Reason Magazine - Topics > Latin America

Hooray for Uribe

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:00:00 EDT

In December 1996, the Peruvian Marxist guerrilla group Tupac Amaru (MRTA) occupied the Japanese embassy in Lima, taking hostage a group assembled to celebrate the birthday of Emperor Akihito. Four months later, Peru’s strongman president, the now-imprisoned Alberto Fujimori, ordered a team of elite Peruvian soldiers to retake the building. The handful of rebels who managed to survive the initial assault, witnesses later reported, were bound, dragged into a courtyard, and executed by members of the Peruvian army. Not a single member of the MRTA made it out alive.

A rather different tactic was employed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whose special forces freed 15 hostages held by the Marxist terror group FARC on Wednesday. The hostages included three American contractors and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. Dressed like a group of slightly menacing Berkeley baristas, the army infiltrators disguised themselves in Che Guevara t-shirts (seriously) and camouflaged uniforms, easily convincing the FARC that they too were fist-clenching, Lenin-reading members of the jungle politburo. It was an elaborate, cleverly plotted ruse—one that was guaranteed to fool a platoon of knuckle-dragging, forest-dwelling communist revolutionaries.

And it was a stunning—and, to Latin America watchers, unexpected—success. While it is tempting to indulge in the reflexive optimism that follows such a victory, the war against the FARC isn’t over yet. Nevertheless, it is also difficult to disagree with The Economist’s immediate post-raid assessment. The operation, said the magazine, was “a disaster for the FARC and its sympathizers in Latin America who hoped to use the hostage issue to weaken Mr Uribe.” In other words, it was a disaster for not only the FARC, but also for Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, all of whom have expressed some degree of sympathy or ideological affinity for the group.

While outwardly congratulatory, many in Latin America and Europe could muster only lukewarm praise for the Uribe government, which is viewed by many as ideologically suspect and too friendly with the Bush administration. As one blogger at The Economist noticed, more than a few European newspapers were more interested in criticizing Uribe’s policies than they were in discussing the rescue of Betancourt. The French paper Libération championed Betancourt’s cause, The Economist noted, but “could barely bring itself to congratulate Mr Uribe and the Colombians this morning,” choosing instead to upbraid the government’s “implacable” war against the guerrillas.

In the fever swamps of the far left, the reaction was predictably full of non sequiturs about Uribe’s dubious past associations and rumor-mongering about the fortuitous timing of the operation. The left-wing radio station Pacifica devoted a significant chunk of its coverage following the raid to questioning both the “timing” of the operation (more on this in a moment) and the institutional corruption of the Uribe administration—but nothing on the FARC’s unspeakably brutal crimes against the Colombian peasantry.

A Huffington Post writer dismissed as fake the evidence gleaned from laptops captured in the raid that killed FARC commander Raul Reyes in March. The material, which was verified by Interpol and suggested connections between FARC and officials in Venezuela and Ecuador, was most likely ginned up by the “death squad President Alvaro Uribe.” (The same author recently praised Evo Morales for “turn[ing] over the tortilla of our consciousness about Indians, race and power.”)

There is an understandable desire to bludgeon Uribe’s credibility by citing, for instance, his shady family and political connections. And there is quite a bit to unpack here. While it’s unfair to compare President Uribe to the buffoonish President Chavez, his critics are indeed justified in expressing skepticism of the timing of the raid, which they claim is designed to distract the public from a very Chavista-like scandal. Uribe’s second term election victory was secured after Congress lifted a ban on the serving of consecutive terms—a victory secured through good old-fashioned bribery, say his critics. The court recently ruled against the president on this very issue, forcing Uribe to issue a furious denial.

And his accusers are also correct to criticize the positively Bolivarian attempt to hold on to power for a third term, with party activists collecting signatures to force a referendum on the issue. While not directly involved in the campaign to extend his rule, Uribe has thus far refused to eliminate the possibility of yet another presidential mandate.

And then there is “Plan Colombia”—the wasteful, destructive, and counterproductive drug war operation inaugurated by former U.S. President Bill Clinton (and expanded by President George W. Bush) and former Colombian President Andres Pastrana. Drugs and the FARC are deeply intertwined, but it is optimistic to think that an end to the Colombian drug war would precipitate the end of the guerrilla war.

So yes, the Uribe government is far from perfect—it is Latin America after all, so we must judge on a steep curve—but as even the left-leaning Guardian acknowledged this week, Uribe is indeed a "skilled politician" who "has been able to bring a degree of order, security and prosperity to the country that was scarcely believed possible when he took office in 2002."

So what to do now? With FARC against the ropes and Uribe’s popularity at all time highs, former KGB “agent of influence” Richard Gott, author of a hagiographic biography of Hugo Chavez and a pro-Castro history of Cuba, advised that a “new Democratic government in the United States in January should put pressure on Uribe to engage in negotiation.” The New York Times said much the same: “President Álvaro Uribe should now capitalize on that disarray and offer the rebels, who long ago traded the business of political liberation for drug trafficking, a political settlement.”

During his press conference with the freed hostages, Uribe himself made a vague offer to FARC, one quickly endorsed by Betancourt: “This is an invitation to the FARC to make peace, to start releasing the hostages they still hold captive.” It is rather important to note that this was not the first in a new round of negations, but a stern demand for peace, offering no reciprocal action by the government.

So let’s bring this back around to where we started. Looking at the Peruvian example of fighting a war against left-wing guerrillas, we see a protracted, bloody war that the government ultimately won, crushing both the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru, two Maoist terror organizations who demanded nothing less than the restructuring of civilization according to the Chairman’s book of insane aphorisms. And there could, of course, be little political negotiations when there was almost nothing to negotiate. That was a situation understood by the rebels, and one that prompted them to enter into the business of kidnap and assassination.

There is an important distinction that must be made between the Fujimori tactics noted above—which routinely involved extrajudicial executions and the torture and disappearance of detainees—and those of Uribe, who claims to have insisted that the FARC hostage takers not be harmed during the raid. And while his critics rail against waging war against the FARC, it is only now, with the organization in full retreat, that the government can start making demands and "negotiate." This is, in other words, fast becoming the type of "negotiation" we saw aboard the battleship USS Missouri in 1945.

All of this is good news for Colombia, President Uribe, the families of the released, and the country’s economy (the Colombian peso surged the following day). But last word must go to Betancourt, who after years in captivity wisely warned both the Latin American left and her captors to let Colombia choose its own destiny: "I think (Chavez and Correa) are important allies in this process—but on the condition of respect for Colombian democracy. Colombians elected Alvaro Uribe. Colombians did not elect the FARC.”

And with President Uribe's approval rating hovering around 80 percent, don't expect Colombians to elect the FARC anytime soon.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor at reason.

