longer the same. Changing the purpose of this day enabled Latin America to in a sense ‘reconquer’ its own identity and end this ‘cultural’ battle, which is actually way more than just cultural. 

This process of colonization and decolonization through language is exemplified in Quijano’s work about ‘Colonial power’ (Quijano, 2000) which illustrates the link between linguistic practices and the use of a specific colonial vocabulary, such as race, or ethnicity, to convey a colonial and racialized vision of native Latin American peoples. Quijano emphasizes the dehumanization of indigenous people, as well as their alienation behind the word ‘race’ and through the adoption of Spanish as part of a shared colonial language. The ‘Dia de la Raza’ is an illustration of this language coloniality as it blurs each indigenous massacred and indigenous individualities in a single term ‘race’, and invisibilized one side of the colonization by showing only the Spanish side of it. 

Therefore, as we can see from this analysis, it was time for a reappraisal of the ‘Dia de la Raza’. This reappraisal is now what should be celebrated, in the sense that it also celebrates creativity and use of the Spanish language against its initial colonial aim. Indeed, native Latin American peoples have achieved a paradigm shift from the ethnocentric celebration of October 12th by using the Spanish language as a ‘decolonization’ tool against the still colonial Spanish institution. The defenders of this paradigm shift maintain that, in this way, a celebration that many might consider offensive and Eurocentric can be replaced by another that is inclusive and that also addresses the vision of the ethnic groups and cultures that suffered so many abuses as a result of the remembered event.

Originally from France, Mathilde is currently a MPhil Student in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University. Before her MPhil, she completed a BA in International Relations at King’s College London, with a focus in Latin America, which sharpened her interest in the region. She is especially interested in Latin American identity politics and minorities integration.

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Latin American Community: Little Bird

Photo provided by the author

By: Camila Consolmagno

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

My story begins where it ends. All my life I’ve heard people say, ‘when one door closes, another opens,’ and all my life I saw this as nothing but a pretentious proverb attempting to justify the vexatious things that happen in life. In reality, sometimes things just occur irrationally. People seek comfort, sometimes in a proverb, in the same way as a hug; it will never actually solve the problem, but it will still be solacing. While growing up, however, I’ve realised that that saying isn’t as ostentatiously ignorant as I’d always believed. All endings are also beginnings; we just don’t know it at the time. And so, my story begins and ends with an airplane. 

...

It was an ordinary day in Guarapari, Brazil – adhesively hot. I wasn’t born here; my birth-city is a 15-hour car drive away. I was born in Londrina, my mother’s city, but my parents moved to Guarapari just a couple of months after having me. I don’t recall the time, but the sun was out, probably morning. I was in my mother’s flat – which was unusual for a Saturday, considering I spent the weekends at my dad’s. Unwashed dishes from the night before. No toys on the floor for a change. Four packed suitcases by the door. I was nine years old and my brother was four. 

Dad finally arrived, late and impatiently pressing his car horn. ‘Vamos!,’ he yelled still from inside the car but with his head poking out of the window. His girlfriend of a few months was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. My mother rushed down with my brother and I; then ran up and down again but this time with our suitcases. We’re waiting outside the flat. ‘Vamos!,’ Dad shouts again. My mother’s crying. My brother doesn’t understand what’s going on, and I’m mad at him for not knowing. ‘Say goodbye to mum’ I suggest, ‘because you might not ever see her again” – I’ve always been dramatic. He cries and hugs her, and I say a quick goodbye. We get in the car and just as the door closes my dad agilely speeds. I look back but in the flash all I see is a speck of what’s supposed to be my mother’s face. In what feels like less than a second, she vanishes, and I don’t get the chance to look at my mother’s face for one last time before I go. 

I didn’t see that face for another six years.

We arrive at the airport just in time. My dad and his girlfriend say their last goodbyes. I envy their hugs and their kisses and their tears as all of that was blindly swept away from me in the honk of a car. I still hate that noise. 

