Don't fear the reaper

Former US Ambassador to El Salvador William Walker has an op-ed in the New York Times telling Americans not to fear El Salvador's leftists. I'd say that it's pretty consistent with what I've argued - the US has found a way to co-exist with the Christian Democrats, ARENA, and Funes, and should be able to work with the FMLN should they win. The FMLN has played by the rules for the last two decades and hasn't behaved in a manner that should scare the US anymore than the behavior of ARENA.

However, I am more concerned with ALBA-Petróleos de El Salvador than Ambassador Walker (See this El Faro report) and while the US should not fear a Sanchez Ceren-led government, it should be concerned. I'm not talking crazy concerned like Mr. Abrams, just concerned. There's a lot of uncertainty that will come from an FMLN-Sanchez Ceren administration.

Over the last two decades, what we have referred to as the moderates within the FMLN have been pushed out of the party. In different ways, the moderates on the left pushed for greater internal democracy, a regeneration of leadership, cooperation with pro-democracy businessmen on the right side of the political spectrum, and improved relations with the US. I'm thinking Joaquin Villalobos, Ana Guadalupe, Facundo Guardado and even Hector Silva.

Many moderates on the left eventually returned to work with the current administration (I'd say Salvadoran Ambassador to the US Ruben Zamora might fit here). Some never left because they realized there was nothing for them outside the FMLN (Oscar Ortiz). And some have ended up selling their souls skills to Mexico (Villalobos) and ARENA (Guardado) making me question how moderate they actually were.

As a result, in the mid-2000s, the orthodox wing of the FMLN consolidated its power over the party and reasserted the FMLN's socialist roots with a commitment to establish socialismo cuscatleco no matter how longer it took.

What does that mean in practice? I have no idea. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez was at the height of his power when the FMLN made their re-commitment to socialism and while it was unlikely that they were going to copy his model anyway, there is still just a little more uncertainty what an FMLN government will look like. How much different will the FMLN be when they are no longer the junior partner in the executive branch?

The FMLN also has five years of experience in the executive branch (at least part of it) that has most likely changed their thinking about how to govern the country. How much has their thinking changed compared to 2005 or so when they re-committed themselves to socialism? How much has their thinking changed since May 2009 when they entered the executive branch?  How much of Sanchez Ceren's, and Quijano's for that matter, campaign promises will actually become policy? I don't exactly know.

If the FMLN wins, I'd say that we will know a little more about their plans with some of the appointments that they make. While I would expect Manuel Melgar and Jose Luis Merino to show up somewhere in the FMLN-led administration, I would  only be worried if they were placed in positions that worked very closely with the US government. It's well-known that the US has problems with these two individuals, no need to antagonize the US. It would be like the US appointing someone like John Negroponte or John Bolton to be US Ambassador to the United Nations. It just sends the wrong signals.

If what I've heard that Oscar Ortiz will somehow oversee domestic security, that would be a good signal. We shall see.

In the meantime, here are several other El Salvador-related links that are worth checking out.

Weekend Elections Part I: El Salvador’s Three-Way Race

The Washington Office on Latin America's Background Information on the Upcoming Elections in El Salvador.

Hector Perla, Jr. and how El Salvador vote should be decided by the people, not U.S. Maybe it's me but I envision economic and social policies under an ARENA-Quijano administration not all that different from what has occurred under Funes. Different, but not all that different.

Tim has several links and Boz thinks that we are looking at second rounds in El Salvador and Costa Rica.

If Sanchez Ceren wins, ARENA has no one but themselves to blame

So their first president allegedly approved the murder of the Jesuits at the UCA. Their second president was a close confidant of Roberto D'Aubuisson and perhaps worse. Their fourth president increased his personal wealth sixteen times or so and was so corrupt that they had to expel him from the party. Now the sky is falling in on their third president. (I do wonder which of the four increased his wealth the most while in office through illicit dealings.)

President number three, Francisco Flores, appears to have tried to skip town on Tuesday stowing away in a bus headed for Guatemala. However, he had a change of heart when he was caught and decided to return to the capital to answer a congressional committee's questions surrounding the whereabouts of $10-15 million dollars donated by Taiwan's president to help Salvadorans recover from the 2001 earthquakes.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Luis Martinez ordered authorities to freeze Flores's bank accounts and properties. He's not under arrest but things are not looking good for Norman Quijano's campaign manager. This is probably not what Quijano had in mind when Flores was brought in to right the ship.

If ARENA loses this weekend, I'd say it probably has more to do with their failures in governing and their failure to adjust to life as an opposition party more so than it does to any success that the FMLN has had in office. It's not as if the FMLN has done great.

It's just that ARENA hasn't made itself into a better alternative.

Francisco Flores tries to pull an Alfonso Portillo

I apologize for the light blogging this week but it is the last week of the intersession course that I am teaching on September 11, 2001 and Beyond. I received paper drafts on Monday and returned them on Tuesday. Then students took an exam yesterday which I am still grading. Finals papers are due tomorrow. So what is going on:

The left is strengthening in El Salvador and Costa Rica days before the people of each country go to the polls. Both countries appear headed to runoffs but it is possible, especially in El Salvador, that the FMLN could eke out a first round victory.

In Guatemala, former Interior vice minister and current secretary of Communication of the Presidency Francisco Cuevas is asking for an investigation into former president Alvaro Colom. Cuevas alleges that Colom obstructed an investigation into a high-level functionary accused of leading a group of assassins while in office. Meanwhile, President Perez Molina dropped his suit against Jose Ruben Zamora but Vice President Roxanna Baldetti hasn't moved quite so quickly.

In Nicaragua, nobody wanted Rosario Murillo to be president so they have agreed to change the constitution in order to eliminate term limits and to eliminate the requirement that the winning candidate capture greater than 35 percent of the national vote. See The Pan-American Post for more details.

Boz takes a look at Latin America in last night's State of the Union address.

Finally, former ARENA President Francisco Flores tried to flee El Salvador yesterday morning. It looks like he wanted to avoid going before the Legislative Assembly once again. He has not been very effective at explaining where the $10 - 15 million dollars from Taiwan went. His ARENA colleagues appear to have abandoned him which isn't that surprising given that his response to the money given to him from Taiwan was nothing new and that previous ARENA president had received similar donations.

No accounting for millions in charity shipped to Guatemala

Reporters from CNN, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Center for Investigative Reporting set off on an investigation to discover what happened to $40 million in medical donations sent from the United States to Guatemala in 2010. Unfortunately, they could not find anyone to account for what supplies were actually sent and who in Guatemala actually benefited.

Reporters asked each of the 15 charities involved in the $40 million shipments to provide inventories of what they shipped. The charities either did not respond or insisted they had sufficient documentation to support the values reported to the IRS.

But they declined to share it.