Communists for Intellectual Property

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:50:00 EDT

This is a bit old, but I don't think it's been mentioned on Hit & Run yet: Che Guevara's children are irked by the unauthorized use of the Argentina-born Cuban revolutionary's name and likeness on products such as T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, and vodka:

Aleida Guevara, the eldest of Guevara's four children by his second wife, Cuban revolutionary Aleida March, said the commercialization of her father's image contributed to tension between rich and poor in some countries.
"Something that bothers me now is the appropriation of the figure of Che that has been used to make enemies from different classes. It's embarrassing," she wrote during an Internet forum sponsored by Cuba's government ahead of what would have been her father's 80th birthday on June 14....
"We don't want money, we demand respect," wrote Guevara...
But Cuba's communist government also has worked hard to make money off of the revolutionary's image, stocking tourist shops with T-shirts, postcards and other trinkets bearing his face and three-letter signature.

Here's a win/win proposal: The Cuban government can retain all rights to Che's name and likeness if it lets Cubans freely own, transfer, and use other kinds of property.

Michael Moynihan on the cult of Che here. Kerry Howley on the commercial sullying of Genghis Khan's good name here and here.

[Thanks to John Kluge for the tip.]

Yes We Can Pander!

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

If you doubt that the big broadcast and print media outlets are, for the most, in the tank for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), quickly skim the transcript of the Democratic frontrunner’s speech in Miami last Friday. Obama travelled to Little Havana to engage in some election-year genuflection, that ritualistic demonstration of fealty to Cuban exiles performed by almost every presidential candidate since Fidel Castro took possession of the island in 1959. Obama pandered, the media swooned—and a few interesting policy shifts were curiously ignored.

In his speech to the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), Obama thundered that he would only accept “libertad” for the captive nation of Cuba, and promised to pave “the road to freedom for all Cubans” by securing “justice for Cuba’s political prisoners, the rights of free speech, a free press and freedom of assembly; and it must lead to elections that are free and fair.” How this elusive goal would be achieved was rather predictably left unsaid.

After the platitudes about freedom and the obligatory Jose Marti citations, Obama staked out a handful of substantive policy positions. If elected, he said, an Obama administration would end the Bush administration’s draconian and counterproductive limits on both family travel and cash remittances sent to Cuba, a policy opposed by a majority of Cuban-Americans.

It was but one policy proposal—a good one, for sure—and the following day’s New York Times dispatch led with it: “Senator Barack Obama on Friday called for greater engagement with Cuba and Latin America, saying the long-standing policies of isolation have failed to advance the interests of the United States or help people who have suffered under oppressive governments.”

Dig deeper into the speech—and the Times account—and you'll find that there are significant limits to Obama’s policies of engagement. During his 2004 Senate campaign Obama declared that it was "time for us to end the embargo with Cuba.... It's time for us to acknowledge that that particular policy has failed." But Cubans don’t influence Illinois senate races like they do Florida presidential contests. And while another Times article declared that “Change Comes to Miami,” the real news is that Obama is merely interested in tinkering with America’s Cuba policy, not substantially changing it.

“I will maintain the embargo,” he said to cheers from CANF members. “It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations. That’s the way to bring about real change in Cuba—through strong, smart and principled diplomacy.”

Wasn’t it this claim—a rather significant policy shift—that should have made the news? In an article headlined “Taking a new approach to Cuba,” the Los Angeles Times mentioned that Cuba had been embargoed for 47 years, and that the brave senator “plunged boldly into these uncharted political waters” by suggesting a repeal of the Bush travel and remittance policy, but didn’t find the space to mention that Obama abandoned—at least temporarily—his support for lifting the embargo.

A writer at The Huffington Post hailed Obama’s “gutsy” and “sensible” speech and noted that CANF founder Jorge Mas Canosa “was a notorious Reagan-era warhorse who made his career as a leader of the embargo-industrial complex.” On Obama’s embargo pander, it was noted, with significant understatement, that “he hasn't pronounced himself ready just yet to let go of the entire embargo.”

The Boston Globe focused on another, less newsworthy aspect of the speech: “Obama: Bush fostered Chavez rise: ‘Negligent’ foreign policy created void.” It’s a dubious claim, one belied by the chronology of Chavez’s political successes, but Obama’s denunciation of Bush’s foreign policy legacy only distracted from his own bellicose—and well-formulated—anti-Chavez rhetoric.

Sounding like a mellifluous, hope-spreading version of Otto Reich, Obama slammed Chavez’s “predictable yet perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and checkbook diplomacy” that “offers the same false promise as the tried and failed ideologies of the past.” Bolivarianism is, he said, a “stale vision.” He warned that “Iran has drawn closer to Venezuela, and just the other day Tehran and Caracas launched a joint bank with their windfall oil profits.” Hugo Chavez is a “democratically elected leader. But we also know that he does not govern democratically.”

All of which is true, of course. By focusing on his shaky claim that it was Bush who “lost Venezuela,” almost all press reports ignored Obama’s expressed support for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s controversial attack on a FARC outpost in Ecuadorian territory. After the raid that killed FARC commander Raul Reyes, The New York Times editorialized that the strike “was an infringement of Ecuador’s sovereignty” and advised the two countries to “settle their differences through diplomatic means” with a guarantee “that such forays will not be repeated.”

Obama disagrees, telling his anti-Castro and anti-Chavez audience that his administration “will support Colombia’s right to strike terrorists who seek safe-haven across its borders” and advising that “strong sanctions” be levied against Venezuela for its support of FARC and Chavez be diplomatically “isolated.” The latter point confused ABC News reporter Jake Tapper, who wondered, after Obama expressed a willingness to engage Chavez without preconditions, if “he will meet with the leader of a country he simultaneously says should be isolated.”

And while accusing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) of wanting to continue the current administration’s failed Cuba policy, Obama told the crowd that he could be counted on as supporting another failed policy—the drug war. “When I am President, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug Program” with Colombia, though he recently opposed the passage of a free-trade agreement with the country. (Speaking of Obama’s skills as a soft-power diplomat, President Uribe responded to Obama’s opposition to the free trade agreement by saying that he “deplored” Obama’s position.)

There were other moments of hawkishness that were largely ignored. “The United States,” Obama declared, “must be a relentless advocate for democracy.” Quoting Martin Luther King Jr., he said that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And: “I will never, ever, compromise the cause of liberty. And unlike John McCain, I would never, ever, rule out a course of action that could advance the cause of liberty.”

But what does any of this mean? It’s easy to get the heads nodding in furious agreement: We can—oh yes we can!—liberate Cuba! But how does one relentlessly advocate for democracy without, say, irritating the likes of Hugo Chavez? As Obama said in Miami, the Bush administration’s rhetoric has “so alienated [us] from the rest of the Americas” that extreme leftism “has even made inroads from Bolivia to Nicaragua.”

Like Candidate Bush in 2000, Obama is still getting his foreign policy bearings, still trying to find that measured voice. When Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer interviewed him last year, Obama “had trouble naming any head of state south of the U.S. border, and looked like a deer in the headlights when asked about the region's headlines of the day." All that, says Oppenheimer, has changed—Obama “has finally done his homework on Latin America.”

