My latest for the LA Times, prompted by Fujimori’s early release from prison in Peru.
Latin America’s democracies don’t get enough credit for surviving so many challenges.
But one challenge they’re *not* controlling could do them in:
The relentless growth of organized crime.
With 72% of votes counted in Guatemala, it’s official: Bernardo Arévalo and Sandra Torres are headed to the run-off.
This is historic.
Arévalo is the son of the founding president of modern Guatemalan democracy, Juan José Arévalo, whose successor was overthrown in a 1954 coup.
Imagine watching a major TV station and suddenly armed gang members are taking the anchors hostage live on air.
This is the terrifying situation of Ecuador, which unfortunately barely makes it onto the radar of the EU or US.
Big turning point.
Tonight, many people watching Colombia's elections are asking "who is Rodolfo Hernández?"
In Feb., I spent a couple hours talking w/ Hernández about what he sees as Colombia's biggest problems, how he would govern, & the foreign leaders he looks up to.
Here's what I learned 🧵
I think Peru is about to deliver an unwelcome wake-up call to the Americas.
It's not only authoritarian socialism, like Venezuela's, that drives mass migration, but also mafia capitalism, like Peru's.
Lawmakers chip away at regulatory bodies to the point markets no longer work.
Trump bashed Bukele at the RNC last night, accusing him of lowering El Salvador’s crime rate by sending criminals to the U.S.
Meanwhile Bukele’s entire strategy for avoiding an economic fiasco requires Trump to get elected & put pressure for an IMF deal.
My first piece for Foreign Affairs (link in 🧵)
Since the '90s, Latin American democracies have rested on two macroeconomic pillars: low inflation & manageable debt.
Now, both are crumbling fast.
Can the region's democracies make it through intact? (1/9)
Speaking of Barbenheimer..
The June 28, 1954 issue of Time features a lead story on Oppenheimer ("the Oppenheimer Case").
The cover: "Guatemala's Arbenz"
The story is about as condescending as you might expect given the title, "Battle of the Backyard."
Latin America's 21st century paradox.
Almost no "wars," but still the most violent region on the planet by far, with over 2.75 million violent deaths since 2000.
To put that in perspective, that's more than five times the casualties of Russia's war on Ukraine.
As social media sites go dark, we don't know how many scenes like these are unfolding all across Venezuela.
This is the violence of Latin America's 1970s-80s right-wing military juntas, recycled by "21st century socialists."
Where is the left?
Peru’s deadly political crisis shows no signs of letting up. But none of it was inevitable.
Until a few years ago, Peru was mostly stable w/ a booming economy and plummeting poverty rates.
What happened? To understand today’s crisis, I argue you have to go back to 2016… 🧵
My latest for Foreign Affairs.
Guatemala holds elections Sunday.
But the country is sliding toward authoritarianism.
Why? Because in the hearts and minds of many Guatemalan elites, the Cold War never ended.
This is the last chapter of an unfinished counterinsurgency (1/13)
I doubt they’ll heed the warning, but if I were a rising star on the Latin American new right (Milei, Bolsonaro, Bukele, etc) I’d internalize that Trump’s lens for the region is nativism, not some kind of pan-American conservatism. Trump & Rubio are not the same.
This video by Venezuelan counterintelligence is terrifying & shows the ongoing transition from electoral authoritarianism to totalitarianism.
Terrifying not only for what it shows, but because it doesn’t even try to present the state as the good guys.
My profile of Guatemala’s Bernardo Arévalo in TIME.
“If Arévalo and his party win and manage to govern, against immense odds, they might just be able to turn Guatemala from a cautionary tale into a Latin American example of forward-looking change.”
Keiko Fujimori is taking a page from Donald Trump’s playbook, refusing to concede losing Peru’s elections and legally challenging the results.
I wrote a piece with Cynthia McClintock in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage on how we got here and what comes next.
(Link in thread)
Latin America's top prosecutors are destabilizing the region:
🇬🇹 AG obstructing democratic transition
🇵🇪 AG leads a criminal organization
🇲🇽 AG prosecuting personal enemies while 99% of murders go unsolved
🇨🇴 AG publicly campaigning against gov's peace plan
The list goes on!
This was Lima, Peru last night.
How did the country go from relative political stability & a booming economy to the current crisis - which has already claimed 50+ lives - in just a few short years?