So last month reporters went searching in Guatemala for the biggest recipient of 2010 charitable donations through Charity Services International: the Sovereign Order of Malta.

But of course no one with the Sovereign Order of Malta was readily available to answer questions about the shipments. It looks like Anderson Cooper's AC360 at 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday will have more on the story.

Tim Kaine and Mark Warner want Secretary Kerry to support free and fair elections in El Salvador.

Tim Kaine and Mark Warner want Secretary John Kerry to support free and fair elections in El Salvador.

The people of El Salvador will hold presidential elections February 2, 2014.  We write to encourage the Department of State and U.S. Embassy in San Salvador to take all appropriate efforts to ensure a free, fair and transparent vote.  Most importantly, the Department and the Obama Administration can support such an outcome by making clear that the U.S. government will work closely with any candidate who wins fair elections. 

For the first time, Salvadorans residing in the United States will be allowed to vote by absentee ballot.  Already, U.S.-based Salvadorans make enormous contributions to their homeland, providing almost 20 percent of El Salvador’s GDP through remittances to friends and loved ones.  By participating in the elections, the Salvadoran-American community will be able to contribute to El Salvador’s democracy, as well as its development.  The U.S. government’s expressed commitment to working with the next president and the people of El Salvador, regardless of the electoral outcome, will encourage full use of the franchise in both the United States and El Salvador.

After the elections, we will look forward to the continued development of U.S.-Salvadoran ties, building on President Obama’s 2011 visit to El Salvador.  Among other promising initiatives, we welcome continued efforts to maximize the impact of remittances sent to El Salvador.  As much as possible, we should reduce the cost and difficulty of sending hard-earned savings to families in El Salvador, and channel them to sustainable, income-generating investments, including small businesses run by receiving families.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

The Obama administration will work with whichever candidate wins freely and fairly. But it's a two-way street. If the victor does not want to work closely with the US, then so be it.

Kind of strange emphasis on Salvadorans voting by absentee ballot given that last I read no more than 10,000 might be able to vote - out of a population of around 2 million.

Remittances? Good but nothing they say hasn't been said for the last fifteen years.

It's not too early to start thinking about 2015

It's not too early to start thinking about 2015 in Guatemala. Wait, of course it is. According to an early January poll, LIDER's Manuel Baldizon heads the pack of candidates with 34%. This is unsurprising given his second place finish in 2011. If history is any guide, he'll be the next president of Guatemala.

However, he's had a rough week. The Patriotic Party has tried to connect Baldizon and his party to lime attack against the Vice President and his newest book is full of plagiarized texts.

UNE's Sandra Torres is back for another run at the presidency. Her last campaign was thwarted by the constitution. She's is poll at 13% which isn't too far off where she left off in 2011. The incumbent Patriotic Party looks like it's supporting Alejandro Sinibaldi. Sinibaldi lost the race for mayor of Guatemala City in 2011.

Let's survive 2014 first.

Will history repeat itself in El Salvador? An ARENA campaign based on fear? (update)

Will history repeat itself in El Salvador? Here is what Sonja Wolf wrote about the 2009 elections in El Salvador in a 2009 article on Subverting Democracy: Elite Rule and the Limits to Political Participation in Post-War El Salvador.

Pre-electoral polls had consistently predicted a leftist victory, although such projections meant little: in 2004 the FMLN's earlier lead was overturned by a substantial margin, and in 2009 Mauricio Funes' initially substantial lead dwindled considerably during the final weeks of the campaign.

Meanwhile, the campaign developed patterns reminiscent of previous electoral processes.

By January 2009 ARENA and its front organisation Fuerza Solidaria were dominating 73 per cent of the political advertising market.169 Fuerza Solidaria also sponsored TV and radio spots and gave talks to public- and private-sector workers, ‘educating’ voters about the FMLN's links with Hugo Chávez and the adverse consequences of a leftist win for El Salvador.170 Similarly, government officials and the leading media sought to associate the FMLN with Colombian rebels, street gangs and irregular armed groups supposedly active in the country, insinuating that an FMLN win would invite more violence.171 Despite persistent and serious irregularities on election day, voting occurred in tranquillity and ended in an historic triumph for the FMLN.

The FMLN links to Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, Colombian rebels, street gangs...where have we heard all this before? Oh that's right. Every single election for the last decade.

***ARENA warns about FMLN-gang links in the run up to February's elections. Meanwhile President Funes warns that he is concerned that the increase in pre-electoral gang violence is an attempt to improve ARENA's prospects in the elections. This is nothing new.

Here's what I wrote about ARENA's use of fear for a conference paper two years ago:

ARENA has also benefited from campaigns that were based upon fear. In 1994, citizens who might have naturally been inclined to vote for the economic reform-minded FMLN instead marked their ballots for ARENA out of fear that an FMLN victory would reignite the war. Wantchekon (1999, 1999a), Ellman and Wantchekon (2000), and Wantchekon and Neeman (2002) argue that the uncertainty surrounding the durability of the peace process led many Salvadorans to vote for ARENA even when doing so went against their economic interests. Wantchekon uses a game theoretic model to explain the support achieved by the ARENA over the FMLN. Wantchekon and his coauthors speculate that had voters been assured that a return to political violence was not possible, the FMLN could have emerged victorious in 1994. However, Salvadorans valued a choice (ARENA) that they thought would be more likely to lead to a definitive end to the war over a choice (FMLN) that would be more likely to promote economic reform (land redistribution) which would have directly benefited them.

Similar to Wantcheckon (1999 and 1999a), Ellman and Wantchekon (2000) find that voters in 1994 supported ARENA not because they approved of their political platform, per se, but rather because they feared that an FMLN victory would lead to disruption of the peace process. Wood (2000: 249) also argues that ARENA did an effective job of convincing Salvadorans that a vote for the FMLN might lead to a return to violence. Several FMLN militants were assassinated in the months leading up to the vote which helped to reinforce this belief. Ellman and Wantchekon (2000) also argue that many FMLN candidates hoped not to win in the 1994 elections, as they feared their victory would destabilize the country and put an end to the peace accords. Barnes (1998) also argues that fear of what an opposition victory would mean kept many FMLN supports from voting. When the FMLN achieved better electoral results in 1997, Ellman and Wantchekon (2000) contend that the party’s improved performance was caused by the decreasing risk that its victory would lead to unrest and that democracy had become more consolidated. The authors point out that the FMLN vote increased at a time when ARENA's economic policies, to which the FMLN was opposed, were helping the economy grow at a rate of 4%.