One airplane, eleven perpetual hours. I remember staring out at the clouds and imagining what it would be like to taste them. They looked like candy floss. Although I hated candy floss, the thought of eating a cloud was incredibly appealing. ‘It’d taste like ice,’ I thought, ‘after all it’s just water anyway.’I tried to look for shadows in the clouds, trying to see if I could find an angel. Eventually I just gave in to the screen in front of me and watched Finding Nemo repeatedly for the remaining nine hours. Growing up in a small town with fifty-two beaches I found comfort in the sea, even if it was pixilated.

...

We were moving to Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, England. I hadn’t really quite processed that – and I wouldn’t for a while. What then used to be a magical town full of adventurous parks where my nine-year-old self could gambol for hours on end, is now a monotonous nightmare for the seventeen-year-old version of myself. ​

We lived with my grandparents for the first bit before we found a place of our own. Their house was a two-storey, three-bedroom, old English brick house. It would be spacious if my grandma had not adorned it with every decorative gift she had received within the past thirty years and bric-a-bracs she’d found in Sunday markets for the last ten. Mini replicas of famous paintings, like the Mona Lisa and Girl with a Pearl Earring hung above the living room’s electric fireplace that I’ve never seen been used. On the wall that followed the evanescing burgundy carpeted stairs that made ghost-like creaks whenever it made contact with any sort of weight, my grandparents blue-tacked framed photos of family members, dead and alive. My father was there, a profile picture of himwhen he was fourteen; that one was my personal favourite.Upstairs were two guest rooms, a bathroom, and my grandparents’ en-suite room. The first guest room was taken by my uncle, so we stayed in the second – the biggest, though not by much. My bed was a single mattress on the carpet floor, coercively squeezed between a wall, right below the only window in the room and next to the double bed where my dad slept. My brother slept on an air mattress adjacent to the double bed, so our mattresses formed an L around its left side. 

My dad’s girlfriend, Carol, joined us three months later and all four of us were crammed into that same room. Sometimes at night, Carol and I couldn’t sleep because of the notable different time zones that we still hadn’t got used to. So, whilst my brother and my dad slept soundly, she’d join me on my mattress and we’d get a pack of cards and quietly, yet competitively, play until we were both finally sleepy, this was often until 3am. Sometimes, we would also watch the current melodramatic Brazilian soap opera on the internet. Or, play the most emulous rounds of dominoes. Together, we always found something to fill our sleepless, empty nights with.

Although, I only seemed to love her when no one was watching. I was still pretty raw from leaving my mother behind and I thought there was a chance I could convince my dad to take us back to Brazil and return to our ordinary lives. But we are better off here, it just took me a while to realise that.

...

I’ve been moving all my life. In Brazil, I learnt never to get attached to a house as every year we moved and changed schools. Now, in England, having moved cities twice, gone to four different schools and lived in five different houses, I’ve learnt not to get attached to people. Albeit, at the same time I’ve grown used to moving, it doesn’t seem to get any easier. Once my dad knew he didn’t have to have it all figured out to move forward, he hasn’t stayed still. I think that’s where I get my impulsiveness from, but some would call it courage. 

I leave Brazil, enter England. My mother leaves, Carol shelters me. One door closes, another opens. 

People often ask me which of the two countries I prefer, almost in a wrong or right form, but they’re incomparable. I can’t note the similarity or dissimilarity between the Latin heat and the British wintry, a feijoada versus a roast dinner, a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. They are countries underneath the same sky and above the same sea, but they are different universes apart. This year when I turn eighteen, I will have lived half of my life in each country. The magic of it all is not choosing which I love most but loving the most of out of both. In the end, I’m only one airplane away.