But for those who desire the elimination of the embargo, we can only hope that, like his cynical denunciations of NAFTA, followed by reassurances to Canada that it was but a primary season pander, Obama is speaking with a forked tongue.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Colombia, the Germ of a Notion

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:26:00 EDT

In a Christian Science Monitor op-ed piece, Mark L. Schneider of the International Crisis Group examines the results of America's crackdown on cocaine cultivation in Colombia:

When Plan Colombia (the multibillion dollar US assistance program targeted at curbing drug smuggling and supporting Colombia against armed guerrillas) started, coca was cultivated in 12 of Colombia's 34 provinces. Today it is grown in 23 of those provinces.
In 2006, after five years of Plan Colombia, four years of the regional Andean Counterdrug Initiative, and after spending $5.5 billion, some 1,000 metric tons of cocaine were produced between Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. That's about the same amount that was produced in 2002 when President Álvaro Uribe took office.
The head of the White House Office of Narcotics and Drug Control Program, John Walters, admitted at a press conference in Haiti recently that last year that cocaine production had risen to 1,400 metric tons in 2007—a whopping 40 percent hike....
In 2002, just under 9 percent of the US population from 12 to 25 years of age admitted to using cocaine the previous year. In 2006, the same percentage said they snorted cocaine.

U.S. officials nevertheless hold up Colombia as "a good model" for Afghanistan to emulate, which helps explain why opium suppression there is going as well as it is.

[Thanks to Paul Rako for the tip.]

The T-Shirt Standard

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:06:00 EDT

The filmmakers behind Secondhand (Pepe) discuss Haiti's trade in used clothes. An excerpt:

First off, we should note that you can find pepe for sale on pretty much any street in Haiti. It seemed as though pepe lined the sidewalks with small-time vendors selling a few things by hanging them up on the walls by the sidewalk. Then we also visited all types of dedicated marketplaces. Some were very concentrated with just clothing, and these were often by the ports, where the clothing would arrive. Sometimes the pepe would be sold within larger markets where you could also find food and other goods. Sometimes the clothing was sorted into different areas or by peddler’s specialty -- you would have the used shoe guy over here and the lady that only sold t-shirts over there.

In one of the largest markets in Miragoane, just outside of the gates of the port, in the central town square -- you had people opening up boxes and making preliminary sortings. In the Saline marketplace in Port-au-Prince, there was an incredible expanse of peddler/tailors set up with sewing machines, sitting among mounds of clothing, under tents sewn together from fabric scraps and old blankets.

At times, we learn, Haitians have even used these clothes as an informal private currency, similar to the cigarettes described in R.A. Radford's classic "The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp." The whole interview is here.

Elsewhere in Reason: Kerry Howley describes the used T-shirt trade in Tanzania.

Giving Them the Rope to Hang Themselves

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:32:00 EDT

Cato's Juan Carlos Hidalgo explains a possible nefarious motive behind Raoul Castro's recent reforms in Cuba.

(Update: Link fixed.)

Friday Funnies

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:00:00 EDT

The Anti-Emo Pogroms

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:06:00 EDT

Mexican subcultures go to war:

In recent weeks, a wave of emo bashings has swept across Mexico, several news agencies have reported, fuelled by punks, rockabillies, goths, metalheads and basically anyone who's not emo.

According to Daniel Hernandez, who's been covering the anti-emo riots on his blog Intersections, the violence began March 7, when an estimated 800 young people poured into the Mexican city of Queretaro's main plaza "hunting" for emo kids to pummel. Then the following weekend similar violence occurred in Mexico City at the Glorieta de Insurgents, a central gathering space for emos. Hernandez also reports that several anti-emo riots have now also spread to various other Mexican cities. Via the Austin American Statesmen, several postings on Mexican social-networking sites, primarily organising spot for these "emo hunts," have been dug up and translated. One states: "I HATE EMOS!!! They are not even people, they are so stupid, they cry over meaningless things... My school is infested with them, I want to kill them all!"...

More recent reports state that the emos have begun to fight back against the other "urban tribes" and organised marches in Guadalajara and Mexico City, escalating the violence and leading to increased police presence.

Hat tip: Charles Oliver, who adds: "This would have made a great movie in the hands of Walter Hill around 1978." It sounds more like a joint project for Todd Haynes and Sam Peckinpah to me.

Cuba: What Is and What Can Be

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:14:00 EDT

A Canadian perspective on Cuba's past and possible future, via Mark Milke of the Calgary Herald:

Cuba in 1958 had a per capita GDP of $3,170 according to the OECD. (Canada's was $8,947.). But Cuba outranked all other Latin American countries except four: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Tellingly, in 1958, the island nation's per person wealth was higher than any East Asian country or colony, save Japan, which barely beat Cuba at only $3,290. Hong Kong had a per capita GDP of $2,924, Singapore's was $2,294, the Philippines' was $1,447, Taiwan's per person GDP stood at $1,387 and South Korea's was $1,112.
Thus in 1958, Cuba was almost as rich as Japan, one and half times as wealthy as Singapore, richer than Hong Kong, and three times as prosperous as South Korea.
Fifty years later, Cuba is one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
Meanwhile, jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan (the latter two also had dictators and problems similar to Cuba in the 1950s) have long eclipsed Cuba. They've done so not only in per capita wealth, but in measurements Castro's defenders point to when they assert the Marxist revolution "worked," such as in health care and education.

Milke doesn't have any faith in Castro Junior doing what's right. His preferred solution is for the U.S. to lift its stupid and ineffective embargo and "wash the Communists out to sea on a tidal wave of U.S. dollars from investment, trade and tourism."

Whole thing here.

Hat Tip: Alan Vanneman.

reason.tv hosts Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) talking down the embargo here.

reason on Cuba over the years.

Now Playing at Reason.tv: Rep. Jeff Flake on U.S.-Cuba Policy

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:30:00 EDT

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End of Reyes

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:00:00 EDT

IN NOVEMBER 2006, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the Marxist terror group that has waged a nearly half-century war against the Colombian state, circulated an open letter to the academic and Hollywood left, requesting that their "always generous solidarity" with Third World liberation movements again be marshaled to "pressure President Bush and his government to support a prisoner exchange in Colombia." The mediation request was addressed to Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, and, bizarrely, Denzel Washington. It was signed, with comradely greetings, by FARC "foreign minister" and second-in-command Raul Reyes.

Last Saturday the Colombian military briefly trespassed the border of neighboring Ecuador and, in a combined arms raid, disposed of Reyes. Acknowledging his military's one mile incursion into Ecuadorian territory, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe offered the country's chavista president, Rafael Correa, a perfunctory apology. Predictably, he refused to be assuaged. When Colombia claimed that the terrorists were killed during a "hot pursuit" operation that spilled across the border, Correa complained that Reyes, along with 23 other members of his execution and kidnap gang, had in fact been killed "in their pajamas."

Read the rest of this piece in The Weekly Standard.