In order to understand 1994 election, Ellman and Wantchekon (2000) “present a model that helps to predict how threats against the electoral process influence platform choice by political parties, which party wins the election, and the policy outcomes finally implemented” (499). They hypothesize that the “stronger” party has a better chance of winning elections if its ability to cause political unrest is not well known and the “weaker” party, as it is aware of the potential for political unrest, will often take up a more centrist party platform in order to avoid disruption by actors that directly or indirectly support the “strong” party. Like Wantchekon, Wood (2000: 249) appears to agree that the FMLN held back in its criticism of ARENA because it was difficult for the party to criticize ARENA while, at the same time, not making it look like they were an unreliable peace partner. The FMLN’s selection of the moderate social democrat Rubén Zamora was more radical than would have been Abraham Rodríguez but less so than had they selected one of the former commanders.

While a fear of a return to war would disappear in later elections, fear remained an issue on which ARENA would continue to capitalize. In 1999, ARENA and the media demonized Facundo Guardado and his military experience as a guerrilla commander. ARENA and the media would do the same in 2004 with Schafik Handal when they “portrayed Handal as a hot-tempered and despotic individual who had masterminded kidnappings and was determined to turn El Salvador into a Cuban-style dictatorship.” His victory would jeopardize economic and political relations with the United States (Wolf 2009: 451). Business owners convinced their employees to support ARENA out of “fear” for what would happen should the FMLN and Handal emerge victorious, insinuating that their jobs would be lost should ARENA lose. ARENA, the media, and certain members of the US government also let it be known that an FMLN victory might lead to the deterioration of relations between El Salvador and the US. An FMLN victory would lead to capital flight, an end to Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans residing in the US, and an interruption of remittances. In both 2004 and 2009, ARENA campaigns argued that the FMLN would turn the country into another Venezuela.

If it wasn’t the FMLN that Salvadorans should fear, it was the maras (Wolf 2009). ARENA argued that its mano dura and super mano dura policies would be more likely to save the Salvadoran people from escalating levels of violence. In a paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association in 2009, Randy Sunwin Uang explored the relationship between crime, voter intimidation, economic growth, and campaign issues and Antonio Saca’s ARENA victory in the 2004 presidential election. Uang found Salvadorans who understood crime or gangs as the most pressing issue for the country rather than unemployment, poverty or economic issues, were more likely to vote for Saca and ARENA. Voter pressure, concerns with neoliberal policies, the FMLN’s choice of Schafik Handal, and concerns about the continuity of remittances should the FMLN emerge victorious, might each have had a small impact on the outcome of the vote, but crime was the primary factor. ARENA and the media then made sure was that violence was at the forefront of voters’ concerns.

That evil Ortega who is popular just like that evil Somoza

Some opposition members fear that the Ortega's are becoming like new Somozas in Nicaragua. While the alleged corruption and concentration of power is troublesome, the comparison seems a bit silly. It's like comparing today's FMLN to the guerrilla organization that took up arms against the military regime or to the death squads that morphed into ARENA which then morphed into today's right in El Salvador.

There's a bit of truth to each but the comparisons probably obscure more than they enlighten. Even though some people are still fighting it, the Cold War has been over for nearly twenty-five years.

Anyway, the feared Ortega is supported by the poor, women, and rich businessmen (ya know, just like Somoza). And a recent survey has him nearly more popular than ever.

The survey, which collected data from face-to-face polling of 1,600 Nicaraguans across the country, shows Ortega still has a 65% approval rating among all voters. Those who identify as Sandinistas support the president with an 82% approval rating, but his approval ratings are also high among independents (44%) and members of the opposition (30%). 

The poll shows that Ortega’s approval ratings have not changed significantly over the past year, and remain remarkably improved from four or five years ago. At the end of 2009, Ortega’s approval rating among all Nicaraguans was less than half (25.8%), while only 7% of independents and 2% of the opposition supported the president. Since then Ortega has elevated his approval ratings among all demographics, including Sandinistas. 

The poll also shows solid support for the president’s social programs, especially among Sandinista party sympathizers who have benefited to greater extent from the government handouts, according to the survey results. 

Now just because he is popular doesn't mean that he is governing in a way that is consistent with the democratic rules of the game or that what he and his wife are doing today are not going to hurt in the long run.

So how did year two turn out Mr. President?

President Otto Perez Molina's state of the nation address was overshadowed by the attack against his vice president. I'm not sure why the push back against calling it an assault or an attack. Here was a sitting vice president hit by an unknown substance (flour, lime, whatever). The people who orchestrated the attack in the name of freedom of expression are responsible for distracting attention away from what the president was reporting on. Unfortunately, it's now turning into a circus with the President cancelling his trip to Davos.

Water & Politics gives a first hand account of what went down at the theater (the people nearby thought it was flour) and also links to Plaza Publica's analysis of the president's "accomplishments."

Ricardo Barrientos gives his take on year two in Guatemalan President’s Mid-term Exam: A Failing Grade? for American University's AULA Blog. The AULA blog has some good academic coverage of what is going on in Latin America. You should check it out every so often.

See El Periodico for more reactions ranging from why would you have ever expected the president to highlight the negatives (Alejos) to we don't believe anything he said (Pinzon).

I gave my recap of year two in 2013: A democratic setback in Guatemala. It was a bad year for Guatemala even if the country's murder rate was slightly lower (one of the few positives).

A little more on that Elliott Abrams attack against the FMLN

Earlier this month, Elliott Abrams attacked Salvadoran Sanchez Ceren and the FMLN's alleged links to South American drug traffickers. He is concerned about the negative consequences of an FMLN victory in February's presidential elections. I said that I was no more fearful of an FMLN victory than I was an ARENA or Unidad victory. The FMLN played the rules of the democratic game while in opposition for fifteen years and during its near five years in the presidency, it had brought down poverty and homicide rates (according to government statistics) and had finally begun to move on corruption allegations against former ARENA administrations.

Geoff Thale at the Washington Office on Latin American and Hector Silva of InSight Crime (among other places) attacked Abrams as well but they did so while highlighting other problems. In a Letter to the Editor at the Washington Post, Geoff argues that drug trafficking and corruption "is rooted not in one party or another, but in El Salvador’s weak institutions and high levels of corruption, especially in the police." The US needs to work with the next president, regardless of which party he comes from, in order to tackle shared challenges. WOLA has more on its website. While it'll be different with Sanchez Ceren, the US has worked with presidents from different political parties in the past.

Hector, on the other hand, gets a little more personal. Elliott Abrams is one of a number of Reagan era officials who were implicated in the Iran-Contra Scandal and its cover-up. It was in the mid-1980s that officials connected to Iran-Contra brought the cocaine problem to El Salvador. Hector is grateful that there are sensible people in Washington working on US policy towards the region and not that many people like Abrams.

That's one of the reason why the Democrats and the FMLN should be able to work together if the FMLN wins the upcoming elections. However, all bets are off if the Republicans take the White House in 2016. In that case it won't be one party's fault. There's enough animosity between former Republican Cold Warriors and FMLN officials that I'm not optimistic that they'll be able to overcome their history.

