Archive for the ‘Regions’ Category

14
Mar

New Pope Shifts Church’s Center of Gravity Away From Europe

Written on March 14, 2013 by Ángeles Figueroa-Alcorta in Americas, Culture & Society, Europe, Foreign Policy, International Law & Organizations

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The surprise selection on Wednesday of an Argentine, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the new pope shifted the gravity of the Roman Catholic Church from Europe to Latin America in one fell swoop, and served as an emphatic salute to the growing power of Latinos across the Americas.

The new pope took the name Francis and is the 266th pontiff of the church. He is the first pope from Latin America, and the first member of the Jesuit order to lead the church.

“I would like to thank you for your embrace,” the new pope, dressed in white, said in Italian from the balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica as thousands cheered joyously below. “My brother cardinals have chosen one who is from far away, but here I am.”

The selection electrified Latinos from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires, and raised the hopes especially of those in Latin America, where 4 of every 10 of the world’s Catholics now live.

But the choice also may provide a strategic boost to the church in the United States, where its following would have lost ground in recent decades were it not for the influx of Latino immigrants, who have increasingly asserted themselves as a cultural and political force, and played a critical role in President Obama’s re-election.

The significance of the choice was not lost on church leaders. “It’s been more than 500 years since the first evangelization, and this is the first time that there is a pope from Latin America,” said Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, who is originally from Mexico.

“It’s a huge role that we never had before,” he said.

The new pope, known for his simple, pastoral ways and his connection to the poor, is in some ways a contrast to his predecessor, Benedict XVI, an aloof theologian who resigned the office — the first pope to do so in 598 years — saying he no longer felt up to the rigors of the job. Read more…

As published in www.nytimes.com on March 13, 2013 (a version of this article appeared in print on March 14, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: New Pope Shifts Church’s Center of Gravity Away From Europe).

14
Mar

Hugo Chávez and his legacy of inflation

Written on March 14, 2013 by Ángeles Figueroa-Alcorta in Americas, Globalization & International Trade, Master in International Relations (MIR), Political Economy

By Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, alumnus of the Master in International Relations (MIR)

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Renaming Venezuela’s currency as the “strong bolivar” sounded like a bad joke back in 2007. Fast forward to 2013 and that “rebranding” seems almost grotesque in light of how weak the Latin American currency really is.

In February of 2013, the Hugo Chávez regime devalued its currency for the seventh time, bringing the fixed exchange rate from 4.3 to 6.3 bolivars to the dollar. The real market exchange rate, though, gives Venezuela’s currency a much lower valuation, closer to closer to a 25/1 rate.

Now, with the socialist leader dead, his legacy will still hunt Venezuela in many ways. In terms of monetary policy, his regime managed to accumulate an inflation of 528% between 2003 and 2011. Such scandalous figure was followed by a 20% inflation rate in 2012. The outlook for 2013 is even worse, with estimates of a 30% rise in prices.

Food shortages are the norm, and price controls only make matters worse. The government has avoided popular unrest by extending subsidies and government programs, yet such scheme is simply not sustainable without historically high oil prices.

What should Venezuela do next in order to contain inflation and have a more stable monetary scenario? Ideally, the denationalization of money would be the best way to allow families and businesses to conduct their day-to-day operations in whichever currency they so desire.

Besides that best case scenario, two other options come to mind: on the one hand, imitating Ecuador’s experiment with dollarization; on the other hand, pegging the currency to a basket of U.S. dollars and oil prices. Both would be steps in the right direction, but they would have to be adopted along with three key reforms: end of price controls, reduction of public expenditures and economic liberalization.

Diego Sánchez de la Cruz is an analyst at Libertad Digital. His work on international economics has been published in different media outlets.

13
Mar

Finding a Smartphone Not Soaked in Blood

Written on March 13, 2013 by Ángeles Figueroa-Alcorta in Africa, Democracy & Human Rights, International Conflict, Terrorism & Security, International Development, International Law & Organizations

My search for a smartphone that is not soaked in blood

Phone companies do too little to ensure the minerals they use are conflict-free. Here’s what you can do to hold them to account

By George Monbiot

Nokia And Windows Announce New Lumia Handset

If you are too well connected, you stop thinking. The clamour, the immediacy, the tendency to absorb other people’s thoughts, interrupt the deep abstraction required to find your own way. This is one of the reasons why I have not yet bought a smartphone. But the technology is becoming ever harder to resist. Perhaps this year I will have to succumb. So I have asked a simple question: can I buy an ethical smartphone?

