 Latin America is in transition. If you didn't know, this is Stingtec, Hawaii. It's the three o'clock clock on a given Wednesday, and Carlos Suarez, the regular host of the Global Connections, is here to join us with this beautiful Latin American painting in the background, which I really like very much. Welcome to the show, Carlos. Great to see you always gay and reconnect. And let me clarify this is not a painting. It's a picture and actually it's a real street in the state of Puebla. You recall some years ago I spent actually several years in Mexico, Mexico City, but also more recently Puebla, this very historic city to the east. And so today it's a great opportunity, as you know, from times that we connect and friendly, you know, see what's going on around the world, you know, and the Global Connections, of course, it both connects us to the world and it brings the world to Hawaii, to Stingtec, Hawaii. And in this case, as you also well know, I get to put in my little professorial hat today a little bit to share both an update but sort of a political analysis of what's happening in this region of Latin America and why should it even matter to us. As I was suggesting and you'll see some data later, it is increasingly clear that this is a region where now there's a sort of a more geopolitical competition happening between China and the US, between China and Taiwan actually in Central America and I'll make some reference to that in a moment. But even more importantly, I mean, you know, we have to remind ourselves while in Hawaii, understandably, we have a focus to the Asia Pacific region. But Latin America, I would remind our listeners and us that it is the region that is extremely vital to the US for many, many reasons, for trade. Our most important trade partner is Mexico. And if you add Canada to, you know, what we would call the Americas. But in general, Latin America is the largest source of our immigration and so cultural ties with your family and connection. It is the largest growing population, you know, if you're passing African-Americans. And yet we know so little about it, you know, it's like we stopped at the Monroe Doctrine in 1828. It's really remarkable how little Americans know about South of the border. You know, we study Europe, we study Africa. As you said, we study Asia. We study all the continents, but we don't study our closest neighbors in Latin America. And that means following their political activities, their economic activities, their social activities. And, you know, and regrettably, from a political point of view, we don't help them as much as we should. We should be all one continent and we're not. So I think it's very important that we have a show like this so you can bring us current on what's going on there and raise our level of awareness about the good things and the bad things that are happening in Latin America. So you want to focus on certain countries. What countries do you want to focus on? Yeah. Well, let me give a, because as we speak now, there's been some interesting dynamics in the last weeks and months in particular, a lot of political transitions, new presidency coming in and some about to happen still. But obviously, as you mentioned earlier, it's important we have to understand there's a long historical context of the US and Latin America. And it's a very, you know, it's a tumultuous history. The US has been very much an active intervention in many countries. And so I say that because from the perspective of Latin America, there's a healthy dose of skepticism. There's a lot of anti-Americanism, because it's been very real that they have been both at different times, you know, either, and again, in very different parts of the way, whether it's direct intervention or the support of previous military governments, very recessive regimes that were in the region, particularly in the 60s, 70s, into the 80s. Anyhow, what I'm always fascinated about Latin America, of course, it's a big region. We've seen the map that spans, you know, from the neighbor Mexico, the large country for the south, which is the largest of the Spanish speaking, all the way to South America, you know, the southern cone, the Argentina, Chile, Uruguay. Of course, Brazil, a very important player in the global economy and also the leader of Latin America, a Portuguese speaker. So it's kind of, in some ways, culturally, rather outside of the rest of the region, which is all, I know, Spanish speaking. But what I want to also say, and I'm wondering out of these cases, the region is fascinating because it is a paradox. It is both a young, new, you know, it's a new society, the combination of the Spanish who came in, colonized, mixing in with indigenous in many places, many immigrant populations, from Asia, from Europe, from Africa, all over the region. It's a very multiracial, multi-ethnic society. Again, I'm just speaking very broadly. All the countries will vary. But it's young, but it's also very old. We have ancient civilizations that are, you know, been there for, you know, millennia. It's also a paradox because it is both tumultuous. We'll see in a moment, you know, we see more of the same. Military foods are, you know, military, in politics, corruption is rampant, you know, inequality and justice, political violence. Again, a history of it. And yet it's also very stable. Traditional societies, you know, the pull of history. Well, briefly, I think our first picture, we have a snapshot just for, you know, some interesting news in the past