2,354 adoption visas issued to US couples during Salvadoran civil war

The US government issued 2,354 adoption visas to American couples during El Salvador's twelve-year civil war years. Many of the children were illegally taken and sold into international adoption rings. Pro-Busqueda has so far been able to find 61 children taken from their parents.

In 1994, a Spanish Jesuit priest called Jon de Cortina helped families track down five of the children taken by the army 12 years before, during the La Guinda de Mayo massacre; the children had been dumped at a Red Cross orphanage 100 miles from their village. News spread and mothers such as Josefina came forward to report their missing children for the first time.

Buoyed by this early success, Father Jon created the Pro-Busqueda [Search] Association of Disappeared Children, a charity with a shoestring budget to investigate disappearances.

Read more about Pro-Busqueda and some of the children who have reconnected with parents in this article from The Independent.

Former EGP commander killed in Guatemala: Was it an accident?

Semuc Champey

Deportations: Guatemala's Main Policy Concern, With No End in Sight (from November). From what I've read, it appears that the US deported more Guatemalan migrants in 2013 because Mexico did a worse job deterring Guatemalan migrants. The total number of migrants returned from Mexico and the US was same year to year; just the distribution changed.

Guatemala's indigenous communities boosted by landmark reparations bill: US expected to instruct World Bank to address atrocities suffered by residents during Chixoy dam construction

Goldcorp: Water Deprivation And Militarized Expansion

I was not surprised that Rios Montt was brought before a Guatemalan tribunal in 2013 but I will be surprised if he is brought before another one any time soon (ever). Here's an update on recent developments.

Mayor of Santa Ana, Guatemala survives an assassination attempt.

Unfortunately former EGP commander and indigenous leader Juan de Leon Tuyuc Velasquez was killed earlier this week in Solola. He is the brother of Rosalinda Tuyuc, leader of Conavigua. He was struck and killed by a vehicle. Authorities are not yet ready to say whether his death was an accident or premeditated.

Guatemala still cannot collect much in way of taxes (11% of GDP).

Guatemala fights money laundering and passport fraud.

Race to the presidency in El Salvador

I contributed to this little primer on the elections in El Salvador in the newest edition of Latin News. Most of it was written in early December but it's not clear that much has changed in the month since.

The race for the presidency in El Salvador is in full-swing, with three main contenders representing the incumbent left-wing FMLN, the right-wing Arena, and the upstart challenger to El Salvador’s two-party system, Movimiento Unidad. In all likelihood, the three-way race will lead to a March runoff, because Salvadorean electoral rules require that the winner of the presidency surpass 50% of the vote.

After selecting the moderate Mauricio Funes as its candidate in 2009, the FMLN this year has instead opted for a candidate from the hardline left. A former guerrilla commander from the Popular Liberation Forces ‘Farabundo Martí’ (FPL), Sánchez Cerén is currently serving as vice president, having also held the education portfolio before stepping down to run for the presidency.

In order to balance the ticket, the FMLN selected the popular mayor of Santa Tecla (and also former FPL guerrilla), Óscar Ortiz, as Sánchez Cerén’s running mate. While many outsiders would have preferred Ortiz to head the ticket so as to maximise the party’s chances of winning over more moderate voters, the FMLN remains convinced that the candidate is less important than the party brand.

Norman Quijano, a two-time mayor of the capital San Salvador (2009-2013), will try to recover the presidency for Arena. The party lost it in 2009 having held it since 1989 .Quijano easily won re-election as mayor in 2012, when he convincingly defeated the FMLN’s Jorge Schafik Handal by 63% to 32%.

Quijano’s running mate is René Portillo Cuadra, who in December 2013 denied that he was considering renouncing his candidacy because his views had not been taken into consideration during the campaign. Arena has experienced severe difficulties maintaining internal unity since losing the presidency in 2009, which has undermined support for Quijano and the party.

Former President Elias Antonio (‘Tony’) Saca (2004-2009) is running for his moderate centre-right Movimiento Unidad coalition. Saca is a former broadcaster who served as president of the Arena administration for the 2004-2009 period, a five-year term during which crime increased and the economy slowed. Saca was expelled from Arena after the party’s defeat in the 2009 elections, allegedly because of excessive corruption during his presidential term.

He then established Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Gana) with several other dissident Arena members. His running mate is Francisco ‘Pancho’ Laínez, who resigned from Arena in March 2013. Laínez served as foreign relations minister during the Saca administration. While Unidad portrays itself as a third party alternative between the FMLN and the Arena, it is unclear what a Unidad presidency would look like. Saca and his supporters are more ideologically aligned with Arena, but they have had a strained relationship with their former allies, with whom they would most likely have to work in the 84-member unicameral legislature to pass legislation. Therefore, some see Unidad as more likely to work, formally or informally, with the FMLN.

Corruption, the economy, the truce negotiated in March 2012 between the country’s two main street gangs (maras), MS-13 and the rival Barrio 18, and relations with the US have dominated the media coverage of the campaign. All three candidates and/or their parties have been linked to ongoing corruption investigations.

President Funes appears to have accepted a US$3m donation from businessman Nicolás Salume during his 2009 campaign, but the details remain unclear. Arena and US officials remain concerned that Funes and the FMLN’s campaigns have been financed illegally by donations from Venezuela and the joint FMLN-Petróleos de Venezuela enterprise (ALBA Petróleos), with the involvement of former guerrilla José Luis Merino, allegedly connected to the Colombian guerrilla group, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), and with the appointment of suspicious individuals to positions overseeing domestic security. While his party and the president have come under scrutiny, Sánchez Cerén is the only candidate so far untouched by allegations of corruption.

President Funes has asked prosecutors to investigate former president Francisco Flores (Arena) on charges related to a US$10m donation from Taiwan during his 1999-2004 term. The money was supposed to assist small farmers register their land titles, but it does not appear that the funds ever arrived at the government agency and instead might have been used to finance Flores’ think tank, América Libre Institute. A senior advisor to Quijanjo, Flores was forced to step down in December 2013 in light of these allegations. Quijano himself has been the target of an investigation into his mishandling of funds as mayor of San Salvador. In addition to Flores and Quijano, the attorney general’s office levied charges against 21 individuals accused of embezzlement and falsifying documents, costing the government over US$1bn in losses. The accused include former government officials who served in the Flores administration and businessmen closely connected to the Arena party.

The third candidate in the race, Saca, has not escaped the allegations of corruption. Saca’s personal wealth allegedly increased from approximately US$0.6m to over US$10m during his single term in office. Questions also remain as to the destination of over US$200m in discretionary funds during his administration. Several officials that served in the Saca administration, including former ministers, vice-ministers, government employees, and businessmen, are also under investigation for incomplete work on the highway Monseñor Romero Boulevard.

