Do we pierce the Darien Gap? And how?

The government wants to revive that electrical connection with Colombia project, again with a proposed route through Guna Yala, along proposed new roads. The Guna leadership — and people — don’t want that.

Then there is the long-stated goal of a road connection between Panama and Colombia, which cattle ranchers, environmentalists and the indigenous communities in Darien don’t want.

The thinking is so clueless, so stereotypical, so clearly aimed at a mobbed up construction industry. We could have those connections, and a far better energy policy, with some thinking out of their boxes.

First of all, let us not romanticize the Dule culture of the Guna nation. Nor for that matter, the Embera way of life. There are remarkable and wonderful things about both of these original nations, but even if things are much improved between them, they are traditional enemies with different world views. They’re just people with their own ways and histories, and real human concerns that may vary from each other’s and yours and ours.

One of the things they share, however, is a concern about roads bringing in outsiders to grab their land and resources. In Guna Yala they are also careful to limit outside influences that might overwhelm their culture.

The ranchers? The Darien Gap is a forest barrier between cattle diseases that are endemic in Colombia and Panamanian herds that don’t suffer from those maladies.

The environmentalists? Tearing a hole through Panama’s main remaining forest, and then watching the deforestation and social conflicts spread from either side of the highway are scenes that nobody in any of the movements to defend nature want to see. (Astroturf “greenwash” front groups for the developers don’t count as movements.)

So why not make the connection via a series of tunnels, bridges and causeways from Meteti, across the Gulf of San Miguel and just off the Pacific Coast of Darien to Colombia? That is, a route designed to never touch land that somebody can use the road to invade. Better a road connection that’s perhaps set up to add a railroad alongside, and in any case through which power lines might be threaded. Better to have a forward-looking connection designed for the coming age of electric cars, a road paved with photovoltaic bricks to provide the power that might make the electrical connection with Colombia superfluous in the first place.

Yes, there would be the costs — additional for building to avoid an invasion route, offset by the reduced costs of land grabbing and patrolling against the creation of a new smuggling road. Also offset by reduced costs of land acquisition, although one suspects that the bottom line of the current Guna Yala proposal is a presumption that nobody owns lands that are collectively owned so white men can just take them without compensation. There would also be geological and marine environmental issues to address by going offshore. The Blue Apple boys and the land grabbers would probably pay people behind the scenes to emphasize such objections.

Let’s not be stampeded into 2Oth century follies that benefit only a few construction, energy and banking interests and thus forego development that looks toward Panama’s future in the public interest.

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Brazilian democracy in crisis
after Bolsonaro’s election

by the Center for Economic and Policy Research – CEPR

The election of far-right extremist Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency throws Brazil’s democracy into “crisis,” Center for Economic and Policy Research Co-Director Mark Weisbrot warned tonight, following news of the election results. Bolsonaro’s rapid ascent from perennial and provocative fringe politician to presidential front-runner shocked observers and commentators in Brazil and internationally. There is much evidence his candidacy was aided by a massive, probably illegal, disinformation campaign against his opponents.

“This is a dark day for Brazil; Brazilian democracy is now in complete crisis,” Weisbrot said. “The international community must help preserve Brazil’s democratic institutions and stand up for the rights of its citizens by letting Bolsonaro know that there will be consequences if he follows through on his dangerous and hateful rhetoric.”

Bolsonaro has a long history of making statements praising Brazil’s dictatorship and disparaging its democratic institutions — notably when, in a TV interview, he said that voting “doesn’t change anything.” Rather, he said, Brazil would need a “civil war” killing 30,000 people. He’s also expressed admiration for Chile’s infamous dictator August Pinochet, saying Pinochet “should have killed more.”

In recent days, Bolsonaro has again raised alarm by talking of jailing or forcing into exile members of the main opposition Workers’ Party in “a cleanup the likes of which has never been seen in Brazilian history.” He also vowed that members of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) would be designated as “terrorists.” MST-affiliated schools and other institutions have been raided by police in recent years, and MST leaders murdered.

Bolsonaro is infamous for misogynistic and homophobic statements. He has also made a number of racist remarks in the past, infamously saying that descendants of Brazilian slaves “don’t do anything,” and, “I don’t think they’re even good for procreation anymore.” He’s chillingly told a campaign rally: “Let’s make Brazil for the majorities. Minorities have to bow to the majorities. Minorities will fit or just disappear!” He’s also warned that “Not one centimeter will be demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas [descendants of escaped slaves living on lands claimed by their ancestors]” were he to become president, leading to concern that Indigenous rights — including to ancestral lands coveted by mining and other business interests — may be trampled under a Bolsonaro administration.

Bolsonaro has signaled that he would support business interests over environmental concerns, and has spoken of withdrawing Brazil from the Paris Climate Accord, raising alarm among environmentalists and in the scientific community who have voiced concern over the likelihood of increased deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Brazil has for years been one of the world’s most dangerous countries for environmental defenders, and the Bolsonaro presidency could make their situation more dire.

“Governments around the world must make Bolsonaro understand that there will be a strong reaction against antidemocratic actions or rights abuses on his watch,” Weisbrot said. “While he may have been elected democratically, there are tens of millions of Brazilians who voted against him. The international community must help to safeguard the rights of Brazil’s most vulnerable.”