Still Stuck on Castro

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:00:00 EST

In a country where major news developments rarely precipitate anything but deeper misery, Cuba awoke Tuesday to the news that el jefe maximo, Fidel Castro, had formally ceded power to his younger brother Raul. Cuba has grown accustomed to a seemingly endless and ageless set of images of the revolutionary father delivering a stultifying oration on Yanqui this-or-that, reposing in a monogrammed track suit, mumbling incoherently about his days in the Sierra Maestra. But to Cuba watchers and exiles, his official ceding of power was unexpected.

The 81-year-old Castro tendered his resignation in column form, carried in Cuba's national newspaper (there is, excluding a flimsy "youth publication," just one). Lifting language from Lyndon Johnson (one of the many presidents that, the deeply serious pundit is required to mention, he has "outlived"), Fidel declared, "I will neither aspire to nor accept—I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept—the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief." Delusional until the end, Castro presumes that his indentured subjects demand eternal revolution, forcing him to repeat that, no, it will be little Raul, 76, who will guide the Cuban people towards a classless and cashless utopia. MSNBC's Chris Matthews apparently believes this too, asking Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), co-sponsor of the monumentally stupid, embargo-expanding Helms-Burton Act, why "Cubans on the island still support the Castro brothers."

The preceding days have demonstrated that information peddled by Castro's legion of academic and celebrity apologists has deeply penetrated the mainstream media consciousness, with credulous reporting sundry revolutionary "successes" of the regime: not so good on free speech, but oh-so-enviable on health care and education.

In an email to staffers, with the nudging subject line "Castro guidance," CNN producer Allison Flexner advised reporters to be fair and not to focus solely on the regime's repressiveness. "Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba," writes Flexner, "namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech."

Well, wrong on all three counts, but more on that later. That evening, CNN's ubiquitous foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour appeared on a panel to hail the end of Castro's rule while managing to mention that he was "a leader in many things such as education, health care." Message received, Atlanta!

In Europe, The Guardian's Latin American correspondent Rory Carroll admonished Cuba for its human rights violations while praising "the government's success in offering all its citizens free access to education and healthcare, resulting in western levels of literacy and life expectancy." That's at best a dubious achievement, considering that Cuba is situated in the West. "Compared with other Latin American countries," Carroll gushed, "Cuba is notable for its absence of beggars, violent crime and extreme inequality," because everyone is equally poor. The average monthly salary in Cuba is 330 pesos—about $13.75.

Thirteen measly bucks and there aren't any beggars in Cuba? Well, not really. As one Miami Herald reporter observed in December 2006, "Anyone strolling through Cuba's tourist spots like Old Havana is likely to encounter a number of panhandlers, from the disabled like Avila and the elderly like Cecilia in the Plaza de Armas, to those struggling with mental illness such as Irma Castillo at the Parque Central." The British left-wing magazine The New Internationalist reported, "On the streets of Havana there are two relatively common sights that wouldn't have been seen 20 years ago: cellphones and beggars." (Cell phone use is, naturally, heavily regulated by the government, ensuring that Cuba ranks second to last in a recent United Nations table of cell phones per person. For those scoring at home, only Papua New Guinea ranks lower.)

The British news agency Reuters tells us that Castro came to power by overthrowing "U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista." And Batista was a dictator—one alternately supported, tolerated, and disliked by Washington. As historian Hugh Thomas, author the magisterial book Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom, wrote, "American assistance to Batista was never explicitly forthcoming." By 1958, a year before Castro's seizure of power, the U.S. had instituted an arms embargo against Batista, and elements within the CIA and State Department were actively agitating for a Castro victory. Indeed, it was the British government that agreed to sell Batista military hardware—15 fighter planes—when the Eisenhower administration refused.

And how does Reuters describe Castro? After 50 years of brutal one-party rule, to apply the appellation "dictator" seems a rather contentious issue: "Vilified by opponents as a totalitarian dictator, Castro is admired in many Third World nations for standing up to the United States and providing free education and health care." And again, we return to education and health care.

The AP, retracing the history of modern Cuba, explains that Castro's "revolutionaries opened 10,000 new schools, erased illiteracy, and built a universal health care system." And what kind of schools, what kind of education system, did they inaugurate? As Georgetown University professor Eusebio Mujal-Leon has observed, "The [rewritten Cuban] Constitution made the furtherance of Marxism-Leninism the purpose of education, and through its Article 38 made the latter a function of the state." What good is universal literacy if one can be arrested for possession of an Orwell book? What good is "free" education if honest academic inquiry is forbidden?

In fairness to fourth-estaters, it wasn't just journalists that cribbed from the party script. The ridiculous Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) was the only American politician to debase himself by issuing a Granma-worthy press release actually praising Castro. This week's events prove, Serrano wrote, "that Castro sees clearly the long-term interests of the Cuban people," including the selfless decision to hand power to his brother, thus saving the Cuban people from the indignity of electoral choice. "I would like to congratulate both Fidel Castro and the Cuban people for this smooth transition of power," continued, "Few leaders, having been on the front lines of history so long, would be able to voluntarily step aside in favor of a new, younger generation." The absurdities of that sentence are too many to catalog, though note that the "younger generation" is represented by Fidel's septuagenarian brother Raul.

Writing in The New Statesman, British parliamentarian John McDonnell, the Right Honorable Gentleman from 1968, offers high praise for Cuban communism and demonstrates a level of credulity not seen since John Reed vacationed in Moscow. But don't mention Moscow, because, as McDonnell bizarrely writes, "unlike Stalin's Russia there have never been any Cuban gulags." What's not to like, he asks, about a country that provides "free prescriptions, free care for the elderly, free university education."

So again, the health and education canard returns. What all of these pols and pundits lazily presume is that if the state of Cuban health care and education have markedly improved on Castro's watch, surely the situation was dire during the final years of the Batista dictatorship.

Well, not exactly. In 1959 Cuba had 128.6 doctors and dentists per 100,000 inhabitants, placing it 22nd globally—that is, ahead of France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. In infant mortality tables, Cuba ranked one of the best in the world, with 5.8 deaths per 100,000 babies, compared to 9.5 per 100,000 in the United States. In 1958 Cuba's adult literacy rate was 80 percent, higher than that of its colonial grandfather in Spain, and the country possessed one of the most highly-regarded university systems in the Western hemisphere.

Cuba improved, as have most countries, on some of these indices in the years since the revolution. As reason Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin points out, "countries like Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil have posted equal gains in literacy during the same time period without resorting to totalitarian governments." (For more reason coverage over the years on Cuba and Castro, go here.)

This is precisely the point: Punctual trains and spiffy highway networks hardly mitigate the horror of dictatorship. Such "advances," like the illusory gains of the Cuban Revolution, are best achieved through policies that promote economic and political freedom. You would think, almost 20 yeas after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that journalists would understand that.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Castro's Reading List

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:12:00 EST

As Fidel Castro turns power over to his younger brother Raul (the Ozzie Canseco of totalitarianism), questions abound: Did Castro resign to have more time with his families? So he could travel outside his open-air island prison a bit more easily? So he could have more time to catch up on his reading?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Ivan Osorio presents this picture and asks: "For nearly all of the Castro era, analyzing Cuban politics has involved Kremlinology-style reading of tea leaves. So I wonder what seasoned Cuba watchers will make of this photo?"

