Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Bolivia joins Mercosur amid a new natural gas discovery, Venezuela readies for a pivotal election, and Mexico vies for CHIPS Act cash.
Sign up to receive Latin America Brief in your inbox every Friday.
Sign up to receive Latin America Brief in your inbox every Friday.
Over the past month, Bolivia has landed in international headlines for a variety of reasons. A failed coup attempt in June rattled the country and put rifts on display within its ruling Movement for Socialism party. Then, in early July, Bolivia filed its paperwork to become a full member of South American customs union Mercosur. And last week, President Luis Arce announced the discovery of a natural gas field that he said could have a market value as high as $6.8 billion.
Altogether, the developments mean that Bolivia—which has generally kept a low profile on the global stage—may now play a bigger role in Latin America’s economic and political map.
Prior to Bolivia’s accession, Mercosur only counted four active countries—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. (Venezuela was suspended in 2016.) Bolivia is the first new member to be admitted in more than a decade.
Supporters of Bolivia’s entry point to its natural resources as an asset for the bloc. Natural gas discoveries fueled an economic boom in the 2000s; although production has declined in recent years, Bolivia still exports gas to countries such as Argentina and Brazil. Bolivia also boasts vast salt flats, which contain minerals such as lithium and potassium. Its lithium reserves are among the largest in the world.
Bolivia’s embrace of the Mercosur countries, particularly Brazil, has already yielded plans for a joint infrastructure project that could facilitate trade. Brazil is helping finance a new road linking Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. That thoroughfare aims to move goods more easily across the continent and provide new connections to Pacific ports and shipping routes to Asia.
“This is not an immediate but a long-term project, and undoubtedly positive,” said Paulo Ferracioli, a professor of international businesses at Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, of the new road. In a separate project, Bolivia and Brazil pledged earlier this month to cooperate on the research and commercialization of components for fertilizers.
While the governments of Mercosur’s four active members all approved Bolivia’s entry—a multiyear process that, in some cases, has spanned presidential administrations—some observers also expressed criticism about the enlargement.
Mercosur has witnessed bitter divisions between its more pro-market and protectionist camps. Bolivia has historically been a more closed economy, and many in the Movement for Socialism are fond of criticizing global capitalism. The country’s tight government control over its lithium sector has left mining to accelerate at a snail’s pace compared to neighboring Argentina and Chile, which are also rich in the resource. Bolivia has teetered near domestic financial crisis in recent years, and political tensions—which escalated into last month’s coup attempt—remain high.
“With this many problems in Mercosur, we do not need new members that don’t necessarily being solutions, but rather more complexity,” said Catholic University of Uruguay international relations scholar Ignacio Bartesaghi. “It’s like a couple that is having problems in their marriage, so they decide to have a baby.”
Despite those doubts, the family has grown. Mercosur is a regional integration project that focuses on more than trade, and Bolivian leaders had long been attracted to the idea of closer political ties with other countries in the bloc. Bolivia’s accession process would be difficult to reverse, although the country could be suspended from the bloc if it experiences a major break with democracy, as occurred with Venezuela.
In Bolivia, leaders celebrated joining Mercosur. “This turns us into an organizing axis in the region,” Arce said, predicting a boost to the country’s economy. In response to criticism about the slow speed of lithium-related development ahead of elections next year, the Arce administration has invited private companies to propose investments in the sector.
Whether Bolivia’s fortunes take a turn depends not only on its regional trading partners, but also on better economic management at home, analysts say. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the country is on track to register a low 1.6 percent economic growth this year. And in spending big on subsidies to keep consumer prices down, the government has burned through its central bank reserves.
The government also has a poor record of transparency on the hydrocarbon sector—which means that last week’s announcement about the new gas field shouldn’t be seen as a panacea, said economist Raúl Velásquez of Fundación Jubileo. Sound economic management over the past two decades, he added, would have devoted Bolivia’s gas profits to diversifying its economy, “and unfortunately that hasn’t happened.”
Saturday, July 27: The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea is due to deliver an order in a case in which Luxembourg accused Mexico of illegally seizing a ship.
Sunday, July 28: Venezuela holds a presidential election.
Saturday, August 3: A six-month cease-fire between Colombia and the rebel group National Liberation Army is set to expire.
