Beautiful Horizons

Where the Sun Never Shines

Christmas 1997 we spent the holiday at my father-in-law's farm in Araçuaí, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The day after Christmas, my brother-in-law invited several of us to visit a friend of his who managed a lithium mine. We took a a tour of the mine, descending to a little more than 200 meters.

The mine had three shifts a day and the woro only stopped on Christmas and New Years Day. It was hot, humid to the point of being difficult to breath (I grew up in Miami, FL without airconditioning and this was much worse), had an unpleasant small and was filled with dust. We wore goggles, earplugs, earmuffs, boots, etc, but it was still deafening. It was steady work in a poor part of one of the richer states in Brazil; a state whose name means General Mines.

I left the mine with the following conclusion: given the risks and the conditions in which they work, you cannot pay miners enough and I don't ever want to enter a mine again.

That makes me all the more happy about this. I also agree with Marc here. I long for the day that as much attention is given by the MSM to Chile's election this year as was given to this story and the earthquake in Chile. The same goes for Haiti, also facing an election shortly. The only time it seems to have come up recently was when Wyclef Jean announced his candidacy.

We all deserve better.

I'm Not Surprised

Much seems to be made of the fact that after the horrific earthquake in Chile last month, the military was sent on to the streets to help preserve order and the public approved.

I don't really understand the surprise. I have read any number of accounts as to how the military has accepted a role subordinate to civilian authority. As the linked article notes, Pinochet's grandson was booted from the military the day after he gave a defiant eulogy at Pinochet's funeral. The defense minister in the Lagos administration was tortured by Pinochet's regime. Her fine work as defense minister helped her get elected the first woman president in what is arguably the most socially conservative country in South America. She left office with approval ratings that would be the envy of virtually every democratic leader in the world.

The country is a different place these days.

Bachelet and the Military

This article in the Los Angeles Times is the only one I have come across among the many that seem determined to question Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet's timing as to when she called out the military to maintain order after the earthquake in Chile on February 27 that addresses this fact:

Long before her election four years ago, Bachelet worked to build a good relationship with Chile's democracy-era military. Under the presidency of mentor Ricardo Lagos, she served as defense minister, the first woman to hold that post in South America. Her work in cultivating mutual trust was instrumental in her victory in the 2006 election.

I think it's inappropriate to second-guess her in this instance. As has been noted, communications were interrupted. I think her prudence should be applauded.

Chile's Embarrassment of Riches

Larry Rohter's writes today about Chile's windfall from copper mining and what to do with it. While there are some good ideas, including fixing the pension system and I'm certain that this is a problem many nations would relish it, this is what makes me seethe:

The situation has been further complicated by a law that guarantees the armed forces 10 percent of government revenues from copper.

That's from earnings, not profits. I'm not done seething. Here's why:

Since the start of the decade, the Chilean military has gone on a buying spree, spending $2.8 billion for weapons, ostensibly to modernize old equipment. The purchases, which have led to expressions of alarm in neighboring Peru and Bolivia, include 10 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes acquired from the United States, eight frigates, two submarines and, most recently, 118 Leopard IIA4 tanks from Germany.

Two years ago, a study done by three international economic research bodies concluded that Chile spent more per capita on the military than any other country in Latin America: $90.88 per inhabitant. According to recent estimates here, the copper law will result in the armed forces receiving nearly an additional $1 billion in 2007, which must be used for “military acquisitions.”

In contrast, General Pinochet did not build a single hospital during the 17 years he was in power, María Soledad Barría, the minister of health, said.

Chile is a nation that is not under threat from anyone. The only nations that still maintain grudges against Chile are Peru and Bolivia, but these grudges certainly do not rise to the level of war, nor do they rise to the level of justifying this kind of spending on the military.

Latin America should be disarming, not rearming. The primary excuse for not changing this law was the fact that the civilian government could not muster enough support to change the law because of the presence of the appointed senators. That's not the case any more. This law is a horrible anachronism. It's long past time to change it.

Chiloé's Bridge

Rohter also has this piece about life in Chiloé, a large island off the coast of Chile. Chiloé is close enough to the mainland, to be served by a bridge, but is currently has access only via ferries. The residents are divided on the bridge:

Others worry that the project would be a death blow to the communitarian values and culture that isolation  has generated.

“No one believes this island should be a fossil, but a bridge would bring a cultural shock that the mainland had centuries to absorb and that this island is not prepared to handle,” said Héctor Leiva, a schoolteacher in Quellón, at the island’s southern end.

Supporters of the bridge project contend that Chiloé’s distinctive music, dance, accent and architecture have already been eroded by exposure to television, cable and the Internet. The bridge would stimulate tourism, they maintain, which is the best way to preserve what remains of Chiloé’s culture.

