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What do the Americas want from America?
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden travels to Los Angeles to host the sixth Summit of the Americas, a gathering of leaders from, well, the Americas. But so far the event has gotten more chatter about who isn’t showing up, the light agenda, and doubts over whether it’ll accomplish anything after decades of US neglect and mutual mistrust.
Still, the US is pushing for a long-overdue reset with its continental neighbors, especially as China becomes a bigger player in the region. But the others in attendance wonder if the region’s most powerful country and the largest economy is really, as Biden loves to say, “back.”
The problem is finding common ground. Most of the countries in the Americas don’t want what the US is offering, and the US is not willing to give them what they crave. To be sure, 35 nations home to over a billion people across two continents are no monolith, but at least most care about two things: trade and migration.
"There's a pretty serious disconnect in terms of priorities," says Eurasia Group analyst Risa Grais-Targow.
Biden is pitching things like more US private-sector investment, stronger institutions, clean energy jobs, and bolstering supply chains. Washington also aims to support "sustainable" trade but only within existing trade agreements.
What Latin America was hoping for? The lifting of trade barriers so the Americas can sell more stuff to America.
But such a vague partnership will do little to counter the elephant in the room: China. For years, Beijing has been doling out cash to gain influence as well as access to key commodities, signing up some 20 Latin American nations to its signature Belt and Road Initiative and surpassing the US as the top trading partner of South America.
However, unlike in Asia, where many of its neighbors fear China's rise as a challenge to their sovereignty, Latin American countries welcome Chinese investment in their economies and appreciate that Beijing doesn't lecture them about corruption and human rights like the US often does.
The other big priority for Biden is migration, where some of the no-shows do matter. Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador passed (he sent his foreign minister instead), as did the presidents of Central America's Northern Triangle countries: Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. If you want to stop migrants from flooding the US southern border, those are four people you definitely want in the room.
Meanwhile, several hours south of the summit by car, thousands of migrants — mostly from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, whose autocratic leaders were not invited to the LA summit — are now marching through Mexico toward the US border, an image Republicans will play over and over in ads ahead of the November midterms.
Biden’s solution? Reportedly ship off a few thousand asylum-seekers to Canada and Spain. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the coming surge, not to mention that it fails to address the region’s biggest-ever migrant crisis, which los gringos continue to overlook.
That’s migrants from Venezuela, where crippling US sanctions have worsened the country’s economic implosion in recent years, forcing millions to flee to countries like Colombia or Peru. Calls for the US to take in more Venezuelans or ease sanctions have fallen on deaf ears in Washington.
"Venezuelan outward migration has been a huge issue for the region. Obviously, the countries that are most affected want some sort of support," says Grais-Targow. "But the focus has been on migration toward the US."
America and the Americas drifting away from each other is nothing new. It's been happening since the 2000s, when the US first shifted attention to the War on Terror after 9/11, and more recently to Russia and especially China. Over the years, its neighbors have increasingly felt like an afterthought for successive US administrations.
Washington has a lot to gain from engaging more with Latin America, even if it's just to keep its countries at arm’s length from China or curb the flow of migrants to the Mexican border. But it'll take more than a summit and bromides to repair years of taking the Americas for granted.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
The Graphic Truth: US flushes LatAm with cash
Strategic, economic and cultural ties between the United States and Latin American states run deep. The US relies heavily on the cooperation of Central and South American allies to stem the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into the country. But for years, Uncle Sam has been accused of exploiting its Latin American friends and taking the region for granted as it prioritizes economic ties with Asia. This view, however, fails to account for the significant amount of cash that the US doles out in order to boost Latin American economies. We take a look at some of those numbers.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
A vote for change in Honduras. Will they get it?
The small Central American nation of Honduras is in many ways a full blown narco-state. President Juan Orlando Hernandez – who’s governed the country for close to a decade – has been linked to the country’s booming drug trafficking trade. His brother Tony, a former congressman who is buds with Mexican drug lord El-Chapo, was sentenced to life-in prison this year for smuggling cocaine into the US. Narco-trafficking gangs run riot in the country, fueling one of the world’s highest murder rates, while corruption and poverty abound.