As president, Sánchez Cerén would most likely continue the reforms begun under the current administration that have benefited the poor and the middle classes. These include subsidies for small farmers, social programs that provide meals, uniforms and supplies to thousands of school-aged children, expanded pensions for seniors, and affordable access to medicine. In all likelihood, Sánchez Cerén would not impede investigations into corruption from previous administrations or into wartime abuses (dating to the lengthy internal conflict between 1979 and 1992). A Sánchez Cerén administration would also try to balance the economic benefits that would accrue through maintaining friendly relations with Venezuela and the US. Sánchez Cerén would probably try to take a stronger stand against US aid conditions too, such as when the FMLN pushed back against the US-favoured Public-Private Partnership Law last year.

Like Funes, Quijano and Arena would most likely work very closely with the US to implement the reforms associated with the US-funded programmes like Partnership for Growth and the proposed second Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact. Quijano has emphasized the economy as a priority and has pledged to kick-start economic growth and improve investor confidence in El Salvador, but how that would differ from the current administration is unclear.

Quijano initially claimed that he would roll-back several of the social programs carried out by the current administration, but has since changed his approach to say instead that he would improve upon their execution. Quijano has been a vocal opponent of the gang truce between the MS-13 and MS-18, which appears to be failing following the discovery in December 2013 of a mass grave containing the remains of over 40 alleged gang victims. Transitional justice and investigations into corruption during previous Arena administrations are unlikely to be priorities of a Quijano administration.

On 7 January President Funes said there had been 2,426 registered murders in 2013, down from 2,543 in 2012 and 4,354 in 2011. That would put the homicide rate at 40 per 100,000 in 2013, compared to 70 in 2011. The president also said that poverty fell four percentage points in 2013 to 29%, on latest census data from the economy ministry. Private economists note that this improvement is due to government social programs, rather than economic growth and job creation, which remains weak.

Real GDP growth in the third quarter of 2013 was 1.6% year-on-year. Annual growth averaged just 1.6% in 2010-2012. The Funes government has deferred tough decisions about its budget, in a country that faces structural obstacles to growth. El Salvador's political cycle (congressional elections are due in 2015) means that the fiscal reforms deemed necessary by the likes of the IMF are unlikely to be addressed properly over the next year. The ratings agency Fitch, which in July 2013 cut its rating on El Salvador (see sidebar), also argues that the political polarisation of the country discourages investment, which has (on IMF figures) stagnated at around 14% of GDP over the last five years or so.

VP Baldetti assaulted in Guatemala

As you've probably heard by now, Guatemalan Vice President Roxanna Baldetti was hit with an unknown powder during President Otto Perez Molina's state of the nation address on Tuesday.

Baldetti was taken to the hospital because she was having difficulty breathing. Given that people thought that she had been hit with flour, they started making a joke out of her predicament. However, it turned out that she was actually hit with lime.

Perez and Baldetti did not have a good year in 2013 but I can't say that assaulting her with lime, or even flour for that matter, is anything other than a criminal act.

Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders

I'd like to bring your attention to a new book by Leisy J. Abrego, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA.

Soon to be released by Stanford University Press, Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders, is about the experiences and well-being of Salvadoran transnational families. The author, Leisy Abrego, an assistant professor at UCLA, interviewed 130 members of these families -- including immigrant mothers and fathers in Los Angeles and young adult children of migrants in El Salvador. Relying heavily on the voices of her respondents, she compares their experiences to reveal the hardships and inequalities they live through. Contrary to popular assumptions about transnational families, she demonstrates that not all are doing well financially and most suffer emotionally through the separation to different degrees. Her analysis highlights the powerful role of U.S. foreign and immigration policies in creating the need for migration and shaping migrants' well-being. 

The chapters explore the reasons people left El Salvador, tying individual experiences to broader military, political, and economic policies supported by the United States government. They provide details about the difficulty of getting a U.S. visa and the increasing violence that unauthorized migrants face while in transit. Chapters also explore the different social expectations and legal possibilities that frame migrants' remitting behaviors. 

Trained as a sociologist, the author is a member of the 1.5 generation -- born in El Salvador, but raised in the United States. She is deeply familiar with the lived realities of the Salvadoran community in Los Angeles and in El Salvador and therefore brings a level of sensitivity to the topic, to balance out the numbers and figures that predominate in public discourse about transnational families.

You can purchase the book here and here.

You can also follow Leisy on Twitter at @AbregoLeisy.

Trade, Development, and the Shadow of Dependence: Latin America and the United States in the World Trade Organization

The following is a guest post by Christina Fattore, a professor of political science at West Virginia University. Christina's research and teaching interests focus on international political economy, international organizations, and gender and international relations.

John Kerry's claim in November 2013 that the Monroe Doctrine is over drives right to the heart of my research, and I'm not sure if I actually buy it.  On its surface, one could argue (like Slate's Joshua Keating did) that greater interdependence has helped the rise of regional leaders such as Brazil and Argentina.  One could also say that these countries are looking elsewhere to build new economic relationships, specifically with China.  However, looking past this handful of countries that have done so well in the Bretton Woods/Washington Consensus system, the negative effects of interdependence continue to influence the foreign policy decision-making of most of the region, particularly, trade policy.  Disregarding Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, it's easy to see that formal trade ties with the US leads Latin American states to support the US agenda in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

I am currently in the midst of a book project on how Latin American overdependence on the US for trade and investment over the past century continues to affect their current behavior in the WTO.  The Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM) of the WTO has been dominated by the major powers, mainly, the EU and US.  Underdeveloped countries mainly avoid the DSM due to a lack of legal capacity (the inability to staff an office with legal experts at WTO headquarters in Geneva or the lack of bureaucratic strength to build a strong trade dispute), the inability to identify and pursue illegal trade behaviors, and a fear of retaliation by the major powers.  Basically, a country's internal limitations are to blame.  If an underdeveloped country does not have the resources to participate in Geneva, they exclude themselves.

While I was investigating this trend, I discovered there was an external facet as to why underdeveloped states are less likely to participate in the DSM.  I theorize that underdeveloped states depend on their large trading partners to represent their trade interests in Geneva.  Mike Allison and I explored this trend in our 2013 article using the decade long "banana war" between the US and the European Union.  Neither the US or the EU actually grow bananas for export; however, they are intricately involved due to investment in the area.  This trade dispute originated with the adoption of the Common Market and the Lome Conventions, where the EU countries agreed to a preferential regime for bananas grown in former colonial holdings in the Asian, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) regions.  However, US-headquartered banana grower Chiquita felt as though this preferential treatment of ACP bananas was hurting its market share, and therefore, turned to the US government to file a complaint against the EU.  This is a clear example of major trade powers representing (or in a way, usurping) trade issues in underdeveloped regions as their own.