My analysis for Foreign Affairs:
The corrupt Guatemalan prosecutor’s office just suspended the leading opposition party, Semilla.
Nicaragua-level authoritarianism.
I expect we’ll see strong statements from
@StateDept
and congressional Democrats soon. And Republicans? Let’s hope.
My latest for
@ForeignPolicy
- "The Realpolitik of Gustavo Petro" - on how the leftist candidate built an unlikely crew of right-wing & establishment allies.
Personal story: I knew something like this was coming when I met Petro's son in 2019. A short 🧵
This city (Maturín, Venezuela) isn’t even in the top five in population terms, and look how large the opposition rally is 8 days out from the elections.
I’ve watched probably half a dozen elections in Latin America & I’ve never seen anything like this.
So many different fires burning this week in LatAm:
🇻🇪 Maduro orders arrest of top opposition leaders, menaces Guyana
🇵🇪 Unpopular congress votes to overhaul constitution, Fujimori ordered free.
🇬🇹 Electoral magistrates flee country, presidential transition in doubt
...
ALERT:
Peru's unpopular leftist President Pedro Castillo announces he is dissolving Congress and installing 'a government of exception.'
Terrible news for the 33 million people of South America's fourth largest democracy. Here's my analysis of what comes next...
1/5
Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s last dictator, is planning to run for the presidency in 2026.
Keiko, his daughter & political heir, always argued he deserved release from prison bc he was on his death bed.
So much for that.
Every day Peru loses more of its hard-won democracy.
It's wild how democracy is collapsing in Perú, Latin America's fifth biggest country, but you hear zero about it internationally
The lesson from Venezuela and Nicaragua: democracies die by a thousand cuts
W/ Congress' assault on the judiciary, the fatal cut is coming in Peru
Peru’s congress just radically changed the constitution with no popular mandate.
A huge blow to democracy.
The current congress will now run for seats in the new senate (bypassing a re-election ban), aided by several amendments which limit competition for these seats.
My take
Wow. Seeing videos and photos of Venezuelans already lining up to vote in tomorrow’s elections.
Unfair & unfair, stifled by arbitrary arrests, you could see why many would stay home. But they aren’t going to, by the looks of it.
What determination.
#PhDone
!
A huge thanks to my committee at
@PUPolitics
@grigopop
, Deborah Yashar, Miguel Centeno, & Guadalupe Tuñón
Also thrilled to announce my next move: I’m joining
@CFR_org
as Fellow for Latin America studies, where I’ll be working on a book project & writing on the region
Jeremy Giles has an outstanding piece in Foreign Policy today on systematic under-counting of homicides in El Salvador.
Gov. "began excluding the discovery of clandestine or unmarked graves from its (homicide) counts."
The real 2023 murder rate was nearly 2x the official one.
With prosecutors launching an investigation into whistleblower journalist Gustavo Gorriti, Peru seems to be following the path of Guatemala.
Gorriti must not become the Peruvian José Ruben Zamora - the Guatemalan newspaper founder jailed since 2022.
Brutal images of police repression coming out of Peru tonight.
The crisis in Peru has its nuances, but the bottom line is that Boluarte & the current congress are now eroding democracy in real time.
🚨 Muerte cruzada 🚨
Ecuador’s President, Guillermo Lasso, just disbanded the National Assembly to stave off impeachment.
With Ecuador’s largest Indigenous org and the opposition promising mass protests, unrest in Quito could get intense fast.
I’ll be updating periodically.
There we go - joint statement from Peru's armed forces and police rejecting Pedro Castillo's attempted self-coup.
Now Congress, the Attorney General & Constitutional Tribunal, and Castillo's Vice President have all come out against it, it looks like it's over.
1/3 of Venezuelans suffer hunger.
Ecuador is being overrun by violent gangs.
Cuba's food production fell by 1/3 in four years.
The idea that stricter border measures will cut migration numbers by a lot is pure fantasy.
Read my take at TIME:
My latest for the LA Times.
Can Guatemala’s president-elect, Bernardo Arévalo, keep his promises to curb corruption and enact reforms?
Yes, but he’ll have to overcome opposition from the judiciary, political class, and some big businesses.
Here’s how.
Thanks to
@TIMEIdeas
for giving the election in Guatemala top billing today.
Central America often only makes it into English-language coverage for its tragedies and crises: gangs, asylum-seekers, and violence.