week. We've seen about two weeks ago the election in the small country of Honduras, the tiny, you know, the banana republic country. But we have the first female woman, Xiomara Castro. She's the wife of a former leftist president who was deposed by a military coup back in 2009. And so Honduras is a tiny country, really the most impoverished of the main Central American ones. And one where very interestingly, she is kind of into office now, sort of as a leftist, and she has signaled that she is going to plan to establish diplomatic relations with China. This is important because it turns out China and Taiwan have been, you know, sort of struggling, or not struggling, they've been fighting over the recognition that still a handful, I think today it's only about 12 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, maybe a few in the South Pacific that continue to recognize Taiwan. And that includes Honduras. Well, this new president has signaled she's planning to change that. China has just won the same change of allegiance from Nicaragua, the neighboring country there, where if we turn actually the next picture I have is of course the more things change, the more they remain the same. We just had a recent election in Nicaragua that re-elected Daniel Ortega. And you and I rolled it up to remember, 1979, the Nicaraguan Revolution, he comes to power, sort of, you know, 20 years after Fidel Castro, like another, you know, sort of protégé, you know, anti-American, anti-Crapitalist, anti-Yersablishment. 40 years later, he's still there and now he kind of re-event himself elected with his wife as the vice president. So talk about cronyism and nepotism and basically, you know, this revolution that was, you know, a very significant 40 years ago has left us now with, you know, sort of a new form of authoritarianism and, you know, a new variation. But let's continue briefly. Again, I'm going to move rather quickly. Oh, well, just to mention Nicaragua, because what happened there is that Daniel Ortega just cut off diplomatic ties with Taiwan and as a result, the China-Mainland China has just delivered 1 million COVID vaccines to Nicaragua, a country that has, you know, a very low rate of vaccination so far. It's very poor. So in effect, you know, a form of vaccine diplomacy, you might say, but it comes in the context of this Taiwan-China struggle that's been going on in Central America for some time now. Well, Carlos, it sounds like there's a quid pro quo thing going on. Where China comes around and says, hey, we want you to separate from Taiwan and get closer to us and we will give you economic benefits. We will help you. That's a little disconcerting, but there you have it. And so one after the other, they fall for that line and drop Taiwan. This is really too bad, isn't it? Well, look, I mean, just to step back and not to be cynical, I'd say Taiwan has its own version of it. They'll come in and provide development assistance, build some hospitals, you know, provide a form of almost like Peace Corps aid to the Central American countries in return for their recognition. And so it doesn't come just out of these countries deciding, hey, they like Taiwan for some reason. Taiwan has been very effective at nurturing those relationships and basically, you know, buying their allegiance in different ways. Now they're losing out. And for a while, China and Taiwan had kind of agreed to stop doing that because they kept looking each other's, you know, last remaining ones. And Taiwan was getting a few more buying off them and meanwhile, China was picking them off. Today, I think it's down to about 12. So they kind of, they're losing them. And Honduras, I just mentioned, about to announce that the new president is the same. Well, let's move forward quickly. And because I want to get us to talk really as well about the role of China, which is another issue. But in the third country, there's had some recent political change in an interesting dynamic, Peru, this country in the Andes of South America. And back in July, after a very long and drawn out process of recounting and very contentious second round election, it brought to power a new president, Pedro Casillo. And he is basically a primary school teacher, sort of, you know, he grew up with basically a very impoverished, illiterate peasant family. So kind of the ranks to riches. Now, he's not a particularly, let's say, intellectual or bright. I mean, he's a primary school teacher. I don't mean that in an offensive way, but he doesn't come to the political office as typically you might out of, you know, some kind of, it's not political, at least business, you know, experience. He's a school teacher, but he, in some ways, he's filled a void because there's been so much tumultuous politics and corruption scandals. Peru has gone through a cycle of presidents that have been essentially impeached and pulled out of office, resigned in the last few years. And, you know, sort of a, there was a while where it had been relatively stable, but most recently it's had more troubling times. Anyway, this guy comes into office. He's had a pretty rough going in part because he's kind of fumbled along the way, hasn't had a real cohesive strategy and very curious what happened is, just in the last days, Mexico, the country's, you know, as you well know, Amno now in the middle of his six year term, has more or less stayed closed inside Mexico. He's not known for his foreign policy international relations at all. Non-interference, you know, it's