This is reminiscent of the bridge built across Guanabara Bay between Rio de Janeiro and Niterói. It was one of  the many expensive projects put together by Brazil's military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. While it's popular for commercial traffic, the ferries that run between the two cities are filled to capacity during business hours. Given a choice between a ferry and the bridge, I'll gladly take the ferry.

The Political End of the Pinochet Era

As I mentioned here, one of the ancillary benefits of Augusto Pinochet's troubles was that it provided the impetus for political change and the end of the constitution that he inflicted under duress upon Chile.

Today, on Chile's 195th birthday, the Pinochet Constitution is now merely part of the miserable history of his horrid rule:

In a highly symbolic act aimed at ushering in a new political era in Chile, President Ricardo Lagos signed Chile’s new Constitution Saturday morning in a ceremony at the La Moneda presidential palace in the presence of the nation’s most important political, religious and civic leaders.

Lagos proclaimed that the new Constitution signifies an end to Chile’s transition to democracy - a process that begin in 1988 following the defeat of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet in a national plebiscite wherein Pinochet sought an additional eight year mandate.

“From this day forward, Chile will no longer have a Constitution that divides it," said Lagos as he signed the new Constitution. "Chile deserved and deserves a democratic Constitution, in accordance with today's international standards of democracy. That is what the Congress approved a few days ago, and that is what we have signed today."

Interior Minister Francisco Vidal, one of the more than 1,000 people attending the ceremony, termed the new Constitution “an act of national unity because we have, for the first time since 1980, a Constitution that represents all of Chile.”

So once again, Latin America's oldest democracy now has a military answerable to civilian rule.

It's about time.

I Find This Patronizing

So Condoleeza Rice has spoken of Miguel Insulza's and Chile's commitment to democracy almost as if it were something recent.

Time for a history lesson, Madame Secretary. Chile, up until 1973, was probably the most consistently democratic nation in Latin America. We all know what happened in 1973, so I don't need to rehash this, but one can only imagine that the desire and respect for democracy is enhanced when one has it brutally snatched away. Insulza and the Chileans do not need Secretary Rice's imprimatur on the subject of democracy.

Perhaps her boss should pay more attention to the Chileans. He could certainly use a refresher course on democracy and human rights.

I Guess I Might as Well Bloviate on This

Back in 1998 and 1999 I struck up an e-mail correspondence with a guy who I met on a New York Times web forum dealing with the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in England. This guy had spent a year in Chile and came back a defender of Pinochet, although he acknowledged that the human right record under Pinochet was hideous. He felt that some of the lower level figures involved in torture and disappearances might face justice someday, but did not think that Pinochet would ever be touched as this fellow believed that "Pinochet saved Chile."

Well history has proven my correspondent wrong in this regard, (I'd love to hear what he would have to say about Pinochet's lining of his pockets) but one of the points he raised is that the privatized social security system instituted by Pinochet was "really neat." Well, as Larry Rohter noted last month in the New York Times and Marla Dickerson wrote yesterday in the Los Angeles Times the participants in the plan may very well beg to differ as to how "really neat" the plan is as management fees have been as high as twenty percent.

Marc Cooper's excellent book, Pinochet and Me has a disturbing section showing how transferring accounts from one fund to another was widely encouraged, not to benefit the investors, but the account managers. Now those fowl are coming home to roost.

The one comment my correspondent made on the privatized Chilean plan was that for the plan to be introduced into the US, it would probably take a military dictatorship. Fortunately we don't have to worry about that . . .

Learning English in Chile

Larry Rohter has an article in today's New York Times about efforts to establish the teaching of English in Chile in such a fashion as to make the country completely bilingual as some of the Scandinavian countries are. He runs off the rails with this comment, however:

In any other Latin American country, a campaign to make English universal and obligatory would inevitably arouse protests about the destruction of the nation's sovereignty and cultural identity. In Brazil, for example, legislation has been proposed to prohibit the use of English in the names of stores or in advertisements and to create new Portuguese-language verbs to designate basic computer operations.

This is a very inapt comparison. To begin with, as Rohter should have pointed out since he lives in Brazil, there are millions of Brazilians who study English. While it is unfortunate that most of them are the ones who have the means to do so, considering Brazil's recent efforts to spur literacy, as his own article notes,  speaking, reading and writing Portuguese well is a necessary prerequisite to learning another language. Secondly, what Rohter failed to mention is how thoroughly English has invaded Brazil in a commercial sense. Where does one eat a light meal? At a lanchonete. In the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro there is a shopping mall called "The New York City Center" (I'm not translating the name; that's the literal name). I can come up with countless other examples and while I strongly believe in the value of learning another language (unlike many of my fellow US citizens) and commend Chile for doing this, Rohter's swipes at Brazil were completely unnecessary. Chile has less than 1/10th the population of Brazil. This is beyond apples and oranges; it's more like comparing pisco sours and caipirinhas.