Beautiful Horizons

Some Football Notes

So Real Madrid have dealt for both Kaká and Cristiano Ronaldo? Color me unimpressed. Not that they're not good players; they're excellent, but Real Madrid has a very suspect back line. They needed defenders and blew a wad of money on attackers. Bad move.

I'm largely in agreement with this article about Italian football.  it just hasn't been the same for several years and it shows. When AC Milan gets knocked out of the UEFA Cup in the quarterfinals if I recall correctly and no Italian team makes it to the semis of the Champions League, that speaks volumes.

Argentina is having a tough time in qualification for the 2010 World Cup, which starts one year from today. They are currently fourth in the qualification group after losing anemically yesterday to Ecuador in Quito. While there remains four games and the Albicelestes are still in fourth place, which is one of the qualifying positions, one can't help but wonder how much of the bloom would come off Coach Diego Maradona (a dreadful choice in my opinion as witness his treatment of Juan Riquelme) if Argentina failed to qualify.

Much was made recently when FIFA recommended altitude limits on games, which would have placed cities like La Paz Bolivia off limits. So how is Bolivia's record in WC qualifying for the 2010 World Cup? They've won three games, drawn three and lost eight. All three they have won in La Paz, but they have also drawn twice in La Paz and lost twice in La Paz. I was wrong in supporting the altitude restrictions. When your team is as dreadful as Bolivia is, altitude doesn't make a difference.

Let's Not Get Ahead of Ourselves

Erik Loomis points to this article in Tuesday's New York Times regarding Bolivia's lithium reserves and their location at the nation's famous Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flats in the world. He expresses concern that the extraction of lithium would have a harmful impact on the region.

I think he's overstating the case. Here's how the lithium is extracted:

Technicians first need to get a brine, or water saturated with salt that is found deep beneath the salt desert, to the surface, where it is evaporated in pools to expose the lithium. Mr. Morales wants the plant finished by the end of this year.

This is similar to what people have been doing in the region for centuries:

On the flat salt desert of Uyuni, such debate seems remote to those still laboring as their ancestors did, scraping salt off the ground into the cone-shaped piles that line the horizon like some geometric mirage. The lithium found under the surface of this desert seems even more remote for these 21st-century salt gatherers.

It seems similar to how salt has been extracted from seawater for centuries and is still extracted. This is mining purley in the sense that it involves mineral extraction. No shafts are being dug, no mountains being stripped, no mountaintops being leveled.

I have been in a lithium mine near Araçuaí, Minas Gerais, Brazil, my father-in-law's hometown. This was a hole in the ground that we drove into in cars with hard hats, boots and ear plugs on. Drilling and blasting took place there. Three shifts work 24/7 in this mine. There is no comparison to this and the methods described in the article.

Erik also expresses concern about lithium extraction reaching a peak level as oil extraction. there's a difference and a major one, however: lithium batteries are recyclable. There is one company that does this and here's a description of their process:

Toxco’s lithium battery recycling facility is located on 11 acres adjacent to the Columbia River near picturesque Trail in southern British Columbia. With over 70,000 manufacturing square feet, Toxco Trail was the company’s first recycling facility. The facility inventories incoming lithium battery waste. The waste is then stored in earth covered concrete storage bunkers. Residual electrical energy is removed from larger, more reactive batteries. If necessary the batteries then begin Toxco’s patented cryogenic process and are cooled to -325°F. Lithium, although normally explosively reactive at room temperature, is rendered relatively inert at this temperature. The batteries are then safely sheared/shredded and the materials are separated. Metals from the batteries are collected and sold. The lithium components are separated and converted to lithium carbonate for resale. Hazardous electrolytes are neutralized to form stable compounds and residual plastic casings and miscellaneous components are recovered for appropriate recycling or scrapping. If the batteries contain cobalt this is also recovered for reuse. [my emphasis]

Sounds good to me. I usually agree with you Erik, but this time I think you need to look into this a little further.

Tit for Tat Not Quid Pro Quo

The Bush administration is responding to Hugo Chavez's expelling of the US ambassador with plans to expel the Venezuelan ambassador. Amidst all the chest thumping on both sides there is this to consider:

While Mr. Chávez threatened yet again this week to halt American-bound oil cargoes, such a situation remains unlikely. For all the warnings, refusing to sell oil would probably hurt Venezuela more than the United States.