Here’s a hopeful story.
A leading presidential candidate in Ecuador was just assassinated, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
He was probably the most vocal critic of the country's organized crime groups.
It looks like he paid for it with his life.
What a senseless tragedy.
🔴
#URGENTE
| Juan Zapata, Ministro del Interior, confirmó la muerte del candidato, Fernando Villavicencio. Fue asesinado, al estilo sicariato, en un mitin político que se desarrollaba al norte de
#Quito
#NoticiaEnDesarrollo
Más información 👉
One thing I’ll say on Peru’s current crisis (more to come in an article soon).
Despite otherwise very worthy coverage, I think int’l media like
@nytimes
and
@NPR
are missing something big: that the Peruvian right has a very sizable & not homogeneously “elite” social base.
Preliminary election results in Guatemala are a total shocker.
Polls were way off.
In second place is center-left opposition politician Bernardo Arévalo from the Semilla party.
I have to admit I did *not* see this coming. Semilla has never done well outside urban areas before.
Well, here we go...
Sandra Torres' party, the UNE, refuses to accept yesterday's election results from Guatemala.
Not clear what the endgame is quite yet, as President Giammattei has already congratulated winner Bernardo Arévalo on the results.
Peru is on the brink of constitutional crisis & presidential vacancy - again.
Yesterday, the Attorney General's office (Ministerio Público, MP) filed a constitutional complaint against Pres. Castillo. Now Congress could remove him in short order.
A 🧵to explain what's going on
Ecuador is living through the narco-violence Colombia experienced a generation ago.
This footage of the aftermath of the assassination of presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio is so eerily similar to the footage of Galan's death.
Such a tragic day for Ecuador.
Methodology/sampling is far from perfect, but a poll by Guatemala’s largest circulation newspaper has businessman and political outsider Carlos Pineda
@72_cpineda
- a virtual unknown until weeks ago - now leading the pack by double digits.
My latest - a wake up call to Washington on Peru.
In FY 2023, CBP made over 75k encounters with Peruvians at the US-Mex border.
That was almost equal to the # for Haitians.
In 2022-23, nearly 1 million people left the country...
What's going on? ...
The mother of Edni López, a professor disappeared by Maduro's security forces, begging for the return of her daughter looks like a scene from 'Argentina, 1985.'
Only it's Venezuela 2024.
Hard to imagine Latin American leftists (Petro, Lula, CFK) can avoid seeing the parallels.
"Devuélvanme a mi hija, no es justo que una madre venezolana tenga que pasar por esto"
Testimonio de la madre de la defensora derechos humanos Edni López, detenida el pasado domingo en el aeropuerto de Maiquetía.
#6Ago
The Ecuador-Mexico crisis brings up a bigger issue.
Do you prefer a world of strong due process guarantees (sometimes, maybe often, abused by criminals to seek impunity)
Or a world of strong governments doing as they please, w/o much regard for legal rights, to seek “justice”..
Point: The inviolability of embassies is an important concept in international relations. Political dissidents deserve options for asylum.
Counter-point: Latin America has a serious problem with corrupt and criminal politicians hiding in foreign embassies to escape justice.
My first piece in the New York Times.
The roots of Ecuador’s crime crisis are complex. Correa, Moreno, and Lasso all made mistakes.
But now politicians of all stripes must come together to reverse criminal state capture and not insist on protecting their own.
Link in 🧵
8 in 10 Peruvians disapprove of congress, which has been on a relentless power-grab this year.
Now consider congress just voted for a sweeping constitutional reform, the biggest change to Peru's constitution in its 30 years.
A 2nd vote in early '24 could lock in the change 🧵
If
#Venezuela
and
#Nicaragua
were included in this graph (ridiculously, they're not), you would have to change the scale completely.
The number killed by Nicaragua's regime more than quadruples Colombia's count.
If you care about Peru - or even if you care about organized crime & democracy in LatAm generally - watched
@ocram
's update today.
Peru's "pacto mafioso" is passing law after law favoring illicit economies and blunting the state's capacity to fight back
Today Guatemala holds general elections.
Several popular candidates have been legally barred from running. Democracy is crumbling.
But that doesn't mean the stakes are low, or that all remaining candidates are the same.
Here's my read on the frontrunners... (1/17)
It’s election day in Mexico.