Latin America is the only region outside of Europe and North America where every single country has been involved in a trade dispute, either as a complainant, defendant, or a third party.  This is mainly true because of the banana disputes, where many countries were involved as co-complainants or third parties, where the US took the lead.  In a paper that I am presenting this week at the Political Economy of International Organizations conference, I tested hypotheses relating to how dependence on the US for trade and investment affects Latin American participation in the DSM.  I found that Latin American states that have formal trade ties through a preferential trading arrangement with the US are less likely to target the US.  This result falls along the lines of the previous literature, where smaller states fear retaliation as punishment for targeting a large trade partner.  However, Latin American states were more likely to join a US-initiated dispute as a third party when the defendant was another large economy, specifically China or the EU.  This supports my expectation that Latin American states support the US trade agenda due to the shadow of dependence due to trade relationships and investment.

While the Monroe Doctrine may be officially over, its effects continue to perpetuate.  Latin American engagement in the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism is just one example of how the region continues to operate under the cloud of the negative effects of interdependence.

The FMLN (CID-Gallup) or ARENA (Mitofsky) will finish first - yeah, thanks

I was recently asked to answered a few questions for the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin American Advisor concerning the upcoming elections in El Salvador.Let's just say that I went unconventional and stressed that regardless of who wins the election, things are unlikely to change dramatically.

Citizens of El Salvador will elect a new president Feb. 2, with Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the candidate of the ruling FMLN party, former president and Unidad candidate Antonio Saca and conservative Arena candidate Norman Quijano currently the top three candidates, according to polls. What issues are driving the race? What is at stake for El Salvador in the election? What distinguishes the candidates from each other, and how would their governments differ from the Funes administration?

Here's my intro

As in past elections, the economy and insecurity are the two key issues. El Salvador has experienced one of the region's slowest rates of economic growth for the last two decades and while economic conditions should improve, growth is likely to be moderate regardless of the next president. The country's homicide rate has decreased significantly as a result of a March 2012 gang truce. However, insecurity remains high and the truce remains unpopular among Salvadorans. No candidate has embraced the truce and its future is in doubt.

The pursuit of corruption allegations against former Arena officials, the pace of transitional justice initiatives, and the reactivation of the mining industry will likely depend upon the ultimate victor.

Click here to read the rest of my response as well as those from Ricardo Cevallos, partner at Consortium Centro America Abogados in El Salvador, Joydeep Mukherji, senior director of Latin American Sovereign Ratings at Standard & Poor's in New York, and Douglas Farah, president of IBI Consultants and senior associate in the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In other news, Tim and Carin Zissis provide their takes on El Salvador's first ever televised presidential debate from Sunday night. I didn't watch the debate but it doesn't sound as if any candidate distinguished himself from the competition in a good or bad way (although Quijano security strategy seems scary to me).



Finally, according to CID-Gallup's most recent poll, the FMLN looks firmly in the lead with 49 percent of the vote. However, this is the first (I think) to have it nearing a first round victory. Mitofsky carried out a poll a few days earlier and actually had ARENA ahead 36 percent to 32 percent. Remember the winning candidate needs to secure 50% of the vote plus 1 (unlike Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua). While the FMLN could definitely win a second round against ARENA or Unidad, I can't imagine that they are looking forward to a one-on-one vote. And I'd still vote against victory in the first round for anybody.

What's driving support for the FMLN? I'd say a candidate who hasn't made many mistakes, a popular president among Salvadorans (but apparently not among those Salvadorans on Twitter), ARENA corruption scandals, a lackluster ARENA candidate, and a former ARENA president running for the presidency on the Unidad ticket. One additional key factor has been the number of historic ARENA supporters switching their support to the FMLN or to Unidad, Salvadoran immigrants in the US, and Salvadoran-American businessmen who have come out in support of Sanchez Ceren and the FMLN. The FMLN needs non-FMLN support and votes.

Why does ARENA still have a chance? An unpopular gang truce supported by the incumbent government and the discovery of a mass grave, an FMLN candidate tied to the more radical wing of the party and to the Latin American left, a slow growth economy, and the government's questionable appointment of public security officials.

Three more weeks to the first round and I'd say that it continues to look like Salvadorans will need two rounds to select their next president.

Nuestro nombre es Costa Rica

Let's just say that Costa Rican youth are fed up with the PLN/PUSC two-party system. Libre and the Anti-Corruption Party seem to have broken Honduras's two-party system. GANA and Unidad continue to make waves in El Salvador's ARENA/FMLN two-party system.

Is Costa Rica's Frente Amplio the solution to the stale PLN/PUSC divide?

Perez Molina and Baldetti back down for now

El Periódico's editor José Rubén Zamora Marroquín has been going after corruption allegations against Vice President Roxanna Baldetti and Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina in Guatemala for at least the last two years. Perez Molina filed a criminal complaint against him in November and Baldetti convinced a judge to authorize a restraining order against the editor in December. Perez Molina and Baldetti allege that Zamora's investigations had gone well beyond simply reporting and investigating on crminal wrongdoing. They accused him of blackmail, stalking and a variety of other offenses.

In December, a judge ordered Zamora to refrain from "disturbing or intimidating" the vice president and her family and then issued a six-month restraining order. This was an odd decision in that a came from a court that oversees gender-based crimes. Baldetti was arguing that his Zamora's writings were an attack against her because she was a woman. A more recent ruling ordered Zamora not to leave the country and to have his bank accounts frozen. Has anyone in the prosecutor's office moved on Zamora's allegations against Baldetti and OPM?

The entire situation has been an embarrassment for the president and the vice president, domestically and internationally. While it's not over, the president and the vice president have now dropped the criminal complaints against Zamora.

The situation reminds me of the president's December 2012 decision not to recognize the Inter-American Court of Human Rights rulings on cases pertaining to crimes against humanity and genocide that occurred before 1987 in Guatemala and that it would no longer pay reparations to victims who suffered prior to 1987. Domestic and international condemnation of the decision made Perez Molina walk that decision back a few weeks later but the damage had already been done.

The relationship between the press and the region's presidents sure seem to be at a low point - Perez, Funes, Ortega, Barrow, Martinelli, and Chinchilla. We'll give Hernandez a few weeks to get comfortable. Here's where each country scores and ranks in Freedom House's Freedom of the Press 2013.

Revisiting Manuel Zelaya's switch from the right to the left and other Honduran news

In A right-to-left policy switch? An analysis of the Honduran case under Manuel Zelaya, Clayton M. Cunha Filho, André Luiz Coelho and Fidel I. Pérez Flores argue that while there have been several candidates who ran on leftist-oriented platforms before ruling from the right in Latin America, Zelaya was the first case of someone whose shifted in the other direction. It was a unique policy switch from the right to the left.  

