Week Thirteen: Our Brand is Crisis

After watching the documentary Our Brand is Crisis, it becomes more and more obvious how Americans constantly interfere with economics and politics in South America. What is even more clear is how this interference is usually beneficial for the United States, but not so advantageous for the Latin Americans that are being “helped.” It is obvious in the film that the candidate Carville is helping is extremely under qualified, but his team still does whatever they can to get him elected. They are elated when he does end up winning, knowing that they have tricked the country into electing a man who does not deserve this job title. This kind of corruption can be seen in the neoliberalist boom that is described in John Chasteen’s book Born in Blood & Fire. The United States is willing to come to the so called aid of Latin America when they know that it will benefit themselves. However, Chasteen outlines many crises happening in these countries that Americans will not lift a finger to help, including extreme poverty and the deforestation of the rain forest.

            America encouraged the ideas of the neoliberalists and their free market economy. This has led to even more widespread poverty, among other serious problems, in Latin America, according to the article, The Slow Death of the Washington Consensus on Latin America” by James Cypher. It seems obvious that these ideas were not revolutionary and would not work just as they had failed in the early twentieth century. As these new implementations are failing in South and Central America, policies like the Washington Consensus, according to Cypher, were telling Americans of the success of all the implementations. This is later seen to be untrue, however it must have convinced many at the time that these were progressive steps that were being taken. One can also see how this benefited the United States with a stock market increase after implementing free trade in Latin America.

            Cypher and Chasteen both point out the influence that these types of economies have on the environment, with heavy emphasis put on mining, agriculture, and fishing, among other things. This is not easily reversed and takes massive amounts of money to correct that these countries cannot afford to spare. The election teams that help get these under qualified people into office are partly to blame for financial crises like the ones in Latin America that take years and years to dig out of. Americans must realize what kind of impact that they are having on so many facets of life, politics, economy, and culture when they intrude into Latin America in any way. At least, as Cypher says, the neoliberalism trend is dying out, hopefully making way for a recovery of the South and Central American economies and ways of life.

Week Twelve: La virgen de los sicarios

The film, La virgen de los sicarios, depicts the aggression and brutality in Medellin, Colombia during the period known as la violencia. Drug smuggling and the gangs that controlled it constantly fought over territory and control of the drug trade. These men and sometimes young boys would find any excuse to engage in open shootouts in the streets. These became so commonplace that those who were frightened by the shootings were ridiculed. As Forrest Hylton points out in his article, “Evil Hour in Colombia,” the wars in the streets of Colombia were not only fueled by the drug trade but also by politics. As this article points out, la violencia did not start with shootings of people because they played their music too loudly, as shown in the film. People had legitimate reasons for panicking after the collapse of the coffee industry and wealthy landowners trying to claim mass amounts of properties.

            Not all of the violence has meaning or motive, however. Ricardo Vargas picks up on the trend of private violence in his essay, “State, Espirit Mafioso, and Armed Conflict in Colombia.” Although privately motivated killings, like those in La virgen de los sicarios, were a problem during this time, mobs were a huge factor during la violencia. Basically, individuals along with mobs infiltrate weak governments and positions of power in order to have control over the drug trade and politics in whatever part of the country they were in. The violence escalated beyond control in Medellin, which seemed to be the center of this war. This violence in metropolitan areas, along with a growing dependence on agriculture and large government tracts of land becoming available, caused a migration for many Columbians to the countryside.

            Much of what Hylton describes in his article highlights the fact that la violencia directly involved the lives of the common people living in Medellin. However, the most of the cold-blooded murders were controlled by “the people upstairs,” basically the wealthy people who have taken over the weak governmental positions. These people almost essentially have turned the people of Medellin into pawns in their game of control. The War of a Thousand Days also seems to have led the way for the brutal behavior, when mass casualties became very commonplace. After this war was over the people were still conditioned and almost indifferent to the murders that happened on a daily basis. This seems to just add fuel to the fire when the police and society were doing almost nothing to combat the shootings that were happening right in front of them. As one can see, la violencia was not sparked or supported by one certain group, cause, or circumstance. It seems to be a perfect storm of political unrest, economic strife, and unwillingness to fix the situation after it had begun that made this time period so brutal for the citizens of Colombia.