America is the country’s main customer for its oil, and therefore the most significant financier of Mr. Chávez’s attempts to assert great state control over Venezuelan society. By contrast, American refiners could buy oil elsewhere, though a disruption in Venezuelan oil supplies could cause ripples in an already weak American economy.

Venezuela will not halt oil shipments to the US and the US will not deem Venezuela a terrorist supporting state as it would greatly impact the flow of oil from Venezuela.

What is more disturbing is the possibility of Chavez supplying military support to Bolivia in the disturbances going on there as Boz notes here. What is encouraging is this bit of news:

President Evo Morales held talks with an opposition rival on Saturday, after a wave of political violence killed 15 people and prompted Mr. Morales to declare martial law in the remote province of Pando.

Mr. Morales called the talks with Mario Cossío, the governor of Tarija Province, which is rich with natural gas, to try to defuse a bitter power struggle with regional governors who are opposed to the president’s socialist reforms and who want a bigger share of energy resources for their regions. Mr. Cossío represented three other governors who refused to attend.

“We have fulfilled the objective of opening talks, and let’s hope that in the coming hours this turns into a sustained process of dialogue which results in a pact to resolve problems in the framework of national reconciliation,” Mr. Cossío told reporters after the meeting.

I'm glad to see them talking. I hope they continue to do so, perhaps with the help of Lula or someone far less bellicose than Chavez.

A Quick Civics Lesson

This is treason:

“This government has not learned how to govern, and for that reason I ask the armed forces to overthrow the president of the republic,” Percy Fernández, the mayor of Santa Cruz, Bolivia’s largest and richest city and a bastion of separatist groups, said Thursday. The mayor’s comments infuriated Mr. Morales and his senior advisers.

As well they should. This is sedition. If Fernández is unhappy, there is a solution for this: elections. Bolivia, with its history of brutal, oppressive military dictatorships does not deserve to have its citizens suffer under yet another one.

Morales, for his part, needs to stop making dictatorial statements like this:

“When a jurist tells me, ‘Evo, you are making a legal mistake; what you are doing is illegal,’ I go ahead even if it’s illegal,” Mr. Morales said. “I later tell the lawyers, ‘If it’s illegal, you make it legal. Otherwise, what have you studied for?’ ”

That's anarchy. If Morales is unhappy then change the law democratically. Bolivia will only prosper if both sides seek to achieve their goals under the law. I can't let this go, either:

Mr. Morales also announced a new allotment of $30 million for Bolivia’s navy, an institution of high nationalistic importance even though the country is landlocked, having lost its coastline to neighboring Chile in a 19th-century war.

This is a waste of money and resources. Chile is not going to return the territory to Bolivia. They will not go to war over this. It's time to move on.

Fewer Gringos Like These, Please

When I lived in Germany, the one constant I tried to be aware of was the fact that I was a guest in the country. Imagine what the outcry would be if, for example, a Bolivian moved to Montana, purchased land on the cheap and acted like he was above the law. Unfortunately, it appears that the reverse is true. Meet Ronald Larsen and his son, Duston:

Tensions here erupted one day in February when Alejandro Almaraz, the deputy land minister, arrived before dawn at the entrance to Mr. Larsen’s Hacienda Caraparicito to carry out an inspection, a step usually taken before the government seizes ranches and redistributes them among indigenous farmers.

Both sides differ as to what happened, but everyone agrees that some violence ensued. “I didn’t want this guy making any trouble, so I shut him up with a shot at one of his tires,” Mr. Larsen was quoted as saying last month by La Razón, Bolivia’s main daily newspaper.

Mr. Almaraz said he was kidnapped and held for a day on Mr. Larsen’s ranch. He responded to the incident by identifying the American rancher and his son Duston in a criminal complaint for “sedition, robbery and other crimes.”

Faced with a legal tussle over the standoff, Mr. Larsen now claims that he did not shoot at Mr. Almaraz’s vehicle. “The tires were punched out with sharpened screwdrivers,” Mr. Larsen said. “If I’d have been shooting at people that day, there would have been dead and injured.”

If you want to see the definition of an Ugly American, I think this is it:

“Evo Morales is a symbol of ignorance, having never even finished high school,” Duston Larsen said.