If his Greenspan jones keeps going, who knows, maybe next on his nightstand is Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal?

More here.

reason on Castro and Cuba here.

Castro Resigns as President for Life of Cuba; Wants to Spend More Time with Families

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:31:00 EST

From the AP:

An ailing, 81-year-old Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when parliament meets Sunday.
The end of Castro's rule - the longest in the world for a head of government - frees his 76-year-old brother Raul to implement reforms he has hinted at since taking over as acting president when Fidel Castro fell ill in July 2006. President Bush said he hopes the resignation signals the beginning of a democratic transition.
"My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath," Castro wrote in a letter published Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma. But, he wrote, "it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer."

More here.

Earlier this year, Castro had said that there would be no change in the Cuba-U.S. relationship until that man in the White House had vamoosed. And George W. Bush, along with most Dems and Reps, haven't shown much interest in changing the ongoing, and idiotic, U.S. embargo of Cuba. (Two pols who dare speak logic on this issue are Reps. Jeff Flake and Charles Rangel).

U.S. policy toward Cuba has been generally misguided for well over a century. Here's hoping the Congress and the president will do something right to accelerate a shift to freedom there. And here's hoping that Cuba becomes a better place as Castro puts one foot into the grave. I don't believe in hell, but I sort of hope there is a place like it for a guy like Castro.

reason on Castro/Cuba here.

More Fun with Price Controls

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:25:00 EST

It was with astonishment that The Economist surveyed Hugo Chávez's first five years in office: "In the five years to 2003, Mr Chávez's performance was disastrous. The proportion of households below the poverty line increased by more than 11 percentage points...It was the first time since data were collected that poverty rose even as the oil price did too."

But in the past few years, the Venezuelan economy has undergone significant growth, with an influx of oil money resulting in 18 percent growth in 2004 and 10 percent in 2005 (though the economic expansion has tapered off in recent months). Back in 2006, Latin American studies Professor Michael Shifter, who is somewhat sympathetic to the Chavism, said that while the economy has improved, and "record oil profits...are funding social spending, [Chavez's] initiatives have yielded only very modest gains." In a previous piece on the caudillo of Caracas, I quoted former chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly Francisco Rodriguez on the much-heralded decrease in poverty: "It's normal for poverty to decline during economic expansions and that the decline under Chávez is not unprecedented—indeed, it is smaller than the decline observed during similar periods in the past."

And despite oil hovering at around $100 a barrel, the economic situation seems to be getting worse. This is what one must endure if one wants to buy "subsidized food" in the city of San Antonio de Tachir:

The New York Times' excellent Latin America correspondent Simon Romero has a must-read (well, for those interested in such things) on Chavez's eroding popularity. A sample:

While Mr. Chávez remains Venezuela's most powerful political figure, his once unquestionable authority is showing signs of erosion. Unthinkable a few months ago, graffiti began appearing here in the capital in January reading, "Diosdado Presidente," a show of support for a possible presidential bid by Diosdado Cabello, a Chávez supporter and governor of the populous Miranda State.
Outbreaks of dengue fever and Chagas disease have alarmed families living in the heart of this city. Fears of a devaluation of the new currency, called the "strong bolívar," are fueling capital flight. While the economy may grow 6 percent this year, lifted by high oil prices, production in oil fields controlled by the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, has declined. Inflation soared by 3 percent in January, its highest monthly level in a decade.

Add to this Exxon's court-approved freezing of $12 billion in PdVSA (Venezuela's state oil company) assets and widespread food shortages (those pesky price controls again!) and it looks like Chavez's Bolivarian revolution is, at long last, in decline.

Aguirre: The Wrath of Allah

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:39:00 EST

Remember that story about people who run around in costumes claiming to be superheroes? I have another follow-up:

Fernando Aguirre, locally known as Osama Bin Laden, patrols a slum in Bogota. Aguirre, who claims to be the son of al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, patrols the most dangerous slums of Bogota and lives from the contributions received from those seeking his protection. Aguirre informs police on petty crimes being committed and is allowed by authorities to brandish his fake rifle.

The costumed crusader in action:

Shoot Down Over Cuba

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

In June 2000, this magazine published a cover story on Hollywood's "missing movies." These were not, alas, films that had been neglected by inattentive archivists or spurned by Ted Turner's guardians of classic film. The target of this search-and-rescue operation, wrote critic Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, were those tales of injustice, those triumphs of the spirit that Hollywood had little interest in producing. Long under the spell of radical writers such as Dalton Trumbo and Clifford Odets, Hollywood was "a town that welcomed Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista junta but never took up the cause of a single Soviet or Eastern European dissident."

Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the entertainment industry is still sensitive to charges of Cold War jingoism, though the spread of hipster Buddhism has necessitated the occasional dramatization of China's occupation of Tibet. A spate of recent films—none of them produced in Hollywood—is also providing a more nuanced picture of the Cold War, one that eschews simple moral equivalence in favor of the dystopian reality of the Eastern Bloc.

This past year saw the release of The Singing Revolution, a riveting documentary detailing the little-known story of Estonia's non-violent resistance to Soviet occupation; the German political drama The Lives of Others, a deeply affecting portrait of the Zamyatinian nightmare that was East Germany; and Katyn, a dramatic recapitulation of the mass murder of 20,000 Polish officers shortly after the country's partition under conditions set by the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. (Eight years ago, Billingsley wondered presciently why the story of the Katyn massacre never made it to the big screen.)

Even Hollywood's strange love affair with the Cuban revolution, recently evidenced by Oliver Stone's Comandante and Walter Salles' saccharine salute to Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries, is at long last showing signs of abating. A few years ago, New York painter/director Julian Schnabel memorably upbraided Castro in his film Before Night Falls, a portrait of the gay writer Reinaldo Arenas, imprisoned by the communist government for both his aberrant politics and sexuality.

Now, from first-time director Cristina Khuly, comes Shoot Down, a brilliantly rendered and scrupulously even-handed documentary revisiting the 1996 Cuban downing of two civilian planes over international waters, both piloted by Miami-based exiles from the group Brothers to the Rescue. Khuly, a 37-year-old sculptor, is the niece of shoot-down victim Armando Alejandre Jr.

An event soon overshadowed by the saga of Elian Gonzales, the attack on the unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes is now largely forgotten outside Miami. And despite the smokescreen of misinformation presented by Castro and his foreign enablers, the facts of the story are rather straightforward and grimly characteristic of a totalitarian regime.

As three Brothers to the Rescue planes approached Cuban territory, the lead plane, piloted by the group's founder Jose Basulto, briefly breached Cuban airspace. While the planes were searching for refugees in the water, officials in Havana, tipped off by a mole in the Brothers leadership, scrambled Soviet-made MiG fighter planes to knock the planes out of the sky. Basulto's plane managed to escape. When the other two were vaporized by Cuban missiles, both were flying over international waters.

