Following in the footsteps of El Pibe and the photo of the “man in the middle”, how about a weekly feature of Quien estoy?  This is a personal favorite photo, and have regretted not seizing the recent opportunity to buy this photo in a large format.  Any guesses out there as to who this is?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/world/americas/26suitcase.html?ref=americas

I was passed this article from my Colombian friend. Maybe those of you in the International Development program already came across this article. This article has been frequently referenced in arguments looking for an ‘alternative’ to the current Western-biased development program.

chau,

Carlos

dvlpmt-in-third-world.pdf

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/23/davos.main/index.html

Maybe a few of you have read about this comical but famous fight between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa that had them feuding for over thirty years. The picture here is a shot of Marquez a day or two after Llosa socked him one! There is more here than just a fight between friends….to read more click on the link:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1505968.ece

chau,

Carlos

As Three Leaders Attempt to Reshape Power, One Question Is Central: Who Would Benefit?

By Monte Reel

Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 18, 2008; Page A12

BUENOS AIRES — Movements to rewrite national constitutions are dramatically changing the political paths of several South American countries, triggering bitter debates over whether new charters will benefit future generations or simply serve the political ambitions of current presidents.

In three Andean countries — Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela — political leaders recently have pursued constitutional rewrites that would make it more difficult for future administrations to reverse the policies they instituted while in office. But in recent weeks, the proposals have reenergized opposition movements, which complain that their governments are tilting toward authoritarianism.”In all of these cases, the constitutions will only last as long as the ruler does,” said Allan Brewer-Caracas, an opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who participated in a constituent assembly in the 1990s. “The main changes that they are calling for are to centralize the government and to concentrate power in that central government. If you want to reinforce democracy after that, you have to change them again to decentralize the governments and the power.”In trying to rewrite the charters, Chavez and his allies in Bolivia and Ecuador hope to forge new national identities — and awaken a strong sense of hope among their poorest citizens. They speak of their proposed changes in revolutionary terms, advocating a stronger state role in the economy and less reliance on global markets, which they say favor more-developed countries.

No one in South America is talking about abandoning electoral politics, but each of the three countries undergoing constitutional battles is experimenting with what the Venezuelan president calls “21st-century socialism.” The experiment has not been easy, partly because determining exactly what 21st-century socialism looks like on the page has sparked painful periods of self-evaluation.

Both Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales proposed changes that would do away with current term limits for presidents, and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa‘s supporters advocate permanently dismantling the country’s opposition-controlled legislature. To those who don’t share their ideologies, the proposals appear to be attempts to win a tighter hold on power and silence the opposition.

The opposition, though, has only gotten louder since the changes were first proposed.

After nearly two years of bitter deadlock, an elected constitutional assembly in Bolivia passed a draft of a new constitution last month — only to see it fiercely opposed by large sectors of the population. The controversy sparked riots and led Morales to call for a referendum on his own rule, and that of regional governors.

In Ecuador, a similar assembly made up primarily of Correa’s allies effectively dissolved the National Congress. Critics cast the developments as the end of democracy, though judges reviewing the matter upheld the action.

And in Venezuela, voters last month dealt Chavez his first electoral defeat by narrowly refusing a set of constitutional changes that would have given him even more authority. Though Chavez and his supporters have hinted they could press for the proposals through other means, such as new laws or decrees, the constitutional referendum for the first time forced Chavez to rethink the nature of his self-styled “Bolivarian Revolution.”

“It would be a mistake if we ignored this and tried to increase the pace,” he said this month. “I’m forced to put on the brakes.”

The current constitutions are not exactly musty documents on yellowing parchment. Bolivia substantially revised its constitution in 1994, Ecuador’s was ratified in 1998, and an assembly in Venezuela dominated by Chavez allies drafted that country’s charter in 1999. In 2004, the legislature in Colombia, a U.S. ally, changed its constitution to allow presidents to be reelected, permitting ¿lvaro Uribe to win another term two years later.

Just as Chavez did before being elected in 1998, both Morales and Correa campaigned on the promise of creating constitutional assemblies to dramatically alter what was perceived by many as the failure of government institutions and of the rule of law.