There are dozens of issues, such as starvation wages, bullying, abuse and 60-hour weeks in the sweatshops manufacturing them, the debt bondage into which some of the workers are pressed, the energy used, the hazardous waste produced. But I will concentrate on just one: are the components soaked in the blood of people from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo? For 17 years, rival armies and militias have been fighting over the region’s minerals. Among them are metals critical to the manufacture of electronic gadgets, without which no smartphone would exist: tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold.

While these elements are by no means the only reason for conflict there, they help to fund it, supporting a fragmented war that – through direct killings, displacement, disease and malnutrition – has now killed several million people. Rival armies have forced local people to dig in extremely dangerous conditions, have extorted minerals and money from self-employed miners, have tortured, mutilated and murdered those who don’t comply, and have spread terror and violence – including gang rape and child abduction – through the rest of the population. I do not want to participate.

None of the campaigning groups wants companies to stop buying minerals from eastern Congo. Global Witness and FairPhone, for example, point out that mining supports many families in a country where 82% are considered underemployed. But they also insist that the trade can be dissociated from violence: if, and only if, companies ensure they’re not buying minerals which have passed through the hands of militias. Given the potential damage to their reputations, you might have expected these firms to take the issue seriously. With a few exceptions, you would be wrong.

I began with the retailers, and the results were disappointing. Vodafone, for example, claims to have developed a social and ecological rating system, enabling its customers “to make informed decisions about the mobile phone they choose to buy”. Its website says this system “was launched in the Netherlands in 2011 and will be introduced to other European markets in 2012″. But all you get when you click on the link is “page not found”. In Dutch. As for its claim that an ethical score “is displayed next to the product, whether you are buying online or in store”, I have been unable to find any such scores on its UK site. Read more…

As published in www.guardian.co.uk on March 11, 2013.

7
Mar

“EU geopolitical challenges” John Bruton, former Prime Minister of Ireland at IE

Written on March 7, 2013 by Ángeles Figueroa-Alcorta in Bachelor in International Relations (BIR), Europe, Foreign Policy, Master in International Relations (MIR), Political Economy, Video

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6
Mar

So Long, Chávez

Written on March 6, 2013 by Ángeles Figueroa-Alcorta in Americas, Democracy & Human Rights, Foreign Policy, Political Economy

Where Does This Leave Venezuela?

By Michael Shifter

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Two decades ago, following the end of the Cold War, the United States and Latin America seemed more prepared than ever before to forge political and economic partnerships. Latin America was emerging from an era of stagnation and economic crisis and appeared to be moving toward market economies and liberal democracies. In the early 1990s, building on U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s widely applauded vision of a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone, Mexico, Canada, and the United States negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement. At the Organization of American States’ conference in 1991, which brought together 34 countries, a landmark agreement codified collective pro-democracy actions. Continuing this trend, the hemisphere’s democratically elected leaders gathered for the first-ever Summit of the Americas in 1994 and confirmed their deepening commitment to democratic principles, growth-oriented economic policies, and broad U.S.–Latin American cooperation. Words like “consensus” and “community” were used to capture the sense of good will.

Since 1999, however, when the recently deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez came to power, the sense of community in the region has dissipated. Policy divergences among Latin American countries have become sharper; free trade and liberal democracy are no longer popular goals; and Latin America and the United States have, albeit cordially, gone their separate ways. Admittedly, generalizations about Latin America are risky; after all, for every country that has deviated from democratic norms, another has moved toward them. And Chávez was not single-handedly responsible for deflating the hopeful spirit that prevailed two decades ago. But his relentless defiance of Washington and its chief allies — often accompanied by aggressive, even belligerent, rhetoric — polarized the region.

To be sure, Chávez’s boldness partially helped inspire pride and political self-confidence in the region, in addition to revitalizing the dream of leftist revolution in Latin America. Chávez’s contributions, however, were minimal compared with the positive impact of larger and more important factors, such as the rise of Brazil, the commodity boom, the growing assertiveness of many of the region’s countries, and the acute fiscal and political shortcomings of the United States.

Far from unifying Latin America and thereby realizing the vision of Chávez’s hero, nineteenth-century independence leader Simón Bolívar, Chávez contributed to the fragmentation of the hemisphere. His attempts at regional cooperation, such as the socialist Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), appealed to only a handful of like-minded countries. After all, both at home and abroad, Chávez was mainly intent on accumulating power, not fostering cooperation. That is what motivated him to curtail Washington’s influence in Latin America and around the world.

As published in www.foreignaffairs.com on March 5, 2013.

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Authors

Ángeles Figueroa-Alcorta
Executive Director Bachelor in International Relations
angeles.figueroa-alcorta@ie.edu

Bachelor in I. RELATIONS

Master in I. Relations

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