a traditional Mexican strategy. Well, right now, Mexico has sent a team down to Peru with some ways to help support that president and a team of financial advisors and sort of government public policy, especially to try to give them some help, which is very curious. It's again different. Mexico normally doesn't do this. It kind of stretches outside of this non-interference, you know, policy that they always have. But, you know, this leader in Peru has had a rough time inside. They're trying to squeeze him out. It's a very polarized environment, needless to say. So in Mexico, separately, that's the president Amno who, aside from that, you know, foray into the South American politics, he's also been sort of knocking heads somewhat with the U.S. because he's got a very, you could say, strong nationalistic, but in some ways, some argue that it's a very anti-green friendly energy policy. He's basically, you know, in terms of issues of addressing, you know, climate change and technology, he's favoring, you know, building more oil refineries and limiting foreign investment in the energy sector, which could have serious implications for, you know, for Mexico's economy, because it recently was opened up for the first time. And now, you know, Amno has been kind of squeezing the both separate from that. And this is going to be true of a number of these different places in Latin America. You have this process of polarization. We see it in the U.S. We see it in the U.S. We see it in other places throughout Latin America, more and more, Chile, now this important country in South America is about to have an election for presidency. And it's a very deeply polarized, you know, a very far right-handed, it's kind of, you know, extreme, let's say, by most mayors, and a very far left guy. And so, like we see here in the U.S., like we see in other places, recently the moderate sort of the middles are being crowded out. And it's happening in Latin America too. We have the curious context of Amno, an authoritarian leader from the left in Mexico, Bolsonaro in Brazil, the Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, you know, sort of kind of very curious, because while they are right and left, they end up coming almost full circle to have some similarities. And a lot of it is like these populists blaming, you know, the opponents, the conservatives, or just whoever it might be, depending on the wheels. So again, what we're seeing with Latin America, finally, one last chart I just want to show, why is it important for us to be aware of it? It has been going through tremendous changes with the role of China expanding in the region tremendously. I have a table here that just came out, I think this past year, they're growing cloud. In terms of investing, I can't see that. Oh yeah, Chinese state investment, what we see there in places like Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, it's what are billions of dollars coming into the country from China. State enterprises that are investing in infrastructure, building things. The U.S. by contrast, we, you know, we struggle there to offer some aid and, you know, a few billion dollars to help with the Central American migration crisis. But on the whole, we don't have massive, you know, and certainly not by the U.S. government. Now there are private investments and that's not included in this map. But clearly China is operating on a different level. They're using their political power to essentially spread their tentacles. And today they are the largest foreign investor in Peru, in Bolivia, and in many others, the second or third largest. What kind of investments are they making, Carlosa? How strategic are those investments? Well, they are in minerals and mines, very strategic, of course. They are natural resources that are essentially, you know, critical for their own, you know, industrial and manufacturing development. Some marometers that, primarily, they're very, you know, very much minerals, I would say. But other than that, you know, China continues to be, you know, obviously exporting a massive quantity of manufactured goods into the region. And so, you know, these are, these countries are also growing middle classes and growing consumer, you know, societies. So today, you know, in Argentina and Chile and Brazil and Mexico, large, you know, consumer groups, I guess. And what are they buying? Well, at the local Walmart, Chinese made goods that we get here. Yeah. What I get out of this is that, you know, if you look at Africa, look at Latin America, for that matter, if you look at Asia, you get this kind of economic colonialism. Where, you know, China, Belt and Road is only a small part of it, really. They're trying to, you know, become a power, economic power everywhere. And that includes this kind of economic colonialism. The minerals, they buy the raw materials, they do, I know they're doing steel, for example, with iron ore out of Brazil in a big deal, supplying steel all over South America and elsewhere. So they're taking their manufacturing technology, you know, and applying it to those resources and becoming a power in so many ways. And we aren't. And we aren't. We are not, we are not doing that. And we don't have the, we call it the national will, the national interest. We rather think about immigration and racism at the border. And we see, we see Latin America as a combination of autocrats, poverty, military coups, and people who are unhappy where they are because of gangs and lack of personal security