In a sign of the hunger for change, Hondurans have overwhelmingly selected an avowed socialist to be the next president, rather than see the conservative Hernandez’s preferred successor take power. It’s a big moment for a country in crisis. What happens now?
First, who’s won? With most of the votes counted, Xiomara Castro of the leftist Libre party currently holds a whopping 20-point lead over Nasry Asfura of Hernandez’s ruling National Party. That means Castro is now all but certain to become Honduras' first female president. She is in fact no stranger to Honduran politics: her husband José Manuel Zelaya served as president for three years until he was ousted in a military coup in 2009.
Hernandez and his cronies won’t be missed by many Hondurans whose lives are plagued by poverty and gang violence while the political elite gets rich off drug money. In Honduras, one of Central America’s poorest countries, lack of economic opportunity and high murder rates continue to drive high levels of emigration, most notably during the pandemic. The emigration rate from Honduras has increased 530 percent over the past three decades.
Will this development change things? In many ways Castro’s win is a triumph for democracy. The elections appear to have been free and fair, a stark contrast to the post-election violence that resulted after claims of election fraud in 2017.
The 62-year old Castro, who represents a coalition of opposition parties, has said she wants to open dialogue with all sectors of Honduran society to bridge the country’s deep divides. She has positioned herself as a change candidate, vowing to root out graft by establishing a UN-backed anti-corruption commission and to reduce poverty. And although her policy details are scarce, her message has resonated with a deeply disillusioned Honduran electorate that feels it has everything to lose by keeping the ruling Nationals in power.
However, Castro’s wings might be clipped by Congress, if the Nationals and its political allies hold solid ground in the 128-seat chamber.
Who’s watching? The United States, for starters. The Biden administration has made combating corruption a key part of its broader Central America policy, which aims to stabilize the region in order to reduce northward migration. And Honduras is a key piece of this: during the surge in illegal border crossings over the past year, Hondurans were second only to Mexicans among nationalities stopped at the border.
Castro, for her part, says she wants to maintain solid ties with the US, though it is unclear whether Washington and Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, will find common ground on a range of issues including relations with China, migration, and security.
Mexico also has a keen interest in seeing a more stable Honduras. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has come under strong pressure – first from Trump, now from Biden – to stop migration flows at his own borders.
Looking ahead. Castro’s job will be to turn stump speech rhetoric into meaningful change that people can feel. Hondurans are desperate for change. The neighbors are watching closely. Can she deliver?
The Graphic Truth: Who's arriving at the US-Mex border
Despite a recent dip, migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border have surged over the past 10 months, driven by economic hardship, violence, and the perception that President Biden would be more welcoming to migrants than his predecessor. Most of those coming to the US from the South hail from Mexico, but a large number have also fled violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. We take a look at migration patterns from Central America in 2021 compared to 2020.
What We're Watching: VP Harris on Central America trip, FBI dupes crooks, India reverses course on vaccines
VP Harris tours Central America: US Vice President Kamala Harris this week embarked on her first official foreign trip since assuming that role, making stops in both Mexico and Guatemala. After immigration became a major political headache for the Biden administration, with Central American migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border in historic numbers in recent months, Biden tapped Harris to oversee issues related to the root causes of mass migration from Central America (which he distinguishes from the so-called "border crisis''). Harris, for her part, has been pushing the US private sector to invest more in the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — that are plagued by corruption and crime, and account for the bulk of migrants arriving at the US' southern border. Harris has also engaged in vaccine diplomacy to shore up support, announcing that the US will ship COVID vaccines to both Guatemala and Mexico. Immigration is a massive electoral problem for President Biden, with polls suggesting that 48 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the issue. Harris is trying to fix that. But analysts say that this trip is also an opportunity for the VP to bolster her own foreign policy bonafides as she looks at a future presidential run.
