OAS Ponders Cuba’s Return AS/COA Online 05/29/09

A human rights protest in front of Havana’s capitol building. The OAS is assessing Cuba’s reentry, but Washington continues to raise rights concerns. (AP Photo)

As part of the White House’s more open approach to Cuba, the Obama administration made a move this week that could assist Havana’s readmissiont to Organization of American States (OAS). At a May 27 meeting of the Permanent Council of the OAS, the United States introduced a proposal to allow Cuba to eventually rejoin the organization. The move is in line with the warmer tone set by the Obama administration on Cuba; the White House has already eased travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans and recommended restarting bilateral immigration talks. But Washington has indicated that Havana must adhere to the rules set out Inter-American Democratic Charter to gain readmission. It remains to be seen if Cuba will reciprocate by taking steps toward addressing political freedom and human rights issues.

Honduran and Nicaraguan delegations also submitted resolutions to pave the way for Cuba to rejoin. Costa Rica had intended to submit a plan, but one from the U.S. State Department replaced that country’s proposal, reports The Miami Herald. The OAS commissioned a working group to start deliberations based on the proposals and report back to the OAS General Assembly, which convenes in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on June 2 and 3. The working group is expected to use the proposals “to find a consensus text for an eventual resolution on Cuba.”

The State Department’s decision to submit a proposal comes after the Fifth Summit of the Americas, when a number of hemispheric leaders called for Washington to improve relations with Cuba. Last week, U.S. Senator and Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee  Richard Lugar (R-IN) said he does not believe Havana should gain instant readmission into the OAS without addressing rights issues, but that Washington must recognize concerns held by other countries at next week’s OAS summit. “There should be a way to harmonize the desire of many of our Latin American allies to reintegrate Cuba into the Inter-American system with the United States’ interest in reforming our policy towards Cuba,” said the senator.

At a May 27 press briefing, U.S. Department of State Spokesman Ian Kelly said the proposal submitted to the OAS “supports the OAS taking steps to initiate a dialogue with Cuba regarding its eventual reintegration into the inter-American system.” Still, the Obama administration has stated that Havana must abide by the OAS Inter-American Democratic Charter to gain readmission. “Any effort to admit Cuba into the OAS is really in Cuba’s hands,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 20. “They have to be willing to take the concrete steps necessary to meet those principles.” She made similar statements at COA’s Washington Conference on May 13. “We look forward to the day when every country in the Americas, including Cuba, can participate in our hemispheric partnerships in a manner that is consistent with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

At the same conference, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) decried the idea of bringing Cuba back into the OAS fold without a dramatic improvement in human rights and democracy on the island. “For the OAS to readmit a regime that engages in this type of systematic suppression of human rights, it would have to rip up its Democratic Charter as a farce.” He also suggested that Washington cuts U.S. funding to the OAS in the case that it allow Havana to rejoin without undertaking democratic moves.

So far, Cuba has not indicated interest in rejoining. Earlier this week, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said Havana was proud that it did not belong to the OAS, saying: “[T]he OAS is totally anachronistic; it serves other interests, and we feel that our path, Cuba’s path, is one of Latin American and Caribbean integration, without a presence from outside the continent.” However, just before Cuban President Raúl Casto hinted at a willingness to discuss human rights matters with the United States.

Writing for Americas Quarterly’s blog, AS/COA’s Senior Director of Policy Christopher Sabatini writes that, for the Obama administration, it is “better to try to loosen some elements of isolation to further what is the crux of U.S. policy towards the region: supporting the development of independent civil society and improvement in human rights on the island.”

In an AS/COA interview, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza voiced support for overturning the 1962 resolution that ejected Cuba as a member country from the OAS. He also explains that if that happens, it would be just the first of many steps toward Cuba’s full reinstatement.

Listen to the audio of as AS/COA panel discussion on the Cuban diaspora.

View the article as originally published at the AS/COA website.