“Large-scale constitutional reforms are extremely popular with citizens,” said Jonathan Hartlyn, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina who has studied constitutional politics throughout Latin America. “They’re particularly popular in a context of perceived economic and social exclusion, and in places where political parties and politicians are both weak and extremely unpopular and are blamed for the crisis.”

The political tension has been worst lately in Bolivia, where thousands of people took to the streets last month, many of them advocating a break from the central government. Several regional governors created “autonomy statutes” calling for more independence and local decision-making power.

A draft of the constitution was passed Dec. 9, but the opposition continues to protest some of its articles, including those that would give the federal government more control of local tax revenue and limit the size of individual landholdings.

Jaime Aparicio, a former Bolivian ambassador to the United States who also helped oversee Ecuador’s constituent assembly elections last year, places the blame for Bolivia’s constitutional problems on the makeup of its assembly.

“The problem in Bolivia is that Morales’s supporters elected people based on their loyalty to the party and on their political activism experience,” said Aparicio, who also serves as vice president of the Inter-American Juridical Committee, based in Rio de Janeiro. “So once they were seated there in the assembly, there was clearly a problem that was very simple — incompetence.”

That’s exactly the kind of statement that angers Morales’s supporters most. They have argued all along that the constituent assembly should give more power to grass-roots movements — not lawyers or the political elite.

When the opposing sides met in La Paz this month, they adopted a tone of conciliation, promising to focus on what brings the different regions of the country together rather than what splits them apart.

“When drafting a lasting constitution, you need to take specific policy off the table and focus on principles,” said David King, associate director of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics and a native of Bolivia. “It can be helpful to focus on abstractions and not particulars.”

Morales, who has been accused of trying to consolidate power through the constitution by expanding presidential authority, last week seemed to suggest that the battles of the constitutional drafting process — despite the deep rancor that has marked it so far — might eventually lead to a consensus of what it should mean to be Bolivian.

“When there are no personal or sectorial ambitions, it’s possible to understand each other for the well-being of the country,” Morales said.

That has been the hope for the process since its inception, before something as basic as a face-to-face conversation between the two sides of the constitutional debate could have been labeled a breakthrough in negotiations.

“I think it will be a very difficult process, but I think we’re in a much better place now,” said Aparicio. “Like it happened in Venezuela, the circumstances are changing and I think President Morales realized that. We were very close to a confrontation, and he had everything to lose.”

At this stage, your knowledge of the topic may vary between sketchy and familiar.  Whatever stage you are in, it is important to begin with a bird’s eye view of the topic.

The main problems students have is they tend to select a few articles on the topic that grab their interest.  What you have to remember is that academic articles are mainly written for the cognescenti, those who have been working on the topic for most of their careers.

 

1)      Step 1 therefore should be to start with the most basic information available on the topic.  In academics, this would be a textbook, designed to simplify and synthesize the main ideas on a topic.  Once you have examined these resources, a good second step is to look at single-authored books on the topic.  If you are studying Chile, a book on the history and one on the political economy of Chile could together give you a good idea of the main periods and themes of the country.  If you are writing on corporate social responsibility, someone who has written a book on the topic will likely cover the main literature in the opening chapter.  Look for titles like, “An Intro. to” or “Leading issues in.”  In general, it is better to start with more recent books, examining all adjacent possibilities by call # on the shelf, as they should represent and summarize what has been done before.  Of course, the quality of writing and analysis varies greatly, and all authors have some bias, so you really want to look at several books, make notes, and compare how they look at the key issues differently.

 

2)      Step 2 would be to look at review articles.  In journals such as Latin American Research Review, at the end of each issue, are reviews of multiple books on the same topic.  Used alone, these will not really give you enough information to understand the author’s points.  But after step 1, they can give you valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of competing approaches to a topic.

 

3)      Step 3 would be to look at multiple author edited volumes.  Skimming the table of contents of these and reading carefully the intro chapters will again help you to make sure you are not missing any key aspects or themes.