Global crime ring duped: More than 800 alleged members of an international crime syndicate have been arrested in a global sting operation coordinated by Australia, Europol, and the FBI. How did they get busted? Law enforcement authorities tracked their nefarious plots involving drug smuggling, money laundering and even murder on ANOM, a secret messaging app that the crooks believed was untraceable. The whole operation was a ruse coordinated by the FBI, which had its informants distribute customized devices loaded with the app following an earlier crackdown on similar encrypted messaging services. Indeed, the operation reveals that cooperation among law enforcement agencies on different sides of the globe can be more successful at times than direct coordination between the governments that oversee them, especially when it's about fighting transnational crime. More broadly, we'll be keeping an eye on how the same agencies might work together to combat cyberattacks, which have risen significantly in recent months and overwhelmingly target national governments and private corporations.
Biden plays the (Central American) Triangle
In recent months, large numbers of men, women, and children from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America – Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador – have left their countries in hopes of applying for asylum in the United States. This wave of desperate people has created a crisis at the US border and a political headache for President Joe Biden. US border officials now face the highest number of migrants they've seen in 20 years.
Biden has a plan to manage this emergency. The idea is to invest $4 billion in these three countries over four years to help create the political and economic conditions that can make them more prosperous, and more secure. The goal is to persuade Honduras, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans that they and their children can thrive where they are.
The Triangle countries need the help. The people who live there have taken hits from poverty, crime, gang violence, drought, COVID-19, and two category 5 hurricanes in November 2020. In recent years, the US has directed money toward training and technical assistance to help farmers grow more food, the physical infrastructure needed to expand trade, and better nutrition for women, children, and babies. The difference this time is that Biden is offering much more money, nearly double the amount the US approved for these countries over the past four years.
But the Triangle countries have long been plagued with government corruption. In fact, earlier this week, Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) published a State Department list of 16 public officials from these three countries that are subject to "credible information or allegations" of corrupt acts. The list includes current Honduran and Guatemalan lawmakers, a senior aide to El Salvador's president, and former state officials from all three governments. The accusations include financial crimes and drug trafficking.
How can the Biden plan produce the broad benefits Washington hopes will stabilize these countries if state officials steal a lot of the money? The text of the plan offers several answers. To receive US help, the governments of these countries must "allocate a substantial amount of their own resources and undertake significant, concrete, and verifiable reforms," show "verifiable progress to ensure that U.S. taxpayer funds are used effectively," and "combat corruption." The Biden plan also directs some of the investment into "civil society organizations that are on the frontlines of addressing root causes" Lending from the International Monetary Fund comes with similar strings attached.
Yet, the Triangle governments have other financial options. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele dismissed the latest corruption allegations from Washington as "geopolitics," and thanked China for providing his country with 500,000 doses of a Chinese-made COVID vaccines and $500 million in investment "without conditions."
Bukele may be inflating the size of that investment, and his comments are partly political bravado and negotiating strategy. But later that evening, El Salvador's Congress ratified a deal with China, signed in 2019 after the Salvadoran government dropped diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, that would invest about $62 million in port infrastructure along El Salvador's coast, a water purification plant, a library, and a soccer stadium.
Honduras and Guatemala don't yet have formal ties with China, but that might change soon.
So, there's the Biden dilemma. You can't ease the flow of desperate people toward the border without investing in better economic conditions in the Northern Triangle. You can't be sure your investments will reach their target without political reforms that reduce corruption. You can't always use money to try to force these governments to reform when they can turn to China and other sources for investment.
On the other hand, isn't Chinese infrastructure investment in these countries a good thing? Maybe Washington can get the development and stability it wants in Central America without having to spend so many US taxpayer dollars to get it. The true answer to this question depends, of course, on what China chooses to invest in.
What do you think, Signal readers? What's the most effective way to solve this dilemma? Let us know.
The Graphic Truth: China makes a move in Central America
In response to an influx of migrants arriving at the US southern border in recent months, the Biden administration has tried to incentivize Central American governments to stop the flow of migrants. Biden recently pledged to invest $4 billion in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador over four years. But these sorts of gestures from the White House often come with strings attached. China, on the other hand, has steadily tried to up its investment in Central America in recent years, and — unlike the Americans — doesn't demand human rights and rule of law reforms in exchange for cash. We take a look at China's direct foreign investment in Central American countries since 2007.