Round Five for the DREAM Act AS/COA Online 04/03/09

Enactment of the DREAM Act would allow some undocumented students to gain legal status. (AP Photo)

In a first step to bring immigration reform back to the front burner, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Rubin (D-IL) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) in the Senate on March 26. A similar bill called the American Dream Act was submitted in the House of Representatives in a bipartisan effort. Yet, despite domestic debate over immigration in recent years, the controversial initiative has not reached the national spotlight. As an example, during President Barack Obama’s interactive town hall meeting held on March 26, none of the top ten questions voted on by more than 3.5 million people were related to immigration reform.

The DREAM Act offers a two-step legalization process for children described as “1.5ers.” As Washington Post columnist Marcela Sanchez explained in a 2007 article, “One-point-fivers are neither first-generation immigrants, adults who immigrated to the United States; nor are they second-generation, children born here of immigrant parents.” According to the National Immigration Law Center, students who came to the United States before turning 16 at least five years before the bill’s enactment could gain conditional permanent resident status if they have clean criminal records and attain high school graduation or college acceptance. To upgrade from conditional to permanent status, participants must then finish two years of college or serve a minimum of two years in the U.S. military.

How many people would benefit from the measure? Research from 2003 by the Pew Hispanic Center published in a Congressional Research Service report estimated that “each year 65,000 undocumented immigrants graduate high school who have lived in the country for more than five years.” In 2006, the Migration Policy Institute calculated that roughly 360,000 undocumented high school graduates would benefit from the measure that year alone. The Center for Immigration Studies reported in 2007 that 2.1 million could qualify for legal status under the DREAM Act.

The legislation was first introduced in 2001 and rejected four times. But the fifth round may be the charm. As the Orlando Sentinal’s “Hispanosphere” blog points out, “[N]ow Democrats have control of U.S. Congress with a president who has expressed support and voted in favor of this legislation in the last go-round.”

Whether consideration of the DREAM Act represents near-term action on comprehensive immigration reform remains unclear. In a recent visit to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that immigration reform is “a high priority” for Obama’s administration. “We believe strongly that there have to be changes made, and we hope we will be able to pursue those in the coming months,” she said. In early March, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a San Francisco church crowd that “we cannot wait any longer for fair and just immigration reform.” However, during this week’s visit to Costa Rica, Vice President Joe Biden warned Central American leaders that the ailing economy hinders immediate action on U.S. immigration reform.

Read the article as originally published at the AS/COA website.

A Tit for Tat over Trucks AS/COA Online 03/20/09

Trucks at the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo)

A move by U.S. Congress to stop a cross-border trucking program drew a counterpunch from Mexico this week. The recently signed U.S. spending bill ended funding for a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to transport cargo inside the United States and vice versa. With the program a long overdue part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico chose to retaliate. The administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón unveiled new tariffs for close to 90 industrial and agricultural products imported from the United States. Yet Washington announced a pair of high-profile visits to Mexico by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. President Barack Obama, opening the door to smooth the turbulence over trade and security issues.

As the tariffs were announced, Mexico’s Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said that the now-suspended pilot program had been successful with no major safety incidents. He also said the cancellation of the program is “wrong, protectionist, and clearly violates the [NAFTA] treaty.” A Department of Transportation report found that Mexican truckers registered under the program met all 22 safety mandates demanded by U.S. Congress.

The duties, which went into effect on March 19, represent tariff increases of as much as 45 percent on $2.4 billion worth of exports, explains Sidney Weintraub of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a Forbes.com editorial that breaks down the history of the trucking plan. The Mexican government carefully chose the products on the tariff list “to avoid pushing up prices of staples in Mexico while hitting goods that are important exports for a range of American states. That way, it could have maximum political effect north of the border,” The Economist explains. Wall Street Journal warns that Mexico can turn to other trading partners—Europe, Canada, and Latin America—to replace the U.S. brands. Total trade between Mexico and the United States stood at over $367 billion in 2008.

Trade and trucks are not the only matters troubling U.S.-Mexican relations at the moment. At AS/COA’s recent annual Mexico City conference, Calderón condemned remarks originating in the United States that question Mexico’s institutional strength in the face of violent organized crime. He raised concerns about U.S. drug consumption and arms smuggling and urged joint U.S.-Mexican action to fight drug cartels.