Preliminary results (just starting) show Claudia Sheinbaum (of AMLO’s party) with a double digit lead.
I spent time in 4 very different Mexico City neighborhoods today m talking to voters about AMLO’s legacy & what comes next.
Some impressions 🧵…
JD Vance on Latin America:
• Supports deploying U.S. military against Mexican cartels
• Opposed bipartisan border deal
• Opposes Cuban-Haitian-Nicaraguan-Venezuela visa parole program (questioned why these countries were selected)
• Said Colombia was once a "failed state"
"Any appearance of political interference with the JNJ will have a profound impact on the legitimacy and strength of Peru’s democracy."
Excellent statement by Senators Kaine and Cardin on the troubling moves to purge Peru's Junta Nacional de Justicia.
Exit polls from Ecuador 🇪🇨
Looks like the second round will be Correista candidate, Luisa González, against Daniel Noboa, the son of a Guayaquil banana mogul & perennial pres. candidate.
Ecuador might be going through an unprecedented period of change. Its politics... are not.
For all those saying there's no precedent in the region for the Noboa gov's violation of int'l law re: the Mexican Embassy, it's simply not true.
Cuban troops attacked the Ecuadorean embassy in Havana in 1981 after Cuban dissidents sought asylum there.
The masks is coming off in Guatemala.
There is a serious effort underway to suspend the presidential run-off, after center-left reformer, Bernardo Arévalo, made the cut.
Will Guatemala be allowed to become the new Nicaragua?
Saw the incredibly moving Argentina 1985 last night. Can’t recommend this film enough.
In 25 years, I hope we’re watching films about justice being served against today’s military-backed autocrats in Caracas or Managua.
The comparisons between Milei & first term Fujimori starting to look a bit more founded.
Presidents concentrate power in the executive to pursue popular but deeply divisive changes to the economic model.
In Milei’s case, within the constitution (& w/o the tanks). For now.
Javier Milei has introduced a massive, sweeping omnibus bill to Congress that would drastically expand presidential powers and affect a wide range of policy areas. The bill also includes electoral reforms: eliminating the PASO primaries, adopting a unified paper ballot (👍),...
Here's my first dispatch from Guatemala.
I traveled to rural villages and small towns talking to people about what's at stake in this election.
Feels like an earthquake is coming, but also like absolutely anything could happen on & after Aug 20.
🇪🇨 (Ecuador) Heir to Guayaquil political family as president, government instability
🇨🇴 (Colombia) Faltering peace deals, violent countryside, narco campaign financing scandal
🇵🇪 (Peru) Prolonged democratic backsliding
It’s not the 1990s
But in the Andes, it might as well be
Was Nayib Bukele's first term a "success"?
If you ask most Salvadorans, the answer is "yes" on security... & a firm "no" on the economy.
Growth is stagnating, 🇸🇻's debt is unsustainable, & FDI is limited.
What's Bukele's plan to turn things around?
Is it feasible?
A 🧵
Seems like a really bad time for Ecuador to blow up relations with Mexico, given the Sinaloa & CJNG cartels’ presence in Ecuador.
True, AMLO was barely willing to acknowledge the cartels’ presence in Ecuador, but now opportunities for intel sharing/security cooperation are 0.
I know we can’t underestimate what Maduro might do to stay in power.
But it’s going to require some very obvious, massive, & logistically difficult fraud - or lots of violence - if he wants to overturn a ~20 point loss and demobilize this mass movement.
Proud to receive the American Political Science Association's Juan Linz Prize for Best Fieldwork in the Comparative Study of Democracy & Autocracy for my fieldwork on Peru, Guatemala, Colombia.
Named in honor of one of the all time greats!
“Ecuador 🇪🇨 didn’t get to this point overnight. It’s the result of years of impunity, strengthening relations between local mafias and transnational cartels, and corruption. These factors - that permitted the rise of these mafias - are also present in Peru 🇵🇪”
Ecuador 🇪🇨 no llegó a este punto de un día para otro. Es el resultado de años de impunidad, de afianzamiento de relaciones de mafias locales con organizaciones criminales globales y corrupción. Estos factores —que permitieron el ascenso de estas mafias—se dan también en Perú 🇵🇪.
In June, I wrote about how Ecuador went from a relatively peaceful country to Latin America's newest violence hotspot.
Now, it's on the brink of becoming a narco-state.