El Salvador's president wins big. What does this mean for the country and its neighbors?
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele is an unusual politician. The 39-year old political outsider boasts of his political triumphs on TikTok, dons a suave casual uniform (backwards-facing cap; leather jacket; tieless ), and refuses to abide by Supreme Court rulings.
Bukele also enjoys one of the world's highest approval ratings, and that's what helped his New Ideas party clinch a decisive victory in legislative elections on February 28, securing a close to two-third's supermajority (75 percent of the vote had been counted at the time of this writing).
His triumph will resonate far beyond the borders of El Salvador, Central America's smallest country, home to 6.5 million people. Now that Bukele has consolidated power in a big way, here are a few key developments to keep an eye on.
Anti-establishment fervor isn't disappearing. The recent election demonstrates that Salvadorians are buying what Bukele is selling even if he doesn't always deliver on his promises.
In 2019, Bukele came to power pledging to root out corruption, break the monopoly of the two parties that have run the country since the end of the civil war in 1992, and rid the country of violent gangs (El Salvador has one of the world's highest crime rates). Despite a dip early in the pandemic, crime has risen at various stages since — though Bukele has harshly cracked down on gang violence. Meanwhile, investigations reveal that Bukele's administration has been mired in its own corruption scandals. Still, a majority of Salvadorians (roughly 90 percent) see Bukele as preferable to a corrupt political establishment that has long lined its own pockets while poverty plagues around 30 percent of the population. People simply want change.
And this trend isn't unique to El Salvador either. In nearby Mexico, populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, also has failed to make good on some reform pledges that brought him to power in 2018. Still, polls show that Mexicans are overwhelmingly rooting for AMLO — a rugged self-described "man of the people" — in upcoming midterm elections, over a self-enriching political class that they feel has left them behind.
Like in Mexico, there are concerns about El Salvador's authoritarian drift. Last year, Bukele sent troops into the parliament to demand the legislative body approve his security package. "Bukele's style of governing is bullying," said Carlos Dada, founder of the newsite El Faro.
And now that Bukele has a supermajority, analysts warn that he can go even further, claiming a mandate to pack the Supreme Court, reconfigure the attorney general's office, and could even push for a new constitution, scrapping provisions that would cap his current presidency at one-term (consecutive terms are banned). Critics are worried that in placing his allies in control of all levers of government, Bukele can now effectively undermine all judicial and legislative independence.
Why does this matter beyond El Salvador? Political instability in El Salvador breeds regional insecurity and more migration.
People from the so-called "Northern Triangle'' of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have for years constituted the largest share of migrants stopped at the southwestern US border. If an increasingly-authoritarian Bukele is unable to make good on his promises and improve Salvadorians' lives (New Ideas' success is so far rooted in Bukele's own self-styled image rather than a fixed political ideology) this could result in thousands fleeing in search of a better life in the United States, just as President Biden is trying to diplomatically tweak US foreign policy towards Latin America. The Biden administration recently axed the Trump administration's third country resettlement program (also known as the Remain in Mexico program), while still towing a tough line on what it calls "irregular migration." This complicates things for Biden who needs to work with the Salvadorians to manage the immigration issue, but who also can't be seen to be playing nice with norm-breaking Bukele after putting human rights and democracy at the heart of US foreign policy.
For Mexico, meanwhile, the stakes are also extremely high. The spillover effects of drug trafficking and gang violence in El Salvador create insecurity and havoc in Mexico (and vice versa). This dynamic intensified under the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy, when Mexico City experienced a surge in asylum applications from El Salvador. (Consider that in 2019, Mexico received around 80,000 asylum applications because many Central Americans did not want to risk being rejected at the US border and being sent back to their home countries.)
Looking ahead. The very online Bukele represents a new brand of politician sweeping parts of Latin America — and the globe. But in the year 2021, what happens in El Salvador very much does not stay in El Salvador. Mexico, the United States, and many others, are watching.