A member of the Honduran elite and elected president with a right-of-center platform in 2005, Manuel Zelaya soon came to be allied with Latin America’s bloc of radical left-wing governments – this being the first case of a post-democratization right-to-left policy switch in the region. The aim of this article is to assess the reasons that could have motivated Zelaya’s ideological turn. After a brief discussion of the Honduran political process, we review the literature about the issue of policy switching and proceed to an empirical analysis of the Honduran case.

We find that the fragility of the country’s energy sector and the alliance with Venezuela in a context of international economic crisis and high oil prices could have triggered a causal mechanism in Honduras similar to the one caused by currency scarcity and international pressure pointed to by the literature as the leading cause for traditional left-to-right switches, which suggests that this case study could serve as a pattern-matching exercise to the general findings of currently accepted switch theory.

Zelaya's tried to solve Honduras' energy crisis by entering into Petrocaribe and ALBA as well as threatening to expropriate Esso, Texaco, and Shell's ports and tanks. The country's economic and political elites had little problem with Honduras' entry into Petrocaribe, many of them lobbied for it, but ALBA was too much.

In other news out of Honduras, Laura Carasik offers US ambassador to Honduras offers tacit support of brutal crackdown at Al Jazeera America, Matthias Schwartz has a Mission Gone Wrong for The New Yorker, and Nina Lakhhani has Honduras and the dirty war fuelled by the west's drive for clean energy for The Guardian.

I didn't want to comment on Elliott Abrams' recent attacks against the FMLN in a Washington Post op-ed

I didn't want to comment on Elliott Abrams' recent attacks against the FMLN in a Washington Post op-ed any more than I did on Monday. Abrams is a person who knows a good deal about Central America but he is not someone whose judgment I would ever trust. Given his "success" promoting democracy in Central America and elsewhere during the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, it's hard to see why anyone takes what he says seriously. He has a history of lying to the American people which led to a guilty plea for withholding information from Congress.

Fortunately, I don't really have to. Ana Rosa Quintana wrote a similar op-ed for the PanAm Post two weeks ago. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that he and Ana were working from the same notes. My comments on her piece are applicable to Abram's piece as well so I'll just repeat them here.

Saca's possible return to the presidency and Merino's [a Sanchez adviser] alleged ties to international drug trafficking are worrisome, but how can you seriously leave out all the allegations of corruption against ARENA that are coming to light?

Saca is a former ARENA president believed to have increased his wealth sixteen times while in office. Several of his officials are under investigation for corruption. The previous ARENA president, Francisco Flores, is under investigation for corruption, money laundering, and the misuse of government funds involving a $10 million donation from Taiwan. Several ARENA officials and businessmen are under investigation for links to the operation of LaGeo and its shady privatization.

Then there's recent news that El Salvador's homicide rate should decrease once again in 2013, largely as a result of the gang truce. On Monday, President Mauricio Funes said that there had been 2,426 killings in 2013, 2,543 in 2012 and 4,354 in 2011. If the figures are up-to-date, the murder rate will end the year right at 40 per 100,000 which is down significantly from the ~70 in 2011.

President Funes also reported that poverty decreased by four percentage points in 2013, from 33 percent to 29 percent. Extreme poverty decreased 3.5 percentage points between 2008 and 2013 as well. The data come from the Household Survey and General Purposes of the Statistics and Census Bureau of the Ministry of the Economy. If true, the decrease came in spite of low growth and job creation; the decrease was caused instead by the implementation of government social programs.

Crime down. Poverty down. Corruption investigations now finally moving forward. I'd be more comfortable with Oscar Ortiz heading the FMLN ticket, but given a choice between ARENA's Quijano, UNIDAD's Saca, and the FMLN's Sanchez Ceren, I wouldn't find it at all surprising if Salvadorans voted for Sanchez Ceren and the FMLN with full knowledge of how they have governed the past five years and how they are likely to govern the next five years.

I don't know how the FMLN will govern should Sanchez Ceren be elected. The country's economic and security dependence on the United States is something that the FMLN will most likely want to change but it'll be difficult. One out of every four Salvadorans live in the US; remittances from Salvadorans living in the US to El Salvador surpass $4 billion each year; the US is El Salvador's most important trading partner; and Salvadorans really like the US. And it is not as if the Latin American left (Venezuela) is in good shape to fill in the void produced by a weakening of economic ties between the US and El Salvador.

Sanchez and the FMLN are not perfect, no candidate/party ever is, but the FMLN has done nothing in the executive or the legislative branch that makes me any more fearful of an FMLN administration than an ARENA or GANA/UNIDAD administration.

I imagine that a "true" FMLN administration will unsettle relations between the US and El Salvador but as long as people like Abrams are not advising US policymakers, the US and El Salvador should be able to overcome most challenges that arise.

All bets are off if Republicans capture the White House in 2016 and the FMLN is in power in El Salvador.

Potential fallout from another ARENA corruption scandal

Boz has some thoughts on the fallout from corruption allegations against Francisco Flores in El Salvador. You might as well read all four points. The investigation into former ARENA president Flores seems to have been going on for a year or more but has really picked up steam since September. The investigation could be because of campaign season prior to the February 2nd elections (probably) or because of US pressure on the Funes government to crackdown on corruption as a condition of a second Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact. Senator Leahy and others remain disappointed with the slow pace of cleaning up El Salvador's institutions after years of ARENA governance.

Obviously the motivation could be a little or a lot of both. Or it could simply be coincidence - the investigation had been going on for some time and with information from the US, the government went public when it could. Regardless of whether the corruption allegations are true, Funes' public comments have politicized the investigation in El Salvador and might have angered some US government officials for revealing details to the public.

Francisco Flores isn't the only former president in trouble for allegedly taking a little off the top of Taiwanese donations. Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo is in a US jail in part for stealing from Taiwan's multi-million dollar donation to Libraries For Peace. That's right, stealing from school children.

This is what I came up with Greg.

This is what I came up with Greg.

@washingtonpost makes an embarrassment of itself once again - Do some people never go away? Democracy under siege http://t.co/UO6LmO7MbA
— Mike Allison (@CentAmPolMike) January 4, 2014

Intersession and September 11

I am teaching an intersession course for the first time this year. We meet four days a week for just under three hours each day. It'll be intense not only because of the compressed nature of the schedule but because the course I am teaching is September 11, 2001 and Beyond. Like me, most of our students are from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and knew people who died on 9/11. That often makes the class pretty emotional and challenging at times.

The first time I taught the class was spring 2012. Students were in third and fourth grade when 9/11 occurred and so they had some personal recollection of the day's events. They mostly remember being in lock down in school and then a visibly distressed parent coming to pick them up from school early that day. Today's college students were around five years old when 9/11 happened so I am not sure what they remember, if anything accurately. (So first year students were five years old or so; I have seniors so they were in third and fourth grades).