and want to come north. I mean, it's a polyglot. I just know about this that tourism by the United States, as opposed to say in the 30s and the 40s where it was so popular, traveled down to Rio and enjoy the music, the people, the culture and all that. I imagine tourism isn't so hot right now between the NS, beyond COVID, of course, between the United States and anywhere in Latin America. I also imagine that, you know, you see movies, movies on Netflix and Amazon, of middle class situations in Latin American countries. But I believe that those are being underwritten by American producers and produced by American directors and all that. So it's kind of a copying of the Hollywood style. What I'm getting at is that our perceptions may not be accurate about what's going on. But I think what's going on is the Chinese culture that's going on. And the other thing that's going on is the resultant autocracies that are developing. And the question really is is the U.S. doing its job under the concept of the Monroe doctrine or really any other sense of no bless old leash where we can help them. And I suggest to you that it doesn't seem that way. There's a lot of very important topics there and I do share your perspective there. What I would say is that, look, real quickly just to dispel of the notion you mentioned about tourism, it continues to be particularly Mexico is a popular destination and this is for people who just, you know, that's all they see. They will travel to Cancun or, you know, whatever it might be in Baja. That continues to be popular again with some restrictions. However, it has opened up quicker than some had expected. Let me, as you talked about that one of the things I want to really underscore is that today we have to realize that much like you can say about Asia, for example, and about Africa, these places that we often have with sense that they're all impoverished and foreign underdeveloped and yes they are, but at the same time they are also increasingly globalized and connected. What do I mean by that? We have global societies that we have communities through particularly virtual communities through the internet now, so that, you know, emerging rising middle classes in these developing world settings in Latin America so they are more connected, more aware of what's happening in the world and on building bridges in different ways. And as, you know, as a professor I teach, of course, young leaders and future, you know, these days I'm teaching minimally as I have other work on the place, but for the most part what I want to say is that today those who are young and let's say getting education in Latin America it's obviously a small minority and more elite but it's there, it's real. They are again more aware of the world than I would say Americans are about the world. They know more about it, they're more connected and they obviously are hungry for it and what it offers. Let me, having said that, let me shift for a moment and say one other thing. It's interesting that right now in the U.S. we're seeing this dramatic, you know, battle over access to safe abortion that's been threatened and in the region of Latin America, these past years have seen what's often been referred to as the green waves. The word is like a green wave and it's a women's movement that has helped to deliver groundbreaking reforms and progress on reproductive health and rights throughout Latin America. So you've got in Uruguay and Argentina and even in Mexico, rights that are pretty much now stronger than what you find in the U.S. and so on. Well, all that to say that Latin America again, like parts of Asia, particularly, you know, dynamic and emerging places, like parts of Africa are today increasingly global societies and curiously they're picking and choosing, I think in ways, you know, what parts they want from modernization, from globalization and how they can adapt it to their own, you know, mixture of local of, you know, maybe whether it's no. And we say Latin America, but at the end of the day, people identify more by their own national identity in the case of Latin American countries. So they may be Peruvian first and we don't see like in some other countries as much of the complex, let's say ethnic or, you know, differences. So that people again, they're very and they vary by country, but there's a strong sense of national identity throughout, I would say Latin America. But Carlos, what is the common denominator that makes governance and democracy so fragile, so shattered in so many of these places? What is the common denominator that makes autocrats come and go one after the other and and hunters and coups? It just doesn't seem stable. What is it? Is it something south of the equator? What is it? You know, look, I work with a single answer and there's not. I mean, there are continual debates about this. You know, what is it? Why is it characterized as you said by political violence, the history? And for some, it goes back to maybe the legacy of colonialism and how it destroyed and it set up, you know, particularly the Spanish very hierarchical structures. How the new society they created was inherently a class society. So you've got power entrenched in certain interests and then beyond that, depending on the country, essentially you have societies that are characterized by oligarchy, small elites that have kept the power and it's often racially divided as well. Again, with some interesting variations. For some, it is just a product of another product. Let me