Camila Consolmagno is a final-year Bachelor of Laws student at SOAS, University of London. She is the first Brazilian President of the SOAS Latin American Society and an aspiring human rights lawyer

Latin American Community: A Very Latino London

Image Courtesy of Migreat Blog

By Maximilian Frederik van Oordt

​On the doorstep of a second lockdown in the Great British capital, now is a brilliant opportunity to glance at this city with a microscope and notice just how Latin Americans have influenced the city’s culture and gastronomy; with its effects on display now more than ever before.

​Even before the flags of the newly independent republics could be unfurled outside our embassies in London, the British metropolis had already hosted several leading independence figures including Simon Bolivar (1810), Bernardo O’Higgins (1795), Jose de San Martin (1824), and Francisco de Miranda (1802). They would lead a long line of Latin Americans choosing to visit London and, oftentimes, to make it their home.

​Nowadays, Latinx culture flows throughout the city, manifesting itself in what we hear, taste, and smell. No London nightclub is complete without a nod to Reggaeton at some point in the night. Some even dedicate themselves exclusively to the genre, with Time Out publishing a list of its favourite London Reggaeton discotheques in 2019 to reflect a soaring demand for the tunes. Match these musical exports to the wide array of salsa, bachata, and tango clubs all around the city and its safe to say our culture has been welcomed with open arms.

​Once the music is over and the dancing has stopped, a mealtime trip to the high street will inevitably greet you with Argentine and Uruguayan steakhouses, Mexican eateries, Chilean and Peruvian Pisco bars, and marketplaces dotted with Venezuelan arepa stalls. Despite each of these cuisines being so remarkably different from the other, every one of them has met with a delighted (and satisfied) audience. 

​These are displays of our region’s phenomenal cultural and gastronomical assets, presented in all their glory by those Latinos who have chosen to bring a taste of home to the English capital. Had Bolívar and San Martin visited today, I am sure they would have felt right at home.

Maximilian Frederik van Oordt is a second-year International Relations student at King’s College London. interested in politics, history and law, he enjoys focusing on Latin American affairs, with a particular emphasis on these three areas.

Heritage Month: Latin American Identity

Americae Mappa Generalis. Source: Homann Erben/The Old Map Company

By Maximilian Frederik van Oordt

The term ‘latino’  has become a far more common reference point in the world of identity and is the product of over two centuries of fascinating historical processes. While some see the term as a foreigner’s generalisation of such a diverse region as Latin America, it has certainly been building enough momentum – much of it from within the region itself – to stand on its own two feet. While it absolutely glosses over the distinctions between the different countries and cultures of the region, it nonetheless serves as a perfectly acceptable demonym for Latin American people, underlining centuries of shared history between us all.

Generalisation of the region is nothing new, and actually began internally. In the early 1800s, when independence movements began sweeping Latin America, national identities were almost non-existent. The famed heroes of independence, Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins, all took to referring to Latin American nations – in conversation – simply as ‘patria’ (fatherland) rather than anointing it with the names of today’s states – Argentina, Colombia, Perú, etcetera. In their eyes, Latin America was one, united against Spanish dominion, with Bolívar even hoping to establish a gargantuan new state from the unification of the liberated Spanish colonies. Only this, he believed, would give the region the influence and resources it needed to remain independent in the future. To him, the path to the future would be walked side by side – as a united Latin America.

The development of national identities began in the latter part of the 19th Century as several wars, such as the War of the Confederation and that of the Triple Alliance, began establishing a sense of patriotism. The liberated nations took up arms to defend their land against one another and consequently began to differentiate themselves from their neighbours. This period saw the birth of national anthems, flags, and local identities. It partially unified the ethnic mestizos with the indigenous populations under one flag, although racism remains rampant to this day. This created an identity based on nationality rather than ethnic homogeneity.

Fast forward to today and national identity is stronger than ever and not necessarily for the worse. The differences appreciate the enormous and wonderful regional diversity that characterises Latin America. Nonetheless, there remain powerful social, cultural, linguistic, and historical ties between the countries which have begun to build a common regional identity on top of a national one. These have both been a product of, and an inspiration for, Latin American international organisations such as MERCOSUR, CELAC, PROSUR and UNASUR, which reinforce this regional identity. To complement the political integration, cross-border cultural exchanges in music, dance, television, and more have increased the feeling of community and will continue to do so in the future.