Given the tensions, the timing of the upcoming visits by Obama and Clinton could prove crucial to giving ties between the neighbors a boost. Appearing on National Public Radio’s “Diane Rehm Show,” COA’s Eric Farnsworth explained expects that this bump in trade relations won’t escalate “at a time when, I think, neither nation could afford it.”

Mexico’s El Universal takes a closer look at the trade rift and plans for Obama’s trip to Mexico in advance of April’s Summit of the Americas. Clinton’s visit next week will pave the way for Obama’s. Moreover, the appointment of former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk as the new U.S. Trade Representative gained congressional approval this week, just in time to tackle the problem. “It will be one gnarly challenge after the next for the new U.S. trade representative, starting with the trade war that erupted this week with Mexico,” says Dallas Morning News.

Some contend that killing plans for a trucking program will result in higher shipping costs. Bloomberg reports that what a truck could haul from one point in Mexico to another in the United States will take three different trucks and one extra day without the program. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that the value of goods transported by truck between both countries rose to $234 billion last year. Mexico’s decision came as the World Bank raised alarm about protectionist measures undertaken by G20 members in the midst of the global financial crisis.

AS/COA hosts a program on March 24 in advance of the Obama and Clinton visits. Learn about the event, which will involve a panel videoconferenced in New York and Washington.

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ARENA, FMLN Face Off in El Salvador AS/COA Online 03/10/09

Rotating campaign ads show the faces of ARENA’s Ávila (L) and the FMLN’s Funes. (AP Photo)

Update: FMLN candidate Mauricio Funes has been elected as the next president in El Salvador after winning with approximately 51 percent of the vote, ending the 20-year rule of the ARENA party.

Salvadorans head to the polls on March 15 to elect their next president. Voters will choose between the governing Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) party candidate Rodrigo Ávila and the opposition’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) candidate Mauricio Funes. Recent polls and international media forecast that the leftist FMLN candidate appears poised to unseat ARENA, which has held power since 1989. Ávila says that a Funes victory would bring in a government similar to that of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

A poll conducted by Central America-based CID-Gallup released two weeks before the elections shows Funes leading the race by more than five percent over his opponent. But the election is not won yet; President Antonio Saca noted that the key to win the election remains in the hands of undecided voters, who make up as much as 20 percent of the electorate.

Funes, a former television journalist, has long been outspoken critic of the government. The FMLN nominated him in September of 2007. Since then he has attempted to calm critics who point to the leftist roots of his party. In an interview with the Honduran newspaper La Prensa, Funes said his political platform uses Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as point of reference rather than Chávez. He also said that, as president, he would not join regional agencies such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas if doing so would threaten bilateral relations with the United States.

Ávila, a former chief of the national police, closed his campaign with a massive rally at the Cuscatlán Stadium in San Salvador shouting the slogan “Country yes, Communism No.” In an interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Ávila extolled the economic improvements gained under two decades of ARENA rule. He also defended his record as a police chief in the 1990s. Ramos also interviewed Funes a week earlier.

The state of the economy and security stand as priority issues in the election. El Salvador has the second-highest homicide rate in the world after Iraq, reports the Miami Herald in an article about Salvadoran gangs. The Economist Intelligence Unit predicts a marked slowdown in the country’s GDP growth through 2010 and warns that, “regardless of the final outcome in the presidential election, no party will have an outright majority in Congress, complicating policy implementation in the next four-year term.”

The National Democratic Institute prepared a report on January legislative elections as well as the March 15 presidential elections. According to their data, ARENA had outspent the FMLN through January 18, with the former accounting for 65 percent of campaign spending and the latter just 19 percent. In the January election, the FMLN won a plurality of votes in the Legislative Assembly by winning 35 out of 84 seats. However, ARENA won the mayoralty of San Salvador, ending over a decade of FMLN control of the capital.