The mole, former Cuban Air Force MiG pilot Juan Pablo Roque, is a chilling reminder of the Stasi-like tactics of the Cuban secret police. Roque infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue by insinuating himself into the exile community—going so far as to write a book for the Cuban American National Foundation detailing his escape from the island—and marrying a local woman as cover. The day before the deadly flight, Roque declined an invitation to participate in the mission and informed his wife that he would be away on business. A day later, he reappeared on Cuban state television to denounce the Brothers as "terrorists" of the empire.

It is perhaps unintentional, but Shoot Down reasserts the controversy and complexity of the Clinton years, often obscured in hindsight by the salaciousness of the Lewinsky scandal and the failures of the Bush presidency. From our vantage point, it's easy to forget that Clinton sanctioned the liberal use of heavily militarized federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and during the seizure of Elian Gonzales from a Florida residence. He also reversed a 30-year old American policy treating those fleeing Cuba as political refugees.

It was this change, we learn, that precipitated Brothers to the Rescue's shift from search-and-rescue operations in the Florida Straits to direct confrontation with the Castro regime. (Prior to the shoot down, Brothers dropped pro-democracy leaflets from within Cuban airspace, to be carried by the wind to shore.) Under pressure from Castro, the Clinton administration revised the 1966 Cuban Adjustment act, reclassifying those fleeing Cuba from political refugees to illegal immigrants worthy of repatriation—unless they managed to reach American shores. This was the birth of the "wet foot-dry foot" policy, under which individuals would be returned to Cuba if picked up at sea. This was also the death of Brothers to the Rescue's previously cordial relationship with U.S. authorities.

The Clinton administration's response to the shoot-down crisis, hotly argued by the documentary's on-screen surrogates, is found by all to be deficient. That leaves viewer wondering what, short of sending F-16s on sorties over Havana, the appropriate response to such hostile acts should have been. It is clear, though, that, as Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) argues in the film, had such an event been perpetrated by the apartheid government of South Africa or Pinochet's Chile, the level of public outrage surely would have been greater.

But arguments like those of Diaz-Balart aren't offered in isolation. Shoot Down strives not to be seen as a "Miami exile" film, leading Khuly to explore—and subtly reject—the Castroite perspective. The strenuous attempt at balance is, at times, irksome. One wonders if the inclusion of Castro hagiographer Saul Landau, who signed a recent editorial on the Cuban revolution with the exclamation "Viva Fidel!," adds anything to the story, other than to act as another layer of insulation against charges of bias.

But this is a minor quibble. Unctuous fellow-travelers such as Landau (who sheepishly confesses to the camera that Cuba's judicial system is "less than perfect") will convince no one that destroying civilian planes was necessary for the revolution's survival.

Almost a decade ago in reason, Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley rightly bemoaned the film industry's lack of interest in arguably the 20th century's greatest tragedy: the stubborn adherence of politicians, artists, and intellectuals to the dogma of Marxism-Leninism. The recent crop of films promises, however belatedly, to begin the process of correction.

Currently in limited release, Shoot Down by itself will not redraw the image of Castro-as-beneficent-leader—Michael Moore's paean to Cuban health care was just nominated for an Oscar, after all. But every little bit helps.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Discuss this story at reason's Hit & Run blog.

Coke Is It for Hugo Chavez

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:14:00 EST

Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez reveals the secret of some of his strength: He chews coca, the source of cocaine, "every day in the morning." He also named his connection--Bolvian prez Evo Morales (the two are pictured here).

From the Miami Herald:

''I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am,'' he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience.
Chávez, who does not drink alcohol, added that just as Fidel Castro ''sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,'' Bolivian President Evo Morales "sends me coca paste . . . I recommend it to you.''
It was not clear what Chávez meant. Indigenous Bolivians and Peruvians can legally chew coca leaves as a mild stimulant and to kill hunger. But coca paste is a semi-refined product -- between leaves and cocaine -- considered highly addictive and often smoked....
Morales is the longtime head of a Bolivian coca-growers' union and is known to chew coca in public, even during cabinet meetings, since he took office. Bolivia limits the coca acreage in an effort to control supplies of coca leaf that wind up being refined into cocaine....
This is not the first time that the president praised the properties of coca leaves. During a visit to a communal kitchen in western Caracas in early 2006, with Uruguayan President Tabaré Vásquez, Chávez suggested using the kitchen's ovens to bake bread made from a special coca-based flour.
''We could try that here, as part of that effort to de-Satanize a product that our indigenous people have been producing for centuries,'' he said.

I'm with Chavez on "de-Satanizing" coca. But when you agree with the guy on anything, even the time of day, it's time to take a hit of something.

Whole story here.

reason on Chavez here. On Morales here.

The Return of Chavismo

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:01:00 EST

After a post-referendum-defeat period of calm, Hugo Chavez is back on the balcony, threatening enemies of Venezuela's Potemkin democracy. (But Mr. Moynihan, you say, Venezuela is a democracy, Chavez is Venezuela's elected leader, and he graciously conceded when smacked down by voters!). AP reports that El Jefe is threatening to nationalize counterrevolutionary farms:

President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to take over farms or milk plants if owners refuse to sell their milk for domestic consumption and instead seek higher profits abroad or from cheese-makers. With the country recently facing milk shortages, Chavez said "it's treason" if farmers deny milk to Venezuelans while selling it across the border in Colombia or for gourmet cheeses. "In that case the farm must be expropriated," Chavez said, adding that the government could also take over milk plants and properties of beef producers.

Incidentally, these ungrateful farmers seek "higher profits" abroad because there are no profits to be had at home, thanks to the Bolivarian system of price controls that, despite impressive economic growth fueled by high oil prices, has left supermarket shelves bare. Chavez also threatened to nationalize those banks "neglecting laws requiring them to set aside nearly a third of all loans for agriculture, mortgages and small businesses at favorable rates":

President Hugo Chavez threatened on Saturday to take control of banks that fail to meet state-imposed loaning requirements designed to benefit Venezuela's farmers.
[...]
Chavez has threatened banks before. He raised the possibility last year of nationalizing commercial banks amid demands they use some of their profits to fund social programs for the poor.
He has not followed through on most of those threats, although Venezuela's central bank, which is controlled by his allies, ordered private banks in 2006 to double bank deposit reserves from 15 to 30 percent in attempt to head off inflation. The Venezuelan leader's warnings come amid fluctuating food shortages and rising inflation, which reached 22.5 percent in 2007 - the highest official rate in Latin America.

Full story.

My review of a recent Chavez biography here.

Say It Aint So, Joe

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:54:00 EST

The D.C. Examiner waxes indignant at Joe Kennedy's latest series of radio and TV commercials, in which he ~~shills for a thug dictator~~ offers heating assistance to America's poor, courtesy of "our friends in Venezuela."

He never mentions Chavez, nor does he explain why Venezuela, with a 2007 per capita gross domestic product of just $6,900 (less than Croatia or Belarus) would send highly discounted oil to a country with a per capita GDP of $43,500.
This is the same Chavez who expropriated U.S.-owned oil firms, then gave sweetheart deals to Chinese and Russian energy companies. He has repealed basic freedoms of press and speech, and was just barely prevented recently from becoming president for life.