Week Eleven: Cocaine Cowboys

Watching the documentary Cocaine Cowboys gives the viewer a somewhat skewed view of the “war on drugs” that America started fighting in the 1970s and 1980 and are still apparently fighting today. The United States government makes it appear more than necessary to get all illegal drugs out of this country and to stop the threat of their importation by taking them down at the source. The film portrays this view as completely reasonable, what with all of the mafia-like wars and shootouts constantly happening in Miami in the late 70s and early 80s. This doesn’t seem to be quite the case, however, for the rest of the country, but the United States has still spent billions of dollars since this cocaine boom on eliminating the drug from this country. This all can be seen as a façade if one reads the “Documentation of Official US Knowledge of Drug Trafficking and the Contras.” The government apparently had specific knowledge of drug runs being made right under their noses, and did nothing about it. Perhaps the US wasn’t interested in stopping Americans from making money, but shutting down the lucrative cocaine crops of other countries.

            The United States must know how its interference and policies have affected the economies of Latin American countries that produce high amounts of cocaine, thus stimulating the economies of these countries. The implementation of countless anti-drug programs in the United States, along with working with the governments of the cocaine-producing countries has cost the United States billions without affecting the drug-production in these countries almost at all, according to Coletta Younger’s article “Collateral Damage: The US ‘War on Drugs’ and its Impact on Democracy in the Andes.” The American government cannot figure out a productive way to stop drug production in Latin America, or how to keep these drugs out of American hands. Also, as Younger points out, the people in Latin America need jobs growing the plant that cocaine is made from. These are poor people who have a ready made job that suits them and the land around them, who is America to go in and tell these countries to shut down this production that is obviously stimulating their economy.

            Younger’s article also points out the threat to human rights that the drug war produces. The United States trains Latin American military people on how to combat drugs, stating that they have a special course that focuses on human rights. The soldiers however, do not always follow this course correctly. It seems that the military feel the need to go after anyone involved in drugs, no matter what the cost at the time, making court hearings and persecutions very hard because of the lack of discipline shown by the people in charge of these drug busts. All in all it seems that the American government is very hypocritical concerning its “War on Drugs” and its methods behind eliminating drugs in America. Its concern at home is affecting the lives of so many people in Latin America.

Week Ten: Bus 174

After seeing the documentary Bus 174 it is obvious how countries in Latin America are influenced by the change in culture that is happening all over the world in a negative way. People living in America would most likely find it hard to imagine that taking some public form of transportation would be a daily risk to their lives. Although the killing depicted in the movie was not the day to day norm, those riding the bus knew that robberies were not infrequent for that area. Alberto Salcedo Ramos’s article “The Drive-by Victim” gives a personal testimony to the immediate danger to one’s life that taking a taxi in a Latin American country can impose. Ramos admits to knowing the risk that he was taking when he hailed the cab, which is almost an unthinkable opinion in the United States, even in larger cities like New York City. Modern transportation like the subway or busses, that are usually viewed as new, productive, and environmentally friendly choices, are dangerous and vulnerable in Latin America.

            Alma Guillermoprieto’s article “The Heart that Bleeds: Mexico City” focuses on the adverse affect that modernization has had on Mexico City and other cities in Latin America. Much of what is popular in America has been imported to Mexico and other countries, like fast food and mass transit. It seems however, that these are the only forms of modernization that these countries receive; almost all of these can be seen to adversely affect the communities or not be as successful as they are in America or Europe. Why is it that bus robberies are somewhat common in Latin America, but big news in America or Europe. One of the women interviewed in the documentary was not impressed in the beginning when Sandro hijacked the bus that she was taking to work, actually calling into work saying that her bus was being robbed, and that she may be a little bit late.

            This desensitization to violence is shocking to those who cannot fathom being in a holdup in the first place. Guillermoprieto points out that this is causing a breakdown of the morals and culture of Mexican, as they are influenced more and more by the unsuccessful facets of the modernization in their country and less and less by the beneficial changes that Americans experience daily. Ramos obviously came out of his ordeal much luckier than the woman that was killed in the Bus 174 incident. Ramos’s attitude however, is much like those on the bus, thankful that the robbers left them alive and unharmed, thinking how nice they must be to treat them so well, rather than thinking that a situation like this should never be common in the first place. It is hard to see where one can start to fix this problem, however it is obviously up to the government to more adequately train a police force in order to stop the violence.