I have always believed that the issue as to where one is in one's life is not where you are, but how far you've come. regardless of how one feels about Evo Morales - and I'm the first to say my feelings about him are mixed, what he has accomplished is striking in and of itself, especially considering where he started.

How this plays out  - and to some extent this seems like a somewhat microcosmal view of the larger issues straining Bolivian society - remains to be seen, of course, but I don't think that the ugly rhetoric helps matters.

Evo in New York -The Speech*

I went to see Evo Morales speak at The Great Hall at Cooper Union Monday night. He spoke for approximately an hour and a half and was humble, humorous and engaging. Some of the better points he made:

• Corruption is worse than neoliberalism.
• Coca in and of itself is a harmless crop with a long tradition of use by the indigenous people of the Andes.
• Democracy is integral to his movement.

On the subject of corruption, I could not agree more. I've long believed that corruption and impunity are the evil twins of the very worst in Latin American politics. I'm certainly no fan of neoliberalism and am overjoyed that the Washington Consensus is effectively dead, but corruption is a disease that knows no left or right. Coca is maligned because it is made into cocaine. Cocaine is illegal in Bolivia, the coca leaf is not. It has numerous other uses that do not involve drug addiction and narcotrafficking. Given the miserable failure that the war on drugs has become, this is a problem that, in my opinion, should be addressed on the demand side. As for his support for democracy, well that goes without saying is a positive.

Among the things I found disturbing and/or inconsistent were the following:

• Praise for Fidel Castro.
• Condemnation of capitalism in general.

If Morales is going to put forth the ideas of a constituent assembly, referenda, free and open elections and fair representation as intrinsic to good government, why does he support a man who has denied his citizens those same things while imprisoning them for the non-violent expression of their beliefs. Does he believe that anything in the way of the protests that shut down El Alto in the Gas War could have been accomplished in Cuba if Cuban citizens had legitimate grievances that the government was not responding to them?

As for his condemnation of capitalism, I'm not a supporter of unbridled capitalism, but Morales rightfully took credit for increasing Bolivia's currency reserves and creating a budget surplus. How did this happen? In addition to nationalizing the petroleum industry, the government had to sell some of its natural resources. Clearly there had to be businesses interested in buying said resources. I'm certainly glad to see Bolivia getting its fair share, but without a market for it, it might as well stay in the ground.

There were a number of young people in the audience. As I was waiting in line I heard them discussing Cuba. One of them pointed out that he supported the Cuban Revolution, but said that  he did not support Fidel and felt that Fidel Castro had betrayed his own movement by letting his nation become a client state of the USSR and the resulting difficulties of the Special Period, maintaining his hold on the government and not calling for elections. When Morales praised Castro, a middle-aged woman sitting in front of me jumped up and applauded saying, "Viva Fidel!"

Ahh, the wisdom of youth, the calcification of some of the middle-aged among us.

A note to the young woman who introduced President Morales: learn some basic Latin American history. When you make the statement that Evo Morales is the first indigenous president of a nation in the Americas, you're promoting your admiration for Morales over the truth. Anyone worth their salt on the subject would surely know that Benito Juarez preceded Morales as the first indigenous president in the Americas by 148 years.

The two most peculiar observations of the evening: for the duration of Morales' speech, a officer in the dress whites of the Bolivian Navy stood behind Morales. I suppose if Michelle Bachelet were in the audience it might have been done for effect. As it turns out, it just looked strange.

At the end of the evening a number of enthusiastic supporters rushed the stage to shake Morales' hand. Several handed him flags: some were Aymara flags, some were Venezuelan flags; none were Bolivian flags.

*I'm republishing this post as there are some additional points I remembered and wanted to bring out.

Evo in New York

On Monday I'm going to see President Evo Morales of Bolivia speak at Cooper Union on Monday and hope to be able to report on his speech on Tuesday.

I'm somewhat agnostic about Morales. I'm glad to see an indigenous leader get elected, but I would prefer if he demonstrated a little more independence from Chavez, to wit, his recent cozying up to Ahmadinejad and Iran a la Chavez. I have no issue with the recent requirement that US citizens obtain a visa to visit Bolivia, especially given the reason stated being for reciprocity as Bolivians must obtain a visa to visit the US. I'm squarely with him on keeping the capital in La Paz. I think it would be a ridiculous waste of money to move it to Sucre.