The Examiner editorial also ponders why the born-into-wealth Kennedy takes a $400,000 annual salary to head up a non-profit whose alleged purpose is to provide heating fuel to the poor and elderly. I'd guess that $400K would heat quite a few homes, wouldn't it?

Scenes from the Revolution

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:31:00 EST

From Reuters, the tale of a stammering representative of the bolibourgeoise who treated reporters to a stinging denunciation of capitalism...while wearing a $180 Louis Vuitton tie and $500 Gucci shoes:

A video of a Gucci- and Louis Vuitton-clad politician attacking capitalism then struggling to explain how his luxurious clothes square with his socialist beliefs has become an instant YouTube hit in Venezuela.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Pedro Carreno was momentarily at a loss for words when a journalist interrupted his speech and asked if it was not contradictory to criticize capitalism while wearing Gucci shoes and a tie made by Parisian luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton.
"I don't, uh ... I ... of course," stammered Carreno on Tuesday before regaining his composure. "It's not contradictory because I would like Venezuela to produce all this so I could buy stuff produced here instead of 95 percent of what we consume being imported." The video clip (www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsdXkY4UlE) had been viewed more than 15,000 times on Thursday, a day after it was posted on the YouTube Web site.

The AP translates an editorial from opposition paper Tau Caul, edited by the anti-Chavez leftist Teodoro Petkoff:

Poking fun at Carreno in an editorial published in the Tal Cual daily on Friday, comedian Laureano Marquez wrote a fictional response from the government official.
"Do you think that I, as a revolutionary, am not disgusted by having this imperialist trash around my neck? Of course, but I don't have any other option while locally made ties are not produced," Marquez wrote.

Full story.

22 Floors of Freedom

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:09:00 EST

An interesting story from São Paulo, Brazil, where hundreds of homeless families took over an abandoned building and made something out of it:

The Prestes Maia building in downtown São Paulo, abandoned for 12 years, had become a haven for drugs and prostitution. Then, in 2002, more than 400 homeless families, in cooperation with a local group called the Downtown Homeless Movement, occupied the 22-story building. Conditions were crowded and difficult--the building lacks electricity and running water--but residents established a free library, cinema, and educational and social activities....

The Downtown Homeless Movement, which has reclaimed more than 30 buildings in São Paulo, is just one of many groups reclaiming abandoned buildings across Brazil. At Prestes Maia, residents have fought eviction with protests, road blockades, and legal battles. After years of struggle, they have won either new housing or assistance from the government.

I'd rather they won the building itself. But after a two-decade absence, the original owners apparently wanted it back. I'm sure there's more to this story than I now know, but based on what I've read so far, I'd say cases like this are why adverse possession laws are a good idea, despite their occasional abuses.

Elsewhere in Reason: Robert Nelson reviews a book about squatters, in Brazil and in other countries.

Elsewhere not in Reason: Photos from Prestes Maia.

Submitted for Your Perusal

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:14:00 EST

When the Peru Free Trade Agreement passed the Senate yesterday, John Kyl (R-Ariz.) voted against it. Kyl ordinarily supports trade treaties, so John Miller of National Review asked him to explain his vote.

Kyl replied, as you might expect, that he disliked the labor and environmental rules that came bundled with the agreement's tariff reductions. But then he added another complaint: that when it comes to pharmaceutical patents, the pact isn't protectionist enough.

I am concerned about the labor and environment provisions, but I am simply puzzled by the intellectual property changes. I am not sure what my colleagues hoped to gain by weakening standard protections for U.S. intellectual property through this trade agreement. I see no reason why U.S. legislators would want to weaken the ordinary protections that are normally accorded to pharmaceutical intellectual property in our bilateral trade agreements....

And why should we expect that those who want to weaken protections for U.S.-owned intellectual property will stop at pharmaceuticals? Are computers, movies, music, and other products that involve valuable U.S. intellectual property next? U.S. intellectual property is one of our most valuable exports; it is not in the national interest of the United States to unilaterally weaken protections for it.

For Kyl, apparently, "free trade" means getting the rest of the world to adopt the same intellectual property rules as the United States, as though there were some pure, Platonic patent terms that every nation should obviously embrace. (*) I prefer the perspective laid out a few years back by Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, whose pro-trade credentials are at least as impressive as Kyl's:

The process of trade liberalisation is becoming a sham, the ultimate objective being the capture, reshaping and distortion of the WTO in the image of American lobbying interests.

The protection of intellectual property provides a good example of US tactics. Washington has used both inducements and punishments to secure its interests. During negotiations over the North America Free Trade Agreement, Mexico was told that the price of a deal was acceptance of intellectual property protection provisions.

It was a price Mexico was prepared to pay. But the US has also demanded that other countries accept similar provisions or face retaliatory tariffs. Subsequently, during the Uruguay round of trade liberalisation, the US was able to insert the trade-related intellectual property regime (TRIPs) into the WTO, even though no intellectual case had ever been made that TRIPs, which is about royalty collection and not trade, should be included.

I'm skeptical towards bilateral trade agreements in general. But if the Peru pact is a step back from the effort to impose American intellectual property laws everywhere, that's something to cheer.

Elsewhere in Reason: I look at the recent history of trade regulations.

Elsewhere not in Reason: Cato's Ian Vasquez is bullish on Peru -- and is happy to see the agreement "give permanence" to the country's trade policies.

* Actually, he might not want them to adopt the "same" rules. Previous trade agreements have often imposed even stricter regulations.

Blocking Bolivarian Boulevard

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:23:00 EST

The Venezuelan revolution might have to get by without a dictator-for-life:

In a fiercely contested referendum yesterday, voters rejected reforms that would have scrapped term limits on Mr Chavez's rule, given him control over foreign currency reserves and boosted powers to take over private property.

Mr Chavez conceded just after election officials said early yesterday that the "no" camp had about 51 per cent of the vote and that the President scored only about 49 per cent support.

Although he remains powerful and popular, it was the biggest electoral blow to the anti-US leader since he swept to power in 1998.

The Cold War's Return

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:33:00 EST

On December 2 voters in Russia and Venezuela will go to the polls, choosing to either accelerate the Sovietization and Sandinistaization of their respective societies or—an eventuality that seems less likely—to curtail the centralization of power in the hands of increasingly villainous chief executives. In Russia, parliamentary elections will doubtless further demonstrate the plenary power of Vladimir Putin, who is constitutionally forbidden from seeking a third term in office though is being advised, Kremlin sources recently told Reuters, to exploit a legal loophole that would allow him to run for another four-year term. In Venezuela, voters will decide on 69 separate changes to the country’s “Bolivarian” constitution—previously rewritten by President Hugo Chavez in 1999—including the right of the president to be re-elected indefinitely and a state-mandated six-hour workday. The apparent popularity of Chavez’s constitutional tinkering has prompted Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuela’s closest South American ally, to push a similar preliminary bill through parliament that will unburden the executive from constitutional limits on re-election.