While it may sound paradoxical, the fomentation of a regional identity will most likely continue and complement an ever-increasing national one, highlighting everything we Latin Americans have in common with one another, while promoting the cultural differences that make us unique.

Maximilian Frederik van Oordt is a second-year International Relations student at King’s College London. interested in politics, history and law, he enjoys focusing on Latin American affairs, with a particular emphasis on these three areas.

Latin American Heritage Month: The KCL LatAm Society Answers

By: The KCL Latin American Society 2020-2021 committee members

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

In many parts of the world, September and October are dedicated to celebrate the cultural diversity and heritage of Latin America. In this honour, we asked members of the KCL Latin American Society what Latin American heritage meant to them. These are their answers.

Being Spanish my mother tongue, the thing about Latin America I became interested first was literature. I started reading Latin American literature when I was in Secondary School, as a part of the curriculum. It was then when I realised how much you can learn about a culture through literature and art. Books are a great way not only to travel from your coach but also to better understand how life is in other places. I feel that Latin American authors reflect the reality of their society in different periods of history and through different lenses. Moreover, Latin American poetry is to me not only a way to know the culture but a way to understand the feelings of the author and their ideas and ideals around certain topics.

- Ana

It is difficult to give a single answer to what my Latin American heritage means because I have luckily been exposed to various cultures and realities which have also shaped me. However, I believe one of the strongest manifestations of what I have culturally inherited is to be always oriented to hard work. I think it comes from the fact that Latin America is a very unequal region of the world. Long and hard work tends to be the reality and the answer for the vast majority of the population, including my family. I am grateful for that because it has helped me to keep focus and useful skills.

-Lucía 

Being the European born daughter of Cuban migrants, the most important things I have gained from my Latin American heritage are perspective and humbleness. Perspective because, having not only heard all the stories from my parents’ childhoods but also having seen it myself, I have learned that people can be happy and cheerful without having it all, or even having nearly nothing. This has taught me that happiness depends only on one’s attitude towards life. And humbleness because I grew up privileged and received a great education all due to my parent’s hard work; having learned all about their past and the troubles they went through to be able to provide that for me has taught me to be extremely grateful and never take things for granted.

-Denise

Latin American heritage is a complicated thing. On the one hand there’s so much that we don’t know we share with other countries in the region, but at the same time huge differences are often overlooked between them. For me, having been born in Chile but having lived in Nicaragua and Panama, that variety is the beauty of it. You have football countries, baseball countries, tango and salsa, reggaeton and rock, beach and skiing, rainforest, tundra and desert. In spite of those stark contrasts there are still values and attributes binding it all together. 

-Gianni

My Latin American Heritage means that, as someone from a privileged background from a country with exceptionally high levels of poverty, living in one of the great capitals of the world, and studying in a world-renowned university, I feel that I have the responsibility to educate myself, raise awareness about Latin American problems, and somehow attempt to bring about positive change in a region that so desperately needs positive change. My Latin American Heritage means that I (think that I) am aware and can sometimes relate to  the experiences, customs and general issues that people face in the region, which allows me to find more similarities than differences between me and Latin American people I meet, regardless of their nationality.

-Henrique

Personally, it is very conflicting. My Latin American heritage is a reminder of all the years I lived in fear until I moved countries. It is all the misunderstandings with friends and family because I got "converted to white culture" and do not support outdated values and morals that they claim are "Latin Culture". It is constantly feeling out of place, never from here but no longer from there. But it is also hard work, perseverance, an unparalleled sense of humility. It's knowing that things do not come easy and that success does not happen overnight. And to be honest, I think that's the most important thing, because I surely never take anything for granted.