I don't believe that he is a malignant force in his country or in Latin America. I also don't believe that he is the second coming of Christ, so you can expect a fair appraisal of what he has to say.

Meanwhile, I call your attention to this rather fair article about Morales in last Tuesday's New York Times.

Immigration in Spain - and a Man Who Said Enough Abuse

While most of the attention regarding immigration seems to focus on the US/Mexico border, Spain has a very difficult problem with illegal immigration. In addition to being the nearest European Union nation to the desperate poverty that plagues Africa, poor immigrants from Latin America have one advantage that Latino immigrants to the US do not have: a first language in common.

They also have at least one thing in common with illegal immigrants to the US: employers who exploit them. As this story on Saturday's El Pais (Spanish coverage in blog here; ephemeral English language link gone by about 5 p.m. EDT on Sunday June 24, 2007 here), a Bolivian immigrant in Bilbao, Spain, Udalrico Taboada, had enough:

“The employer always tells that if you complain, you’ll go to the police,” he [Taboada] says.

This fear, and the unfulfilled hope of achieving legal status, for two years led him to put up with terrible conditions: working shifts of 12 to 18 hours, often at night, with no days off. He spent hours and hours at the sewing machine, embroidering club insignia on t-shirts of Athletic Bilbao soccer club. “Each Athletic insignia has 8,000 stitches,” he says. Multiply that by the 400 shirts he had to do each day, in the shop of the firm Bordado Express SL at Leioa in Vizcaya. In order to elude Labor Ministry inspections, Udalrico and other immigrants were often put to work at night. “We worked from 7pm to 8am, including Sundays,” he says: 13 hours nightly, for €31.54 per shift. That is an exhausting day’s work, for about half the retail price of one of the official Bilbao Athletic shirts he embroidered.

Udalrico put up with all this because the woman who ran the shop had promised to obtain papers for him, in the mass immigrant legalization program in 2005. He had all the requisites: he had been in Spain since before August 2004, had no criminal  record, and he had a job. “She kept telling me to be patient, that the process was slow.”

Tired of being jerked around and deceived, Taboada sought legal help - and got it:

Taboada, 27, and his legal counsel, Bilbao labor lawyer Roberto Cadenas, have obtained a ruling from the Basque High Court enjoining the state employment agency Inem to pay unemployment insurance to Taboada for time he worked, regardless of the fact he had no residence or work permit and was not registered in the Social Security system nor paid its monthly quotas.

Good for him. As the article says, not having papers does not mean that you are without rights.

Land Reform and Mennonites In Bolivia

Evo Morales is attempting to institute land reform in Bolivia and this article in Thursday's Times focuses on the Mennonite community in Bolivia and their reaction to this issue. I didn't know that there was a significant Mennonite community in Bolivia, but I'm not surprised.

When I was in Belize several years ago, I spent time in a part of the country that had a huge Mennonite community that is given credit by some for revolutionizing agriculture in that country. That may very well be and they certainly appear to have had a great deal of success in that area, but as the article notes

Mr. Morales has plans to redistribute as many as 48 million acres of land, considered idle or ill gotten through opaque purchase agreements, to hundreds of thousands of peasants.

Land reform in Latin America is a complex issue and land ownership is often of questionable provenance, to put it mildly and very often concentrated in the hands of the few. It has also has a history of very little success. Time will tell if it works in Bolivia, but I'll remain skeptical.

Bolivia's Gas Gamble

Much has been written about Bolivian President Evo Morales' recent decision to nationalize Bolivia's natural gas industry. Some of it is hysterical and groundless. Some of it is reasoned and sensible.

One important fact to bear in mind: the two companies facing the greatest impact on their earnings and investment are Repsol of Spain and Brazil's state-owned Petrobras. Some in Brazil are criticizing Lula's rather calm response to this, but it would be good for everyone to take a deep breath now and start negotiating.

I don't feel sanguine, however. Petrobras has already canceled a pipeline project and expects to suspend further investment in Bolivia while working towards importing liquified natural gas. So the question then becomes if Bolivia has complete control over the hydrocarbons, what do they expect to do with them if their largest investor is leaving?

Eduardo has much more.