CHIPS cash. At a Washington, D.C., meeting with Latin American foreign ministers last week, the U.S. government said it would prioritize Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama as recipients of some CHIPS and Science Act funding meant to bolster the semiconductor sector in nearby countries. A joint report by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S.-Mexico Foundation for Science foresaw Mexican firms specializing in activities including the semiconductor packaging, assembly, and testing processes.
Still, USAID’s director in Mexico has publicly called for water and electricity access in the country to improve for it to live up to its potential in the chip sector. Latin American countries should ramp up their investments in the semiconductor industry in the next two years “because we’re seeing countries move quickly”—particularly those in Asia that could become alternatives to Mexico when it comes to packaging and testing, she told Bloomberg.
Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office in October, has expressed a desire to make the country a nearshoring haven.
Leonidas Iza, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, heads a march to the Constitutional Court in Quito on March 28, 2023.
Leonidas Iza, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, heads a march to the Constitutional Court in Quito on March 28, 2023.Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images
Ready to run. Leonidas Iza, the head of a powerful Ecuadorian Indigenous organization called the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, announced on Sunday that he will seek the country’s presidency next year on the ticket of Indigenous party Pachakutik. Divisions between Ecuador’s Indigenous groups and the leftist Correísmo movement have delivered center-right victories in the country’s past two presidential elections, but prominent figures in both groups—including Iza himself—have publicly called for a unified ticket in recent months.
Pachakutik’s support of Iza positions him as a key negotiator should that party and the Correísmo movement stitch together a progressive alliance. Center-right Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, meanwhile, aims to seek reelection on his record of hard-line security policy.
Mapping music. The Caribbean Progress Studies Institute think tank dedicated a recent podcast episode to tracing how singer Rihanna’s music reflects the Caribbean’s sociopolitical landscape, from “Pon de Replay” to “Work.” Rihanna is from Barbados. “Pon de Replay,” her first big hit, was released in 2005 and takes its title from local Barbadian dialect Bajan, translating to “play it again.”
Other songs reflect Caribbean culture in their subject matter, the presenters said. That includes portrayals of strong women, as heard in “Man Down.” Today, those depictions are quickly categorized as feminist, although in the Caribbean, “growing up, that was never a concept we used, though we saw it every day,” host Rasheed Griffith said.
Meanwhile, “Work” draws on a rhythm from Jamaican dancehall music, a strain that is sometimes generalized as falling under the umbrella of house music. That is an oversimplification, however: Dancehall is distinct and is also one of the roots of reggaeton.
In what year was Rihanna named an official national hero of Barbados?
2019
2020
2021
2022
Rihanna received the honor in a ceremony that marked Barbados’s new status as a republic after it severed formal ties to the British monarchy.
Supporters of Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and opposition leader María Corina Machado hold posters during a campaign rally in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on July 23.
Supporters of Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and opposition leader María Corina Machado hold posters during a campaign rally in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on July 23.Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images
Venezuela is hurtling toward a high-stakes presidential election this Sunday. Ahead of the vote, polls continue to predict an opposition victory, although President Nicolás Maduro may try to prevent that outcome through undemocratic means via his influence over the country’s judiciary, security services, and electoral authority.
Opposition and civil society groups have coordinated observation networks at voting locations across the country. Electoral experts from the Carter Center and the United Nations will also be present.
Meanwhile, opposition figures—such as presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and his close ally María Corina Machado—have voiced openness to a negotiated presidential transition after the election. If Maduro loses, he could theoretically be persuaded to leave power if he knew he would not be investigated for certain actions that he took while in office.
Maduro and his allies have sent conflicting signals in recent days over how they plan to respond to the election results. Last week, Maduro said there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the vote; in an interview published in El País on Wednesday, however, Maduro’s son said that if the opposition wins, his United Socialist Party would leave power. He went on to say that he had never seen polls that cited the opposition as ahead.
Venezuelans who had been formerly depoliticized have come out to opposition rallies ahead of the vote, Tony Frangie-Mawad reported for Foreign Policy last week. “Against all odds,” he wrote, “the opposition is gaining momentum.”
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66b1353480474a08a779e6e022d44831&url=https%3A%2F%2Fforeignpolicy.com%2F2024%2F07%2F26%2Fbolivia-mercosur-gas-lithium-arce-coup-economy-politics%2F&c=17386380360884378453&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-07-25 21:01:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.