-Marie 

To this day I don’t quite understand what my heritage means to me. Yet I’ve learnt through stories and interactions, that oneness and community come at the forefront of the way we act as Latin Americans, always with empathy and care. Truly, if there’s one thing that binds a region with such complex issues, is our kindness as a people. But that goes beyond our stereotypes of musicality and sports fanaticism, we see kindness and care in every interaction (be it in a churrasco or an asado), which is why my heritage reminds me of our commitment to gratefulness and care, regardless of the circumstance.

-JP

For me being Mexican or being called Latin American brings joy and warmth to my heart. My heritage has taught me that we are not all equal in this world, and we are not born with the same opportunities. However, if we, as all of the LATAM countries who were colonized stand together, and stand strong we can overcome anything. What my country has taught be is how to be strong, how to overcome the obstacles, and fight. It has taught me how to enjoy the music, how to enjoy the cuisine, how to look up in the sky and smile as the sun touches my face. 

-Nelva

Compiled by: Marie Ascencio

Marie is a third year International Relations Student at King’s College, the Broadcast Editor for International Relations Today and the Editor in Chief of El Cortao.

Julio Cortázar's Final del Juego: A Reflection on the Concepts of Reality and Existence

Source: https://queleerlibros.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/julio.jpg

By: Irene Pérez Beltrán

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao

Brief context: Julio Cortázar (1914-84) was an Argentinian writer that became one of the members of the Latin American Boom, a period during the 1960s and 70s when a group of Latin American authors became globally popular. He spent the beginning of his career in Argentina, which was governed by the authoritarian Peronist Regime under Juan Domingo Perón from 1946. In 1951 Cortázar moved to Paris in self-imposed exile, where he wrote the collection of stories Final del Juego and his most famous novel Rayuela. 

 Living in a context of political instability and repression, Cortazar has been widely criticised for using the fantastical elements of his short stories to avoid addressing the real issues that the Argentinian society of the 1950s was forced to face. However, this article will show how the themes that he explores in his collection of stories Final del Juego, despite being seemingly unrelated to the context in which they were written, actually provide a deep reflection on the reality of individual experience. Namely, I will focus on the story Una Flor Amarilla and how it reflects Cortázar’s experience as a writer that had to suffer both the pressures of the authoritarian Peronist regime and the restrictions from intellectual and literary spheres. 

 By looking at the story ‘Una Flor Amarilla’, one can see how the surrealist storyline of a man meeting his own reincarnation in a young boy provokes an ontological reflection on life and existence.  The fact that the protagonist is able to meet his reincarnation before his death is described as an (translated from Spanish) ‘error in the mechanism’, which also accurately describes how the reader experiences the story when comparing it to the assumptions of everyday life. Cortazar triggers this questioning and sense of confusion by using a double narrative. This way, instead of the storyteller narrating directly to the reader, he tells his story to another man in a bar, who then narrates his reaction. Despite the detailed storyline being incredibly convincing, the narrator’s comments of disbelief, namely how drunk the storyteller was, create this tension between reality and illusion palpable throughout the narrative. This inner conflict created in the reader, unable to decide whether to believe this alternative presentation of existence, in a way mirrors the experience of those unwilling to succumb to the imposed way of life under an authoritarian leader such as Juan Domingo Perón. In Cortázar’s case, this desire to break away from the impositions of Perón’s regime resulted in his exile to Paris, where he would obtain the literary freedom for his metaphysical explorations in Final del Juego, published in 1956.

 Towards the end of the story, the storyteller implies that he killed the young boy to prevent him from following the steps of his unfulfilled life, but is then overwhelmed by the thought of being the first mortal soul. In this dark turn of events, where Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on the Argentinian writer is evident, one can see how the reflexion over the reality of life and existence expands to include the anxiety surrounding the questions of death and afterlife. This more abstract contemplation could also be applied to the subject of literary legacy and the idea of the writer’s craft being part of a broader existence that transcends the author’s life. 