Read my analysis of Ecuador's security crisis
@CFR_org
.
Let's talk about Jimmy Carter.
At the height of the Cold War, he transformed U.S. relations with Latin America.
But today, the story of how he stood up for democracy & human rights has been largely forgotten.
Here's how Carter changed U.S. foreign policy for the better.
🧵
“In Guatemala, prosecutors and judges collude to sell impunity to the highest bidder… Arévalo ran on promises of changing that status quo.”
Listen to my full interview on the judicial coup against
@BArevalodeLeon
in Guatemala on NPR’s
@TheWorld
.
"Peru’s last dictator, Alberto Fujimori, has pulled off a jailbreak years in the making — not by tunneling his way out of prison but by the graces of the country’s highest court."
My latest for the LA Times, "The organized crime threat to Latin American democracy."
Top brass of Ecuador's military makes its first statement on Lasso's decision to apply
#MuerteCruzada
and disband the legislature.
Key takeaways to follow:
• They say Lasso's decision was within the limits of the constitution & should be respected by "all citizens"
1/2
Many look at Latin America right now and see a “left turn” in full swing.
My take: it’s already almost over. This time, possibly, for good.
Read my latest on how weak parties + rising crime could turn LatAm’s social democrats into an endangered species.
Thrilled to have a new working paper with
@ProfTortuga
up at UNU's World Institute for Development Economics.
We develop a new concept - "contract clientelism" - to describe a common way candidates finance campaigns (& vote-buying) in developing democracies.
A 🧵...
Arévalo jr. was born in exile in Uruguay.
There’s immense symbolism to his win, as dozens of government critics in Guatemala have been forced into exile in recent years.
Arévalo Sr. brought about Guatemala’s first democratic spring. There will be immense hope & pressure…
Today, I'm thrilled to be joining
@CFR_org
as Fellow for Latin America studies.
From now on, my analysis, commentary, & upcoming events/talks on the region will appear here:
"Not since the era of Alberto Fujimori has Peru’s democracy been in such dire straits."
Read Cynthia McClintock, Julio Carrión, and others on Peru one year after Castillo's self-coup and impeachment:
A couple disclaimers - First, some, but far from all, of what I have to say here is included in a profile I wrote for
@AmerQuarterly
.
Second, this thread isn't pro- or anti-Hernández. It's an attempt to shed light on a little-understood candidate (1/x)
Many people are asking how Ecuador "suddenly" became a violent drug trafficking hub.
But it wasn't sudden at all.
This Financial Times big read, which quotes me, tells the whole story - starting with the serious blunders of the Correa government.
A tale of two lefts?
Petro - the experienced outsider-insider - got his tax reform through in a divided congress. It's the most progressive tax reform in Colombia's history.
But Boric again hit a brick wall. There's really no substitute for decades of political experience.
🇨🇱In a major blow to Boric's agenda, the lower house rejects his progressive tax reform and it is unlikely that it will meet the threshold in the Senate to pass. To be reconsidered, it would need to pass with a qualified majority, which is unlikely.
This is how how you stop an election from being stollen.
The 48 cantones, one of Guatemala’s strongest indigenous organizations, says the electoral tribunal has 3 days to certify the first round results, or there will be mass protests.
Not an empty threat when you consider…
"Europe’s demand 'has turned Ecuadorean ports into one of the most valuable pieces of infrastructure you can control if you are a drug-trafficking group in Latin America,'" I told the Economist.
Here we go.
Efforts to overturn Guatemala's election are advancing.
Prosecutors just requested the lifting of President-Elect Bernardo Arévalo's immunity from prosecution and declared the election results "null."
La fiscal de FECI, Leonor Morales Lazo, asegura que no se utilizaron los formatos que el TSE estableció en los documentos de las actas 4 y de esa cuenta todos los resultados de las elecciones generales 2023 son “nulos”.
📸: Diego España/LH
Reminder that Guatemala’s Arévalo won by nearly twice the landslide margin of Argentina’s Milei… and yet still faces an uphill battle to have his win respected.
“What a difference it makes to live in democracy.”
La distancia porcentual de votos entre Bernardo Arévalo y Sandra Torres fue casi el doble de la Milei y Massa.
Allá el oficialismo concedió la derrota a la primera y aquí siguen en su intento golpista.
Aún con lo catastrófico, enorme diferencia la que hace vivir en democracia.