rephrase that. It's maybe the condition that Latin America in terms of the economic history basically got the raw into the deal because they were the places where the powerful colonizing powers established the crazed power extracting raw materials. And that story went on for a long time. It still exists in some measures, but it's not enough to say that that's the whole region. It has changed. But what I'm getting at there is that these relationships that were established whether it has to do with political power or economic power have simply hindered some of the development. Now, there are other arguments more controversial and I don't like them myself. I don't think they hold much water, but there are some that are more cultural. Somehow they're lazier. It's the hot sun. It's the climate and at the end of the day there's too much variation in Latin America where you have actually some countries that have done things that we well and that have done it's an interesting laboratory for democratic development. And especially I would say at the grassroots level at the local level, maybe what we see at the presidential level is not always very pretty. And the places I described in the beginning, these are some of the tough papers, you know, in Central America for, you know, history of violence, etc. Even Chile, while it's polarized, I mean it's also still got a, let's say a more higher level of democratic development. But no easy answers to these things but we have to study the history. Let's look at the future though, Carlos. Let's look at the future. Because we have certain bright spots. I mean, for example, you know, you could go down into any of these countries if they get American TV. You know, they can watch Netflix movies. They can be on Netflix movies. They're kind of what do you want to kind of call it a bedroom community in many ways to the U.S. And they, you know, as you say they can order things, they can order products from China, from the U.S. and have them in their homes. They can develop a middle class and in some places there is a middle class but they don't have it together yet. Most of these places I think you're talking about either domestically or internationally. So the question is with the exposure and the awareness you're talking about where the average person maybe he can see further. And the average American, I agree with that. But where is it going? What do you expect? Let me give you a 10-year horizon. What do you think Carlos is going to happen? And we can talk about specific countries or we can talk about the whole continent but where do you think it's going? Well, I would say you're going to see some patterns that have been going on exacerbating. What do I mean by that? On some level it is increasing, well, not just polarization but more polarization of wealth. And what I mean by that is Latin America to begin with is already unequal societies, already wealth concentrated. And so the bottom line is that those who have wealth that are globally connected they're going to do very well. They're going to continue to be sort of globe frauders if you will. And it could even be just regionally. There's a lot of wealth that just simply is there and yet it's concentrated. But I'm just making a sweeping observation. So we're going to continue to see that. Some people are going to be doing very well. I think you're going to see given all the political chaos that we continue to describe it's not going to go well for many people. It's going to be tough because when you don't have coherent public policy, continuity, predictability, investment slowness, money gets stifled away, nobody, governments are corrupt, this is not solving the problem. It's not going to work. It languishes and the potential that is there is not being harnessed and there are a lot of losers. So it's going to be grim on one hand but I guess I don't want to paint a picture where everything is going into some apocalypse because there are a lot of dynamic areas and a lot of interesting stories, a lot of interesting urban renewal and development. And I think what you're going to see is that macro political system and the leaders much like in the United States, you're going to see some areas doing well, even some regions of countries doing better than others, Mexico, the big country to the south, it really is, you could say certainly two countries but maybe even three. You have the whole part that's connected to the U.S., deeply integrated, manufacturing modern, middle class, then you have this very separate part in the south connected to Central America, underdeveloped, marginalized, impoverished, limited opportunities that's going to continue and unfortunately those are continuing to separate even more but look, you could talk about that in many other settings too, but it's happening in Latin America so that's why I'm trying. I know we have to look at this country by country because they're all different cultures, different arrangements, different histories, all that. However, let me put this last question to you. It's clear that the security of the United States is dependent at least in part on what's happening south of the border. It's not necessarily a good thing to see China moving in and making all those huge investments, taking a strategic materials resources away from the possibility of American development. In the past we've made a lot of mistakes but if we look at our farm policy right now in a broad sweep of it, what should we be doing? In a perfect world with a