 Being heavily influenced by Surrealist art since the beginning of his literary career, Cortázar was exposed to the broadly accepted head figures of Surrealism, who often encouraged artists to follow certain guidelines to create a sense of unity within the movement. Notably, the 1938 Manifesto by André Breton and Diego Rivera advocated for an ‘Independent Revolutionary Art’, urging Surrealist art to promote socialist ideals. This was in turn criticised for being oxymoronic, as an artist cannot be simultaneously free and subject to a specific political alignment, and stimulated a rise in Existentialism. This view sees value and purpose in the individual rather than in a higher political or social structure, and thus seeks to question the assumptions imposed by such structure by searching the answers purely in the individual. The influence of this notion on Cortazar’s work is seen in the anxiety experienced by the storyteller. As a mortal, his existence is no longer part of a bigger, overarching structure that transcends his ephemeral life. 

 Through Una Flor Amarilla, Cortazar captures perfectly how, once one decides to break away from external influences and is thus reduced to one’s individual experience, the fear of the futility of life is practically unavoidable. Nonetheless, Cortazar’s comments on Jean Paul Sarte’s work, primary exponent of Existentialism, illustrate how he sees this questioning as allowing the reader (translated from Spanish) ‘to be reborn, if he is able to, above the ashes of his historic self, his conformist self’. He thus describes this existentialist exploration as a sort of awakening, an end goal that allows the individual to reach a higher level of experience.

 Overall, Final del Juego is a collection of short stories that, as seen with Una Flor Amarilla, discusses the themes of life, death and existence. Through the use of surrealist elements, the writer manages to paradoxically achieve a more comprehensive exploration of individual reality, both his personal one and that of the contemporary reader, and its relation to political and social external forces. 

Irene Pérez Beltrán is a 2nd Year International Relations student at King’s College London with a passion for Latin American Literature and sustainable development. 

Violence in the US-MEX Borderlands: The Consistent Threat to National Identity

Source: https://time.com/4977283/artist-stages-picnic-on-us-mexico-border/

By: Daniela Díaz Azcúnaga

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

Over the years, the current political boundary between the United States and Mexico has changed but one key feature has remained constant: its association with violence. Despite being far from the centres of both state powers, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands have become a significant place of great interest for those seeking and resisting power. More than a static political boundary, the U.S.-Mexico border region can be seen as a third different realm that emerges from constant interaction and coexistence of different ideas and experiences. What has been overlooked, however, is the important instrumental role that violence played in building the Mexican nation-state and how it used these differences to create a false superior-inferior identity that still persists today.

Today, the U.S.-Mexico border region is inhabited by an estimated of 15 million people from different cultural backgrounds. In the borderlands there is not just one identity; its inhabitants may identify as Mexican, Chicano, American, Puebloan, Yaqui, or from other Latin American countries that make the border region their home too.  This multi-lingual and multi-cultural coexistence in the region is what makes it so ambiguous and unstable; they both divide and connect. This cross-cultural coexistence, however, can represent a menace to state power. If people inhabiting the region have different identities, cultures and ideas and keep moving between both countries what does these say about how much control the state has over certain area or how unified they are as a nation?

Citizens can only claim the right to use violence only insofar as the law permits them, whereas the state can use violence to their liking either as punishment or also as entertainment and glorification of its power. As remarked by economist and political theorist, Max Weber, the state is the sole authority to assert the ;right” to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a territory. The state’s authority can therefore be understood as a domination of man over man by means of violence. When their power as authority is in jeopardy, violence is their immediate instrument to sustain it.