 

4)      Step 4 is to make a catalogue of what data are available and to prepare some basic excel charts on the overall trajectory.  For a country, the main exports and imports over time.  For an issue such as education, what data are available and what do they say, eg how has overall literacy changed over time; how has female participation, etc.  Here your previous steps will help you to hone in on what are the foundational and contentious variables in the discussion.

 

 

At first glance, this could be a monumental task.  However, if you approach this task with purposefulness and with the idea of developing new habits, it is quite feasible to finish within a week.  You want to make sure that you do not read word for word.  What you are doing is scanning information, reading particular areas carefully, in order to answer the question at hand.  You are then in steps 2-4 scanning new information to make sure you have not missed anything.

The key question for starting research is:

What are the key paradigms used to explain the trajectory of the country/issue?  What helps to explain the differences in those paradigms?  What kind of variables, methods, and data help to explain these differences?

If you analyze the trees without this forest level view, you have a high chance of (re) producing bias and missing key aspects of the debate.  If you look carefully for the right kind of material (syntheses and reflections), such as the chapter we read in class for the first week, you will not get buried.  You will instead be able to say confidently, it is clear that there are 3 main approaches to LA devt. historically, dependency, structuralism, and neoliberalism.  Every subsequent step will then be informed by this and help you to begin to categorize authors and begin to develop your own perspective and potential contribution, which is our end goal.

 I am available for discussion as you progress.

Purpose:

The reflection papers are designed to get you in the habit of thinking carefully about the material you have, and creating a quick set of analyses and suggestions on what they bring to the issue(s) at hand.  This is the preparation that will allow you as a researcher or analyst, to have influence in decision-making meetings, and signal your contribution to group discussions.  Of course, it also allows for considerably improved incorporation of the materials into your own knowledge base, consideration of the multiple possible perspectives and types of analyses on issue(s), and stimulation of your own creative suggestions/analyses.

 What it is not:

The reflection paper does not require outside research.  It is not a summary of each paper.  Remember, you will be coming to a meeting where everyone else has access to the same materials.  The key point is for you to develop your own unique view of the issues and to learn to be persuasive in using the materials available.  Therefore, although for yourself it will be useful to create a set of notes by author, the key for the paper will be what have you learned from them?

 What it is:

Once you have made detailed notes of each author, you should find ways to compare them.  That is, there must be common questions, variables, actors, etc by which you can compare and contrast their perspectives on the issues.  You should also not neglect how differences in methods, frameworks of analysis, and evidence affects their analyses.  It is often helpful to make an outline and/or a table/diagram to sketch this out more clearly in your mind.  You will then write up your comparison, with one important aim- what do you think about what these authors say.  What can you contribute in terms of how to move forward from the contradictions and limits of the current discourse?  What is missing from the discussion?

 What it will help you to accomplish:

1) This exercise will help you read more strategically for key analytical points through large amounts of materials.  Over time, you will become more efficient and purposive in your reading.  This is an absolutely essential skill in a time of seemingly overwhelming information.

2) Your own analytical skills will improve considerably by breaking down the strengths and weaknesses of leading authors.  The purpose is not to just critique but to see how one sets up convincing research and what can be done to improve it through the comparison and contrast (as well as the natural limits of any piece).

3) It pushes you to think more carefully about the issues at hand, to push yourself towards developing your own perspective, to be shared and tested out in group reflection at the meeting.  Ultimately, you will have to “sell” your own analysis, so this is a good bridge towards that goal.

Buenas,

If anyone has any recommendations for links to place under our Blogroll on the right side of our page let me know and I will add them. Nice picture of the Three Amigos eh? If you don’t recognize el caballero in the middle, I recommend you find out!!

-El Pibe

Hola companeros,

Bienvenido!

To start off the blog, here is a link to the documentary War on Democracy which discusses the US involvement in Latin America over the last 30 years. I think Val and Catherine saw this last term, if I am correct. To watch the trailer go here:

http://warondemocracy.net/

If the documentary interests you, go to Google Video and search it by name to watch it in its entirety for free.

Saludos,

Carlos