Just before the October 28 vote, 18 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging the State Department “to take a strong stand in opposition to such backsliding; leaving clear that US assistance and cooperation with Brazil is contingent on the upholding of basic human rights and democratic values by its leaders.”

Weisbrot noted that Bolsonaro’s rise was abetted by years of politicized attacks against the left-leaning Worker’s Party, led by hard right actors in the media, the judiciary, and Brazil’s Congress.

Many observers cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election after former president Lula da Silva was barred from running in contravention of the UN Human Rights Committee, and Lula had very restricted access to the media. The contested jailing of Lula, who was sentenced to 12 years on unsubstantiated charges, created a political vacuum which Bolsonaro was able to fill.

“By preventing former president Lula da Silva, Brazil’s most popular politician, from running in this election, the country’s right-wing elites subverted democracy and paved the way for a dangerous fascist to take power,” Weisbrot said.

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‘…and to the banana republic…’

The 1980s academic literary craze about deconstructionism had a point, which was promptly carried to destructive or absurd extremes in some of the rarified circles in which it was taught or debated. The point was that one must look at a word, a phrase, a work of art or literature, not only at it was intended by its author but in the eyes of how people — who might be at a later time in another place — perceive its meaning.

One of the extremes was a movement to ban Mark Twain’s anti-racist masterpiece Huckleberry Finn from schools and public libraries. Ostensibly it was due to a name, words and phrases now considered to be expressions of racial hatred. The “deconstructed” perspective became an excuse for intellectually lazy people to neither read nor understand the work before condemning it. The flap advanced the sophomoric “gotcha” games that now pass for debate in US public discourse.

Then there is this phrase “banana republic,” which is a bit older than the jargon coming out of political science departments and into hawkish Washington rhetoric about “failed states.” Taken as malevolently simplified, the former phrase is a blanket racist dismissal of Latin American countries where bananas are grown, their governments and their people; while the latter sounds like some ill-mannered white teacher in Washington passing out grades to countries which his corporate paymaster dislikes.

However, as originally intended the “banana republic” was an example of what later came to be understood as a “failed state.” That is, a country with institutions so weak that its government could be ordered around by a single company, where any semblance of rights, freedom or democracy was at best window dressing and was quite often explicitly discarded. “Banana” as in how the United Fruit company became a law and power unto itself across parts of Latin America, with atrocious consequences for most of the people who lived under those regimes. But of the failed state a frequently cited example is Chicago and surrounding Cook County at the height of Al Capone’s power. It was gangster rule enforced by bribery and violence, no matter what the voters of that part of Illinois may have wished.

The thing about failed states is that they are vacuous. They tend to invite opportunistic foreign powers, brutal dictators and preposterous demagogues to fill the voids left by the missing legitimate governments and authoritative institutions. Often there are combinations of foreign interference, dictatorship and demagoguery at the same time. Like Guatemala’s comedian thug commander in chief, with soldiers lining up behind him as he defies the courts and prosecutors that would call him to account. Like Honduras since the 2009 coup.

The US “border crisis” is about Hondurans and to a lesser extent Guatemalans fleeing north, often with children in tow, because they fear for their lives, because the hoodlums who have moved in as the masters of their countries’ failed states consider them obstacles to be eliminated. So we see these caravans.

Donald Trump is now busy blaming Democrats and George Soros for the caravans, something completely at odds with the truth. Figure that the vile racist, the money launderer, the multi-level fraud artist who got to the White House after he asked for and received foreign assistance will get around to talking about “banana republics.” To him and his white supremacist followers it will be one more bit of inflammatory code.

But what about the United States? A hollowed-out economy, crumbling infrastructures, abused and ignored public institutions, a preposterous “reality TV” demagogue who would be dictator, a sticky fingered oligarchy calling the shots — the USA under Republican rule is ever more a banana republic. Even if it imports the bananas in US supermarkets from points south.

Now it seems that US voters may be offered the same kind of deal that the Honduran voters received. That’s what all the vote suppression tactics add up to.

Chinese loans

The Chinese system has its good points but also some bad ones, to the extent that the Chinese way is nothing that Panama should copy. China does not insist upon this as a condition of doing business.

The US system, which has some admirable traits and some terrible ones, is also nothing for Panama to copy. But in addition to foreign policy alignments upon which the United States often insists, there is this demand that Panama adopt “Washington Consensus” economic policies.

However, just because Panama can do business with China without accepting the austerity that US-dominated international financial institutions would have us adopt does not mean that China won’t insist that its loans be repaid. We don’t need reminders from abroad to know this.

The problem with Chinese loans is Panamanian. Do we hand our development issues to the Panama Canal Authority, whose board is under multiple clouds of corruption scandals? Do we use Chinese loans to put the families of the political caste on new payrolls? Do we squander Chinese credit on gleaming vanity projects instead of using it to increase and protect Panama’s productive capacities?

The construction companies and their financial allies have designs, but Panama has no plans worthy of the name. That’s the problem. Just running up the debt some more, this time with Chinese creditors, does not help Panama in the long run.

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