government maybe that's more together than what we have now, what would we do to deal with Latin America? How would we develop it in a way so that it finds its natural course, its best development possibilities in terms of investment in farm policy and in terms of enhancing the security of the continent in general. It's always uncomfortable to find out that a few hundred miles away from the southern border there's violence and terrible things happening, people suffering in a kind of nightmare life. We can't afford to have that. It's just troublesome. I guess my question is what can the United States do? Can the United States do anything? Maybe we just don't have the ability to do this but if we did, if we had a strong farm policy what would we look for and what would we do to achieve it? That's a big herpulean task. Again, it's a challenge that has continued to confront the U.S. quite some time. Let me step back to remind us that after 9-11, or actually right before the 9-11 attack in the year 2000, we had an interesting critical juncture. We had the election in the U.S. of George W. Bush, and there was his brother, his sister-in-law that was Mexican and he understood Mexico because in Mexico you had the election of a brand new president, Vicente Fox, who was a opposition leader, himself a cowboy of sorts, a businessman. What I'm getting at is that there was this window of opportunity for the U.S. and Mexico to develop closer and then both of them began discussing a guest worker program. In Mexico, they go to Canada, by the way, but not to the U.S. But the 9-11 made all that obviously go away and since then, the U.S. has, U.S. foreign policy, speaking of, has basically neglected Latin America. Now it's breathing down our neck. We have the migration for years now, the caravans of past years and the bottom line is what can the U.S. do well? In a curious way, if we look at the Trump strategy of the past years, that was a strategy of like not too much, kind of look the other way, but as long as they play ball and in the case of Mexico, playing pretty dirty, feel the southern border. Take care of that, you know, stop those migrants from coming or else, you know, it's a very strong one. But let me suggest this, the only real solution ultimately has got to be a multi-prong one with many different things of why are people coming here? It's the poverty, it's the crime and again, there are no simple antics of those. But if you don't address it, it's not going to go away. And we have a responsibility because those Central American countries that we mentioned that are in crisis that have all these gangs, well, guess what? Those gangs were formed in the prisons in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles when we basically had a huge wave of immigrants from the Civil War that we had responsibilities, not just Civil War, but the other conflict in Central America. The United States has, I guess, I'm suggesting a legacy of responsibility for some of the crisis. So it's incumbent on... And those gangs affect us. Those gangs have connections in the U.S. and they make trouble for us. And finally, you know, along the same line, there's humanitarian issues like Haiti where we get drawn into it on a humanitarian basis and it's better to prevent it before it goes to that level, right? Sure, sure. But let me just say this quickly that, I mean, the U.S., obviously it has a role, and yet because of its history and the baggage that comes with it and because of the recent story of Donald Trump, who obviously Latin America saw was, you know, he was rather offensive and, you know, he was like the ugly American. I want to say, and we've talked about this in other shows, there's a healthy dose of skepticism. The U.S. cannot come down to Latin America. Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to solve it. No, it needs to be a little more modest, again, like a lot of reform in some areas, but it needs to be working below the government to government, more people to people, more grassroots, more, you know, supporting NGOs because today Latin America, again, harnessing these new technologies, seeing how the world works, seeing Europe, seeing the U.S. and the growth and proliferation of civil society groups, of NGOs and so people are solving their own problems because the government aren't and so what I'm getting at there is that we need to see that the solutions are not just the leaders meet yet. They do need to meet and it's better if they meet than if they don't, but ultimately it's got to be people to people. It's got to be, you know, I don't know, just many more tentacles going in and a little bit of modesty on the part of the U.S. and the people standing that, you know, you can't bring all the solutions, you have to help them help themselves. Yeah, and at the end of the day, there's a huge supply of minerals and other resources there, huge possibilities for agriculture and a huge consumer market. So all of this could be positive for us and we ought to preserve it and develop it in the most, you know, human and natural and positive and friendly way. That's what we should do, but that's just my perception of what you're saying. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. Great to talk to you. I look forward to our next conversation. I look forward to your next show, of course, and I really like that photograph behind you. It's beautiful. It is more than beautiful. It is a statement. Thank you very much, Carlos. You're welcome. Oh, huh. Happy holidays.