Throughout the history of the borderlands, there has always been a group designated as the threat to state power, national identity and hence the formation of the nation-state. In its transition from colony to modern nation-state, Mexico hid its purpose of using violence to build a nation, behind one of protection from ‘threats’ from ‘inferior identities’. After gaining independence from the Spanish Imperial power in 1810, Mexico naturally wanted sovereignty and a legitimate state. However, in order to begin building a nation-state,Mexico needed to overcome the rooted differences in the border region–the key was to give their citizens a common sense of belonging. The Mexican state, accordingly, attempted to unify its citizens by giving them the same sense of belonging and alienating them from those whose identities did not coincide with the ‘strong Mexican national identity’.

The first group targeted as a threat were those thought as savages. In the 1800s, during Porfirio Diaz’s regime (1876-1911), indigenous settlements in the border region were interfering with the modernization of Mexico. To solve this ‘problem’ Mexico monopolised and systematically used violence to either ‘civilise’ or get rid of these indigenous communities, such as the Yaquis–in the border state of Sonora– who were thought of as barbaric and uncontrollable. During this period the Yaqui population coincidentally diminished up to almost a half. The solution to the Mexican ‘Indian problem’ was either, ‘helping’ everyone identify to one sole national identity or eliminating them. Identifying as indigenous was identifying as inferior to modernisation, progress and national unity; it gave justification to use physical and psychological violence to end the threat that stopped the nation from growing modern and strong. Even though Mexico thought that eliminating the ‘Indian problem’ would secure their rise as a modern nation, the increasing interdependencies between cities in the border, gave rise to a different group they would later target as a menace: migrants. 

During the 20th century, a pattern of twin-cities emerged across the political boundary and as a result increased the interdependency and flow of people between these cities, such as Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, or Tijuana-San Diego. The increasing legal and illegal border crossings represented a threat to both nations: to the U.S. it represented a national security danger while to Mexico it signified losing the support of a strong international nation and powerful nation. The approach taken to solve this ‘threat’ transformed the border into an arena for coordinating state violence. In 1954, Operation Wetback, was enforced in the United States in cooperation with the Mexican government to control the increasing illegal border crossings. Mexican officials actively participated in the implementation of policing unsanctioned migration along the border. They coordinated with the U.S. Border Patrol to deport migrants into the interior of Mexicowho were forced to wait in wired enclosed detention camps.The use of violence changed during this period from an open physical killing, to an enclosed performance of racial and dehumanising discriminatory acts. The U.S. fed racialised ideas of Mexicans to their citizens under the justification for more border enforcement and sustain their power over the region. Whereas the Mexican state and migrants began to also assimilate themselves as the ‘problem’ and inferior neighbour. 

Migrants became the group depicted as a threat and turned into the ‘Indian Problem’ of the 20th and 21st century. The increasing migration towards the U.S. and the implementation of Border Enforcement, slowly turned Mexico into its perpetrator of violence and the inferior ally. Violence in the borderlands simultaneously divided and connected the communities that inhabit the region. It acted as a tool to the United States and Mexico to separate and obliterate those living in the border region who represented a problem to their rise as modern nation. According to Missing Migrants, 2,019 migrants have died crossing the border since 2014, and the number keeps increasing. The history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands has played an important part in the building of the Mexican state. It has stood as the opposite of strength, progress and unity to the Mexican government, however, building a wall or eliminating the diversity that conforms them will not solve or stop the flow of people, languages, culture that has evolved in the borderlands. The border emerged as a political boundary, social space and cultural hub and  despite –and sometimes because of the bloodshed– endured and became part of their own identity and also of that of Mexico. Instead of proposing new ‘threats’ its time to acknowledge the unity and strength that can be found amongst diversity.

Daniela is a Mexican student, currently in her second year of BA in Liberal Arts with a major in Politics at King’s College. She enjoys writing about environmental and social justice affairs, especially those concerning minority groups such as women, children or indigenous groups.