Some have wondered what role Washington will play in this election, given past U.S. involvement in Salvadoran politics. A Boston Globe op-ed recalls the country’s 2004 election, when the Bush administration drummed up fears by implying that an FMLN victory could result in a change in migratory status for Salvadorans living in the United States. According to the U.S. State Department, Salvadorans working in the United States sent $3.8 billion in remittances in 2008, benefiting more than 22 percent of the population. As expected, in December the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau extended the Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans until September 2010. Still, over 200 American academics wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking for a U.S. government statement of impartiality.

Angus Reid Global Monitor offers a timeline and background information on the election.

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A Primary in Puerto Rico AS/COA Online 05/30/08

Voting booths in Puerto Rico. (AP Images)

A tight race for the Democratic nomination brought Puerto Rico’s June 1 primary into the national spotlight as never before. The vote on the “Isla Bonita” gave the sagging Clinton campaign a boost a day after the Democratic Party’s decision to seat Michigan and Florida delegates–but only as half votes. Senator Hillary Clinton won by a 2 to 1 margin in the Puerto Rico primary, supporting her claim that she can win the popular vote. Yet the primary results brought Senator Barack Obama closer to the total delegate count he needs to secure the Democratic nomination. At the same time, the primary provided the front runner an opportunity to reach out to Hispanic voters.

At the same time, the primary drew attention to political matters facing the U.S. commonwealth territory, including the fact that islanders can’t vote in the presidential election despite their eligibility to serve in the U.S. armed forces. Columbia University’s Michael Janeway takes a closer look at the Puerto Rico primary in a New York Times op-ed.

Voter turnout was low on the island, which has a population of four million and 2.5 million registered voters. Still, with 55 delegates and 8 super delegates up for grabs, the island commands more than double the combined delegate heft of South Dakota and Montana, the subsequent and last two primary states. Despite that, CNN served as the only major network to cover the primary’s exit-poll results.

But the importance of the vote has not been lost on Democratic candidates. While Clinton’s win won’t break Obama’s majority stake in delegates, a strong show in Puerto Rico could lend credence to her argument that the Democratic race is not over. With that in mind, the New York senator spent three days stumping on the island in hopes of shoring up her double-digit poll lead in Puerto Rico. Her campaign released a cavalcade of ads in English and Spanish, and hit the Puerto Rican pavement with batucada percussionists and loudspeakers pumping reggaetón. Still, as the Economist puts it, the “odds look terrible” for the Clinton campaign.

For Obama, the primary allowed him to sharpen his skills in terms of attracting Hispanic voters, who have largely supported his rival during the primary season. A recent San Francisco Chronicle analysis examines how going after the Democratic-leaning Latino voting bloc could serve as “the Democrats’ best strategy” to win in November’s election. To that end, the Obama campaign aired an ad with their candidate addressing voters in Spanish—the first advertisement in which a presidential candidate speaks directly in that language. Obama also delivered his first major speech outlining his Latin American policy proposals a week before the primary.

Obama’s outreach to the Hispanic voting bloc has focused on setting him up as a contender with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. According to the Financial Times, Obama and McCain have already launched their race to secure the Latino vote by campaigning in states such as New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. (Republicans held their primary contest in Puerto Rico in February with Senator McCain sweeping all 20 delegates).

For Puerto Rico, the Democratic primary stirred up the island’s ongoing dilemma over whether to become the fifty-first American state or remain a territory. Both Obama and Clinton support self-determination for the island, meaning they will leave the decision up the island’s residents. During the candidates’ visits, Puerto Rican veterans complained to both that Puerto Ricans have no right to cast votes in the presidential elections, even though the islanders serve in the U.S. military. In an op-ed for the Washington Times, Puerto Rican official Flavio Cumpiano writes about the crossroads of the Puerto Rican political status. He also highlights Puerto Rico as a research and development powerhouse, with plenty of room to expand its high-tech and pharmaceutical industries for full integration into the global market.

Yet Puerto Rico faces a number of challenges, including a stagnant economy, high food and fuel prices, and social inequality. The latest issue of ReVista, the magazine published by Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, explores these themes and offers a series of articles examining the roots of inequality, weak labor markets, and low standards of education in Puerto Rico’s economic dependency on the United States.

Read an AS/COA interview with Susan Minushkin on the role of the Latino vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Updated June 1, 2008.

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