Though they both reportedly enjoy widespread popularity, neither Chavez nor Putin are taking any chances (and independent polling data from both countries suggest that such unease might be justified). In the run-up to the election in Russia, Mr. Putin has launched a fresh wave of crackdowns on opposition leaders and media outlets. Last weekend police descended upon protesters in St. Petersburg, arresting 200 opposition politicians and activists, including Boris Nemtsov, leader of Union of Rightist Forces, and Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who heads the opposition coalition The Other Russia, as they marched, with barely concealed symbolism, toward the Winter Palace. For his participation in the “illegal” demonstration, Kasparov was sentenced to five days in jail.

Attacks on the independent press are also increasingly common, with murdered Kremlin critics Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya only the most prominent examples. Last week the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta—which is, says the Washington Post’s Moscow correspondent, “one of the last outposts of critical journalism in Russia”—was forced to suspend publication of a regional edition after its offices were raided and authorities declared the paper in violation of copyright laws for supposedly possessing “pirated software.” According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, two of the paper’s other outposts were also raided in 2007, with the authorities again using the possession of counterfeit software as a pretext.

Such public assaults on political opponents could account for the findings of a recent VTsIOM poll demonstrating a startling drop in support for Putin’s party: 57 percent said they will cast their ballot for United Russia, a 10 percent drop from the company’s previous survey. But in an increasingly Sovietized Russia, where the government controls a disconcerting number of media outlets (the last independent television station was commandeered by the government in 2002), an electoral rejection of Putin is still extremely unlikely. According to the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times, the lead-up to this election has “seen a powerful media campaign boosting Putin and his subordinate United Russia party…Putin has commanded blanket news coverage."

But most distressing are reports that United Russia party officials recently “called in thousands of staff on their day off in an attempt to engineer a massive and inflated victory for President Vladimir Putin,” according to a story in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. If they choose not to heed the bullying “recommendations” of party heavies, state employees “risk losing their jobs, their accommodation or bonuses”; university students are being threatened with failing grades and expulsion. (Hugo Chavez has employed a similar system of intimidation, using the “Tascon List,” which identified 2 million-plus citizens who voted to recall the president, to push people out of state jobs and refuse state benefits and services to political enemies.)

But Putin’s increasingly long reach isn’t limited to control of the news media and public sector workers; his influence, like that of his Soviet forbearers, naturally extends to classroom curricula. A Russian text book judged insufficiently obsequious to the regime was recalled on orders from the Kremlin, to be replaced by a new text featuring a gushing paean to Putin ( "We see that practically every significant deed is connected with the name and activity of President V.V. Putin"), a Pravda-like section on the crimes of America, and a mealy-mouthed apologia for Comrade Stalin ("The most successful leader of the U.S.S.R.").

Besides nourishing an expanding personality cult of his own, Putin has actively worked to rehabilitate the Soviet past, declaring in 2005 that “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Such Sovietophilia was detectable from the very beginning of his reign, when the newly-installed President presided over the reinstatement of a plaque at the KGB’s notorious Lubyanka headquarters celebrating former Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov, architect of the brutal repression of the “Prague Spring,” as an “outstanding political figure.” Earlier this month, Putin, with a troupe of saturnine, medal-bedecked KGB men in tow, attended a champagne reception to posthumously award the highest state honor to George Koval, an American who passed atom bomb secrets to Stalin. Considering this ongoing reassessment of Soviet history and historiography, it’s unexceptional that, according to a report from Radio Free Europe, a recent study of Russians found that “45 percent of respondents said they believed Stalin had played a largely positive role in Russia's history.” In fact, Stalin was deemed “Russia's second-most successful leader since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution”—losing out only to Mr. Putin.

In Venezuela, Putin’s ally Hugo Chavez seems to be mimicking not the failed Soviet project, but the failed revolution of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas—though this time with the benefit of vast oil wealth. While the Venezuelan government allows the publication of opposition newspapers—in Nicaragua, this was a role filled by Jamie Chamorro and La Prensa, a newspaper that existed throughout the dictatorship but was subject to frequent harassment, censorship and closure by the junta—the press is cowed by threats of government action and the use of libel writs brought before friendly, Chavista judges.

In the case of opposition television channel RCTV, the Chavez government was more explicit, simply refusing to renew the station’s license (required to operate on the public band, though it can still reach a much audience via cable and the Internet), without offering the accused an opportunity to defend itself against charges of sedition. When RCTV was ejected from the airwaves, its slot was taken over by yet another government-run propaganda channel in the mold of ViVe, a “public service” network that devoted significant airtime in the election run-up mocking opposition protestors and admonishing viewers to vote ‘Si!’ to the constitutional changes (ViVe can be watched live here; archived documentaries on the philosophy of Mao and Marx archived here; RCTV on government station VTV’s coverage of recent student protests here).

Parallels to the Sandinista regime, unfortunately for the people of Venezuela, don’t stop there. In one less-remarked upon provision, the new constitution would attempt to solidify Chavez’s base by lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 years-old, a tactic the Nicaraguan government successfully employed during its rigged 1984 election (Cuba too has a voting age of 16, though no elections to speak of). Chavez has also echoed the revolutionary rhetoric of Daniel Ortega, smearing any and all opponents as a spies and fifth-columnists; agents of the “Empire” and enemies of the people. So when former Minister of Defense and Chavez confidant Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel publically broke with the government, saying that the proposed changes to the constitution amounted to a soft coup d’état, his former boss unleashed his full fury, threatening those who run afoul of the revolution: "He who says he supports Chavez but votes 'no' is a traitor, a true traitor. He's against me, against the revolution and against the people." Such rhetorical thuggery is, alas, the least of the oppositions concerns; protests and gatherings are often met by armed members of local “Bolivarian Circles,” state sanction gangs charged with protecting the revolution and modeled on Cuba’s “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution” and Ortega’s “Turbas Divinas,” or “divine mobs.”

Despite their obvious contempt for democratic institutions, both leaders still command a disturbing, though hardly overwhelming, level of Western support; defenders who will doubtless welcome a Chavez or Putin electoral victory and retrenchment. In the American Conservative, British writer John Laughland lauds Putin’s economic record and remarks that his ideology isn’t much different from your average European social democrat (This was, alas, meant as a compliment). A columnist for the Huffington Post described, somewhat clumsily, Chavez’s power grab as an attempt “democratize political power to the grassroots of the majority more thoroughly than anything we have seen in this hemisphere... ever.” Another Huffington Post columnist lamented that Chavez’s revisions to the constitution are “falsely portrayed by many in the U.S. media as anti-democratic.”

But the media have this one right. Both Chavez and Putin are attempting to reset the clock on the Cold War, and neither of them is terribly interested in promoting democratic institutions or ensuring a fair, transparent electoral process. And if recent history is any judge, come Sunday morning both Russia and Venezuela might very well be further down the path to the one party state.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.