Society and Culture: The New Cultural Geography of Latin America

Source: https://cadenaser.com/ser/2019/08/31/cultura/1567250385_602885.html

By: Tommy O’Donnell

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

When flamenco artist Rosalía came on to the Spanish music scene in 2017, Spaniards were both intrigued and entranced by her angelic vocals and creative direction — a twenty-something from Catalunya dabbling in the traditional art form of Andalucía was an oddity, but her growing success made her undoubtedly the hottest name in Spain. As her star grew brighter and despite her university-level flamenco education, her music ignited conversations within Spain about art and the people who make it; should this Catalan girl with no link to the Spanish south be the face of flamenco? Does she have the right to dramatically alter flamenco’s sound with trap and hip-hop influences? These questions, however, were just the precursor to a much wider discussion about what Rosalía’s artistry, and that of those similar to her, represents.

As Rosalía’s star continued rising, she started dabbling in other genres of music, notably reggaeton. Although her venture into this culture is harmless at first sight, what followed sparked an important conversation amongst Latino music lovers: what is Latin music? Or perhaps more fittingly, who is Latin music? In 2017 the singer received her first Latin Grammy Awards nomination in the category ‘Best New Artist’. It is not unique for Spaniards to be featured in the Latin Grammys; in fact, David Bisbal and Bebe, two Spanish artists were successful in that exact category in the early 2000’s. Additionally, in 2019 Rosalía came up victorious in the night’s biggest category, ‘Album of the Year’. This confused many, as Rosalía is… not Latin. The issue here is not with the Latin Recording Academy itself, but more so that the phrase ‘Latin music’ does not have a concrete definition agreed upon by everyone.

To figure out what ‘Latin music’ itself even means, we have to go back to the very origin of the word ‘Latin’. Merriam Webster has multiple definitions, but the most sensible and relevant describes it as “relating to the peoples or countries using Romance languages”. Romance languages are a family of languages which you will undoubtedly be familiar with; Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian are the most prominent. So should the Latin Grammys include French-, Italian- and Romanian-language music too? Well, the dictionary suggests not, as the sub-definition notes that ‘Latin’ “specifically relates to the peoples or countries of Latin America”, and although it may seem too nitpicky to consult dictionaries and origins to figure out what ‘Latin’ really means, it only reinforces that we as an in-tune society understand that being Latin is not the same as being Hispanic, and that ‘Latin music’ is the music of Latin America. 

Although still an important discussion, awards shows are not the be all and end all of Latin music and Latin culture — but what this inclusion of non-Latin American artists in the Latin Recording Academy and any other similar body arguably does is re-colonise the Latin American experience. When we compare Spain, a comparably rich and powerful European nation with Latin America, a less-developed region, we see more space being taken away from those who cannot find it otherwise. A show celebrating Latin-ness should not be taken over by those who are widely recognised as non-Latin, especially because the resources and opportunities that those from more-developed nations naturally inherit give the already-powerful an unequal step up.

So what does our understanding of ‘Latin music’ have to do with “The New Cultural Geography of Latin America”? For a long time, Latin culture stayed in Latin America and amongst Latin American communities, but in recent years many elements of Latin culture, especially pop culture, have become in vogue; for example, Latin music. As always, when something smells of success it attracts those who want a taste — including those who have no business taking a bite. After the global reggaeton explosion of 2017, artists from English-speaking countries such as the UK and the US made it routine to have a Spanish-language feature or a so-called ‘latin flair’ in their music, as well as many artists from Spain creating music inside the reggaeton genre. Perhaps ‘bastardisation’ is too strong a word, but the above instances exemplify the willingness of those from more advantaged regions to embrace a culture only when it suits them. Whether it be Spaniards at the Latin Grammys, a rogue collab or another Lola Índigo song, history is repeating itself as the rich cultures of foreign lands are invaded, stolen and repurposed to appease the thieves. It’s time those thieves start celebrating the Latin people who made the Latin culture in the first place.

Tommy is a third year Spanish & Portuguese student from the UK with a keen interest in language learning and global politics. He enjoys writing about current political affairs and turmoil, especially in Latin America.