I don't get the feeling that students learn much about events surrounding 9/11 in much of an academic way prior to or even in college. They've gotten a little from parents and friends over the years but that is about it. Now I am sure that we can say that about lots of events but given that we are only a decade or so removed from the attacks and that we and the world are living the consequences every day, every political science department should do their best to introduce some of what we know about the causes and consequences of 9/11 to our students.

Here is the course description and (for the first time) student learning outcomes:

Course Description: This course analyzes the major social and political events directly related to September 11, 2011. Throughout the semester, we will examine the causes and consequences of 9/11 including, but not limited to, the emergence of Al Qaeda, the historical involvement of the U.S. in the Middle East, the covert and overt wars launched by the U.S. in response to the attacks, and efforts intended by the U.S. government to ensure the safety of Americans here at home and abroad.

Student Learning Outcomes (see last page for additional details): At the end of this course, a student who has completed all readings and assignments and participated in class discussions is expected to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the United States and al Qaeda prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Methods of Assessment: Class participation, Exam 1)

• Explain how the United States, al Qaeda and much of the rest of the world responded to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Methods of Assessment: Class participation, Exam 2);

• Identify and analyze what injustices, real or perceived, led up to and resulted from 9/11 (Methods of Assessment: Class participation, Exams, Policy Paper);

• Write a policy position paper based on original individual research in which a course of action is recommended and justified (Method of Assessment: Proposal, Policy Paper); and

• Articulate and defend orally a policy position (Method of Assessment: Presentation).

Here's the entire syllabus. I'd say that it is a little light on political science in its current state which will change when I teach the course during a full fifteen week period.

Why do people keeping getting Guatemala murder numbers wrong?

I've seen several references to over 6,000 homicides in Guatemala in 2013. Sorry, it's not really true. INACIF recorded 6,072 violent deaths last year. Its numbers include murders, suicides, and accidental killings. That's an increase over the 6,025 violent deaths of the year before. So they count homicides and other violent deaths not just homicides.

The National Civilian Police, on the other hand, reports homicides. It counted 5,259 murders last year. That was 104 more murders than 2012 but once you account for population estimates, 2013 came out with a lower rate than 2012 - 34.0 to 34.2. It's really the same but the optimist can say it was down. I've also come across different year end numbers from the PNC for 2012 but it is always in the 5100s (5,174 and 5,155).

I have no problems reporting the numbers from INACIF, just stop calling them homicide numbers. But there's nothing really new about getting Guatemala's murder numbers incorrect. Heck, candidate Otto Perez Molina went around the country telling people how he was going to reduce murders from 25 per day down to some other number. That was only 3-4,000 higher than the official homicide numbers.

Central American murder rates remain same to slightly lower

With a good end to the year (25% fewer homicides in December), Guatemala ended with a homicide rate nearly the same as as 2012. In 2013, the rate was 34.0 while in 2012 it was 34.2. Guatemala's murder rate is still very high but obviously much lower than the 46 per 100,000 it recorded in 2009.

In neighboring El Salvador, authorities registered 104 fewer homicides in 2013 compared to 2012. It was actually the least violent year since 2003! La Prensa uses 2007 population estimates to illustrate that the murder rate dropped to 43.3 in 2013 but using the 6.2 million population estimate it is 40 per 100,000 - about 30 points lower than 2011 (the year before the gang truce).

Honduras finished the year with a murder rate of 83 per 100,000 which is 2-3 points lower than the last two years. Those numbers are from UNAH.

Given the uncertainty surrounding true homicide numbers and reliable population estimates, I'd be comfortable with saying that there was no change in each country's homicide rate but, if pushed, each country experienced slightly lower rates compared to the previous year.

Belize walks away with the most improvement cutting its homicides from 145 to 99 for a murder rate of 30 (down from 44). There's no doubt about the homicide rate here.

Here is a chart on homicide rates for the four countries since 2000.

A democratic setback in Guatemala

I have a new post up at Al Jazeera on 2013: A democratic setback in Guatemala.

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina was recently named The Latin Trade's Leader of the Year for 2013 in recognition "for reshaping Guatemala's foreign trade and investment outlook, effectively implementing changes to position the country as an attractive destination for investment in Latin America". The World Bank's annual Doing Business report also recognised Guatemala as one of the world's top business regulation reformers for 2012-13 because of its success in reducing  obstacles to start a business, improving the way construction permits are distributed, and simplifying its tax system.

It is unfortunate that the international community chose to celebrate Molina and Guatemala with such recognition during a year in which there have been so many setbacks for democracy. I do hope that Molina and the Guatemalan government and business community will one day earn these rewards, but 2013 was not their year.

And see the first comment from Front Line Defenders which pretty much says that while everything that I say is true, it's actually much worse.

While everything Mike Allison says is true one startling fact alone illustrates how volatile the human rights situation is and how the government has not only failed to deal with the problem but has been complicit in its creation.

UDEFEGUA the national body responsible for documenting attacks on human rights defenders recorded 305 such attacks for the whole of 2012. By August of 2013 the figure for the year to date was 595. Front Line Defenders attended a crisis meeting of national and international NGOs to address this developing crisis. Of the 25 Guatemalan HRDs attending the meeting every single one had been threatened or attacked directly while others had been targeted in media smear campaigns by the secretive Foundation Against Terrorism.

Inward investment is all very well but how will it survive in a political climate where the rule of law is meaningless and where to challenge the power of the oligarchy is to be seen as a traitor to the country?

And don't blame me because the editors shortened Perez Molina to Molina and Rios Montt to Montt.

Preliminary homicide numbers in Guatemala and El Salvador

Preliminary homicide statistics are rolling in for Central America. In Guatemala, it looks like they have ended the year with 5,259 murders. That would be 104 more than they ended 2012. I'll wait for Carlos Mendoza to put together year end numbers because Prensa Libre's historical numbers are not consistent with what everyone has been using. It doesn't look like they are using the National Civilian Police's homicide statistics or the Forensic Institute's (INACIF)'s violent death statistics so I don't really know.

Here is a figure on homicide numbers using the PNC's numbers if the 2013 numbers that PL provides is actually from the PNC.

Once you account for the population increase from 2012 to 2013, the rate remains pretty flat but obviously an increase in the total number of homicides is not something that anyone was hoping for. Perhaps the optimist can hang their hat on the fact that the last several weeks of the year were relatively violent free.

In El Salvador, homicides decreased by 104 compared to 2012, ending the year with 2,490. That's pretty impressive given all the talk about the failing gang truce. Now if you want to say that gang are simply hiding the bodies of their victims, which is possible, you need to go back pre-truce and increase those murder numbers as well to account for disappearances. All the numbers will look worse.